En: MACKEY - N

MACKEY – N

Source: Mackey's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry

• N

The Hebrew letter is the fourteenth letter in the English and Hebrew alphabets; its numerical value is 50, and its definition, fish. As a final, Nun is written 1, and then is of the value of 700. The Hebrew Divine appellation is Formidabilis.

• NAAMAH.

The daughter of Lamech and sister of Tubal-cain (see Genesis iv, 18-24, and 99, which have been read as meaning two different persons but now usually understood as of the same list). To her the Legend of the Craft attributes the invention of the art of weaving, and she is united with her three brothers, by the same legend, in the task of inscribing the several sciences on two pillars, that the knowledge of them might be preserved after the Flood.

• NABAIM

See Schools of the Prophets

• NAHARDA,BROTHERHOOD OF

After the destruction of the Solomonial Temple, the captives formed an association while slaves at Naharda, on the Euphrates, and are there said to have preserved the secret mysteries.

• NAKED

In Scriptural symbology, nakedness denoted sin, and dothing, protection. But the symbolism of Freemasonry on this subject is different. There, to be "neither naked nor clothed" is to make no claim through worldly wealth or honors to preferment in Freemasonry, where nothing but internal merit, which is unaffected by the outward appearance of the body, is a recommendation for admission.

• NAME OF GOD

A reverential allusion to the name of God, in some especial and peculiar form, is to be found in the doctrines and ceremonies of almost all nations. This ineffable or unutterable name was respected by the Jews under the sacred form of the word Jehovah. Among the Druids, the three letters I. O. W. constituted the name of Deity. They were never pronounced, says Giraldus Cambrensis, but another and less sacred name was substituted for them. Each letter was a name in itself. The first is the Word, at the utterance of which in the beginning the world burst into existence; the second is the Word, whose sound still continues, and by which all things remain in existence; the third is the Word, by the utterance of which all things will be consummated in happiness, forever approaching to the immediate presence of the Deity. The analogy between this and the past, press ent and future significations contained in the Jewish Tetragrammaton will be evident.

Among the Mohammedans there is a science called Ism Allah, or the science of the name of God. "They pretend," says Niebuhr, "that God is the loclc of this science, and Mohammed the key; that, consequently, none but Mohammedans can attain it; that it discovers what passes in different countries; that it familiarizes the possessors with the genii, who are at the command of the initiated, and who instruct them; that it places the winds and the seasons at their disposal, and heals the bites of serpents, the lame, the maimed, and the blind."

In the chapter of the Koran en titled Araaf, it is written: "God has many excellent names. Invoke him by these names, and separate your selves from them who give him false names." The Mohammedans believe that God has ninety-nine names, which, with that of Allah, makes one hundred; and, therefore, their chaplets or rosaries are composed of one hundred beads, at each of which they invoke one of these names; and there is a tradition, that whoever frequently makes this invocation will find the gates of Paradise open to him. With them Allah is the Ism al adhem, the Great Name, and they bestow upon it all the miraculous virtues which the Jews give to the Tetragrammaton.

This, they say, is the name that was engraven on the stone which Japheth gave to his children to bring down rain from heaven; and it was by virtue of this name that Noah made the ark float on the waters, and governed it at will, without the aid of oars or rudder. Among the Hindus there was the same veneration of the name of God, as is evinced in their treatment of the mystical name Aum. The "Institutes of Menu" continually refer to the peculiar efficacy of this word, of which it is said, "All rites ordained in the Veda oblations to fire, and solemn sacrifices pass away; but that which passes not away is the syllable Aum, thence called aishara, since it is a symbol of God, the Lord of created beings."

There was in every ancient nation a sacred name given to the highest god of its religious faith, besides the epithets of the other and subordinate deities.

The old Aryans, the founders of our race, called their chief god Dyaus, and in the Vedas we have the invocation to Dyaus Pitar, which is the same as the Greek Zev cramp, and the Latin, Jupiter, all meaning the Heaven-Father, and at once reminding us of the Christian invocation to "Our Father which art in heaven."

There is one incident in the Hindu mythology which shows how much the old Indian heart yearned after this expression of the nature of Deity bv a name.

There was a nameless god, to whom, as the "source of golden light," there was a worship. This is expressed in one of the Veda hymns, where the invocation in every stanza closes with the exclamation, "Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?"

Nor, says Bunsen (God in History i, 302), "the Brahmanic expositors must needs find in every hvmn the name of a god who is invoked in it, and so, in this case. their have actually invented a grammatical divinity the god Who." What more pregnant testimony could we have of the tendency of man to seek a knowledge of the Divine nature in the expression of a name?

The Assyrians worshiped Assur, or Asarac, as their chief god. On an obelisk, taken from the palace of Nimrod, we find the inscription, "to Asarac, the Great Lord, the King of all the great gods."

Of the veneration of the Egyptians for the name of their supreme god, we have a striking evidence in the writings of Herodotus, the Father of History, as he has been called, who, during a visit to Egypt. was initiated into the Osirian mysteries. Speaking of these initiations he says (book u, chapter 171), "the Egyptians represent by night his sufferings, whose name I refrain from mentioning." It was no more lawful among the Egyptians than it was among the Jews, to give utterance aloud to that Holy Name.

At Byblos the Phenicians worshiped Eliun, the Most High God. From him was descended El, whom Philo identifies with Saturn, and to whom he traces the Hebrew Elohim. Of this El, Max Muller says that there was undeniably a primitive religion of the whole Semitic race, and that the Strong One in Heaven was invoked under this name by the ancestors of the Semitic races, before there were Babylonians in Babylonia, Phenicians in Sidon and Tyre, or Jews in Mesopotamia and Jerusalem. If so, then the Mosaic adoption of Jehovah, with its more precise teaching of the Divine essence, was a step in the progress to the knowledge of the Divine Truth. In China there is an infinite variety of names of elemental powers, and even of ancestral spirits, who b are worshiped as subordinate deities; but the ineffable name is Tien, compounded of the two signs for great and one, and which, the Imperial Dictionary tells us, signifies "The Great One—He that dwells on high, and regulates all below."

Drummond (Origines) claimed that Abaur was the name of the Supreme Deity among the ancient Chaldeans. It is evidently the Hebrew signifies "The Father of Light." The Scandinavians had twelve subordinate gods, but their chief or supreme deity was Al-Fathr, or the All Father.

Even among the Red Men of America we find the idea of an invisible deity, whose name was to be venerated. Garcilasso de la Vega tells us that while the Peruvians paid public worship to the sun, it was but as a symbol of the Supreme Being, whom they called, Pachacamac, a word meaning the soul of the world, and which was so sacred that it was spoken only with extreme dread.

The Jews had, besides the Tetragrammaton or fourlettered name, two others: one consisting of twelve and the other of forty-two letters. But Maimonides, in his More Nevochim (part i, elxii), remarks that it is impossible to suppose that either of these constituted a single name, but that each must have been composed of several words, which must, however, have heen significant in making man approximate to a knowledge of the true essence of God. The Cabalistical book called the Sohar confirms this when it tells us that there are ten names of God mentioned in the Bible, and that when these ten names are combined into one word, the number of the letters amounts to forty-two.

But the Talmudists, although they did not throw around the forty-two-lettered name the sanctity of the Tetragrammaton, prescribed that it should be communicated only to men of middle age and of virtuous habits, and that its knowledge would confirm the n as heirs of the future as well as the present life. The twelve-lettered name, although once common, became afterward occult; and when, on the death of Simon I, the priests ceased to use the Tetragrammaton, they were accustomed to bless the people with the name of twelve letters. Maimonides very wisely rejects the idea that any power was derived from these letters or their pronunciation, and claims that the only virtue of the names consisted in the holy ideas expressed by the words of which they were composed.

The following are the ten Cabalistic names of God, corresponding to the ten Sephiroth:

1. Eheyeh

2. Jah

3. Jehovah

4. E1

5. Eloah

6. Elohim

7. Jehovah Sabaoth

8. Elohim Sabaoth

9. Elhi

10. Adonai

Lanzi extends his list of names to twenty-six, which, with their signification, are as follows:

At. Aleph and Tau, that is, Alpha and Omega. .A name figurative of the Tetragrammaton.

Ihoh. Eternal, absolute principle of creation.

Hoh. Destruction. the male and female principle, the author and regulator of time and motion.

Jah. Lord and remunerator.

Oh. Severer and punisher.

Jao. Author of life.

Azazel. Author of death.

Jao-Sabaoth. God of the co-ordinations of loves and hatreds. Lord of the solstices and the equinoxes.

Ehie. The Being, the Ens.

El. The First Cause. The principle or beginning of all things.

Elo-hi. The Good Principle.

Elo-ho. The Evil Principle.

El-raccum. The Succoring Principle.

El-cannum. The Abhoring Principle.

Ell. The Most Luminous.

II . The Omnipotent.

Ellohim. The Omnipotent and Beneficent.

Elohim. The Most Beneficent.

Elo. The Sovereign, the Excelsus.

Adon. The Lord, the Dominator.

Etoi. The Illuminator, the Most Effulgent.

Adonai. The Most Firm, the Strongest.

Elion. The Most Sigh.

Shaddai. The Most Victorious.

Yeshurun. The Most Generous.

Noil. The Most Sublime.

Like the Mohammedan Ism Allah, Freemasonry presents us as its most important feature with this science of the names of God. But here it elevates itself above Talmudical and Rabbinical reveries, and becomes a symbol of Divine Truth. The names of God were undoubtedly intended originally to be a means of communicating the knowledge of God himself. The name was, from its construction and its literal powers, used to give some idea, however scanty, in early times, of the true nature and essence of the Deity. The Ineffable Name was the symbol of the unutterable sublimity and perfection of truth which emanate from the Supreme God, while the subordinate names were symbols of the subordinate manifestations of truth. Freemasonry has availed itself of this system, and, in its reverence for the Divine Name, indicates its desire to attain to that truth as the ultimate object of all its labor. The significant words of the Masonic system, which describe the names of God wherever they are found, are not intended merely as words of recognition, but as indices, pointing—like the Symbolic Ladder of Jacob of the First Degree, or the Winding Stairs of the Second, or the Three Gates of the Third—the way of progress from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge, from the lowest to the highest conceptions of Divine Truth. And this is, after all, the real object of all Masonic science.

• NAMES OF LODGES

The precedency of Lodges does not depend on their names, but on their numbers The rule declaring that "the precedency of Lodges is grounded on the seniority of their Constitution" was adopted on the 27th of December, 1727 (Constitutions, 1738, page 154). The number of the Lodge, therefore, by which its precedency is established, is always to be given by the Grand Lodge. In England, Lodges do not appear to have received distinctive names before the latter part of the eighteenth century. Up to that period the Lodges were distinguished simply by their numbers. Thus, in the first edition of the Book of Constitutions, published in 1723, we find a list of twenty Lodges, registered by their numbers, from No. 1 to No. 20, inclusive. Subsequently, they were further designated by the name of the tavern at which they held their meetings. Thus, in the second edition of the same work, published in 1738, we meet with a list of one hundred and six Lodges, designated sometimes, singularly enough, as Lodge No. 6, at the Rummer Tavern, in Queen Street; No. 84, at the Black Dog, in Castle Street; or No. 98. at the Bacchus Tavern, in Little Bush Lane. With such names and localities, we are not to wonder that the "three small glasses of punch," of which Doctor Oliver so feelingly speaks in his Book of the Lodge, were duly appreciated; nor, as he admits, that "there were some Brethren who displayed an anxiety to have the allowance increased." In 1766 we read of four Lodges that were erased from the Register, under the similar designations of the Globe, Fleet Street; the Red Cross Inn, Southwark; No. 85, at the George, Ironmongers' Lane and the Mercers Arms, Mercers Street. To only one of these, it will be perceived, was a number annexed. The name and locality of the tavern was presumed to be a sufficient distinction. It was not until about the close of the eighteenth century, as has been already observed, that we find distinctive names beginning to be given to the Lodges; for in 1793 we hear of the Shakespear Lodge, at Stratford-on-Avon; the Royal Brunswick, at Sheffield; and the Lodge of Apollo, at Alcester. From that time it became a usage among our English Brethren, from which they have never since departed.

But a better taste began to prevail at a much earlier period in Scotland, as well as in Continental and Colonial Lodges. In Scotland, especially, distinctive names appear to have been used from a very early period, for in the very old Charter granting the office of Hereditary Grand disasters to the Barons of Rosslyn of which the date cannot be more recent than 1600, we find among the signatures the names of the officers of the Lodge of Dunfermline and the Lodge of Saint Andrew's. Among the names in the list of the Scotch Lodges, in 1736 are those of Saint Mary's Chapel, Kilwinning, Aberdeen, etc. These names were undoubtedly borrowed from localities; but in 1763, while the English Lodges were still content with their numerical arrangement only we find in Edinburgh such designations as Saint Luke's, Saint Giles's, and Saint David's Lodges.

The Lodges on the Continent, it is true, at first adopted the English method of borrowing a tavern sign for their appellation; whence we find the Lodge at the Golden Lion, in Holland, in 1734, and before that the Lodge at Nure's Tavern, in Paris, in 1725. But they soon abandoned this inefficient and inelegant mode of nomenclature; and accordingly, in 1739, a Lodge was organized in Switzerland under the appropriate name of Stranger's Perfect Union. Tasteful names, more or less significant, began thenceforth to be adopted by the Continental Lodges. Among them we may meet with the Lodge of the Three Globes, at Berlin, in 1740; the Minava Lodge, at Leipsic, in 1741; Absalom Lodge, at Hamburg, in 1742; Saint George's Lodge, at the same place, in 1743; the Lodge of the Crowned Column, at Brunswick, in 1745; and an abundance of others, all with distinctive names, selected sometimes with much and sometimes with but little taste. But the worst of them was undoubtedly better than the Lodge at the Goose and Gridiron, which met in London in 1717.

In the Colonies of America, from the very first introduction of Freemasonry into the western world, significant names were selected for the Lodges; and hence we have, in 1734, Saint John's Lodge, at Boston; a Solomon's Lodge, in 1735, at both Charleston and Savannah; and a Union Kilwinning, in 1754, at the former place.

This brief historical digression will serve as an examination of the rules which should govern all founders in the choice of Lodge names. The first and most important rule is that the name of a Lodge should be technically significant; that is, it must allude to some Masonic fact or characteristic; in other words, there must be something Masonic about it. Under this rule, all names derived from obscure or un-masonic localities should be reflected as unmeaning and inappropriate. Doctor Oliver, it is true, thinks otherwise, and says that "the name of a hundred, or wahpentake, in which the Lodge is situated, or of a navigable river, which confers wealth and dignity on the town, are proper titles for a Lodge." But a name should always convey an idea, and there can be conceived no idea worth treasuring in a Freemason's mind to be deduced from bestowing such names as New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, on a Lodge. The selection of such a name shows but little originality in the chooser; and, besides, if there be two Lodges in a town, each is equally entitled to the appellation; and if there be but one, the appropriation of it would seem to indicate an intention to have no competition in the future.

Yet, barren of Masonic meaning as are such geographical names, the adoption of them is one of the most common faults in American Masonic nomenclature. The examination of a very few old Registers, taken at random, will readily evince this fact. Thus, eighty-eight, out of one hundred and sixty Lodges in Wisconsin, were named after towns or counties; of four hundred and thirty-seven Lodges in Indiana, two hundred and fifty-one have names derived from the same source; geographical names were found in one hundred and eighty-one out of four hundred and three Lodges in Ohio, and in twenty out of thirty-eight in Oregon. But, to compensate for this, we had seventy-one Lodges in View Hampshire, and only two local geographical appellations in the list. There are, however, some geographical names which are admissible, and, indeed, are highly appropriate These are the names of places celebrated as Masonic history. Such titles for Lodges as Jerusalem, Tyre, Lebanon and Joppa are unexceptionable. Patmos. which is the name of a Lodge in Maryland, seems. as the long residence of one of the Patrons of the Order. to be unobjectionable.

So, too, Bethel, because it signifies the House of God; Mount Moriah, the site of the ancient Temple; Calvary, the small hill on which the sprig of acacia was found; Mount Ararat, where the ark of our father Noah rested; Ophir, whence Solomon brought the gold and precious stones with which he adorned the Temple; Tadmor, because it was a city built by King Solomon; and Salem and Jebus, because they are synonyms of Jerusalem, and because the latter is especially concerned with Ornan the Jebusite, on whose threshing-floor the Temple was subsequently built—are all excellent and appropriate names for Lodges. But all Scriptural names are not equally admissible- Cabul, for instance, must be rejected, because it was the subject of contention between Solomon and Hiram of Tyre; and Babylon, because it was the place where "language was confounded and Freemasonry lost," and the scene of the subsequent captivity of our ancient Brethren; Jericho, because it was under a curse; and Misgab and Tophet, because they were places of idol worship. In short, it may be adopted as a rule, that no name should be adopted whose antecedents are in opposition to the principles of Freemasonry.

The ancient patrons and worthies of Freemasonry furnish a very fertile source of Masonic nomenclature, and have been very liberally used in the selection of names of Lodges. Among the most important may be mentioned Saint John, Salomon, Hiram, King David, Adoniram, Enoch, Archimedes, and Pythagoras. The Widow's Son Lodge, of which there are several instances in the United States, is an affecting and significant title, which can hardly be too often used. Recourse is also to be had to the names of moderate distinguished men who have honored the Institution by their adherence to it, or who, by their learning in Freemasonry, and by their services to the Order, have merited some marks of approbation. And hence we meet, in England, as the names of Lodges, with Susser, Moira, Frederick, Zetland, and Robert Burns; and in the United States with Washington, Lafayette, Clinton, Franklin, and Clay. Care must, however, be taken that no name be selected except of one who was both a Freemason and had distinguished himself, either by services to his country, to the world, or to the Order. Brother Oliver says that "the most appropriate titles are those which are assumed from the name of some ancient benefactor or meritorious individual who was a native of the place where the Lodge is held; as, in a city, the builder of the cathedral church."

In the United States we are, it is true, precluded from a selection from such a source; but there are to be found some of those old benefactors of Freemasonry, who, like Shakespeare and Milton, or Homer and Virgil, have ceased to belong to any particular country and have now become the common property of the world-wide Craft. There are, for instance Carausius, the first Royal Patron of Freemasonry in England; and Saint Alban, the first Grand Master; and Athelstan and Prince Edwin, both active encouragers of the art in the same kingdom. There are Wykeham, Gundulph, Giffard, Langham, Yevele (called, in the old records the King's Freemason), and Chicheley, Jermyn, and Wren, all long celebrated as illustrious Grand Masters of England, each of whom would be well entitled to the honor of giving name to a Lodge, and any one of whom would be better, more euphonious, and more spirit-stirring than the unmeaning, and oftentimes crabbed, name of some obscure village or post-office, from which too many of our Lodges derive their titles.

And, then, again, among the great benefactors to Masonic literature and laborers in Masonic science there are such names as Anderson, Dunckerley, Preston, Hutchinson, Town, Webb, and a host of others, who, though dead, still live by their writings in our memories. The virtues and tenets—the inculcation and practice of which constitute an important part of the Masonic system—form very excellent and appropriate names for Lodges, and have always been popular among correct Masonic nomenclatures. Thus we everywhere find such names as Charity, Concord, Equality, Faith, Fellowship, Harmony, Hope, Humility, Mystic Tie, Relief, Truth, Union, and Virtue. Frequently, by a transposition of the word Lodge and the distinctive appellation, with the interposition of the preposition of, a more sonorous and emphatic name is given by our English and European Brethren, although the custom is but rarely followed in the United States. Thus we have by this method the Lodge of Regularity, the Lodge of Fidelity, the Lodge of Industry, and the Lodge of Prudent Brethren, in England; and in France, the Lodge of Benevolent Friends, the Lodge of Perfect Union, the Lodge of the Friends of Peace, and the celebrated Lodge of the Nine Sisters.

As the names of illustrious men will sometimes stimulate the members of the Lodges which bear them to an emulation of their characters, so the names of the Masonic virtues may serve to incite the Brethren to their practice, lest the inconsistency of their names and their conduct should excite the ridicule of the world.

Another fertile and appropriate source of names for Lodges is to be found in the symbols and implements of the Order. Hence, we frequently meet with such titles as Level, Trowel, Rising Star, Rising Sun, Olive Branch, Evergreen, Doric, Corinthian, Delta, and Corner-Stone Lodges. Acacia is one of the most common, and at the same time one of the most beautiful, of these symbolic names; but unfortunately, through gross ignorance, it is often corrupted into Cassia—an insignificant plant, which has no Masonic or symbolic meaning.

