Daily Mason

Tile French is Sacrifant. A Degree in the Archives of the Lodge of Saint Louis des Amis Réunis (Saint Louis of the Reunited Friends) at Calais.

RAISED

When a candidate has received the Third Degree, he is said to have been raised to the sublime Degree of a Master Mason. The expression refers, materially, to a portion of the ceremony of initiation, but symbolically, to the resurrection, which it is the object of the Degree to exemplify.

A curious sidelight upon the use of the expression is that obtained by considering the word as also meaning the acceptance or adoption of the candidate officially by the Fraternity. There is an ancient and striking parallel for this understanding. Among the Roman customs connected with the birth of children that was the most remarkable which left it to the arbitrary will of the father whether his new-born child should be preserved or left to perish. The midwife always placed the child on the ground. If the father wished to preserve its life he raised it from the ground and this was said to be tollere infantem, the raising of the child. This was an intimation of his purpose to acknowledge and educate it as his own If the father did not choose to do this, he left the child on the ground, and thus expressed his wish to expose or abandon it, exponere. This exposing of a newborn child was an unnatural custom borrowed from the Greeks by which children were left in the streets and abandoned to their fate (see Fiske’s Classical Antiquities, page 287). Some highly significant pictorial instances of resurrection are found in old churches. The altar picture from Holyrood at Edinburgh, Scotland (see illustration), is a good example. Here the First Person of the Trinity supports or raises the Son. Usually the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Ghost, is also represented symbolically in such cases, the dove being as a rule selected to indicate the complete threefold unity of the Godhead. The altar symbolism from Holyrood is therefore a typical specimen of the Trinity portrayal and of the resurrection occurrence.

Brother J. E. Barton discusses the symbolism of the other illustration, the Trinity Boss in the West Porch of Peterborough Cathedral in England. This porch is from architectural details dated about 1375. Old writers would call the porch a “Galilee,” a ritualistic provision for such occasions as Palm Sunday, and for processions generally on the Sabbath. The promise to the disciples, that the risen Christ should go before them into Galilee, is no doubt the origin of the name; for the chief ecclesiastical dignitary, who brought up the rear of the procession, here went first, and entered the porch through the ranks of his subordinates, as a Master in taking his seat in the Lodge.

Three probabilities are to be taken into account in considering this boss. It is the central ornament of a porch having special reference to the feast of the Resurrection. It was designed by a Gild—itself probably dedicated to the Holy Trinity, as at the Newark Parish Church, which would naturally wish the porch dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Its designers were inspired by a desire to connect, in a manner not unnatural to Freemasons with their own grades and ritual, the two ideas of the Holy Trinity and of the Resurrection.

Presumably the Masonic Gild, perhaps the chief Gild in Peterborough, was about to vault the porch it had given, and looked about for a suitable composition for its main boss. The first and inevitable suggestion was a Trinity subject, so common in sculptures stained glass, and on monumental brasses The usual Trinity is a design of God the Father sups porting the Son upon the Cross, with the Holy Spirit added in the form of a Dove. Next it was suggested that the Trinity should here be modified in form, so as to deplete a Risen, not a Crucified Lord, as being suitable to a Galilee Porch.

Last came the unifying suggestion that by the use Of a Masonic symbol the Resurrection of Christ, in the Trinity subject, should be marked at the point where Our Lord is about to be raised to Heaven by the hands of the Father; one hand gripping, and the other blessing. Hence the Second Person in the Trinity, who has already passed from the earthly Incarnation, is here at a singular position. His pierced hands show Him already crucified and rising from the grave, with the attitude common to medieval paintings of the Resurrection and the loin cloths still about Him. He is about to be raised to the sublime Degree, and God the Father, in order more expressly to note the Masonic idea, is figured like the Sun at its meridian.

What more appropriate than two figures typical of the Elect, redeemed by Christ, and raised and crowned with Him? Hence the two crowned figures, one apparently an ecclesiastic with an amice, whose diadems have the Trinity symbol of the trefoil, like the Father’s crown in the Chester boss. In this Peterborough boss, indeed, each foil of the trefoil is itself trefoiled, as if to insist on the threefold notion.