An important rule in the nomenclature of Lodges, and one which must at once recommend itself to every person of taste, is that the name should be euphonious, agreeable sounding. This principle of euphony has been too little attended to in the selection of even geographical names in the United States, where names with impracticable sounds, or with ludicrous associations, are often affixed to our towns and rivers. Speaking of a certain island, with the unpronounceable name of Srh, Lieber says, "If Homer himself were born on such an island, it could not become immortal,-for the best-disposed scholar would be unable to remember the name"; and he thinks that it was no trifling obstacle to the fame of many Polish heroes in the Revolution of that country, that they had names which left upon the mind of foreigners no effect but that of utter confusion. An error like this must be avoided in bestowing a name upon a Lodge. The word selected should be soft, vocal—not too long nor too short—and, above all, be accompanied in its sound or meaning by no low, indecorous, or ludicrous association. For this reason such names of Lodges should be rejected as Sheboygan and Oconomowoc from the Registry of Wisconsin, because of the uncouthness of the sound; and Rough and Ready and Indian Diggings from that of California, on account of the ludicrous associations which these names convey. Again, Pythagoras Lodge is preferable to Pythagorean, and Archimedes is better than Archimedean, because the noun is more euphonious and more easily pronounced than the adjective. But this rule is difficult to illustrate or enforce; for, after all, this thing of euphony is a mere matter of taste, and we all know the adage, "De gustibus non est disputandum," there is no disputing about tastes.

A few negative rules, which are, however, easily deduced from the affirmative ones already given, will complete the topic. No name of a Lodge should be adopted which is not, in some reputable way, connected with Freemasonry Everybody will acknowledge that Morgan Lodge would be an anomaly, and that Cowan Lodge, would, if possible, be worse. But there are some names which, although not quite as bad as these, are on principle equally as objectionable. Why should any of our Lodges, for instance, assume, as many of them have, the names of Madison, Jefferson, or Taylor, since none of these distinguished men were Freemasons or Patrons of the Craft. The indiscriminate use of the names of saints unconnected with Freemasonry is for a similar reason objectionable. Beside our Patrons, Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist, but three other saints can lay any claims to Masonic honors, and these are Saint Alban, who introduced, or is said to have introduced, the Order into England, and has been liberally complimented in the nomenclature of Lodges; and Saint Swithin, who was at the head of the Craft in the reign of Ethelwolf; and Saint Benedict, who was the founder of the Masonic Fraternity of Bridge Builders. But Saint Mark, Saint Luke, Saint Andrew all of whom have given names to numerous Lodges, can have no pretensions to assist as sponsors in these Masonic baptisms, since they were not at all connected with the Craft.

To the Indian names of Lodges there is a radical objection. It is true that their names are often very euphonious and always significant, for the Red Men of the American Continent are tasteful and ingenious in their selection of names—much more so, indeed, than the whites, who borrow from them; but their significance has nothing to do with Freemasonry.

What has been said of Lodges may with equal propriety be said, mutatis mutandis, the necessary changes having been made, of Chapters, Councils, and Commanderies.

We may supplement what Doctor Mackey says here with a few allusions to peculiar names of Lodges Gaelic Lodge of Glasgow, Scotland, has the peculiarity that once a year the Brethren confer a Degree in that quaint old Celtic language of the Scotch. America Lodge of London, England comprises exclusively only those who were born in the United States. There is a Lodge of lawyers at Belfast. Ireland which bears the significant name of the Lodge of Good Counsel. A Lodge at London comprises a membership keenly interested in the improvement of the condition of the blind, and the name of their Lodge, Lux in Tenebris, or Light Among Shadows has a meaning that touches the heart.

Titles of many foreign Lodges have a peculiar significance as they exhibit a tendency to group Brethren of certain professions and pursuits. The London Hospital Lodge, the Middlesex Hospital Lodge and the City of London Red Cross Lodge are particularly significant names and several of the leading clubs, permanent schools, societies of musicians, of architects, of chartered accountants, the London School Board as well as engineers and various other professional organizations have Lodges bearing the names of these institutions. The Telephone Lodge has an expressive title, and one might suspect that the Sanitarian and Hygeia Lodges have to do with public health, and that is correct. Aquarius Lodge recruits its members from Brethren connected with the London Water Works, Aguartus being indeed the "water bearer." The Brethren of Evening Star Lodge are concerned with the lighting of London. We Visited a Lodge at London whose members were all lawyers and all engineers; they were certified members of the Institution of Patent Agents and the name of their Lodge was Invention. Hortus Lodge comprises Brethren who are merchants or growers of flowers, hortus being the Latin word for garden.

• NAMUR

A city of Belgium, where the Primitive Scottish Rite was first established; hence sometimes called the Rite of Namur.

• NAOS

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).

• NAPHTALI

The territory of the tribe of Naphtali adjoined, on its western border, to Phenicia, and there must, therefore, have been frequent and easy communication between the Phenicians and the Naphtalites, resulting sometimes in intermarriage. This will explain the fact that Hiram the Builder was the son of a widow of Naphtali and a man of Tyre.

• NAPLES

Freemasonry must have been practiced in Naples before 1751, for in that year Ring Charles issued an Edict forbidding it in his dominions. The author of Anti-Saint Nicaise says that there was a Grand Lodge at Naples, in 1756, which was in correspondence with the Lodges of Germany. But its meetings were suspended by a royal Edict in September, 1775. In 1777 this Edict was repealed at the instigation of the Queen, and Freemasonry was again tolerated. This toleration lasted, however, only for a brief period. In 1781 Ferdinand IV renewed the Edict of Suppression, and from that time until the end of the century Freemasonry was subjected in Italy to the combined persecutions of the Church and State, and the Freemasons of Naples met only in secret. In 1793, after the French Revolution, many Lodges were openly organized.

A Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite was established on the 11th of June 1809 of which King Joachim elected Grand Master, and the Grand Orient of Naples on the 24th of the same month. The fact that the Grand Orient worked according to the French Rite, and the Supreme Council according to the Scottish, caused dissensions between the two Bodies, which, however, were finally healed. And on the 23d of May, 1811, a Concordat was established between the Supreme Council and the Grand Orient, by which the latter took the supervision of the Degrees up to the Eighteenth, and the former of those from the Eighteenth to the Thirty-third. In October, 1812, Wing Joachim accepted the presidency of the Supreme Council as its Grand Commander. Both Bodies became extinct in 1815, on the accession of the Bourbons.

• NAPOLEON I

It has been claimed, and with much just reason, as shown in his course of life, that Napoleon the Great was a member of the Brotherhood. Brother J. E. S. Tuckett, Transactions of Quatuor Coronati Lodge (volume xxvii, pages 96 to 141, 1914), arrives at the following conclusions: The evidence in favor of a Masonic initiation previous to Napoleon's assumption of the imperial title is overwhelming:

The initiation took place in the body of an Army Philadelphe Lodge of the—Ecossais—Primitive Rite of Narbonne, the third initiation of the " Note Communique" being an advancement in that Rite; These initiations took place between 1795 and 1798.

Brother David E. W. Williamson sends us a reference of value here: In his Notes pour servir a Histoire de la Franc-Maçonnerie a Nancy jusqu'en 1805, M. Charles Bernardin, P. M. of the Lodge at Nancy, writing about 1910, says "3e Décembre (1797) on place la visite du general Bonaparte a la loge de Nancy." If this visit by hirn as a Freemason is a fact we can limit to a narrow range the probable time when Bonaparte was initiated and thus support the claim of Brother Tuckett.

Brother Tuckett's evidence is summed up thus: In 1801, that is, fully two years before Napoleon became Emperor, a prominent Ecossais, Brother Abraham, writes of the Masonic order "as proud now to number the immemorial Brothers Bonaparte and Moreau among its members." The Official report of a Masonic Festival at Dijon in November of the same year described Masonic honors paid to Napoleon and refers to " Les DD.. et RR.. FF.. Buonaparte et Moreau." Another official report of a similar Festival at Montauban eleven days later describes Masonic honors paid to Napoleon and Moreau, and in the Toast List their names occur with essentially Masonic embellishments. Moreau became head of the Army Philadelphes in 1801. The Strassburg Lodge is said to have toasted Napoleon as a Freemason. The wording of the toast shows that this was before Napoleon became Emperor. At the same period a Philadelphe Lodge, probably of the Army Branch, did exist at Strassburg. In 1805, or early 1806, an eminent Brother Pyron, then, or a few months later, a Philadelphe, writing to another eminent Brother Eques, chief of the Philadelphes, claims Napoleon as brother of our Rite." Rite referred to possibly Philadelphe, certainly an Ecossais Rite.

In March, 1807, at Milan, in a Lodge named in honor of the Empress, the mother of the Viceroy, Grand Master at Milan, Napoleon is toasted as "Brother, Emperor and King, Protector." In 1816 appears a book of Confesses de Napoleon with an engraving representing the reception of Bonaparte by the llluminsti. In 1820, and again in 1827, an unknown writer says, "It is certain that Napoleon underwent three initiations." The first, 1795, the reception by the Francs- Juges-query, Illuminati ? The second, from description evidently an Ecossais initiation, is placed between March, 1796, and June, 1798. The third, a Philadelphe, more probably of the Army Branch initiation at Cairo. In the same volume Napoleon is made to say that he had been initiated into a "Secte des Egyptien.s." In 1829 the Abeille Masonnique, and in 1830 Clavel, state that Napoleon visited Lodges in Paris incognito, unknown. From 1829 onwards a number of writers repeat that Napoleon was initiated at Malta in 1798. In 1859 a correspondent of the Freemasons Magazine claims to have known a French Brother who professed to have met Napoleon as a Freemason in open Lodge.

Frost in his Secret Societies of the European Resolutions London, 1876 (volume i, page 146), quoted Nodier's authority for the statement that "the Emblem " of the Army Philadelphes was identical with that adopted for the Legion of Honor. The Insignia chosen for the Legion consisted of a white enameled five-rayed star bearing the portrait of Napoleon and a wreath of oak and laurel. Legend—Napoleon Empereur des Français. On the reverse—The Frence Eagle grasping 3 thunderbolt. egend—Honneur et Patrie. The Ribbon was of scarlet watered silk. Presumably Frost and Nodier allude to the five-rayed star, derived from the Pentalpha an emblem found in all Masonic and related systems. The Emperor's brothers, the Imperial Princes Joseph, Lucian, Louis and Jerome, were all Freemasons as was also his step-son Eugene Beauharnais—at first regarded as the Imperia; Heir-Apparent, his brother-in-law Murat, and his nephew Jerome. Joseph, 1768-1844. King of Naples, 1806-8. King of Spain, 1808-13. Nominated by the Emperor himself as Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France, 1804. Louis, 1778 to 1846. King of Holland, 1806-10. Grand Master Adjoined of the Grand Orient of France, 1804. Jerome, 1784 to 1860. King of Westphalia, 1807-13. Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Westphalia. His son Jerome was also a Freemason. Lucien, 1775 to 1840.

A member of the Grand Orient of France. Eugene Beauharnais, 1781 to 1S24. Viceroy of Italy 1805-14. Grand Master of Italy and Grand Master of the Grand Orient of the Division Militaire at Milan, 1805. Joachim Murat,1771 to 1815. King of Naples,1808. Senior Grand Warden of the Grand Orient of France, 1803. Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Naples 1808. Grand Master of the Order of Saint Joachim 1806. The Empress Josephine is known to have been friendly to Freemasonry. She was initiated into the Maconnerie d'Adoption in the Lodge Les Francs Chevaliers in 1804 at Paris, together with several of the ladies of her court, and became an active member as well as patroness of that Rite. Those who were chosen by Napoleon for high honor and office in the State were nearly all of them members of the Craft and higher Degrees. Of the sis who, with the Emperor himself formed the Grand Council of the Empire, five were certainly Freemasons, at their head being the Arch-Chancellor, Prince Jean Jacques Regis Cambaceres, the Emperor's right-hand man, and in his time the most active, enthusiastic and indefatigable Freemason in France.

The sixth, the Arch-Treasurer Le Brun, formerly Third Consul, is also believed to have been of the Craft, but it is not certain. Of the nine lesser Imperial officers of State, six at least were active Masons. Of Marshals of France who served under Napoleon, at least twenty-two out of the first thirty were Freemasons, many of them Grand Officers of the Grand Orient. The union of all the separate and often mutually hostile Rites in one governing body was from the first the project of Napoleon. Mereadier relates that during the Consulate Napoleon threatened to abolish Freemasonry altogether unless this was accomplished. Late in 1804, at the request of Cambaceres he interested himself in the reorganization of the Grand Orient with the result that in 1805 the Grand Orient assumed control over the whole body of Freemasonry in the Empire, with the Emperor's brother, Joseph, as Grand Master, with Cambaceres and Murat as his Grand Master Adjoints. Through Cambaceres the Emperor assured the Brothers of his imperial protection, stating that he had instituted inquiry into the subject of Freemasonry, and that he perceived that their highly moral aim and purpose were worthy of his favor.

Louis Napoleon III was a member of the Supreme, of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of France.

• NAPOLEONIC FREEMASONRY

An Order under this name, called also the French Order of Noachites, was established at Paris, in 1816, by some of the adherents of the Emperor Napoleon.

It was divided into three Degrees:

1. Knight

2. Commander

3. Grand Elect

The last Degree was subdivided into three points

i. Secret Judge

ii. Perfect Initiate

iii. Knight of the Crown of Oak

The mystical ladder in this Rite consisted of eight steps or stages, whose names were Adam, Eve, Noah, Lamech, Naamah, Peleg, Oubal, and Orient. The initials of these words, properly transposed, compose the word Napoleon, and this is enough to show the character of the system. General Bertrand was elected Grand Master, but, as he was then in the Island of Saint Helena, the Order was directed by a Supreme Commander and two Lieutenants. It was Masonic in form only, and lasted but for a few years.

• NARBONNE, RITE OF

See Primitive Rite

• NATIONAL GRAND LODGE

The Royal Mother Lodge of the Three Globes, which had been established at Berlin in 1740, and recognized as a Grand Lodge by Frederick the Great in 1744, renounced the Rite of Strict Observance in 1771, and, declaring itself free and independent, assumed the title of the Grand National Mother Lodge of the Three Globes, by which appellation it is still known. The Grand Orient of France, among its first acts, established, as an integral part of itself, a National Grand Lodge of France, which was to take the place of the old Grand Lodge, which, it declared, had ceased to exist. But the year after, in 1773, the National Grand Lodge was suppressed by the power which had given it birth; and no such power was recognized in French Freemasonry (see Grand Lodge and General Grand Lodge).

• NATIONAL GRAND LODGE

See General Grand Lodge

• NATIONAL LEAGUED OF MASONIC CLUBS

See Masonic Clubs, National Imbue of

• NATIONAL MASONIC RESEARCH SOCIETY

Organized in Iowa, 1914, the Society commenced the publication of the Builder, January, 1915, with Reverend Joseph Fort Newton as Editor-in-Chief. A managing Board of Stewards, all of the Grand Lodge of Iowa, were George E. Frazier, President; Newton R. Parvin, Vice-President; George L. Sehoonover, Secretary, with Louis Block, C. C. Hunt, John W. Barry. Ernest A. Reed of New Jersey became President in 1922, with R. I. Clegg, Ohio, VicePresident; C. C. Hunt, Iowa, Secretary, and F. H. Littlefield, Missouri, Executive Secretary and Treasurer. Later, Brothers R. I. Clegg, H. L. Haywood, Robert Tipton, Dudley Wright, Louis Block, A. B. Skinner, J. H. Tatsch, became associate editors, Brother Haywood becomung editor in 1921, and R. J. Meekren in 1926.

In 1913 Bro. George L. Schoonover of Anamosa, Ia., who was to become Grand Master, Grand Lodge of Iowa, some five years later, became deeply impressed by the fact that among the three million Masons in America were a rapidly-increasing number of Masonic students; and that newly-made Masons, imbued with the spirit of the time, were more and more demanding to know "what it is all about." He was familiar with the world-wide influence of the Iowa Grand Lodge Library, and with the work of Research Lodges in England, but believed that the American Craft needed a facility of a different kind, not localized but national, and one not an official arm of any Grand Lodge yet one that could be approved by each Grand Lodge and could cooperate with them. He worked out a plan for a national society, to be devoted to Masonic studies and to be a way-shower in Masonic education, and to be composed not of Lodges or of Grand Lodges but of individual Masons who would join it voluntarily, each paying a small annual sum for dues; he also believed that such a society would require a monthly journal; not a Masonic newspaper but a competently edited, well-printed, illustrated magazine, carrying no advertisements, which could compare favorably with the best non-Masonic journals. He believed also that while the society ought to stand on its own feet and pay its own way it should be examined, approved, and officiallY endorsed by a Grand Lodge beforehand.

In 1914 he laid his plan before the Grand Lodge of Iowa, and received whole-hearted endorsement. Though not a man of great wealth Bro.Schoonover was a man of means, and at his own expense he erected a three-story, beautifully designed headquarters building in his home town of Anamosa, Ia., some twenty-three miles outside of Cedar Rapids. The newly-formed organization chose the name "National Masonic Research Society"; secured Joseph Fort Newton as Editor-in-Chief; employed Wildey E. Atchison of Colorado to be Assistant Secretary in charge of staff and on January lst, 1915, issued the first number of The Builder, its official monthly journal, sent to members only.

Each member paid an annual membership fee ($2.50 at first, and then $3.00); for this he received The Builder, special brochures and booklets as they were published, could have answers to any question, could secure expert advice on Lodge educational methods, assistance in private Masonic researches, etc. The membership increased slowly, but in due time passed 20,000, among which were hundreds in foreign countries—at one time more than 40 countries, with 200 to 300 in England alone. The only new activity added after the Society's formation was a department for the sale of Masonic books as a convenience to its members, and not for profit. Bro. F. H. Littlefield became Executive Secretary in 1921 and removed headquarters to St. Louis, Mo.

When in 1916 Bro. J. F. Newton was called to London to become pastor of the City Temple his place was filled for a time by a group of associates, among the latter being Bro. H. L. Haywood, who wrote three books for the Society. He served as Editor without pay for about two years, and then in 1921 became Editor-in-Chief; Bro. Jacob Hugo Tatch was his Assistant Editor for about one year then transferred to the Masonic Service Association (it had no connection with the N. M. R. S.); he was succeeded by Bro. R. J. Meekren, who in turn became Editorin-Chief in 1925, after Bro. Haywood had left for New York to become architect and director of the Board of General Activities of the Grand Lodge of New York, including editorship of The New York Masonic Outlook.

Midway in the year 1931 the Society was so depleted in membership by the depression when some thirteen million men were out of employment that it was forced to discontinue. During the sixteen years the Society had published The Builder in the form of a bound volume with index each year. In a certain sense that set of books continues the work of the society, because it is in almost every Masonic library in America, in many public libraries, and in thousands of homes. It is a work of great reference value, because in it are carefully wrought, factual articles on the history, symbolism ritual, and jurisprudence of the Fraternity, the larger number (unlike Ars Quatuor Corona natoram, a reference work for another purpose) being on Freemasonry in America.

• NATIONAL MASONIC TUBERCULOSIS SANATORIA ASSOCIATION

The National Tuberculosis Association estimates that some fifty thousand living cases exist at all times among Freemasons in the United States and that five thousand of the Brethren die from tuberculosis every year. A Tuberculosis Sanatoria Commission was appointed by the Grand Lodges of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico.

An investigation was made by this Commission in 1922 of the situation in the Southwestern United States where thousands of consumptives resort. Many of these are Freemasons. Information collected by the Commission indicated distressing conditions and an urgent need for larger fraternal co-operative service. During the fortyffeventh Annual Communication on February 18, 1925, Grand Lodge of New Mexico, a Committee was empowered and subsequently, at Las Cruces in that State, the Committee met and provided for the incorporation of a National Masonic Tuberculosis Sanatoria Association with an office at Albuquerque, New Mexico, under the supervision of Brother Alpheus A. Keen Grand Secretary. The purpose of the institution is to act as trustee or agency for receiving and administering funds for the relief of Freemasons and members of their familes or others suffering from tuberculosis or in distress from other causes; to provide hospitalization for sick and employment for the well; to establish institutions for the care of those suffering from tuberculosis and other diseases; and to acquire and conduct property in lands and buildings for such training schools, hotels, and so forth, as required for the objects named, and to circulate scientific and useful information for the prevention, relief and cure of tuberculosis, etc.

The Association is to do whatever may be deemed essential to accomplish these objects, to encourage and promote works of humanity and charity, to relieve poverty sickness, distress, suffering, to prevent danger, and to educate, to conquer tuberculosis. The management is under a Board of Governors, one member from each United States Grand Lodge Jurisdiction, the General Grand Chapter, General Grand Council, Grand Encampment, the two Supreme Councils, the Shrine, and the Eastern Star. The first President, Jaffa Miller, was succeeded by Herbert B. Holt, both Past Grand Masters of New Mexico; the first Secretary was Alpheus A. Seen, Grand Secretary of Freemasons, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the Executive Secretary was Francis E. Lester, Past Grand Master, Mesilla Park, New Mexico. The Builder, National Masonic Researeh Soeiety, St. Louis, Missouri, had a monthly department, "The North-East Corner," conducted vigorously and ably as a Bulletin of the Association by Robert J. Newton, Las Cruces, New Mexico.

• NATIONAL SOJOURNERS

An association of Freemasons who hold or have held commissions in the defense forees of the United States Government. Detroit Chapter No. 1 was organized in 1919.

• NAVAL LODGES

Because of crowded space in ships and because of frequent changes of personnel early attempts to constitute Lodges on board war vessels did not meet with large success, even at the period when Thomas Dunckerley, master organizer, and himself member of a Naval Lodge on H. M. S. Vanguard, put his enthusiasm behind them. In his Lodge Lists, Lane names only four British Naval Lodges. Between 1760 and 1768 the Modern Grand Lodge chartered only three. In 1810, after a conference called by the Grand Lodge of Scotland, the British Grand Lodges agreed not to authorize Naval warrants. Men in the Navy, marines on sea duty, and seamen in general found their Masonic homes in Lodges working in the ports, many of which were Naval or Mariners' Lodges in effect. Masonic students have to be on guard against confusing a Masonic meeting on board a ship, called by Masons in its crew or passenger list or by a Military Lodge on board a transport, with chartered Naval Lodges. (There are a number of instances where Masonic burial services have been solemnized on board a ship; in one instance where a retiring missionary died on board ship a group of Masons wirelessed to Washington for permission to bring the body home for burial, and three of them accompanied the body and the widow to her home in the Midwest.)

• NAYMUS GRECUS

The Grand Lodge Manu, script, No. 1, contains the following passage: "Yt befell that their was on curious Masson that height [was called] Naymus Grecus that had byn at the making of Sallomon's Temple, and he came into ffraunce, and there he taught the science of Massonrey to men of ffraunce." Who was this Naymus Grecus? The writers of these old records of Freemasonry are notorious for the way in which they mangle all names and words that are in a foreign tongue. Hence it is impossible to say who or what is meant by this word. It is differently spelled in the various manuscripts.

Namas Grecious in the Lansdowne, .Nayrnus Graecus in the Sloane, Grecus alone in the Edinburgh-Kilwinning, and Maymus Grecus in the Dowland. For a table of various spellings, there are about twenty-five, see Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge (volume iii,page 163). Doctor Anderson, in the second edition of his Constitutions (1738, page 16), calls him Ninus. Now, it would not be an altogether wild conjecture to suppose that some confused idea of Magna Graecia was floating in the minds of these unlettered Freemasons especially since the Leland Manuscript records that in Magna Graecia Pythagoras established his school, and then sent Freemasons into France.

Between Magna Graecia and Maynus Grecuns the bridge is a short one, not greater than between Tubal-cain and Wackan, which we find in a German Middle Age document. The one being the name of a place and the other of a person would be no obstacle to these accommodating record writers; nor must we flinch at the anachronism of placing one of the disciples of Pythagoras at the building of the Solomonic Temple, when we remember that the same writers make Euclid and Abraham contemporaries. Just so do we find w this "Curious Masson" flourishing at the widely different periods of King Solomon and Charles Martel, a claim not easily explained on historical grounds.

• NAYMUS GRECUS

The curiously puzzling problem of Naymus Grecus which is discussed on page 700 is in a sense a Rosetta Stone for the archeology of early Masonic Manuscripts, therefore the large amount of time devoted to it by Masonic scholars has not been out of proportion. Robert I. Clegg's penetrating suggestion in that article that Naymus Wrecks was Magna Graecza is respected as one of the reasonable solutions. On page 94 of his History of Freemasonry Mackey refused to commit himself except to reject Krause's theory that Naymus had been Nannon, a Greek scholar of the period of Charles the Bold. Edmund H. Dring contributed to Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, Vol. XVIII., page 178, a treatise in which he brought his great erudition to bear to prove that Naym?~s Grecus was a corruption of the name Alcuin. R. F. Gould had proposed the theory that Naymus meant "some one with a Greek name." Wm. E. Upton believed that Grecus was a genuine surname. Wyatt Papworth enumerated eight possible derivations. Howard advocated the theory that a Greek colony in France named Nemausus or Nismes was referred to; and with this W. J. Hughan agreed. Sidney Klein took Naymus Grecus to be an anagram of Simon Grynaeus, a 15th century editor of Euclid. Russell Forbes took Naymus to have been an architect who worked under Charlemagne. Speth and Yarker identified him with Marcus Graecus. (The data immediately above are collected from the discussions appended to Dring's treatise.)

To these may be added yet another suggestion. Jewish scholars who divide the history, religion, and literature of the Jews into the three periods of Eebraic, Israelitish, and Judaic, begin the third period at the time when the Jews enlarged their own culture to include, first, Hellenic culture, with its Greek language and dialects, and (at a somewhat later period) Arabic culture. Mohammed received most of what little education he possessed from Jewish teachers in his home community, and it is certain that his Allah was his own theological presentation of Moses Jehovah, a pure monotheism; when Mohammedanism swept through the Near East and into North Africa and Spain it carried with it a saturation of Old Testament and Talmudic lore.

During the long period when the regnant culture in North Africa, Egypt, Arabia, the Near East, and some of Greece was an amalgam of Jewish, Hellenic, and Mohammedan elements the word naymus was everywhere in use by it. In Greece a naysus was a law-giver, or teacher, or great scholar. In the Talmud he was a prophet, the term being taken to denote an orator, leader, scholarly reformer, etc. Among Arabs a naymus was a "cryer out," or prophet or teacher; Mohammed himself was called a naytnus. Perhaps in that whole culture (of which 80 much infiltrated into Europe from Greece, Sicily, Spain, and from the Crusades) the most famous Greek naymus was Pythagoras; and since he is in the Old Manuseripts connected with Euclid, Naymus Grecus could easily have referred to Pythagoras as the Greel; "Naymus." This is not to suggest that the author of the Old Charges intended Naymus Grecus to be Pythagoras; rather it is to suggest that originally Naymus Grecus had been a title, but that the author of the 0ld Charges took this title to be a name; and it may be that it originally had been a title used of Pythagoras.

• NAZARETH

A City of Galilee, in which Jesus spent his childhood and much of his life, and whence he is often called, in the New Testament, the Nazarene, or Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus Nazarenus was a portion of the inscription on the cross (see I. N. R. I). In the Rose Croix, Nazareth is a significant word, and Jesus is designated as "our Master of Nazareth," to indicate the origin and nature of the new dogmas on which the Order of the Rosy Cross was instituted.

• NEBRASKA

In March, 1854, the region between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains was divided by Congress into the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska. The Grand Master of Illinois issued a Dispensation for a Lodge at Bellevue to petitioners who were vouched for by a member of Garden City Lodge, No. 18, and by Lafayette Lodge, No. 18, both of Chicago. The Lodge was chartered as Nebraska Lodge, No. 184, on October 3, 1855. On January 24, 1888, the Lodge moved to Omaha. Three Lodges, namely, Nebraska, No. 184; Giddings, No. 156, and Capital, No. 101, sent representatives to a Convention held on September 23, 1857, at Omaha to organize a Grand Lodge. David Lindley presided and George Armstrong was chosen Secretary. Grand Officers were elected: Brother Robert C. Jordan, Grand Master and Brother George Armstrong, Grand Secretary. The name of Giddings Lodge was changed to Western Star and that of Capital to Capitol. The Lodges were then renumbered as Nebraska, No. 1, at Bellevue; Western Star, No. 2, at Nebraska City, and Capitol, No. 3, at Omaha.

On November 21, 1859, Omaha Chapter, No. 1, was granted a Dispensation by the General Grand King, and on September 8, 1865, when this was reported to the General Grand Chapter, a Charter was i88ued. At a Convention held March 19, 1867, at Plattsmouth, by permission of the Deputy General Grand High Priest, the Grand Chapter of Nebraska was regularly organized. Officers were elected and installed as follows: Companions Harry P. Deuel and James W. Moore, Grand High Priest and Deputy Grand High Priest; Companion David H. Wheeler, Grand King; Companion Edwin A. Allen, Grand Scribe, and Companions Orsamus H. Irish and Elbert T. Duke, Grand Treasurer and Grand Secretary. All who helped in the organization of this Grand Chapter were later made Life Members. Nebraska is one of the States which make the Order of High Priesthood an essential qualification to the installation of the High Priest elect.

The Supreme Council of the Southern Jurisdiction, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, granted a Charter for the organization of Omaha Council, No. 1, on July 8, 1867. Delegates from Omaha, No. 1; Alpha, No. 2, and Furnas, No. 3, formed the Grand Council of Nebraska on November 20, 1872. From 1875 to 1886 the Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons controlled the Council Degrees in Nebraska, but they again came under the Grand Council on March 9, 1886, and in 1889 the latter became a member of the General Grand Council.

Mount Calvary Commandery, No. 1, was formed at Omaha by Dispensation dated June 16, 1865, and issued by Grand Master Benjamin B. French. It was organized July 24 and chartered September 6. Representatives of the four Commanderies of the State, Mount Calvary, No. 1; Mount Olivet, No. 2; Mount Carmel, No. 3, and Mount Moriah, No. 4, met in Omaha on December 28, 1871, and established the Grand Commandery of Nebraska.

In 1881 came the beginning of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, in Nebraska. Mount Moriah Lodge of Perfection, No. 1, was chartered January 1; Semper Fidelis Chapter of Rose Croix, No. 1, on January 17; Nebraska Consistory, No. 1, was granted a Charter April 12, 1885, and Saint Andrew's Council of Kadosh, No. 1, on October 22, 1890.

• NEBUCHADNEZZAR

About 630 years before Christ, the Empire and City of Babylon were conquered by Nebuchadnezzar, the King of the Chaldeans, a nomadic race, who, descending from their homes in the Caucasian Mountains, had overwhelmed the countries of Southern Asia. Nebuchadnezzar was engaged during his whole reign in wars of conquest. Among other nations which fell beneath his victorious arms was Judea, whose King, Jehoiakim, was slain by Nebuchadnezzar, and his son, Jehoichin, ascended the Jewish throne. After a reign of three years, he was deposed by Nebuchadnezzar, and his kingdom given to his uncle, Zedekiah, a monarch distinguished for his vices. Having repeatedly rebelled against the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar repaired to Jerusalem, and, after a siege of eighteen months, reduced it. The city was leveled with the ground, the Temple pillaged and burned, and the inhabitants carried captive to Babylon. These events are commemorated in the first section of the English and American Royal Arch system.

• NEBUZARADAN

A Captain, or, as we would now call him, a general of Nebuchadnezzar, who commanded the Chaldean army at the siege of Jerusalem, and who executed there orders of his sovereign by the destruction of the city and Temple, and by carrying the Inhabitants, except a few husbandmen, as captives to Babylon.

• NEGRE

The dark skin of Gabriel Mathieu Marconis the elder, a founder of the Rite of Memphis, made him known as the Negre, or Negro.

• NEGRI, BENED

Composer of the song, the Aged Brothers, the words written by Brother J. J. Smith, and sung at Freemasons Hall, London, June 24, 1846, in aid of the Aged Freemasons Home.

• NEHEMIAH

Son of Haehaliah. During the Babylonish captivity, given permission to rebuild the Temple and restore the city, becoming Tirshatha or Governor of Judea and Jerusalem, for twelve years. Literally translated, the Hebrew, Nehemiah, is Consolation af God.

• NEIGHBOR

All the Old Constitutions have the charge that "every Mason shall keep true counsel of Lodge and Chamber" (see Sloane Manuscript, No. 3848). This is enlarged in the Andersonian Charges, of 1722 thus: "You are not to let your family, friends and neighbors know the concerns of the Lodge" (Constitutions, 1723, page 55). However loquacious a Freemason may be in the natural confidence of neighborhood intercourse, he must be reserved in all that relates to the esoteric concerns of Freemasonry.

• NEGRO LODGES

The subject of Lodges of colored persons. commonly called Negro Lodges, has long been a source of contention in the United States. Dot on account of the color of the members of these Lodges, but because of the supposed illegality of their origin and operation.

Prince Hall and thirteen other negroes were made Freemasons in a Military Lodge in the British Army then at Boston on March 6, 1775. When the Army was withdrawn these negroes applied to the Grand Lodge of England for a Charter and on the 20th of September, 1784 a Charter for a Masters Lodge was granted (although not received until 1787), to Prince Hall and others. all colored men, under the authority of the Grand Lodge of England. The Lodge bore the name of African Lodge No. 459 (later changed to loo. 370). and mas situated in the City of Boston. This Lodge, like many others, had little connection with the Grand Lodge of England for many years. and its registration, like many others, of Lodges still working. was stricken from the rolls of the United Grand Lodge of England when new lists were made in 1813.

African Lodge continued to operate and in 1827 they proclaimed "that with knowledge they possessed of Masonry, and as people of color by themselves, they were, and ought by right to be free and independent of other Lodges." Accordingly on June 18, 1827, they issued a protocol, in which they said: "We publicly declare ourselves free and independent of any Lodge from this day, and we will not be tributary or governed by any Lodge but that of our own." That is their present de facto status.

They soon after assumed the name of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge and issued Charters for the constitution of subordinates, and from it have proceeded the vast majority of the Lodges of colored persons now existing in the United States.

On March 12. 1947 the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts voted "to accept, approve and record" the report of a special committee of Past Grand Masters on this subject which closed its report with these words: "In conclusion your Committee believes that in view of the existing conditions in our country it is advisable for the official and organized activities of white and colored Freemasons to proceed in parallel lines, but organically separate and without mutually embarrassing demands or commitments. However, your Committee believes that within these limitations, informal cooperation and mutual helpfulness between the two groups upon appropriate occasions are desirable. " This was construed by some United States Grand Jurisdictions as recognition, though not actually so, and recognition of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts w as withdraw n by some Grand Lodges and threatened by others and in 1949 the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts rescinded this resolution, not because they had changed their attitude. but they said because it seemed inexpedient and this action was taken only for the sake of harmony.

An apparently insurmountable barrier to recognition is the doctrine of exclusive Masonic territorial jurisdiction—only one Grand Lodge in any one state or territory. This rule is confined to the United States and Canada. but is strictly observed and enforced It prohibits invasion of occupied territory by any other Grand Lodge, not alone those of Negro origin and membership.

Since the writing of the article, a number of records of the Revolutionary Period have been discovered which have made it more clear why Negro, or Prince Hall, Masonry is clandestine in each and every American Grand Jurisdiction, and has been for more than a century. Prince Hall sent a petition for a Charter to the (Modern) Grand Lodge of Masons in 1777; according to Masonic law then in effect he should have submitted his petition to one or the other of the two already longest abolished Provincial Grand Lodges in Massachusetts, because he did not ask for a military warrant. Owing to war conditions, and to the chronic dilatoriness of the Modern Grand Lodge in responding to communications from America, the Charter was not received until 1787; yet during this inchoate period the self-styled African Lodge worked as a Lodge, made Masons, and helped to initiate the formation of other Negro Lodges, all in violation of Grand Lodge lau. The Charter itself became dormant, was rendered null and void, and was erased from the lists by the Grand Lodge of England.

In 1827 a group of Negroes made use of this piece of paper, which had become completely devoid of authority, to set up a new "Grand Lodge," and in which they declared themselves independent of any other Lodge—which declaration was in itself a plain proclamation that in their own eyes they were a clandestine society, and therefore not entitled by either Masonic or civil last to use the name "Masonic." Bodies acting according to the so-called "Prince Hall Constitutions" (which never existed) have continued to be clandestine ever since. In 1930 they had 37 Grand Lodges, with some 750,000 members in some 5,000 to 6,000 Lodges; by 1940, and owing to the depression, the membership had declined to about 500,000.

In 1899 the Grand Lodge of Washington, acting on a Report submitted by William H. Upton, declared its willingness to provide for Negro Lodges if a sufficient number of regularly-made Negro members could be found; but when one after another of the other Grand Lodges withdrew recognition, Washington rescinded its action. (See under PEACE AND HARMONY.) Upton elaborated his Report in book form under the title of Negro Masonry in 1902 the book is now obsolete because,

1) he did not at the time possess complete data

2) because his argument to the effect that Prince Hall and his associates had been regularly made and possessed a legitimate ritual in the beginning is irrelevant. Many Lodges have become clandestine in Britain and America after having worked for years as regular Lodges side the cases of Preston's Grand Lodge of England South of the River Kent, and the Lodges under the so-called Wigan Grand Lodge, and the many American Lodges which lost their charters during the Cerneau affair; and because

3) the whole structure of the argument which Lipton based on his theory of the Modern vs. the Ancient Grand Lodge is invalid.

See Negro Masonry in the United States, by Harold van Buren Voorhis; Henry Emmerson; New York; 1940; 132 pages; complete bibliography; it contains a chapter on Alpha Lodge, No. 116, Newark, N. J., which has all Negro members. (There are Lodges under the Grand Lodge of England with Negro membership.) Official History of Freemasonry among the Colored People in Narth America, by William H. Grimshaw; New York; 1903; 393 pages. Prince Hall and his Followers, by George W. Crawford (a Prince Hall member); New York; 1914; 96 pages. (Like other non-Masons Negro authors find it difficult to understand Masonic data; their statements of fact about actions taken by regular Grand Lodges may be checked against Grand Lodge Proceedings. Negro writers very seldom, for example, have their facts straight about actions taken at different times by the Grand Lodges of Massachusetts and of Washington.)

• NEITH

The Egyptian synonym of the Greek; Athené or Minerva.

• NEKAM

But properly according to the Masoretic pointing, Nakam. A Hebrew word signifying Vengeance, and a significant word in the high Degrees (see vengeance).

• NEKAMAH

Hebrew word, signifying Tengeance, and, like Nakam, a significant word in the advanced Degrees.

• NEMBROTH

A corruption of Nimrod, frequently used in the Old Records

• NEMESIS

According to Hesiod, the daughter of Night, originally the personification of the moral feeling of right and a just fear of criminal actions; in other words, Conscience. A temple was erected to Nemeses at Attica. She w as at times called Adrastea and Rhamnusia, and represented in the earliest days a young virgin like unto Venus; at a later period, as older and holding a helm and wheel. At Rhamnus there was a statue of Nemesis of Parian marble, executed by Phidias. The Festival in Greece held in her honor w as called Nemesia.

• NEOCORUS

A name of the guardian of the Temple.

• NEOPHYTE

Greek , meaning newly planted. In the primitive church. it signified one who had recently abandoned Judaism or Paganism and embraced Christianity; and in the Roman Church those recently admitted into its communion are still so called. Hence it has also been applied to the young disciple of any art or science. Thus Ben Jonson calls a young actor, at his first entrance "on the boards," a neophyte player. In Freemasonry the newly initiated and uninstructed candidate is sometimes so designated.

• NEOPLATONISM

A philosophical school, estate fished at Alexandria in Egypt, which added to the theosophic theories of Plato many mystical doctrines borrowed from the East. The principal disciples of this school were Philo-Judaeus, Plotinus, Porphvry, Jamblichus, Proclus, and Julian the Apostate. Much of the symbolic teaching of the advanced Degrees Of Freemasonry has been derived from the school of the Neoplatonists, especially from the writings of Jamblichus and Philo-Judaeus.

• NEPHALIA

Festivals, without wine, celebrated in honor of the lesser deities.

• NE PLUS ULTRA

Latin, meaning Nothing more beyond. The motto adopted for the Degree of Kadosh by its founders, when it was supposed to be the summit of Freemasonry, beyond which there was nothing more to be sought. And, although higher Degrees have been since added, the motto is still retained.

• NERGAL

The Hebrew word in:. The synonym of misfortune and ill-luck. The Hebrew name for Mars; and in astrology the lesser Malefic. The word in Sanskrit is Nrigal.

• NESBIT, WILBUR D

American poet and humorist. Born at Nenia, Ohio, September 16, 1871; died at Chicago, Illinois, August 20, 1927. Received the initiatory Degrees in Evans Lodge No. 524, Evanston, Illinois, where his membership remained until his death. The Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite were conferred upon him in 1919 at Chicago, and he was honored with the Thirty-third Degree by the Supreme Council, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 15, 1925. Also a member of Medinah Temple, Ancient Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, at Chicago. Brother Nesbit wrote a number of poems of Masonic significance one of which through his courtesy follows:

I SAT IN LODGE WITH YOU

There is a saying filled with cheer. Which calls a man to fellowship. It means as much for him to hear As lies within the brother-grip. Nay, more! It opens wide the way to friendliness sincere and true There are no strangers when you say to me: mar sat in lodge with you." When that is said, then I am known; There is no questioning or doubt; I need not walk my path alone Nor from my fellows be shut out. These words hold all of brotherhood and help me face the world anew There's something deep and rich and good in this: " I sat in lodge with you." Though in far lands one needs must roam, By sea and shore and hill and plain, Those words bring him a touch of home And lighten tasks that seem in vain Men's faces are no longer strange, but seem as those he always knew When some one brings the joyous change with his: " I sat in lodge with you." So you, my brother, now and then Have often put me in your debt By showing forth to other men That you your friends do not forget. When all the world seems gray and cold and I am weary, worn and blue Then comes this golden thought I hold—you said: " I sat in lodge with you." When to the last great Lodge you fare My prayer is that I may be One of your friends who wait you there, Intent your smiling face to see. We, with the warder at the gate, will have a pleasant task to do We'll call, though you come soon or late: " Come in ! We sat in lodge with you."