The ark of the Egyptian gods. A chest or structure with more height than depth, and thereby unlike the Israelites Ark of the Covenant. The winged figures embraced the lower part of the Naos, while the cherubim of the Ark of Yahveh were placed above its lid. Yahveh took up His abode above the propitiatory or covering between the wings of the cherubim, exteriorly, while the gods of Egypt were reputed as hidden in the interior of the Naos of the sacred barks, behind hermetically closed doors (see Cherubim).

In Hebrew M. Maimonides calls it the two-lettered name, and derives it from the Tetragrammaton, of which he says it is an abbreviation. Others have denied this, and assert that Jah is a name independent of Jehovah, but expressing the same idea of the Divine Essence. It is uniformly translated in the authorized version of the Bible by the word Lord, being thus considered as Synonymous with Jehovah, except in Psalm lxviii, 4, where the original word is preserved: “Extol Him that rideth upon the heavens by His name Jah,” upon which the Targum comment is “Extol Him who sitteth on the throne of glory in the ninth heaven; Yah is His name.” It seems, also to have been well known to the Gentile nations as the triliteral resume of God; for, although biliteral among the Hebrews, it assumed among the Greeks the triliteral form, as IAO Macrobius, in his Saturnalia, says that this was the sacred name of the Supreme Deity; and the Clarian Oracle being asked which of the gods was Jao, replied, “The initiated are bound to conceal the mysterious secrets. Learn thou that IAQ is the Great God Supreme who ruleth over all” (see Jehovah).

ICONOLOGY – Is the science which teaches the doctrine of images and symbolic representations. It is a science collateral with Freemasonry, and is of great importance to the Masonic student, because it is engaged in the consideration of the meaning and history of the symbols which constitute so material a part of the Masonic system.

The staff of office borne by the Grand Master of the Templars. In ecclesiology, baculus is the name given to the pastoral staff carried by a bishop or an abbot as the ensign of his dignity and authority. In pure Latinity, baculus means a long stick or staff, which was commonly carried by travelers, by shepherds, or by infirm and aged persons, and afterward, from affectation, by the Greek philosophers. In early times, this staff, made a little longer, was carried by kings and persons in authority, as a mark of distinction, and was thus the origin of the royal scepter.

The Christian church, borrowing many of its usages from antiquity, and alluding also, it is said, to the sacerdotal power which Christ conferred when he sent the apostles to preach, commanding them to take with them staves, adopted the pastoral staff, to be borne by a bishop, as symbolical of his power to inflict pastoral correction; and Durandus says, “By the pastoral staff is likewise understood the authority of doctrine. For by it the infirm are supported, the wavering are confirmed, those going astray are drawn to repentance.” Catalin also says that “the baculus, or episcopal staff, is an ensign not only of honor, but also of dignity, power, and pastoral jurisdiction.”

Honorius, a writer of the twelfth century, in his treatise De Gemma Animoe, gives to this pastoral staff the names both of bacutus and virga. Thus he says, ”Bishops bear the staff (baculum), that by their teaching they may strengthen the weak in their faith ; and they carry the rod (virgam), that by their power they may correct the unruly.” And this is strikingly similar to the language used by St. Bernard in the Rule which he drew up for the government of the Templars.

In Artiele I xviii, he says, “The Master ought to hold the staff and the rod (bacutum et cirgam) in his hand, that is to say, the staff (baculum), that he may support the infirmities of the weak, and the rod (cirgam), that he may with the zeal of rectitude strike down the vices of delinquents.”

The transmission of episcopal ensigns from bishops to the heads of ecclesiastical associations was not difficult in the Middle Ages; and hence it afterwards became one of the insignia of abbots, and the heads of confraternities connected with the Church, as a token of the possession of powers of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

Now, as the Papal bull, Omne datum Optimum, so named from its first three words, invested the Grand Master of the Templars with almost episcopal jurisdiction over the priests of his Order, he bore the baculus, or pastoral staff, as a mark of that jurisdiction, and thus it became a part of the Grand Master’s insignia of office.

The baculus of the bishop, the abbot, and the confraternities was not precisely the same in form. The earliest episcopal staff terminated in a globular knob, or a tau cross, a cross of T shape. This was, however, soon replaced by the simple-curved termination, which resembles and is called a crook, in allusion to that used by shepherds to draw back and recall the sheep of their flock which have gone astray, thus symbolizing the expression of Christ, “I am the good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.”