• NETHERLANDS

Speculative Freemasonry was first introduced in the Netherlands by the opening at the Hague, in 1731, of an Occasional Lodge under a Deputation granted by Lord Lovel, Grand Master of England, of which Doctor Desaguliers was Master, for the purpose of conferring the First and Second Degrees on the Dul;e of Lorraine, afterward the Emperor Francis I. He received the Third Degree subsequently in England. But it was not until September 30, 1734, that a regular Lodge was opened by Brother Vincent de la Chapelle, as Grand Master of the United Provinces, who may therefore be regarded as the originator of Freemasonry in the Netherlands. In 1735, this Lodge received a Patent or Deputation from the Grand Lodge of England, John Cornelius Rademaker being appointed Provincial Grand Master, and several Daughter Lodges were established by it. In the same year the States General prohibited all Masonic meetings by an Edict issued November 30, 1735.

The Roman clergy actively persecuted the Freemasons, which seems to have produced a reaction, for in 1737, the magistrates repealed the Edict of Suppression, and forbade the clergy from any interference with the Order, after which Freemasonry flourished in the United Provinces. The Masonic innovations and controversies that had affected the rest of the Continent never successfully obtruded on the Dutch Freemasons, who practiced with great fidelity the simple Rite of the Grand Lodge of England, although an attempt had been made in 1757 to introduce them. In 1798, the Grand Lodge adopted a Book of Statutes, by which it accepted the three Symbolic Degrees, and referred the four advanced Degrees of the French Rite to a Grand Chapter. In 1816, Prince Frederick attempted a reform in the Degrees, which was, however, only partially successful. The Grand Lodge of the Netherlands, whose Orient is at the Hague, tolerates the advanced Degrees without actually recognizing them. Most of the Lodges confine themselves to the Symbolic Degrees of Saint John's Freemasonry, while a few practice the reformed system of Prince Frederick.

• NETWORK

One of the decorations of the pillars at the porch of the Temple (see Pillars of the Porch).

• NEUFCHATEAU, COUNT FRANÇOIS DE

See Francois de Neufchateau, Le Comte

• NEVADA

On May 15, 1862, Carson Lodge, No. 154, now No. 1, at Carson City was granted a Charter. At a meeting held on January 16, 1865, to consider the formation of a Grand Lodge, six of the eight Lodges in the State were represented. The following day delegates were sent by seven Lodges, namely, Carson, No. 154; Washoe, No. 157; Virginia, No. 162; Silver City, No. 163; Silver Star, No. 165; Escurial, No. 171, and Esmeralda, No. 170. Lander Lodge, the only remaining one in the State did not appear at the Convention but paid allegiance to the new Grand Lodge along with the others. A Constitution was adopted, Grand Officers were elected and installed January 17, and the first Annual Grand Communication at Virginia City was held October 1S13, 1865. Ten years later the Grand Lodge lost heavily by fire. In consequence the next regular meeting, at which 92 members and 286 visitors were present, was held on top of Mount Davidson, 7,827 feet high.

A Dispensation was issued by the General Grand High Priest, Companion John L. Lewis, in May, 1863, to Lewis Chapter at Carson City, Nevada. Its Charter was dated September 8, 1865. Companion Lewis granted authority to the four Chapters in the State, namely, Lewis, Virginia, Austin, and White Pine, to take steps to form a Grand Chapter. Three days later Charters were granted to two Chapters which were working under Dispensation.

The early Councils in Nevada were not long-lived owing probably to the fewness of the Companions who started them. The first was Carson Council at Carson City. Its Dispensation was issued on September 3, 1896, by the General Grand Council but was annulled September 24, 1900. Several others were organized but ceased work before long and the first to receive a Charter was Nevada, No. 1, at Goldfield, on September 10, 1912.

The De Witt Clinton Commandery, No. 1, at Virginia was established under a Dispensation from Grand Master Henry L. Palmer, February 4, 1867, and was chartered September 18, 1868. It was duly constituted and officers installed on January 8, 1869. When the Grand Commandery of Nevada was organized on April 15, 1918, there were in existence in the State three subordinate Commanderies, De Witt Clinton, No. 1; Malta, No. 3, and Winnemucca, No. 4. Eureka, No. 2, had ceased work some time before.

In 1901 Charters were granted by the Supreme Council, Southern Jurisdiction, to four bodies of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite at Reno, namely, Nevada Lodge of Perfection, No. 1; Washoe Chapter of Rose Croix, No. 1; Pyramid Council of Kadosh, No. 1, and Reno Consistory, No. 1. The Charters were dated respectively June 28, August 30, December l9, and December 20.

• NE VARIETUR

Latin, meaning Lest it should be changed. These words refer to the Masonic usage of requiring a Brother, when he receives a Certificate from a Lodge, to affix his name, in his own handwriting, in the margin, as a precautionary measure, which enables distant Brethren, by a comparison of the handwriting, to recognize the true and original owner of the Certificate, and to detect any impostor who may surreptitiously have obtained one.

• NEW BRUNSWICK

New Brunswick was part of Nova Scotia until the year 1786. On August 22, 1792, Solomon s Lodge, No.22, was warranted by the Provincial Grand Lodge at Halifax. It was constituted at St. Anns, now Fredericton, the capital of New Brunswick. When the Dominion of Canada was established in 1867 the question of an Independent Grand Lodge of New Brunswick was discussed and as a result fourteen Lodges opened a Grand Lodge on October 10, 1867. Within four years all the Lodges in the district came under the control of the new Body. Brother Robert T. Clinch, the District Grand Master, was elected Grand Master but declined the office as he was still on the English Registry. Brother B. Lester Peters was then elected and finally installed on January 22, 1868. Capitular, Cryptic and Templar Freemasonry each have Bodies in the Province.

• NEW CALEDONIA

See Oceanza

• NEWFOUNDLAND

The Ancient Colony of Newfoundland remained without the Confederation of the Canadian Provinces. Freemasonry in this island dates back to 1746, the first Warrant being granted by the Provincial Grand Lodge at Boston. Brother J. Lane's list gives six Lodges warranted in the eighteenth century. The Grand Lodge of the Ancient, England is credited with four—one in 1774 and three in 1788—and the Grand Lodge of England, Moderns, with two —one each in 1784 and 1785. Nine others were chartered by the United Grand Lodge of England up to 1881, a number still remaining active. Six Lodges were organized under the Scottish Jurisdiction. A District Grand Lodge has been formed.

• NEW HAMPSHIRE

A petition was sent to Henry Price of Boston on February 5, 1735, by six Freemasons at Portsmouth who had been working for some time under Constitutions "both in print and manuscript." No Lodge had up till then been chartered in Portsmouth but they probably possessed a copy of the British Constitutions of 1723 and a set of older laws in manuscript. It is likely that meetings were held by these Brethren even before the establishment of the Grand Lodge in 1717. In 1787 a Convention of delegates from two or more Lodges was called to organize a Grand Lodge but it was not fully established until July 8, 1789. General John Sullivan was elected the first Grand Master and the name chosen for the new body was "The Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of the Ancient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons of the State of New Hampshire."

The General Grand King issued a Warrant to Saint Andrew's Chapter at Hanover on January 27, 1807. The Warrant was confirmed with others on June 7, 1816; at the Convocation of the General Grand Chapter of the United States. On the organization of the Grand Chapter of this State on June 10, 1819, the following officers were elected: Grand High Priest and Deputy Grand High Priest, John Harris and Thomas S. Bowles; Grand King, Henry Hutchinson; Grand Treasurer, John Davenport; Grand Secretary, Thomas W. Colby; Grand Chaplain, Thomas Beede; Grand Marshal, Timothy Kenrick; Grand Stewards, Companions Cady, Baker, Saxton, Pierce, and Grand Tyler, Jesse Corbett. The Grand Chapter was recognized by the General Grand Chapter at the Convocation held on September 9, 1819.

Tyrian Council of Royal Masters was established by four Brethren on August 5, 1815. It was visited about August 19, 1817, by Companion Jeremy L. Cross who conferred the Degree of Select Master upon several members of the Council. Tyrian, Guardian, Washington and Columbian Councils together formed a Grand Council for the State of New Hampshire on July 9, 1823. From 1835 to 1855, however, the work of the Royal and Select Masters in New Hampshire ceased owing to the Morgan turmoil.

A meeting to organize Trinity Encampment, No. 1, was held at Lebanon in March, 1824. Two other meetings were held on April 8 and 15 and the Charter was received on April 10. During the Morgan excitement the Encampment ceased work but was granted another Charter on September 19, 1853. Sir Henry Fowle on May 27, 1826, granted a Dispensation for a Grand Encampment. A meeting of delegates at Concord on June 13, 1826, elected officers and chose Sir John Harris of Hopkinton as Grand Master. A Constitution was adopted on June 14 and meetings were held regularly until interrupted by the Anti-Masonic movement- on Tuesday, June 12, 1860, delegates from five subordinate Commanderies, namely, De Witt Clinton, Trinity, Mount Horeb, North Star, and St. Paul, were present at a meeting to reorganize the Grand Commandery. A Warrant of Dispensation was granted on July 19 and, on August 22, 1860, in the presence of Benjamin B. French, Grand Master of the Grand Encampment, officers were duly elected and installed.

Two Charters were issued to the Ineffable Lodge of Perfection at Portsmouth, one on January 31, 1842, which was destroyed by fire in 1865, and a second on May 19, 1866. A second body of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the Grand Council of Princes of Jerusalem at Portsmouth, was chartered June 25, 1845. On June 4, 1864, Charters were granted to the Saint George Chapter of Rose Croix and the Edward A. Raymond Consistory at Nashua.

• NEW JERSEY

The first Provincial Grand Master in America, Daniel Coxe, lived in the State of New Jersey but did not, it is believed, exercise his Masonic powers there. On May 13,1761, A Warrant was granted by George Harrison, Provincial Grand Master of the Province of New York to Freemasons in the Town of Newark. The first meeting place of this body, the Saint John's Lodge, No. 1, of which the Minutes are preserved even yet, was the Rising Sun Tavern. It met afterwards at the houses of the members. William Tukey was named in the Charter as the first Master and under his direction the Lodge flourished. Washington's birthday was always observed as a festival and when the General's Headquarters were located at Morristown in 1779, numerous military Lodges were organized. A Convention of Master Masons was held on December 18, 1786, to consider the establishment of a Grand Lodge for New Jersey. A Constitution was adopted on April 2, 1787.

In the Proceedings of the General Grand Chapter for June 6, 1816, there is mention of a Warrant granted to Washington Chapter, Newark, May 26, 1813. The General Grand High Priest was reported to have granted permission for the formation of a Grand Chapter but, owing to the fact that there was only one regularly chartered Chapter subordinate to the General Grand Chapter in New Jersey, it was declared impossible. Not until February 13, 1857, was the Grand Chapter of New Jersey established by Newark Chapter, No. 2; Hiram, No. 4, and Boudinot, No. 5. The Grand Council of Pennsylvania chartered New Brunswick Council, No. 12, on June 23, 1860. This Council wag later known as Scott Council, No. 1. New Brunswick, No. 12; Eane, No. 11; Gebal, No. 14, the three Councils in New Jersey, all chartered by the Grand Council of Pennsylvania, began work for the formation of a Grand Council of New Jersey. A Convention was held at New Brunswick November 26, 1860, when Nathan O. Benjamin, Grand Master of the Grand Council of New York, was elected to preside and Joseph H. Hough, Deputy Master of Gebal Council, became Secretary. The Grand Council u then opened in Ample Form.

Hugh de Payens Commandery, No. 1, at Jersey City was granted a Dispensation March 12, 1858, and a Charter September 16, the following year. It was duly constituted on November 25, 1859. The Grand Commandery was constituted on February 14, 1860, with three subordinate Commanderies, Hugh de Payens, No. 1; Saint Bernard, No. 2, and Helena, No. 3. In 1863 the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite was first established at Trenton when the Mercer Lodge of Perfection was chartered, May 23, 1863. The Mercer Council of Princes of Jerusalem and the Trenton Chapter of Rose Croix were both established at Trenton by Charters dated May 19, 1866, and June 26 1868, respectively. On May 16, 1867, the New Jersey Consistory at Jersey City was granted a Charter. These bodies are under the Supreme Council, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction.

• NEW MEXICO

During the Mexican War Freemasonry was brought into the district by military Lodges attached to Regiments stationed there. Among these Lodges were Missouri, No. 86, and Hardin, No. 87, but both were closed with the end of the Mexican War. The Territory was then established and the Grand Lodge of Missouri issued a Charter for Montezuma Lodge, No. 109, the first Lodge to be organized in the new political division. It was duly instituted on August 22, 1851. A Convention was held at Santa Fe, August 6, 1877, for the purpose of making arrangements to establish a Grand Lodge. Simon B. Newcomb presided and A. Z. Huggins acted as Secretary. Representatives of four Lodges, namely, Aztec, No. 108; Chapman, No. 95; Montezuma, No. 109, and Union, No.480, were appointed to be present, but when the meeting took place those from the last named failed to attend. The next day William W. Griffin was elected Grand Master and David J. Miller, Grand Secretary.

The following Chapters were organized under Dispensation and received Charters: Santa Fe, No. 1, Santa Fe, December 11. 1865, September 18, 1868; Silver City, No. 2, Silver City, February 22, 1876, August 24, 1877; Las Vegas, No. 3, Las Vegas, March 10, 1881, August 15, 1883; Rio Grande, No. 4, Albuquerque, January 12, 1882, August 15, 1883; Deming, No. 5, Deming, February 28, 1885, October 1, 1886; Raton, No. 6, Raton, no Dispensation, July 23, 1891; Columbia, No. 7, Roswell, January 24! 1894, August 24, 1894, and Socorru, No. 8, Socorro, October 1, 1896, October 13, 1897. The Grand Chapter was organized October 3, 1898, and W. H. Seamon was elected Grand High Priest and A. A. Keen, Grand Secretary.

Deming Council, No. 1, was granted a Dispensation May 11, 1887, by the General Grand Council. Its Charter was issued November 19, 1889, but was annulled November 4, 1909. Hiram Council, No. 1, at Albuquerque, organized under a Dispensation, January 19, 1920, was granted a Charter from the General Grand Council on September 9, 1924. Zuni Council, at Gallup, was organized by Dispensation, April 3, 1922, and Santa Fe Council at Santa Fe, April 19, 1922, a Council of that name under Dispensation at Santa Fe, May 1, 1895, surrendered its Dispensation on November 38, 1899.

A Commanlery organized in New Mexico as Santa Fe, No. 1, was granted a Dispensation May 31, 1869.A Charter was issued September 21,1871. When the Grand Commandery was instituted on August 21, }901, there were six subordinate Commanderies in existence, Santa Fe, No. 1; Las Vegas, No. 2; Pilgrim, No.3; McGrorty, No. 4; Aztec, No. 5, and Rio Hondo, No. 6 on August 29 Malta, No. 7, was established at Silver City. A Lodge of Perfection, the first body of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, to be organized in New Mexico, was granted a Charter as Santa Fe, No. 1, on April 8, 1886. On October 20, 1909, three more bodies of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite were chartered, namely, Aztlan Chapter of prose Croix, No. 1 Coronado Council of Kadosh, No. 1, and New Mexico Consistory, No. 1.

• NEW SOUTH WALES

A state of the Commonwealth of Australia, in the southeast portion of the island continent. Freemasonry owed its introduction to this State to the Social and Military Virtues Lodge, No. 227 (Ireland), which, attached to the 46th Foot in 1752, was at work in Sydney in 1816. Following on this, other Lodges, with a fixed abode, were opened under Irish Warrants, the first of which was Australian Social Lodge, No. 260, opened in 1820.

The Grand Lodge of England chartered a Lodge entirely for Australians, Australia, No. 820, in 1828. In 1839 England appointed a Provincial Grand Master and Scotland and Ireland followed suit in 1855 and 1858 respectively.

Representatives of twelve Scottish and Irish Lodges met on December 3, 1877, and organized the Grand Lodge of New South Wales. A body had however existed for some years which had also called itself the Grand Lodge of New South Wales but its proceedings had been highly irregular and when the new Grand Lodge was formed it accepted a Lodge Warrant from the new authority. The latter however was itself refused recognition by the Grand Lodges of the British Isles owing to there being seventy-three other Lodges in the district over which the few had no right to annex authority. On September 1, 1888, a Grand Lodge of West South Wales was opened which was duly sanctioned by other Grand Lodges and the existing dissension was thus ended.

• NEW TEMPLARS

An Order of five Degrees instituted in France in the early part of the nineteenth century. The Degrees were termed—Initiati; Intimi Initiati; Adepti; Orientales Adepti; and Magnae aquilae nigrae sancti Johannes Apostoli Adepti.

• NEWTON, SIR ISAAC

Was Sir Isaac Newton a Mason? The question lies in the same case as that about Samuel Johnson (which see). There is in Cambridge an Isaac Newton Lodge, No. 859, but the fact does not prove Newton a Mason any more than the existence (at various times) of some three Shakespeare Lodges proves that Shakespeare was a Mason. There are, however, presuppositions in favor of his membership. Dr. J. T. Desaguliers was one of Newtons closest friends, so close that Newton stood godfather to Dr. Desaguliers' daughter; and Dr. Desaguliers at the time was the master builder of the new Grand Lodge system of Speculative Freemasonry.

The Royal Society was the apple of Newton's eye. Newton in turn was the leader, inspiration, and glory of the Royal Society; and the membership of the Royal Society was so wholly Masonic that six or ten of its members were in the same Lodge at the same time; the Society's club shared its rooms with a Lodge; furthermore, a few of the Lodges acted as extension centers for the Society at a time when it was not yet popularly recognized and was the butt of much newspaper ridicule, so that it meant not a little for Royal Society members to be able to deliver scientific lectures (even on mechanics) to Lodges. Newton was therefore in a Masonic circle. Also, one of the few of his papers published posthumously was an attempt to work out the dimensions of Solomon's Temple. He had his formula for gravitation held up for twenty y ears because he had forgotten that a French mile and an English mile were not the same length. His calculations on the Temple were held up even longer, forever in fact, because he found that four different cubits were in use as units of measure in Solomon's time, and he could nowhere discover which one had been used; nevertheless this interest in Solomon's Temple is significant. As against these presuppositions in favor of his having been a Mason stand two facts: no record of his membership has been found; Sir Isaac himself w as "not a clubbable man."

• NEW YORK

The first Provincial Grand Master from 1730, Colonel Daniel Coxe, did not take any active steps towards the exercise of his new office. Captain Richard Riggs, however, who succeeded him on November 15, 1737! arrived in New York on May 21, 1738. The Provincial Grand Lodge was then organized and the first mention of Freemasonry in New York which occurs in the New York Gazette of January 22, 1739, is thought to refer to this body.

The fourth Provincial Grand Master was the most active in organizing Lodges Temple and Saint Fohn's were both alive in 1758 and the latter, the Charter of which was dated 1751, was probably constituted first. On September 5, 1781, the Atholl Grand Lodge authorized the constitution of a Provincial Grand Lodge of New York with the Rev. William Walter as Provincial Grand Master. Nine Lodges united in its formation, but Lodges constituted by the Moderns were excluded, and some years elapsed before it was thought advisable to allow them to participate. In 1787 the Grand Lodge declared illegal all Lodges in the State not under its own control.

The Royal Arch Degree was probably worked under the Lodge Charters at first. It is thought that Washington Chapter began life with the Provincial Grand Lodge, warranted in 1781, but as its records were destroyed by fire the facts about its early history are unknown. Five Chapters, namely, Hudson, Temple, Horeb, Hibernian and Montgomery, constituted on March 14, 1798, a Deputy Grand Chapter for the State of New York, subordinate to the Grand Chapter of the United States. Companion De Witt Clinton was then elected Deputy Grand High Priest. Brother Clinton also served as Grand Master of the Grand Encampment of New York, Grand Master of Knights Templar of the United States and for fourteen years was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of his State, being furthermore United States Senator, Mayor of New York City, and later was elected Governor of New York. He did not hesitate to publicly defend Freemasonry when many in public office were too fearful to be fair, or were even maliciously antagonistic. As Governor he was prompt, judicial and thorough with the problems raised by the Morgan mystery, and also wrote these sterling convictions to show his personal Masonic sentiments:

"I know that Free Masonry, properly understood, and faithfully attended to, is friendly to religion, morality, liberty and good government; and I shall never shrink under any state of excitement, or any extent of misapprehension, from bearing testimony in favor of the purity of an Institution which can boast of a Washington and a Franklin and a Lafayette as distinguished members, which inculcates no principles and authorizes no acts that are not in perfect accordance with good morals, civil liberty and entire obedience to the government and the laws." On January 10, 1799, the Grand Chapter to the Northern States assumed the name, as it already had the status, of a General Grand body and the Deputy Grand Chapters omitted the word Deputy from their titles.

Columbia Grand Council, No. 1, was opened at a meeting in Saint John's Hall on September 2, 1810. It was probably a self-constituted body. On January 18, 1823, it was resolved to form a Grand Council of Royal and Select Masters and at a Convention held a week later Companion Lownds was chosen Most Illustrious Royal Grand Master.

In 1860 this Grand Council united with another organized May 7, 1854, by representatives of Washington, Pennell and Oriental Councils. A list of members of Morton's Encampment, probably the first in the State, appeared in 1796. Reference to a procession including Knights Templar in the Independent Journal of New York, December 28, 1785, suggests that the Encampment was at work years before 1796. Of those established about the beginning of the nineteenth century, Temple Commandery, No. 2, seems to be the oldest. A meeting was held on January 2, 1814, of the leading Knights Templar in the State Assuming the necessary authority, they chose officers for a Grand Encampment and on June 18, 1814, this body was established with De Witt Clinton as Grand Master. June 21, 1816, the General Grand Encampment of the United States was organized at New York. Ineffable Lodge of Perfection and Grand Council of Princes of Jerusalem were chartered at Albany on December 2O, 1767. Some years elapsed and on August 6, 1806, the Chapter of Rose Croix of New York City and the Consistory of New York City were both constituted.

• NEW ZEALAND

A dominion consisting of a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean about one thousand miles to the southeast of Australia. Less than 100 years after the standing of the first European in this country a French Lodge, Franqaise Primitive ntipodienne, the Antipodes meaning the opposite side of the earth, was chartered at Akaroa on August 9, 1843. The second and third were founded by the Grand Lodges of Ireland and England respectively in 1844 and 1845.

After 1862 the progress of the Craft gained impetus and many more Lodges sprang up. Between 1860 and 1875 fifty-four Lodges in all were warranted. On April 99, 1890, the Grand Lodge of New Zealand was established by those Lodges which desired independence. The others have continued their allegiance to their original Grand Lodges but have always maintained a friendly attitude towards the Grand Lodge of New Zealand.

At the time of the writing of the concise account of Freemasonry in New Zealand on page 707 the oldest know n Lodge record was dated 1843. In Centennial History of the New Zealand Pacific Lodge, Aro. It by R. C. G. Weston (published by the Lodge in 1942) evidence is given of a Lodge at mork in 1842.

• NICARAGUA

A republic of Central America, between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The Lodge of Regularity, No. 300, was granted a Charter by the Grand Lodge of England at Black River in 1763, but its name was removed from the register at the Union of 1813. Lodges were opened also at Greyto an by authority of the Grand Lodge of Scotland.

About 1762 a Provincial Grand Master, Brother Thomas 51. Perkins, was appointed by Lord Aberdour and this authority was later extended to cover America.

Brother Street states in 1922' report to the Grand Lodge of Alabaman "The Grand Lodge of Nicaragua has its seat at Managua but we have been able to learn nothing of its history or present activities."

• NICK

From the Danish word, Nikken. The spirit of the waters, an enemy of man, the devil, or in the vulgate, Old Nick.

• NICOLAI, CHRlSTOPH FRIEDRICH

Christopher Frederick Nicolai, author of a very interesting essay on the origin of the Society of Freemasons, was a bookseller of Berlin, and one of the most distinguished of the German savants of that Augustan age of German literature in which he lived. He was born at Berlin on the 18th of March, 1733, and died in the same city on the 8th of January, 1811. He was the editor of and an industrious contributor to, two German periodicals of high literary character, a learned writer on various subjects of science and philosophy, and the intimate friend of Leasing, whose works he edited, and of the illustrious Mendelssohn. In 1782-3, he published a work with the following title: Versuch über die Beschuldigungen welche dem Tempelherrnorden gemacht worden und über dessen Geheimniss; nebst einem Anhange über das Entstehen der Freimaurergegeselschaft that is, An Essay on the accusations made against the Order of Knight's Templar and their mystery; troth an Appendix on the origin of the Fraternity of Freemasons. In this work Nicola advanced his peculiar theory on the origin of Freemasonry, which is substantially as follows:

Lord Bacon, taking certain hints from the writings of Andrea, the founder of Rosicrucianism and his English disciple, Fludd, on the subject of the regeneration of the world, proposed to accomplish the same object, but by a different and entirely opposite method. For, whereas, they explained everything esoterically, Bacon's plan was to abolish all distinction between the esoteric and the exoteric and to demonstrate everything by proofs from nature. This idea he first promulgated in his Instauratio Magna, but afterward more fully developed in his New Atlantis. In this latter world he introduced his beautiful apologue. abounding in Masonic ideas, in which he described the unknown island of Bensalem, where a king had built a large edifice, called after himself, Solomon's House. Charles I, it is said, had been much attracted by this idea, and had intended to found something of the kind upon the plan of Solomon's Temple, but the occurrence of the Civil War prevented the execution of the project.

The idea lay for some time dormant, but was subsequently revived, in 1646, by Wallis, Wilkins, and several other learned men, who established the Royal Society for the purpose of carrying out Bacon's plan of communicating to the world scientific and philosophic eat truths. About the same time another society was formed by other learned men, who sought to arrive at truth by the investigations of alchemy and astrology. To this society such men as Ashmole and Lily were attached, and they resolved to construct a House of Solomon in the island of Bensalem, where they might communicate their instructions by means of secret symbols. To cover their mysterious designs, they got themselves admitted into the Masons Company, and held their meetings at Masons Hall, in Masons Alley, Basinghall Street. As Freemen of London, they took the name of Freemasons, and naturally adopted the Masonic implements as symbols.

Although this association, like the Royal Society, sought, but by a different method, to inculcate the principles of natural science and philosophy, it subsequently took a political direction. Most of its members were strongly opposed to the puritanism of the dominant party and were in favor of the royal cause, and hence their meetings, ostensibly held for the purpose of scientific investigation, were really used to conceal their secret political efforts to restore the exiled house of Stuart. From this society, which subsequently underwent a decadence, sprang the revival in 1717, which culminated in the establishment of the Grand Lodge of England. Such was the theory of Nicola. Few will be found at the present day to concur in all his views, yet none can refuse to award to him the praise of independence of opinion, originality of thought, and an entire avoidance of the beaten paths of hearsay testimony and unsupported tradition. His results may be rejected, but his method of attaining them must be commended.

• NICOTIATES, ORDER OF

or the Order of the Priseurs. As smoker, meaning a smoker of tobacco, so priseur means taker-a taker of snuff. A secret Order mentioned by Clavel, teaching the doctrines of Pythagoras From a strictly historical point of view the Society seems to have had its rise about the year 1817, but its traditional history carries one back to the closing years of the fifth century, and the persecution under Emperor Justinian, instigated by his wife, Theodora. In so far as can be gathered, Cachire de Beaurepaire, A. Meallet—Esline and Etienne Francois Bazot seemed to have been the original members or founders of the Society. Brother R. E. Wallace James was of the opinion, derived from various circumstances, although he had as then no actual evidence sufficient to verify the belief, that to Bazot should be contributed this honor.

The Society lasted only for some sixteen years. The last meeting of which we can find any trace was a banquet which was held in June, 1833. During these sixteen years, however, the Priseurs gathered to the membership the bulk of the most famous Masonic characters of the time resident in Paris. Among the first to join was J. M. Ragon, who was admitted a member on June 1, 1817, at which time, though the Society had only been a few months in existence, the membership numbered twenty-five. Andre Joseph Etienne Le Rouge was admitted at the following meeting, held upon January 21, 1818, and on his being appointed Secretary, he became the ruling spirit of the Society. In short, the Priseurs were apparently a very select little coterie of Parisian Masons who met together, over their pipes and cigars, to discuss the various subjects connected more or less with Freemasonry (see Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, volume xxviiu, 1915).

• NIGERIA

The Grand Lodges in the British Isles are responsible for the introduction of Freemasonry into Nigeria, a territory of West Africa. The English Grand Lodge controls five Lodges at Lagos and one each at Calabar, Ebute Metta, Kaduna, Onitsha, Fort Harcourt, Warri and Zaria; Ireland one at Calabar, and Scotland has two at Lagos and one at Calabar.

• NIGHT

Lodges, almost universally, all over the world, meet, except on special occasions, at night. In some large cities, as New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Lodges have been established of Brethren whose occupations prevent their assemblage at other than the daytime, hence these are usually called Daylight Lodges. In this selection of the hours of night and darkness for initiation, the usual coincidence will be found between the ceremonies of Freemasonry and those of the Ancient Mysteries, showing their derivation from common origin. Justin says that at Eleusis, Triptolemus invented the art of sowing corn, and that, in honor of this invention, the nights were consecrated to initiation. The application is, however, rather abstruse.

In the Bacchae of Euripides (Act in, line 485), that author introduces the god Bacchus, the supposed inventor of the Dionysian Mysteries, as replying to the question of King Pentheus in the following words:

Pentheus. By night or day, these sacred rites perform'st thou?

Bacchus. Mostly by night, for venerable is darkness;

In all the other Mysteries the same reason was assigned for nocturnal celebrations, since night and darkness have something solemn and August in them which is disposed to fill the mind with sacred awe. Hence black, as an emblem of darkness and night, was considered as the color appropriate to the mycteria. In the Masteries of Hindustan, the candidate for initiation, having been duly prepared by previous purification, was led at the dead of night to the gloomy cavern, in which the mystic rites were performed.

The same period of darkness was adopted for the celebration of the Mysteries of Mithras, in Persia Among the Druids of Britain and Gaul, the principal annual initiation commenced at low twelve, or midnight of the eve of May-Day. In short, it is indisputable that the initiations in all the Ancient Mysteries were nocturnal in their character.

The reason given by the ancients for this selection of night as the time for initiation, is equally applicable to the system of Freemasonry. "Darkness," says Brother Oliver, "was an emblem of death, and death was a prelude to resurrection. It will be at once seen, therefore, in what manner the doctrine of the resurrection was inculcated and exemplified in these remarkable institutions." Death and the resurrection were the doctrines taught in the Ancient Mysteries;

and night and darkness were necessary to add to the sacred awe and reverence which these doctrines ought always to inspire in the rational and contemplative mind. The same doctrines form the very groundwork of Freemasonry; and as the Master Mason, to use the language of Hutchinson, "represents a man saved from the grave of iniquity and raised to the faith of salvation," darkness and night are the appropriate accompaniments to the solemn ceremonies which demonstrate this profession.

• NIHONGI

Japanese, meaning Chronicles of Fisons The companion of the Rojiki; the two works together forming the doctrinal and historic basis of Sintonism. The Japanese adherents of Sinsyn are termed Sintus, or Sintoos, who worship the gods, the chief of which is Ten-sio-dai-yin. The Nihongi was composed about 720 A.D., with the evident design of giving a Chinese coloring to the subject-matter of the Kojiki, upon which it is founded.

• NILE

There is a tradition in the old Masonic Records that the inundations of the River Nile, in Egypt, continually destroying the perishable landmarks by which one man could distinguish his possessions from those of another, Euclid instructed the people in the art of geometry, by which they might measure their lands; and then taught them to bound them with walls and ditches, BO that after an inundation each man could identify his own boundaries. The tradition is given in the Cooke Manuscript (lines 455-72) thus: "Euclyde was one of the first founders of Geometry, and he gave hit name, for in his time there was a water in that lond of Egypt that is called Nilo, and hit florid so ferre into the londe that men myght not dwelle therein. Then this worthi clerke Enclide taught hem to malre grete wallys and diches to holde owt the watyr, and he by Gemetria mesured the londe and departyd hit in divers parties, and made every man to close his own part with walles and dishes." This legend of the origin of the art of geometry was borrowed by the old Operative Masons from the Origines of Saint Isidore of Seville, where a similar story is told.

• NIL NISI CLAVIS DEEST

Latin, and meaning Nothing buff the key is wanting A motto or dence often attached to the Double Triangle of Royal Arch Masonry It is inscribed on the Royal Arch badge or jewel of the Grand Chapter of Scotland, the other — devices being a Double Triangle and a Triple Tau.

• NIMROD

The Legend of the Craft in the Old Constitutions refers to Nimrod as one of the founders Of Freemasonry. Thus in the York Manuscript. No. 1, we read: 'At ye makeing of ye Toure of Babell there was Masonrie first much esteemed of, and the King of Babilon yt was called Nimrod was A Mason himself and loved well Masons." And the Cooke Manuscript thus repeats the story: 'And this same Nembroth began the towre of babilon and he taught to his werkemen the craft of Masonrie, and he had with him many Masons more than forty thousand. And he loved and cherished them well" (see line 343). The idea no doubt sprang out of the Scriptural teaching that Nimrod was the architect of many cities; a statement not so well expressed in the authorized version, as it is in the improved one of Bochart, which says: "From that land Nimrod went forth to Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and Rehoboth city, and Calah and Resen between Nineveh and Calah, that is the great city."

• NINE

If the number three was celebrated among the ancient sages, that of three times three had no less celebrity; because, according to them, each of the three elements which constitute our bodies is ternary: the water containing earth and fire; the earth containing igneous and aqueous particles; and the fire being tempered by globules of water and terrestrial corpuscles which serve to feed it. No one of the three elements being entirely separated from the others, all material beings composed of these three elements, whereof each is triple, may be designated by the figurative number of three times three, which has become the symbol of all formations of bodies. Hence the name of ninth envelop given to matter. Every material extension, every circular line, has for its representative sign the number nine among the Pythagoreans, who had observed the property which this number possesses of reproducing itself incessantly and entire in every multiplication; thus offering to the mind a very striking emblem of matter, which is incessantly composed before our eyes, after having undergone a thousand decompositions.

The number nine was consecrated to the Spheres and the Muses. It is the sign of every circumference; because a circle or 360 degrees is equal to nine, that is to say, 3+6+0=9. Nevertheless, the ancients regarded this number with a sort of terror; they considered it a bad presage; as the symbol of versatility, of change, and the emblem of the frailty of human affairs. Wherefore they avoided all numbers where nine appears, and chiefly 81, the produce of nine multiplied by itself, and the addition whereof, 8+1, again presents the number nine. As the figure of the number six was the symbol of the terrestrial globe, animated by a Divine Spirit, the figure of the number nine symbolized the earth, under the influence of the Evil Principle; and thence the terror it inspired. Nevertheless, according to the Cabalists, the character nine symbolizes the generative egg, or the image of a little globular being, from whose lower side seems to flow its spirit of life. The Ennead, signifying an aggregate of nine thongs or persons, is the first square of unequal numbers. Every one is aware of the singular properties of the number nine, which, multiplied by itself or any other number whatever, gives a result whose final sum is always nine, or always divisible by nine. Nine multiplied by each of the ordinary numbers, produces an arithmetical progression, each member whereof, composed of two figures, presents a remarkable fact; for example:

1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8 . 9 . 10

9 . 18 . 27 . 36 . 45 . 54 . 63 . 72 . 81 . 90

The first line of figures gives the regular series, from 1 to 10. The second reproduces this line doubly; first ascending from the first figure of 18, and then returning from the second figure of 81. In Freemasonry, nine derives its value from its being the product of three multiplied into itself, and consequently in Masonic language the number nine is always denoted by the expression three times three. For a similar reason, 27, which is 3 times 9, and 81, which is 9 times 9, are esteemed ax sacred numbers in the advanced Degrees.

• NINEVEH

The capital of the ancient Kingdom of Assyria, and built by Nimrod. The traditions of its greatness and the magnificence of its buildings were familiar to the Arabs, the Greeks, and the Romans. The modern discoveries of Rich, of Botta, and other explorers, have thrown much light upon its ancient condition, and have shown that it was the seat of much architectural splendor and of a profoundly symbolical religion, which had something of the characteristics of the Mithraic worship. In the mythical relations of the did Constitutions, which make up the Legend of the Craft, it is spoken of as the ancient birthplace of Freemasonry, where Nimrod, who was its builder, and "was a Mason and loved well the Craft," employed 60,000 Masons to build it, and gave them a charge "that they should be true," and this, says the HarZeian Manuscript, No. 19g, was the first time that any Mason had any change of Craft.

• NINE WORTHIEST

Also known as the Nine Excellent Masters, Freemasons selected from Brethren. each representing a Lodge in London and Westminster. Nine Brethren were elected every year by the Grand Chapter to visit the Lodges and report to the Grand Chapter or to the Right Worshipful Deputy Grand Master in order to preserve the uniformity of the work in England. Appointment of the Body occurred in 1792 and it was abolished in 1813. A special medal was used by these nine members, being surrendered to the successors every year The medal, recalled by the Grand Chapter in 1817 on one side represented Freemasons at work and on the reverse side showed an incident in the Arch legend.

• NINUS GRAECUS

See Nalymus Grecus

• NISAN

The seventh month of the Hebrew civil year, and corresponding to the months of March and April, commencing with the new moon of the former.

• NINE SISTERS, LODGED OF THE

A famous Masonic Body at Paris, France, La Loge des Neufs Soeurs, whose request for formal organization same before the Grand Orient on March 11, 1776. The name, Nine Sisters, refers to the Muses, the classic nine goddesses presiding over the arts and sciences; their names, their departments, and their characteristic attributes being as follows: Calliope, epic poetry bearing wax tablet and pencil; Clio, history, with B scroll; Erato, erotic poetry, with a small Iyre; Euterpe, lyric poetry, bearing a double Hute; Melpomene, tragedy, with tragic mask and ivy wreath; Polyhymnia, or Polymnia, sacred hymns, veiled and in an attitude of thought; Terpsichore, choral song and the dance, with a lyre; Thalia, comedy, with comic mask and ivy wreath, and Urania, astronomy, carrying the celestial globe.

This truly remarkable Lodge had many noted members and it exhibited some curious features. For instance, the tendency that has cropped up here and there to some small extent to demur at any taking of an oath in the conferring of a Degree was long ago considered by this Lodge and it decided adversely to the practice. Among the leading Brethren of the Lodge was Benjamin Franklin, the second Worshipful Master, who during his term of office, two years, had undoubtedly a part of consequence in the organization mainly by the members of his Lodge of the Apollonian Society, called after the fabled originator and protector of civil order, the founder of cities and legislatures.

The President of this organization was Antoine Court de Gebelin, who was Secretary of the Lodge in 1779. IIe was a member of several learned societies and the author of a comprehensive work planned to extend over thirty volumes, of which he published nine, entitled the Primitive World Analyzed and Comas pared with the Modern World. This enterprise gave him such a reputation that he became the Royal Censor, although a Protestant. In 1780, some months before the formation of the Apollonian Society, the French Academy having the disposal for the first time of the prize founded by Count de Valbelle awarded it to Court de Gebelin as having produced the most meritorious and most useful work.

This writer having an encyclopedic knowledge was an extremely zealous Freemason. Before the foundation of the Lodge of Nine Sisters he was a member of another Lodge at Paris, that of the Ami6 Reunis, Reunited Friends. He had been one of the principal founders of the Rite of the Philalethes or Seeders of Truth which played an important part in the Freemasonry of the period and which extended its influence even beyond French territory. In 1777 he gave in a series of seven lectures a course on the Allegories most resembling the Masonic Grades where he had for hearers the most distinguished Freemasons of Paris.

The Apollonian Society was organized November 17, 1780, and from the literary program of its first meeting we can easily understand the nature of its activities. The institution begun under its guidance was said to be "Particularly consecrated to encourage the progress of the several sciences relating to the arts and to commerce." It had two objects. The first was to offer to scientists, professional or amateur, laboratories for their experiments. The second was of teaching the use of machines and of demonstrating their application for the making of all things necessary to life. The program included a course in physics and chemistry, serving as an introduction to the arts and trades in which was made known the natural history of the materials there used; a course in experimental physics and mathematics which could be especially applied to the mechanic arts; a course in the manufacturing of fabrics, of dyes and so on; a course in anatomy showing its utility in sculpture and in painting, together with the knowledge of physiology necessary to the art student; a course in the English language and another in Italian. This was afterwards extended to include Spanish and other tongues.

While a charge was made to defray expense, yet some provision was arranged for free training. The institution received upon its opening the favor of the learned societies and responded with establishing new courses in mathematics, astronomy, electricity and so forth. The name of the school became the Lycee, the Lyceum, named after the great institution of learning opened at Athens by Aristotle. It went through the Revolutionary period without being obliged to close its doors and for sixty years this institution of the higher education continued the ideas with which it was begun by the Freemasons of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters. A long list of notable men of France attended. We are told that it "developed in French society a taste for the higher studies. It contributed largely to the expansion of new ideas and to make known scientific discoveries. It stimulated public education. " we have mentioned what was done by the Lodge for training along educational lines but there is a similar chapter in what its members did for the protection of the innocent unjustly accused and for the reform of the penal laws.