The baculus of the abbot does not differ in form from that of a bishop, but as the bishop carries the curved part of his staff pointing forward, to show the extent of his episcopal jurisdiction, so the abbot carries his pointing backward, to signify that his authority is limited to his monastery. The baculi, or staves of the confraternities, were surmounted by small tabernacles, with images or emblems, on a sort of carved cap, having reference to the particular gild or confraternity by which they were borne.

The baculus of the Knights Templar, which was borne by the Grand Master as the ensign of his office, in allusion to his quasi-episcopal jurisdiction, is described and delineated in Munter, Burnes, Addison, and all the other authorities, as a staff, on the top of which is an octagonal figure, surmounted with a cross patee, this French word being applied to the arms having enlarged ends. The cross, of course, refers to the Christian character of the Order, and the octagon alludes, it is said, to the eight beatitudes of our Savior in His Sermon on the Mount.

The pastoral staff is variously designated, by ecclesiastical writers, as virga, ferula, cambutta, crocia, and pedum.

From crocia, whose root is the Latin crux, and the Italian croce, meaning a cross, we get the English word crozier. Pedum, another name of the baculus, signifies, in pure Latinity, a shepherd’s crook, and thus strictly carries out the symbolic idea of a pastoral charge.

Hence, looking to the pastoral jurisdiction of the Grand Master of the Templars, his staff of office is described under the title of pedum magistrate seu patriarchale, that is, a magisterial or patriarchal staff, in the Statuta Commilitonum Ordinis Tempti, or the Statutes of the Fellow-soldiers of the Order of the Temple, as a part of the investiture of the Grand Master, in the following words:

Pedum magistrale seu patriarchale, aureum, in cacumine cujus crux Ordinis super orbem exaltur; that is, A Magisterial or patriarchal staffl of gold, on the top of which is a cross of the Order, surmounting an orb or globe. This is from Statute xxviii, article 358. But of all these names, baculus is the one more commonly used by writers to designate the Templar pastoral staff.

In the year 1859 this staff of office was first adopted at Chicago by the Templars of the United States, during the Grand Mastership of Sir William B. Hubbard. But, unfortunately, at that time it received the name of abacus, a misnomer which was continued on the authority of a literary blunder of Sir Walter Scott, so that it has fallen to the lot of American Freemasons to perpetuate, in the use of this word, an error of the great novelist, resulting from his too careless writing, at which he would himself have been the first to smile, had his attention been called to it. Abacus, in mathematics, denotes an instrument or table used for calculation, and in architecture an ornamental part of a column; but it nowhere, in English or Latin, or any known language, signifies any kind of a staff.

Sir Walter Scott, who undoubtedly was thinking of baculus, in the hurry of the moment and a not improbable confusion of words and thoughts, wrote abacus, when, in his novel of Ivanhoe, he describes the Grand Master, Lucas Beaumanoir, as bearing in his hand “that singular abacus, or staff of office,” committed a gross, but not uncommon, literary blunder, of a kind that is quite familiar to those who are conversant with the results of rapid composition, where the writer often thinks of one word and writes another.

Anno Lewis (Anno Lucis), in the Year of Light, is the epoch used in Masonic documents of the Symbolic Degrees. This era is calculated from the creation of the world, and is obtained by adding four thousand to the current year, on the supposition that Christ was born four thousand years after the creation of the world. But the chronology of Archbishop Ussher, which has been adopted as the Bible chronology in the authorized version, places the birth of Christ in the year 4004 after the creation.

According to this calculation, the Masonic date for the “year of light” is four years short of the true date, and the year of the Lord 1874, which in Masonic documents is 5874, should correctly be 5878. The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite Freemasons in the beginning of the nineteenth century used this Ussherian era, and the Supreme Council at Charleston dated its first circular, issued in 1802, as 5806. Dalcho (Ahiman Rezom, second edition, page 37) says: “If Masons are determined to fix the origin of their Order at the Xirrie of the erection, they should agree among themselves at what time before Christ to place that epoch.” At that agreement they have now arrived. Whatever differences may have once existed, there is now a general consent to adopt the theory that the world was created 4000 B.C.