The active membership of Benjamin Franklin in this Lodge raises an interesting question relative to the influence this distinguished Freemason may have exerted regarding the attitude of French Lodges in particular toward community problems. Franklin was the founder of the club in Pennsylvania called the Junto, a sort of small debating body in which the members educated one another by discussion.

This was popularly known as the Leather Apron Caleb, a suggestive title, by the way, and the rules drawn up by Franklin require that every member in his turn should submit one or more questions on any point of morals, politics, or natural philosophy for general discussion and once in three months produce and read an essay of his own writing on any subject he pleased. What we know of this particular organization and its interest in sociology is well worth study in connection with what is here recorded of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters at Paris. The history of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters was written by Louis Amiable, lawyer, once Mayor of the Fifth District of Paris, Councillor of the Court of Appeals, Grand Orator of the Grand College and formerly Member of the Council of the Grand Orient of France. He died suddenly at Aix, January 23, 1897, only the day following the writing of the last few pages of his book. As is pathetically said on the flyleaf, "The work is published without having been submitted to the corrections of the author."

Brother Amiable's book, Une Loge Maçonnique d'Avard 1789, has the charm and "go" of an alluring novel full of remarkable incidents and striking people— better, indeed, than any novel could be, because the adventures are historical and the actors are real. The wonderful book sketches with almost breathless sweep the electrically charged zone of the French Revolution. For Freemasonry in France, like the progress of the Craft in American Colonial days, was a school of patriotism.

Freemasonry of the French and American Revolution was neither watery nor apologetic. In truth it was a home and a laboratory for the cleansing fluid that acidly tried men's souls, that assayed the pure gold from the dross and sent the refined product out into the world to hang together or hang separately in the sacred cause of freedom. Says Brother Amiable: Freemasonry was incontestably one of the factors of the great changes which were produced in North America and in France, not by means of some kind of international conspiracy, as has been pretended so childishly but in the elaboration of ideas, in rendering public opinion clearer, wiser and stronger, fashioning the men in the fray and whose action was decisive. Of all the Masonic Lodges who exerted that influence in our country (France) the best known, or perhaps I had better say, the least unknown today, is that which received Voltaire some weeks before his death. Brother Amiable is justly proud of the membership of the Lodge, the most famous men of the time. Violtaire, the great writer; Lalande, the astronomer; Benjamin Franklin, who followed Lalande as Borshipful Master; Paul Jones was a member; and there is a long list of titled men, counts and marquises; eminent lawyers, as de Seze, who defended the King, Louis XVI, before the Convention; groups of literary leaders, Delille, Chamfort, Lernierre, and Florian, of the French Academy; painters of international fame as Vernet and Greuze; the great sculptor Houdon; musicians, as Precinni and Delayrac; while there was also a group of the Revolutionist Party chiefs, Sieves, Bailly, Petion, Rabaut-Saint-Etienne, Brissot, Cerutti, Foucroy, Camille Desmoulins and Danton.

The clergy themselves had furnished the Nine Sisters with a notable array. Two churchmen took part in the first grouping of founder members. On the day, when Voltaire was received, the Lodge contained no less than thirteen priests of religion. One of these, untiring in his zeal, took part in the work. Four others who came later into the Lodge sat as members of the great Revolutionary Assemblies.

Brother Amiable tells us that twelve members had their seats in the National Institute, some occupying the highest positions; thus Francois de Neufchateau was president of the Senate Conservatory;

Fontanes, president of the Legislative Body; Lacepe, Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor; while Moreau de Saint Mery—Worshipful Master in 1805 was Councillor of State. Brother Amiable discusses Masonic service:

In 1780 the Lodge in community service doubled herself, in some sort, by the foundation of the Apollonian Society, called afterwards the Museum and then the Lyceum of Paris, from whence was drawn the origin of that development of the higher public education in our country, France. Again, by Deputy and Pastorate, the Lodge reinforced, directed, and caused to triumph the great movement of opinion for the reform of the penal laws, which had a satisfactory beginning in the Royal Declaration of May, 1888, and which prompted the reformatory decrees of the Constitution. Pages are given by Brother Amiable to the civil, literary, artistic, and scientific activities of the members. The standard of qualification was lofty and exacting, jealously cherished and enforced. He gives some extracts he makes from the Lodge records. For instance,

The truly instructed Freemason, truly imbued with his duties, is a man free from reproach and from remorse. He possesses, without dependence on philosophy, the most sublime precepts of morality. He will be just because he is benevolent and unselfish. None near to him are strangers, and he will be himself neither strange nor aloof nor indifferent to any. All men will be his brothers, whatever may be their opinions or whatever may be their country. Lastly he will be a faithful subject, a zealous citizen, submissive to law and conservation, subordinate to the duties of society by principle.

There is also in the same Document a survey of the Lodge position: The Lodge of the Nine Sisters, in making the Masonic virtues the base and support of its institution, believes to have joined there the culture of the sciences, of letters and of the arts. This is but reclaiming their true origin. The arts have had, like Freemasonry, the unobtrusive advantage of bringing men together. It was to the sounds of the harp and voice of Orpheus that the savages of Thracia abandoned their caves. These were the fine arts that sweetened the customs of the nations; they are the preservers even to this day of the graciousness of manners. Let us labor then with zeal, with perseverance, to fill the double purpose of our institution. Because the base constantly upholds the structure, let us decorate it, but let not the new ornaments ever had the dignity of its ancient architecture.

The character of the Lodge was well exhibited in the following rule adopted by it:

The talents that the Lodge of the Nine Sisters exact of a candidate, in order that he may justify the name he bears, comprises the sciences and the liberal arts, to the end that any and all subjects proposed to him ought to be dowered by whatsoever talent, be it of the nature of the arts or of the sciences as the case may be, and that he has already given a public and sufficient proof of possessing this talent,

Note that the candidate must be publicly known as a talented man, This rule was not only carried out in regard to the candidates, but was also in effect for affiliates. Nevertheless, the rigor of the rule was not absolute. On occasion it was judiciously relaxed. The Lodge, we are told, did not wish to deprive itself of the element of strength that could be brought in by the co-operation of that considerable group of persons who had not already given public and sufficient proof of possessing some particular talent. Therefore the following qualifying rule was in effect:

There may be exceptions to the rule only when the candidates are distinguished by their rank or by the honorable positions they occupy.

As a consequence of the character of the Lodge we find the following requirement: All candidates for initiation must be proposed or a member of the Lodge. His application and the precise description are announced to all the Brethren by the Secretary. Three members of a Committee are named to inform themselves of his life, his morals, and of his talents, and upon these things they shall make report by word of mouth or in writing. On this report there is taken a vote by ballot, and three black balls suffice for rejection of the candidate. If the first ballot is favorable, the candidate is simply authorized to ask in writing (by a letter, not by filling out a blank) for his initiation. His request should be brought into the Lodge by the proposer. On the receipt of that request the discussion is reopened and he is subjected to a new ballot. The candidate is only accepted on the following basis: The proposer and the members of the Investigating Commits tee are the responsible agents. If, after the initiation, there shad be learned, relative to the new Brother, such things as cause the Lodge to regret his admission and thereupon to east him out of its bosom, the proposer will be deprived of entrance to the Temple for five months and the members of the Committee for three months.

We read from page 12 of La Dismerie's Memoirs quoted by Brother Amiable:

It was necessary to give proofs of a regular and sustained conduct, of a docile character, of a sociable humor. All measures that human prudence might suggest were employed by us to anticipate and avoid in this regard every kind of oversight.

Freemasons desiring to affiliate with the Lodge were subjected to a like examination by an Investigating Committee. A ballot was taken in every case and three black balls were sufficient to reject the applications. A visit by a Freemason had critical supervision. The visitor was only introduced after showing a letter of summons signed by the Secretary and addressed to him with mention of the Brother who had caused the invitation to be issued. Officers of the governing Bodies of the Grand Orient itself were only exempt from this rule that aimed at giving the Lodge all the privacy of a home.

In all that concerned the solemn engagement taken by the new Brethren at their initiation, the philosophical spirit of the Lodge manifested itself by a remarkable innovation. Hitherto that pledge was invested with an oath. In the same way it was accompanied by an imprecation against perjury. The Brethren of the Nine Sisters held that the promise of a free and honest man should be sufficient among upright folk. It was therefore regularly by a rule decided that the candidate at initiation having submitted his proofs that the request for admission called for. and having the right hand placed on the heart, shall make a pledge of which here are the obligations: Of never saying, writing, or doing anything in the Lodge against religion, against morality, or against the state.

Of being always ready to fly to the relief of humanity.

Of never disclosing the secrets that are confided to him.

Of observing inviolably the Statutes and By-Laws of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters.

Of making every endeavor to contribute co-operatively to the glory and prosperity of the Lodge.

From the Lodge By-Laws adopted in 1781 the Grand Orient took over the innovation, amplifying the formula and putting therein certain other obligations. But, after the Revolution, they reinserted the oath and the imprecation against perjury, though a recent revision (th s was written by Brother Amiable in 189S7) caused these to disappear.

The Lodge had twenty-five officers, exclusive of the two substitutes to fill the positions of absentees. There were three Orators. This is explained by Brother Amiable "by reason of the importance of their use in such a Lodge." There were two Directors of Concerts:

The first of these two officials, in 1778, is Dalavrae who figured with the qualification of Guard of the Eing Dalavrac, aged twenty-five years, yet unknown to the general public, but who became one of the most fertile and most popular of composers in the style of Comic Opera.

These officers were all elected annually in May. Three qualifications were necessary: He must be a contributing member, have been at least a year holding membership in the Lodge counting from the day he took his obligation, and has been present at five Grand Assemblies in the course of the year prey ceding the election. Independently of the reunions of Committees pertaining to administration, there was every month a General Reunion or Grand Assembly followed by a banquet, except in September and October which are the two months of vacation. The meeting preceding the banquet is devoted to a concert and to specimens of workmanship, that is to say, of literary productions. Three of these reunions are more important than the others, of sueh were the two Festivals of Saint John in summer and in winter, corresponding to the two solstices, and to that reunion of May 9 in honor of the renewal of the hIason'c year. This last comprised particularly an exposition of works of art produced by, and of choice specimens of music composed by, brethren of the Lodge.

At each ord nary Grand Assembly one of the Orators took the floor and spoke eulogistically of some great man no longer among the living. The Worshipful Master, the Senior Warden, the Archiviste (Keeper of Documents) and one of the Experts (an officer having somewhat similar functions to oar Senior Deacon) ought also at predetermined dates to produce pieces of architecture. (The French expression for a Freemason's service done in the spirit of craftsmanship and exhibiting the result of h's special talent.)

At every Festival of Saint John, three Brothers, so designed at the preceding Festival, are to pronounce respectively, one a eulogy upon a great man of the past; another, an example of eloquence- the third, a specimen of versification. Moreover, a closing discourse shall be given by one of the Orators at the Grand Assembly of August 9, preceding the vacation period- and a like address will be offered at the reopening on November 21. All these are outside the pieces of architecture presented by the newly admitted Brethren, and of such as all the Brethren are at liberty to produce. It is difficult to imagine a greater intellectual activity. Sever did a society of learned men make greater showing. He shall see later by the testimony that is in our possession relative to certain members of the Lodge, that the performance responded fully to the above program. Two items in the regulations merit also to be specially mentioned.

The one instituted a foundation at twelve hundred pounds for new editions of works by members of the Lodge which shall be judged worthy, and which shall relate to the objects cherished by the dine Sisters, to sciences, to literature, to the fine arts, music, painting, engraving, etc. Brine Commissioners were named for each occasion by the Lodge to judge upon the merits of the respective works. They acted not, as is often done elsewhere, by making a mere investment, but made a liberal advance payment, to give some leeway in view of future requirements. The Lodge supervised the edition in a manner to bring it up to date, fresh and timely, and two issues of the work were issued before the Brother to whom they had made the advance was able to lay claim upon any profits.

Not less remarkable is the injunction coming among those referring to financial benefactions an injunction which imposes the special duty of assistance to those Brethren who are lawyers, physicians, and surgeons. the obligation of giving their advice gratis in consultation to all those who are recommended to them by the Lodge. But there is more than that involved. The solemn obligation they have contracted "to fly to the relief of humanity" implied that every Craftsman of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters was devoted to the succor of victims of injustice, at a time when great iniquities were so frequently committed, the duty of imitating, as far as is possible, the noble example shown by Voltaire. Such an engagement could not remain a dead letter in the Lodge which counted among its members the most celebrated legal advocate of the period, Elie de Beaumont, with whom the patriarch of Ferney was himself associated in the defense of Calas and of Serven.

The text of the By-laws provided in the case where one of the Brethren should have been charged with the defense of the innocent unjustly accused, and where any state of affairs rendered such papers necessary to the justification of the person under attack, the lawyer Brother should be provided with an allowance up to a total of one hundred pounds toward the printing and publishing of the statements in question. Not so much was it the amount allowed, as will here be seen, but the prompting to an act of devotion. Moreover, some time later, when Deputy undertook the memorable struggle to save the three innocent persons condemned to death by the Parliament of Paris. he spent much more than three hundred pounds for the printing of the arguments that tore them away from the executioner.

Essays given to the Lodge were rehearsed later before other notable gatherings. The eulogy upon Louis IX by a member, the Abb d'E;spagnac, was later heard before the French Academy in solemn session. In fact, the prize of the Academy, August 12, 1777, was awarded to the Abbe Remy, later one of the three Orators in 1778, for a repetition of a Lodge address. La Dixmerie says, however:

The taste for addresses is not the only thing about our meetings. Everything that concerns literature, the sciences, the arts, the morals, is there heard, welcomed, and encouraged. The same author shows that from the very beginning the Lodge had made all sorts of gifts to the indigent. Every year they remitted, to the principal of a College of Paris, a generous sum to be distributed amongst students, "the least fortunate and the most meritorious." The Lodge also provided education and food for three poor children, and when these arrived at the proper age, the Lodge placed them in an apprenticeship and paid the price of their being taught the mastery of a business. Every Lodge Festival was the occasion of generous collections for charity. The ecclesiastics of the Lodge were of liberal tendencies. Remy wrote eloquently but irreverently of the Council of Trent. Brother Amiable says: "To see the clergy censured by a priest is never common. Of course it is true that this priest was a Freemason. That he was in turn censured by the theologians was natural." We are told by Bachaumont: "But the clerical power was humbled, the clamor of the clergy was impotent to obtain from the Government the suppression of the printed work."

Another extract from the Memoirs Secrets of Bachaumont tells that the Lodge decided on September 10, 1777, to give thanks by a solemn church service for the recovery from a very serious illness of the Duke de Chartres, then the Grand Master of France.

Father Cordier, a very ardent and very zealous Brother, presented the subject for deliberation in the Lodge of the Nine Sisters, and the vote being unanimous for carrying the plan into execution, it was arranged that on the next Wednesday, the 17th of the month, there should be chanted a Mass and a Te Deum in music at the Church of the Cordeliers as an act of grace for the happy event. There will be admission tickets. separate entrance will be provided for the ladies and gentlemen and those only may be admitted who have the signs of recognition.

As Henri Martin points out in his History of France (page 397): "The reception of Voltaire among the Freemasons was an episode deserving of memorial.

Their secret was but his, 'Humanity and Toleration."' There is an echoing expression in the verses credited to Brother La Dixmeurie: "At the name of our Illustrious Brother, today all Freemasons triumph. If he receives from us the light, the world had it from him." On April 7, 1778, in the morning, was the initiation. Some two hundred and fifty were present, Lalande, the famous scientist, presided. We are told that "the elite of Freemasonry was present."

Father Cordier, declaring that he presented Voltaire for their initiation, observed that an assembly as literary as it was Masonic, ought to be flattered by witnessing the most celebrated Frenchman being desirous of admission among them. He hoped that they would have a kindly regard for the great age and feeble health of the illustrious neophyte.

Voltaire was born November 21, 1694, and there fore at his initiation was in his eighty-fourth year. The dodge taking that request under consideration decided at once to dispense with the greater part of the ordinary proofs, that he should not be placed blind folded between the columns but that only a black curtain should hide the East until a convenient season.

A commission of nine members was appointed by the Worshipful Master to receive and prepare the candidate; this was headed by the Count Stragonoff and the Candidate was introduced by the Chevalier de Villars, the aged author leaning on the arms of Benjamin Franklin afterwards Master of the Lodge and at that time Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States) and Court de Gebelin. Questions on philosophy and morals were propounded to Voltaire by the Worshipful Master and were answered in a manner that compelled those present in several instances to manifest their admiration.

He himself was strongly impressed and all the more so when the curtain being suddenly removed he saw the East brilliantly illuminated and the illustrious men seated there. He was conducted to the Worshipful Master, where he took an obligation, after which he was constituted an Apprentice and received the signs, words and grips of this Degree. During this time the musicians, under the direction of the celebrated violinist, Caproni, executed ia brilliant style the first part of the third symphony of Guenin. Then Larive of the Comedie Franeaise placed upon the initiate's head a crown of laurel.

We give a few extracts from the address by the Worshipful Master to Voltaire, who was seated "by an unusual distinction in the East."

Very dear Brother, the era most flattering for this Lodge will be henceforth marked by the day of your admission. It brings an Apollo to the Lodge of the Nine Sisters. She finds in him a friend of humanity who reunites all the titles of glory that she is able to desire for the ornamentation of Freemasonry. A King (Frederick the Great of Prussia), of whom you have long been the friend, and who is known as the Illustrios Protector of our Order, had inspired in you the taste for entering it; but it was to your own country that you reserved the satisfaction of initiating you to our mysteries.

After having received the applause and the cheers of the nation, after having seen its enthusiasm and its raptures, You come to receive, in the Temple of friendship, of virtue and of letters, a crown less brilliant but equally solacing to the heart and the soul. The emulation that your presence undoubtedly will spread and enforce, giving a new luster and a new activity to our Lodge, will renown to the profit of the poor she solaces, of the studies she encourages and of all the good she ceases not to do. What citizen has so well served as you the nation in the illumination of duty and of true interests, in rendering fanaticism odious and superstition ridiculous, in recalling good taste to its true principles history to its real purpose the laws to their chief integrity.

We Brethren promise to come to the succor of our friends; but you have been the creator of a multitude who adore you and who give a voice to your good deeds. You have raised a Temple to the Eternal; but that which we value even more, we have seen near this Temple and asylum, a refuge for men outlawed but useful, that a blind zeal had repelled. Thus, my dear Brother, you were a Freemason before that time when vou formally received that designation, and you were fulfilling Masonic duties before you had taken the obligation between our hands. The square that we bear is the symbol of the rectitude of our actions; the apron represents a life of labor and of useful actingly, the white gloves express candor, innocence, and the purity of our actions; the trowel serves to cover up the defects of the Brethren; all these are relating to benevolence and love of humanity and consequently, only expressing the qualities that distinguish you. We are but able to unite you with us and of receiving you with the tribute of our admiration and of our recognition.

There followed several addresses in prose and verse by members, and a response by Voltaire. Court de Gebelin presented a copy of his new book, the Primitiue World, and he read that part of it concerning the ancient mysteries of Eleusis. During the course of the proceedings, Monnet, Painter to the King, made a sketch from life for a portrait of Voltaire.

Voltaire became very ill about the middle of May and on the thirtieth sank into an unconscious condition, dying during the night. Preparations for a suitable memorial meeting of the Lodge were arranged for November 98, 1778. The correspondence of Bachaumont shows how impressive and elaborate were the plans for this occasion, and incidentally he mentions the fact that Doctor Franklin had inherited the apron of Voltaire. Franklin acted as a Warden at this time. Of the ceremony we need not go further than to say it was a remarkable display of esteem and affection framed in a setting of rare splendor and charm. At the close there was the usual offering taken by the Lodge for poor students distinguished in their studies at the University. A further donation was proposed by the Abbe Cordier de Saint-Firmin of five hundred pounds, French, to be deposited with a notary for the apprenticeship to a trade of the first poor infant born after a certain time in the Parish of Saint Sulspice. Several Brethren offered to contribute to this fund (see Voltaire, also Franklin).

• NOACHIDAE

The descendants of Noah. A term applied to Freemasons on the theory, derived from the Legend of the Craft, that Noah was the father and founder of the Masonic system of theology. Henee the Freemasons claim to be his descendants, because in times past they preserved the pure principles of his religion amid the corruptions of surrounding faiths. Doctor Anderson first used the word in this sense in the second edition of the Book of Constitutions: "A Mason is obliged by his tenure to observe the moral law as a true Noachida." But he was not the inventor of the term, for it occurs in a letter sent by the Grand Lodge of England to the Grand Lodge of Calcutta in 1735, which letter is preserved among the Rawlinson Manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (see Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, volume xi, page 35).

• NOACHITE, or PRUSSIAN ENIGHT

The French expression is Noachite ou Chevalier Prussien. There are two uses of the title.

l. The Twenty-first Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. The history as well as the character of this Degree is a verv singular one. It is totally unconnected with the series of Masonie Degrees which are founded upon the Temple of Solomon, and is traced to the Tower of Babel. Henee the Prussian Knights call themselves Nonwhites, or Disciples of Noah, while they designate all other Freemasons as Hiramites, or Disciples of Hiram. The early French Rituals state that the Degree was translated in 1757 from the German by M. de Beraye, Knight of Eloquence in the Lodge of the Count Saint Gelaire, Inspector-General of Prussian Lodges in France. Lenning gives no credit to this statement, but admits that the origin of the Degree must be attributed to the wear above named. The destruction of the Tower of Babel constitutes the legend of the Degree, whose mythical founder is said to have been Peleg, the chief builder of that edifice. A singular regulation is that there shall be no artificial light in the Lodge-room, and that the meetings shall be held on the night of the full noon of each month.

The Degree was adopted by the Council of Emperors of the East and West, and in that way became subsequently a part of the system of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. But it is misplaced in any series of Degrees supposed to emanate from the Solo monic Temple. It is, as an unfitting link, an unsightly interruption of the chain of legendary symbolism substituting Noah for Solomon, and Peleg for Hiram Abif. The Supreme Council for the Southern Jurisdiction abandoned the original ritual and made the Degree a representation of the Vehmgericht or Westphalian Franc Judges. But this by no means relieves the Degree of the objection of Masonic incompatibility That it was ever adopted into the Masonic system is only to be attributed to the passion for advanced Degrees which prevailed in France in the middle of the eighteenth century.

In the modern work the meetings are called Grand Chapters. The officers are a Lieutenant Commander, two Wardens, an Orator, Treasurer, Secretary, Master of Ceremonies, Warder, and Standard-Bearer. The apron is yellow, inscribed with an arm holding a sword and the Egyptian figure of silence. The order is black, and the jewel a full moon or a triangle traversed bv an arrow. In the original instructions there is a coat of arms belonging to the Degree, which is thus emblazoned, to use the language of heraldry: Party perfuse; in chief, Azure, send of stars, or a full moon, advent in base, sable, an equilateral triangle! having an arrow suspended from its upper point, barb downward, or. Of these quaint terms we may say that party per fess, means divided by a horizontal band across the shield, some means strewn or scattered, or and ardent mean the colors of gold and silver respectively.

The legend of the Degree describes the travels of Peleg from Babel to the north of Europe, and ends with the following narrative: "In trenching the rubbish of the salt-mines of Prussia was found in 553 A.D. at a depth of fifteen cubits, the appearance of a triangular building in which was a column of white marble, on which was written in Hebrew the whole history of the Noachites. At the side of this column was a tomb of freestone on which was a piece of agate inscribed with the following epitaph: 'Here rest the ashes of Peleg, our Grand Architect of the tower of Babel. The Almighty had pity on him because he became humble."' This legend, although wholly untenable on historic grounds, is not absolutely puerile. The dispersion of the human race in the time of Peleg had always been a topic of discussion among the learned. I ong dissertations had been written to show that all the nations of the world, even America, had been peopled by the three sons of Noah and their descendants. The object of the legend seems, then, to have been to impress the idea of the thorough dispersion. The fundamental idea of the Degree is, under the symbol of Peleg, to teach the crime of assumption and the virtue of humility. 2. The Degree was also adopted into the Rite of Mizraim, where it is the Thirty-fifth.

• NOACHITE, SOVEREIGN

The French title is Noachite Souverain. A Degree contained in the nomenclature of Fustier.

• NOACHITES

The same as Noachidae, which see.

• NOACHITES, FRENCH ORDER OF

See Napoleonic Freemasonry

• NOAH

In all the old Masonic manuscript Constitutions that are extant, Noah and the Flood play an important part in the Legend of the Craft. Hence, as the Masonic system became developed, the Patriareh was looked upon as what was called a Patron of Freemasonry. This connection of Noah with the rnystic history of the Order was rendered still closer with the influence of many symbols borrowed from the Arkite Worship, one of the most predominant of the ancient faiths. So intimately were incorporated the legends of Noah with the legends of Freemasonry t hat Freemasons began, at length, to be called, and are still called, Noachidae, or the descendants of Noah a term first applied by Doctor Anderson, and very frequently used at a much later day.

It is necessary, therefore, that every scholar who desires to investigate the legendary symbolism of Freemasonry should make himself acquainted with the Noachic myths upon which much of it is founded. Doctor Oliver, it is true, accepted them all with a childlike faith; but it is not likely that the skeptical inquirers of the present day will attribute to them any character of authenticity. Yet they are interesting, because they show us the growth of legends out of symbols, and they are instructive because they are for the most part symbolic. The Legend of the Craft tells us that the three sons of Lamech and his daughter, Naamah, "did know that God would take vengeance for sin, either by fire or water; wherefore they wrote these sciences which they had found in two pillars of stone, that they might be found after the flood." Subsequently, this legend took a different form, and to Enoch was attributed the precaution of burying the Stone of Foundation in the bosom of Mount Moriah, and of erecting the two pillars above it.

The first Masonic myth referring to Noah that presents itself is one which tells us that, while he was piously engaged in the task of exhorting his contemporaries to repentance, his attention had often been directed to the pillars which Enoch had erected on Mount Moriah. By diligent search he at length detected the entrance to the subterranean vault, and, on pursuing his inquiries, discovered the Stone of Foundation, although he was unable to comprehend the mystical characters there deposited. Leaving these, therefore, where he had found them, he simply took away the Stone of Foundation on which they had been deposited, and placed it in the Ark as a convenient altar.

Another myth, preserved in one of the Ineffable Degrees, informs us that the Ark was built of cedars which grew upon Mount Lebanon. and that Noah employed the Sidonians to cut them down, under the superintendence of Japheth. The successors of these Sidonians, in after times, according to the same tradition, were employed by King Solomon to fell and prepare cedars on the same mountain for his stupenelous Temple.

The record of Genesis lays the foundation for another series of symbolic myths connected with the Dove, which has thus been introduced into Freemasonry.

After forty days, when Noah opened the window of the Ark that he might learn if the waters had subsided, he despatched a raven, which, returning, gave hun no satisfactory information. He then sent forth a Dove three several timed at an interval of seven days between each excursion. The first time, the Dove Ending no resting-place, quickly returned; the second time she came back in the evening, bringing in her mouth an olive-leaf, which showed that the waters must have sufficiently abated to have exposed the tops of the trees; but on the third departure, the dry land being entirely uncovered, she returned no more. In the Arkite Rites, which arose after the dispersion of Babel, the Dove was always considered as a sacred bird, in commemoration of its having been the first discoverer of land. Its name, which in Hebrew ie zonah, was given to one of the earliest nations of the earth; and, as the emblem of peace and good fortune, it became the Bird of Venus. Modern Freemasons have commemorated the messenger of Noah in the honorary Degree of Orb and Dove, which is sometimes conferred on Royal Arch Masons.

On the 27th day of the second month, equivalent to the 12th of November, in the year of the world 1657, Noah, with his family, left the ark. It was exactly one year of 365 days, or just one revolution of the sun, that the Patriarch was enclosed in the Ark. This was not unobserved by the descendants of Noah, and hence, in consequence of Enoch's life of 365 days, and Noah's residence in the Ark for the same apparently mystic period, the Noachites confounded the worship of the solar orb with the idolatrous adoration which they paid to the Patriarchs who were saved from the Deluge. They were led to this, too, from an additional reason, that Noah, as the restorer of the human race, seemed, in some sort, to be a type of the regenerating powers of the sun.

So important an event as the Deluge, must have produced a most impressive effect upon the religious dogmas and rites of the nations which succeeded it. Consequently, we shall find some allusion to it in the annals of every people and some memorial of the principal circumstances connected with it, in their religious observances. At first, it is to be supposed that a veneration for the character of the second parent of the human race must have been long preserved by his descendants.

Nor would they have been unmindful of the proper reverence due to that sacred vessel—sacred in their eyes—which had preserved their great progenitor from the fury of the waters. "They would long cherish," says Alwood (Literary Antiquities of Greece, page 182), "the memory of those worthies who were rescued from the common lot of utter ruin; they would call to mind, with an extravagance of admiration, the means adopted for their preservation; they would adore the wisdom which contrived, and the goodness which prompted to, the execution of such a plan." So pious a feeling would exist, and be circumscribed within its proper limits of reverential gratitude, while the legends of the Deluge continued to be preserved in their purity, and while the Divine preserver of Noah was remembered as the one god of his posterity. But when, by the confusion and dispersion at Babel, the true teachings of Enoch and Noah were lost, and idolatry or polytheism was substituted for the ancient faith, then Noah became a god, worshiped under different names in different countries, and the Ark was transformed into the Temple of the Deity. Eence arose those peculiar systems of initiations which, known under the name of the Arkite Rites, formed a part of the worship of the ancient world, and traces of which are to be found in almost all the old systems of religion.

It was in the six hundredth year of his age, that Noah, with his family, was released from the Ark. Grateful for his preservation, he erected an altar and prepared a sacrifice of thank-offeringa to the Deity. A Masonic tradition says, that for this purpose he made use of that Stone of Foundation which he had discovered in the subterranean vault of Enoch, and which he had carried with him into the Ark. It was at this time that God made his Covenant with Noah, and promised him that the earth should never again be destroyed by a flood. Here, too, he received those commandments for the government of himself and his posterity which have been called "the seven precepts of the Noachidae."

It is to be supposed that Noah and his immediate descendants continued to live for many years in the neighborhood of the mountain upon which the Ark had been thrown by the subsidence of the waters. There is indeed no evidence that the Patriarch ever removed from it. In the nine hundred and fiftieth year of his age he died, and, according to the tradition of the Orientalists, was buried in the land of Mesopotamia. During that period of his life which was subsequent to the Deluge, he continued to instruct his children in the great truths of religion. Hence, Freemasons are sometimes called Pvoachidae, or the sons of Noah, to designate them, in a peculiar manner, as the preservers of the sacred deposit of Masonic truth bequeathed to them by their great ancestor; and circumstances intimately connected with the transactions of the immediate descendants of the Patriarch are recorded in a Degree which has been adopted by the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite under the name of Patriarch Noachite.

The primitive teachings of the Patriarch, which were simple but comprehensive, continued to be preserved in the line of the Patriarchs and the Prophets to the days of Solomon, but were soon lost to the other descendants of Noah, by a circumstance to which we must now refer. After the death of Noah, his sons removed from the region of Mount Ararat, where, until then, they had resided, and "traveling from the East, found a plain in the land of Shinar, and dwelt there." Here they commenced the building of a lofty tower.

This act seems to have been displeasing to God, for in consequence of it, He confounded their language so that one could not understand what another said; the result of which was that they separated and dispersed over the face of the earth in search of different dwelling-places. With the 106s of the original language, the great truths which that language had conveyed, disappeared from their minds. The worship of the one true God was abandoned. A multitude of deities began to be adored. Idolatry took the place of pure theism. And then arose the Arkite Rites, or the worship of Noah and the Ark, Sabaism, or the adoration of the stars, and other superstitious observances, in all of which, however, the Priesthood, by their Mysteries or initiations into a kind of Spurious Freemasonry, preserved, among a multitude of errors, some faint allusions to the truth. and retained just so much light as to make their "darkness visible." Such are the Noachic traditions of Freemasonry, which, though if considered as materials of history, would be worth but little, yet have furnished valuable sources of symbolism, and in that way are full of wise instruction.

• NOAH

The writer of the Cooke MS. (1410/1450 A.D.) had before him an original which may have been written about 1350 A.D. The author of that original frankly acknowledges that many of his historical statements are taken from "the polycronicon," a sort of universal history, or omnium gatherum, in which were collected scraps and fragments of lore of many kinds, especially about the remote past, and without any attempt to distinguish genuine history from myths, legends, tales, fables. It was from such a polycilronicon that the writer of the Cooke original drew the story of Noah and the Deluge which the Cooke condenses into a paragraph beginning at line 290. According to the old tale thus taken from the polychronicon men knew that God would destroy the world out of vengeance, either by fire or by water; therefore in order to save them from destruction, men wrote the secrets of the Arts and Sciences on two "pilers of stone." When the vengeance came, it turned out to be by water as Noah had expected, and for 365 days he and his family lived in the Ark. With him mere his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives. Many years afterwards, the "cronyelere telleth," the two pillars were found; Pythagoras found one, and Hermes the other.

The Old Charges (Masonic MS, Old Constitutions, etc., they also were called) which served as a charter for the first permanent Lodges of the Freemasons were held in great reverence; in them was this story of Noah and the pillars, and it is from this source, it is reasonable to believe, that pillar and column symbolism came to be used in Speculative Masonry; and since the use of the Arts and Sciences traced directly back to Noah's sons who recovered their use after the Deluge, practitioners of them were sometimes called "Sons of Noah."

The first, or 1723, edition of the Book of Constitutions of the Mother Grand Lodge touches but lightly on the story of Noah, but in the second, or 1738. edition the whole account is changed, the Arl; itself is described as having been a Masonic masterpiece, and Noah and his three sons are described as "four Grand officers." "And it came to pass as they journeyed from the East of the plains of Mount Ararat, where the Ark rested toward the West, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and dwelt there as Noachidae, or Sons of Noah ..." In a footnote the author explains the word: "The Srst name of Masons, according to some old traditions."

What those "old traditions" were nobody knows because there is no evidence that Operative Freemasons called themselves by that name. But it was in some use prior to 1738, for in 1734 Lord Weyrnouth ordered a letter to be sent to the Prov. Grand Master at Calcutta in which this curious statement was included: "Providence has fixed your Lodge near those learn'd Indians that affect to be called Noachidae, the strict observance of his Precepts taught in those Parts by the Disciples of the great Zoroastres, the learned Archimagus of Bactria, a Grand Master of the Magians, whose religion is much preserved in India (which we have no concern about), and also many of the Rituals of the Ancient Fraternity used in his time, perhaps more than they are sensible of themselves. Sow if it was consistent with your other Business, to discover in those parts the Remains of Old Masonry and transmit them to us, we would be all thankful ..." (A. Q. C. XI, p. 35.)

If ever "Noachidae" was in use as a name for Masons it could not have been extensive, because the word (an ugly hybrid) is almost never met with in early Lodge Alinutes or Histories; it is probable that such small use of it as is encountered in American Lodges in the first half of the Nineteenth Century (it is now wholly obsolete) was directly owing to the popularity here of the writings of the Rev. George Oliver u ho never hesitated to give to fancies out of his own mind the same weight as the verdict records of history

There mere two reasons for the place of Noah and his sons in Masonic thought and traditions. It is obvious that the writer of the Cooke MS—or rather, the author of the original of w hich the Cooke is a copy —had an historical problem to solve: if the Deluge destroyed everything how were the Arts and Sciences, Geometry especially, preserved and recorded?

The story of the pillars and of the use made of them by Noah's sons, which, as was seen, he found ready-made in a polychronicon, was his solution. Second, the story of the sons of Noah had a point to it of value for Masons who sought to make clear to their own minds the religious foundations of the Craft. If Masonry w as geometry and architecture it is as old as the world; if it existed in Stoah's time it existed before Christianity, or Judaism either; and yet it now works in Christian lands; how could a "Christian" society have a pre-Christian origin? The answer was that under the separate religions is a ground, or fundament, or matrix of a universal religion which consists of a belief in God and Brotherhood among men, and righteousness. Oliver himself gives one of the clearest expressions of this idea in a paragraph of his in A Dictionary of Symbolical Masonry (New York; 1855; p. 190): "NOACHIDAE, Sons of Noah; the first name of Freemasons; whence we may observe that believing the world u as framed by one supreme God, and is governed by him; and loving and worshiping him; and honoring our parents; and loving our neighbor as ourselves; and being merciful even to brute beasts, is the oldest of all religions."

Not all the versions of the Old Charges contain the Noah story in the same form; the Graham MS. version which has so many details peculiar to itself, and is really an Old Catechism more than a version of the Old Charges, gives the Noah story in a different form and reads in it a different lesson; and it has the lost secrets discovered after the death of Noah rather than after the death of Niram. In his Ahiman Rezon, or Book of Constitutions, writing as Grand Secretary for the Ancient Grand lodge of 1751, Laurence Dermott ridicules the whole story; but it is only as history that he ridicules it, not as symbolism, because (to judge by such written remains of it as have survived) the Ancient Ritual connected the Great Pillars with the two "pillars" in the Cooke MS. Also, in both Ancient and Modern symbolism and in the Royal Arch, the Ark is used as an emblem. (This identification of the Ark with Noah's Ark may be a mistake on the part of Eighteenth Century Ritualists, because before 1717 Operative Gilds kept their papers in a "coffin"— which later reappears under the name "casket," "the Lodge," and "ark.")

Notes. In a medal struck by Henry Steel Lodge, No. 12, of Winchester, Va., on or about 1809, the emblems on the obverse side include not only the Ark, but also a Dove— and—what is more interesting—a Raven ! This same medal indicates that in Steel Lodge. the Royal Arch was not as yet disentangled from the Third Degree because on the reverse side of the same medal the Arch is surrounded by the emblem of that Degree. See American Freemason; Louisville, Ky.; Jan. 1, 1855; page 51.

• NOAH, PRECEPTS OF

The precepts of the Patriarch Noah, which were preserved as the Constitutions of our ancient Brethren, are seven in number and are as follows:

1. Renounce all idols.

2. Worship the one true God.

3. Commit no murder.

4. Be not defiled by incest.

5. Do not steal.

6. Be just.

7. Eat no flesh with blood in it.

The Proselytes of the Gate, as the Jews termed those who lived among them without undergoing circumcision or observing the ceremonial law, were bound to obey the seven precepts of Noah. The Talmud says that the first six of these precepts were given originally by God to Adam, and the seventh afterward to Noah. These precepts were designed to be obligatory on all the Noachidae, or descendants of Noah, and consequently, from the time of Moses, the Jews would not suffer a stranger to live among them unless he observed these precepts, and never gave quarter in battle to an enemy who was ignorant of them.

• NOBLES OF THE MYSTIC SHRINE, ANCIENT ARABIC ORDER

See Shrine

• NOFFODEI

The name of this person is differently spelled by various writers. Villani, and after him Burnes, call him Noffo Dei, Reghellini Neffodei, and Addison Nosso de Florentin; but the more usual spelling is Noffodei. He and Squin de Flexian were thefirst to make thosefalse accusationsagainst the Knights Templar which led to the downfall of the Order. Noffodei, who was a Florentine, is asserted by some writers to have been an Apostate Templar, who had been condemned by the Preceptor and Chapter of France to perpetual imprisonment for impiety and crime. But Dupui denies this, and says that he never was a Templar, but that, having been banished from his native country, he had been condemned to rigorous penalties by the Prevost of Paris for his crimes (for a history of his treachery to the Templars, Bee Squin de Flezian).

• NOMENCLATURE

There are several Masonic works, printed or in manuscript, which contain lists of the names of Degrees in Freemasonry. Such a list is called by the French writers a Nomenclature. The word means a system of names or of naming but is capable of an extension much beyond these limits. For instance, Porter ( Human Intellect, page 399) says, "The technical nomenclature of a single science when finished and arranged, is a transcript of all the discriminating thoughts, the careful observations, and the manifold experiments by which science has been formed."

The most important of these nomenclatures pertaining to Freemasonry are those of Peuvret, Fustier, Pyron, and Lemanceau. Pagon has a nomenclature of Degrees in his Tuileur Generale. Thory has an exhaustive and descriptive one in his A cta Latomorum. Oliver also gives a nomenclature, but an imperfect one, of one hundred and fifty Degrees in his Historical Landrnarks.

It has been evident for some years past that the subject of Masonic nomenclature is growing in importance to a point where Masonic scholars must make it a specialty. Even now, and with investigations scarcely begun, the clearing up of the original meaning of only five or six terms has occasioned a recasting of a few of the most important pages in the history of the Craft. When Anderson entitled his book in 1723 "Constitutions" he meant not a body of organic, fundamental law but a book of customs and ceremonies; it was not until the last quarter of the Eighteenth Century that the word became a term for the Written Law, and it was the incorporating of one law after another in a book of customs which changed the modern texts of Grand Lodge Constitutions so radically that they have been led far away from Anderson's book. In many Grand Lodge Codes the Book of Constitutions is published separately under the head of "Old Charges."

In the General Regulations adopted in 1721 by the Mother Grand Lodge, brethren are warned that "they must obtain a Grand Master's Warrant to join in forming a new Lodge" by Warrant was meant "permission," to be granted or not by the Grand Master personally, and either the Grand Master or a deputy appointed by him was to be present in person to constitute the Lodge. The first written Warrant (or Charter) as a legal document, as possessing authority in itself, was issued by the Grand Lodge of Ireland in 1755 and by the (Modern) Grand Lodge of England for the first time in 1757.