The error is too unimportant, and the practice too universal, to expect that it will ever be corrected.  H. P. Smith (Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible), we may here point out in a paragraph to support Doctor Mackey, says that our appreciation of the Bible does not depend upon the accuracy of its dates. This authority considers that in general, the picture it provides of the sequence of events from the time of Judges down to the Fall of Jerusalem is correct. More recently there has been welcome light on the dates of certain biblical events from the inscriptions in Assyria and Babylonia.

These Empires had made great advances in astronomy and consequently in the regulation of the calendar. They had a reckoning of time which secured accuracy for their records of history. Lists have come down to us in fragments, but by them scholars have corrected some of the dates in Hebrew history. The reference already made to the work of Archbishop Ussher has been checked by these later studies and most of the figures, it is now accepted, are too high for the early period. Probably some of the early writers were influenced by a theory which they had formed or which had come to them through tradition and those tendencies show certain repetitions in the records which are, in these modern days, not so convincing as formerly.

Noowhouek (Constitutions 1784, page 5), speaking of the necessity of adding the four years to make a correct date, says: “But this being a Degree of accuracy that Masons in general do not attend to, we must, after this intimation, still follow the vulgar mode of computation to be intelligible.” As to the meaning of the expression, it is by no means to be supposed that Freemasons, now, intend by such a date to assume that their Order is as old as the creation. It is simply used as expressive of

reverence for that physical light which was created by the fiat of the Grand Architect, and which is adopted as the type of the intellectual light of Freemasonry. The phrase is altogether symbolic.

In the lectures according to the English system, we find the following definition of the Sacred Lodge, the symbol has not been preserved in the American instructions: Over the Sacred Lodge presided Solomon, the greatest of kings, and the wisest of men; Hiram, the great and learned King of Tyre; and Hiram Abif, the widow’s son, of the tribe of Naphtali. It was held in the bowels of the sacred Mount Moriah, under the part whereon was erected the Holy of Holies. On this mount it was where Abraham confirmed his faith by his readiness to offer up his only son, Isaae. Here it was where David offered that acceptable sacrifice on the threshing-floor of Araunah by which the anger of the Lord was appeased, and the plague stayed from his people. Here it was where the Lord delivered to David, in a dream, the plan of the glorious Temple, afterward erected by our noble Grand Master, King Solomon. And lastly, here it was where he declared he would establish his sacred name and word, which should never pass away- and for these reasons this was justly styled the Sacred Lodge.

It was a custom among the English Freemasons of the middle of the eighteenth century, when conversing together on Freemasonry, to announce the appearance of a profane by the warning expression It rains.

The custom was adopted by the German and French Freemasons, with the equivalent expression, Es regnet and II pluie. Baron Tschoudy, who condemns the usage, says that the latter refined upon it by designating the approach of a female by II neige, the French for It snows.

Doctor Oliver says (Revelations of a Square, page 142) that the phrase It rains, to indicate that a Cowan is present and the proceedings must be suspended, is derived from the ancient punishment of an eavesdropper, which was to place him under the eaves of a house in rainy weather, and to retain him there till the droppings of water ran in at the collar of his coat and out at his shoes.

Before any strange and unknown visitor can gain admission into a Masonic Lodge, he is required in the United States of America to take the following oath: I, A. B., do hereby and hereon solemnly and sincerely swear that I have been regularly initiated, passed, and raised to the sublime Degree of a Master Mason in a just and legally constituted Lodge of such; that I do not now stand suspended or expelled; and know of no reason why I should not hold Masonic communication with my Brethren.

It is called the Tiler’s Oath, because it is usually taken in the Tiler’s room, and was formerly administered by that officer, whose duty it is to protect the Lodge from the approach of unauthorized visitors. It is now administered by the Committee of Examination, and not only he to whom it is administered, but he who administers it, and all who are present, must take it at the same time. It is a process of purgation, and each one present, the visitor as well as the members of the Lodge, is entitled to know that all the others are legally qualified to be present at the esoteric examination which is about to take place. This custom is unknown in English Freemasonry.