The word Deputation which now, as applied to a Lodge, means a temporary warrant (in America) granted by a Grand Master to form a Lodge, meant in the early Grand Lodge period a letter from a Grand Master to authorize a brother to act in his place to constitute a Lodge; that is, it was authority granted to a man, not to a body, though usually a Lodge was permitted to keep such a document in its possession.

The term Regular now describes any Lodge which is chartered and is on the list of a recognized and established Grand Lodge, any other body being a clandestine or spurious society; originally "regular" only denoted such early Lodges as had come voluntarily under authority of the Grand Lodge; this did not imply that Lodges which had not done so were spurious or clandestine. The word Degree is now generally held to have been a misnomer, though it is so widely rooted in usage that it probably cannot be changed thus, the First Step should be called not the Degree of Entered Apprentice but the Lodge of Entered Apprentices. The correct name for the old documents is still under discussion; Hughan clung to "Old Charges" because the Mason of earliest record called them that; Gould preferred "Old Manuscripts." Since the Old Catechisms also are Old MSS. the latter name is ambiguous. A correct, unambiguous name awaits discovery.

And the suggestion is here and now made that the familiar "Time Immemorial" should be discontinued The phrase came into usage apparently from Blackstone and naturally denotes something of "which the memory of man runneth not to the contrary," hence a "time immemorial" Lodge would be taken to mean a very old, an almost prehistoric Lodge. It is on record that many "time immemorial" Lodges in Britain before the constitution of the first Grand Lodge in 1717 were only ten to fifty years old at the time; so with the "First Lodge" in Philadelphia. The name "self-constituted Lodge" is recommended to take the place of "time immemorial." Other terms of nomenclature now in the melting pot are dues, jurisdiction, prerogatives, spurious, clandestine, irregular, universality, comity.

• NOMINATION

It is the custom in some Grand Lodges and Lodges to nominate candidates for election to office. and in others this custom is not adopted. But the practice of nomination has the sanction of ancient usage- Thus the records of the Grand Lodge Of England, under date of June 24, 1717, tell us that "before dinner the oldest Master Mason ... in the chair proposed a list of proper candidates, and the Brethren by a majority of hands, elected Mr. Antony Sayer, Gentleman, Grand Master of Masons" (constitutions 1738, page 109).

The present Constitution of the Grand Lodge of England requires that the Grand Master shall be nominated in December, and the Grand Treasurer in September but that the election shall not take place until the following March. Nominations appear, therefore, to be the correct Masonic practice; yet, if a member be elected to any office to which he had not previously been nominated, the election will be valid, for a nomination is not essential.

• NON-AFFILIATION

The state of being unconnected by membership with a Lodge (see Unaffiliated Freemason).

• NONESYNCHES

In the Old Constitutions, known as the Dowland Manuscript, is found the following passage: "Saint Albones loved well Masons and cherished them much. And he made their pay right good, ... for he gave them ijs-vjd, a week, and iijd to their nonesynches." This word, which cannot, in this precise form, be found in any archaic dictionary, evidently means food or refreshment, for in the parallel passage in other Constitutions the word used is cheer, which has the same meaning. The old English word from which we get our luncheon is noonshun, which is defined to be the refreshment taken at noon, when laborers desist from work to shun the heat. Of this, nonesynches is a corrupt form.

• NONIS

A significant word in the Thirty-second Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. The original old French Rituals endeavor to explain it, and say that it and two other words in conjunction are formed out of the initials of the words of a particular aphorism which has reference to the secret arena and sacred treasure of Freemasonry. Out of several interpretations, no one can be positively asserted as the original, although the intent is apparent to him to whom the same may lawfully belong (see Saliz and Tengu).

• NON NOBIS

It is prescribed that the motto beneath the Passion Cross on the Grand Standard of a Commandery of Knights Templar shall be Non nobis Domine! non nobis, sed no7nini too da Gloriam. That is, Not unto us, O Lord! not unto us, but unto Thy name give Glory. The commencement of the 115th Psalm, which is sung on occasions of thanksgiving. It was the ancient Templar's shout of victory.

• NON-RESIDENT

The members of a Lodge who do not reside in the locality of a Lodge, but live at a great distance from it in another State, ore perhaps country, but still continue members of it and contribute to its support by the payment of Lodge dues, are called rum resident members. Many Lodges, in view of the fact that such members enjoy none of the local privileges of their Lodges, require from them at least amount of annual payment than they do from their resident members.

• NOORTHOUCK, JOHN

The editor of the fifth, and by far the best, edition of the Book of Constitutions, which was published in 1784. He was the son of Herman Noorthouck, a bookseller, and was born in London about the year 1746. Brother Oliver describes him as "a clever and intelligent man, and an expert Mason." His literary pretensions were, however, greater than this modest encomium would indicate. He was patronized by the celebrated printer, William Strahan, and passed nearly the whole of his life in the occupations of an author, an index maker and a corrector of the press. He was, besides his edition of the Book of Constitutions, the writer of a History of London, quarto, published in 1773, and a Historical and Classical Dictionary, two volumes, octavo, published in 1776. To him also, as well as to some others, has been attributed the authorship of a once popular book entitled The Man after God's own Heart. In 1852, J. R. Smith, a bookseller of London, advertised for sale "the original autograph manuscript of the life of John Noorthouck." He calls this " a very interesting piece of autobiography, containing many curious literary anecdotes of the last century, and deserving to be printed." Noorthouck died in 1816, aged about seventy years.

• NORFOLK

Thomas Howard, eighth Duke of Norfolk. Grand Master of the English Grand Lodge, installed January 29, 1730, remaining until 1731, and succeeded by Lord Lovel. From Venice, 1731, he sent the Grand Lodge of England the sword of Gustavus Adolphus, together with twenty pounds for the Masons' Charity, and a handsome Minute Book. He died in 1732.

• NORMAL

A perpendicular to a curve; and included between the curve and the axis of the abscissas. Sometimes a square, used by Operative Masons, for proving angles. The word means to act according to an established standard and is from the Latin term signifying both the square for measuring right angles and the rule or precept of personal conduct.

• NORNAE

In the Scandinavian Mysteries these were three maidens, known as Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld, signifying Past, Present, and Future. Their position is seated near the Urdar-wells under the world-tree Yggdrasil, and there they determine the fate of both gods and men. They daily draw water from the spring, and with it and the surrounding clay sprinkle the ash-tree Yggdrasil, that the branches may not wither and decay.

• NORTH

The north is Masonically called a Place of Darkness. The sun in his progress through the ecliptic never reaches farther than 23 28' north of the equator. A wall being erected on any part of the earth farther north than that, will therefore, at meridian, receive the rays of the sun only on its south side, while the north will be entirely in shadow at the hour of meridian. The use of the north as a symbol of darkness is found, with the present interpretation, in the early instructions of the eighteenth century. It is a portion of the old sun worship of which we find so many relics in Gnosticism, in Hermetic philosophy, and in Freemasonry. The east was the place of the sun's daily birth, and hence highly revered; the north the place of his annual death, to which he approached only to lose his terrific heat, and to clothe the earth in darkness of long nights and dreariness of winter.

However, this point of the compass, or place of Masonic darkness, must not be construed as implying that in the Temple of Solomon no light or ventilation was had from this direction. The Talmud, and as well Josephus, allude to an extensive opening toward the North, framed with costly magnificence, and known as the great Golden Window. There were as many openings in the outer wall on the north as on the south side. There were three entrances through the "Chel" on the north and six on the south (see Temple). While once within the walls and Chel of the Temple all advances were made from east to west, yet the north side was mainly used for stabling, slaughtering, cleansing, etc., and contained the chambers of broken knives, defiled stones of the House of Burning, and of sheep. The Masonic symbolism of the entrance of an initiate from the north, or more practically from the northwest, and advancing toward the position occupied by the Corner-stone in the north-east, forcibly calls to mind the triplet of Homer:

Two marble doors unfold on either side Sacred the South by which the gods descend; But mortals enter on the Northern end.

So in the Mysteries of Dionysos, the gate of entrance for the aspirant was from the north; but when purged from his corruptions, he was termed indifferently new-born or immortal, and the sacred south door was thence accessible to his steps.

In the Middle Ages, below and to the right of the judges stood the accuser, facing north; to the left was the defendant, in the north facing south. Brother George F. Fort, in his Antiquities of Freemasonry (page 292), says:

In the center of the court, directly before the judge stood an altar piece or shrine, upon which an open Bible was displayed. The south to the right of the justiciaries was deemed honorable and worthy for a plaintiff- but the north was typical of a frightful and diabolical sombreness.

Thus, when a solemn oath of purgation was taken in grievous criminal accusations, the accused turned toward the north.

The judicial headsman, in executing the extreme penalty of outraged justice, turned the convict's face northward, or towards the place whence emanated the earliest dismal shades of night. When Earl Hakon bowed a tremulous knee before the deadly powers of Paganism and sacrificed his seven-year-old child, he gazed out upon the far-off, gloomy north.

In Nastrond, or shores of death, stood a revolting hall, whose portals opened toward the north—the regions of night. North, by the Jutes was denominated black or sombre; the Frisians called it fear corner. The gallows faced the north, and from these hyperborean shores everything base and terrible proceeded. In consequence of this belief, it was ordered that, in the adjudication of a crime, the accused should be on the north side of the court enclosure. And in harmony with the Seandinavian superstition, no Lodge of Masons illumines the darkened north with a symbolic light, whose brightness would be unable to dissipate the gloom of that cardinal point with whieh waa aFoeiated alS that was sinstrous and direful.

So many of our Masonic customs hinge Upon the connection with old church practices that we are inclined to add to the above summary a few additional particulars. The book entitled Curious Church Customs, edited by William Andrews, 1898, has on page 136 the following item:

Tradition authorizes the expectation that our Lord still appear in the east; therefore all the faithful dead are buried with their feet towards the east to meet Him. Hence in Wales the east wind is called " The wind of the dead men's feet." The eastern portion of a churchyard is always looked on as the most honoured next the south then the west, and last of all the north from the belief that in this order the dead will rise curious instance of this belief is furnished by an epitaphon a tombstone, dated 1807, on the north side of Epworth Churchyard, Lineolnshire, the last two lines of which run as follows:

And that I might longer undisturbed abide I choosed to be laid on this northern side. Felons, and notorious bad eharaeters, were frequently buried on the north side of the church. In Suffolk most of the churches have both a north and south door, and where old customs are observed, the bodes is brought in at the south door, put down at the west end of the aisle and carried out by the north door. In Lineolashire the north is generally reserved entirelv for funerals, the south and west doors being reserved for christenings and weddings.

William Andrews, in a companion volume dealing with Ecclesiastical Curzosities, 1899, has some references to churchyard superstitions, and gives considerable space to inquiries made regarding the old prejudices against being buried on the north side of the church. This prejudice is proven in several parts of England by the scarcity of graves on the north side of churches. The Reverend Theodore Johnson, writing upon this subject, tells of taking charge of a parish in Norfoll; and on being called upon to select a suitable place for a funeral suggested that as there svere no graves on the north side of the church a place could be assigned there.

This aroused vigorous objection but no particular explanation beyond that of a desided dislike. Further inquiry obtained the information that in some cases the north part of the churchyard was left unconsecrated for burial of those for whom no religious service was considered necessary. At last the clergyman found light in visiting an old member of his flock during his last hours on earth. He was a widower, and in speaking of his place of burial he particularly emphasized the words "On the south side, sir, near by the wife." The clergyman in quired why there was such a strong objection to burial on the north side of the church, and the prompt and reproachful answer was at once made: "The left side of Christ, sir: we don't like to be counted among the goats." The author continues:

Here was the best answer to the mystery, pointing with no uncertain words to the glorious Resurrection Day, this aged, earthly shepherd at the end of his years of toil recognized his Great Master, Jesus. as the True Shepherd of mankind, meeting His floek as they arose from their long sleep of death, with their faces turned eastward, awaiting His appearing.

Then when all had been called and recognized He turned to lead them onward, still their True Shepherd and Guide, with the sheep on His right hand, and the goats on His left hand, so wonderfully foretold in the Gospel story: "When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the hole angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory; land before Him shall be gathered all nations and He shall separate them one from another as a Shepherd divideth ads sheep from the goats: and he shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left." Matthew xxv, 31-3.

Surely, the above simple illustration explains much that is difficult and mysterious to us in the wax of religious superstition. Undoubtedly, we have here a good example of how superstitions have arisen, probable from a good source, it may be the words of some teacher long since passed away. The circumstance has long been for gotten, yet the lesson remains, and being handed down by oral tradition only, every vestige of its religions nature disappears and but the feeling remains, which, b in the minds of the ignorant populace, increases in mysteries and enfolds itself in superstitious awe, without any desire from them to discover the origin, or Source, of such a strange custom, or event.

So much of our ceremonies and instruction in the Craft is bound up intimately with the practices of the Church that the foregoing details and the comments made upon them are well worth notice and reflection. We need not in any enthusiasm for the prehistoric and the religious customs of the older nations in the childhood of their faith when the Mysteries of Greece and Rome were flourishing, overlook the equally good claims for attention presented by the more recent traditions that survive and thrive even unto our own times.

• NORTH AMERICAN MASONIC CONGRESS

Zee General Grand Lodge

• NORTH CAROLINA

The Grand Lodge of England warranted a Lodge in North Carolina at Wilmington in March, 1754 or 1755. This was afterwards known as Saint John's, No. 1. A Grand Lodge s of North Carolina was organized in 1771 which met at New Bern and Edenton, but its early history is obscure owing to the supposed destruction of the records by the English during the War of the Revolution. Representatives of seven Lodges, Unanimity, Saint John's, Royal Edwin, Royal White Hart, Royal William, Union and Blandford-Bute, met on December 9, 1787, to reorganize the Grand Lodge. In 1856 Saint John's College was established at Oxford, but during the war of 1861-5, when it was vacated by the students, it was converted into one of the best orphan homes in the country. In charity as in everything else this Grand Lodge has always achieved success.

The first mention of Capitular Freemasonry in North Carolina occurs in the Proceedings of the fourth Convocation of the General Grand Chapter where it appears that a Charter was to have been issued to Concord Chapter at Wilmington, May 4, 1815, by the General Grand King. He also granted one to Phoenix Chapter at Fayetteville, September 1, 1815.

fit the thirteenth Convocation of the General Grand Chapter held on September 14, 1847, at Columbus, Ohio, the General Grand Secretary reported that a Grand Chapter of North Carolina had once existed but had ceased work twenty years before; that according to information just received it had lately been reorganized. An Assembly of representatives of three Chapters had duly adopted a Constitution and elected officers on June 98, 1847. On September 16, 1847, the Grand Chapter of North Carolina was, after the alteration of one or two articles in its Constitution, granted legal authority by the General Grand Chapter of the United States.

Five Councils had been chartered in North Carolina before the organization of the Grand Council. In each ease the document was signed by the Supreme Council of the Southern Jurisdiction. All five were represented at a Convention for the organization of the Grand Council at Fayetteville, June 21, 1822. In 1859 the Grand Chapter resisted an attempt to incorporate the Degrees with the Chapter by a declaration to the effect that it desired to exercise no such control. A Grand Council was organized June 6, 1860, but owing to the Civil War no meeting was held until 1866, and in 1883 it was dissolved altogether. The Degrees then came under the control of the Grand Chapter until 1887 when the Grand Council was again established.

The first official mention of Templarism in North Carolina appeared in the Proceedings of the Grand Encampment of the United States for September 19, 1826. The issue of a Charter to Fayetteville Encampment among others on December 21, 1821, was the item in question. This Encampment ceased work at an early date and the details about an attempt made in 1845 to start another are not known. On September 16, 1850, it was resolved by the General Grand Encampment of the United States to grant renewed authority to Fayetteville and Wilmington. On January 10, 1881, the Grand Commandery of North Carolina was established.

On November 91, 1892, Asheville Lodge of Perfection, No. 1, at Asheville, was granted a Charter. Charters were issued to a Chapter of Rose Croix, a Council of Kadosh, and a Consistory, all located at Charlotte, namely, Mecklenburg, No. 1, October 5, 1901; Charlotte, No. 1, October 23, 1907; Carolina, No. 1, December 18, 1907, respectively, under the Southern Jurisdiction of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

• NORTH DAKOTA

When the Territory of Dakota was divided into North and South Dakota in 1889 the question arose of the necessity for a Grand Lodge in each of the two districts. It was decided that there must be a division of Grand Lodges to correspond with the political division. A Convention was held on June 12, 1889, at Mitchell which resolved that a Grand Lodge for North Dakota should be organized. The following Lodges were represented: Shiloh, No. 8; Pembina, Sto. 10; Casselton, No. 12; Acacia, No. 15; Bismarck, No. 16; Jamestown, No. 19; Valley City, No. 21; Nandan, No. 23; Cereal, No. 29; Hillsboro, No. 32; Crescent, No. 36; Cheyenne Valley, No. 41; Ellendale, No. 49; Sanborn, No. 51; Wahpeton, No. 58; North Star, No. 59; Minto, No. 60; Mackey, No. 63; Goose River, No. 64; Hiram, No. 74; Minnewaukan, Bio. 75; Tongue River, No. 78; Bathgate, No. 80; Euelid, No. 84; Anchor, No. 88; Golden Valley, No. 90; Occidental, No. 99. A Constitution and By-laws were adopted, Grand Officers duly elected, and the first session held the following day.

A similar problem occurred with regard to the Grand Chapter of North Dakota. The Chapters in South Dakota had organized their Grand Chapter on January 6, 1890. Thereupon the representatives of Missouri, No. 6; Casselton, No. 7; Cheyenne, No. 9; Keystone, No. 11; Jamestown, No. 13, and Lisbon, No. 29, organized on January 9 the Grand Chapter of North Dakota. The first Annual Convocation was held at Grand Forks, nine days later.

The first Council in North Dakota, Fargo, No. 1, was granted a Dispensation on February 12, 1889, while the Territory was still undivided. It was chartered, however, five months after the division took place, on November 19, 1889. At a Convention held on March 20, 1916, members of Fargo Council, No. 1; Lebanon, No. 2, and Adoniram, No. 3, organized the Grand Council of North Dakota as a constituent member of the General Grand Council.

The Grand Master of the Grand Encampment of the United States issued a Dispensation to form the Commandery of North Dakota on June 4, 1890. Thereupon Tancred, No. 4; Fargo, No. 5; Grand Forks, No. 8, and Wi-ha-ha, No. 12, Commanderies on June 16, 1890, organized the Grand Commandery of North Dakota.

With regard to the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, Dakota Consistory, No. 1, was chartered on May 26, 1886; Fargo Council of Kadosh, No.1, on December 8,1883; Pelican Chapter of Rose Croix, No. 1, on June 19, 1883, and Enoch Lodge of Perfection, No. 1, on June 7, 1883.

• NORTHEAST CORNER

In the Institutes of Menu, the sacred book of the Brahmans, it is said: "If any one has an incurable disease, let him advance in a straight path towards the invincible northeast point, feeding on water and air till his mortal frame totally decays, and his soul becomes united with the supreme." It is at the same northeast point that those first instructions begin in Freemasonry which enable the true Freemason to commence the erection of that spiritual temple in which, after the decay of his mortal frame, "his soul becomes united with the supreme."

In the important ceremony which refers to the Northeast Corner of the Lodge, the Candidate becomes as one who is, to all outward appearance, a perfect and upright 7nan and Mason, the representative of a spiritual Corner-stone, on which he is to erect his future moral and Masonic edifice. This symbolic reference of the Corner-stone of a material edifice to a Freemason when, at his first initiation, he commences the moral and intellectual task of erecting a spiritual temple in his heart, is beautifully sustained when we look at all the qualities that are required to constitute a "well-tried, true, and trusty" Corner-stone. The squareness of its surface, emblematic of morality its cubical form, emblematic of firmness and stability of character and the peculiar finish and fineness of the material, emblematic of virtue and holiness show that the ceremony of the Northeast Corner of the Lodge was undoubtedly intended to portray, in the consecrated language of symbolism, the necessity of integrity and stability of conduct, of truthfulness and uprightness of character, and of purity and holiness of life, which, just at that time and in that place, the candidate is most impressively charged to maintain.

• NORTH STAR

This star is frequently used as a Masonic symbol, as are the morning star, the day star, the seven stars. Thus, the morning star is the forerunner of the Great Light that is about to break upon the Lodge; or, as in the grade of Grand Master Architect, twelfth of the Scottish System, the initiate is received at the hour "when the day star has risen in the east, and the north star looked down upon the seven stars that circle round him." The symbolism is truth; the North Star is the Pole Star, the Polaris of the mariner, the Cynosura. that guides Freemasons over the stormy seas of time. The seven stars are the symbol of right and justice to the Order and the country.

• NORWAY

Freemasonry must be studied in Sweden and Denmark jointly with Norway as politically the three were united for many years and the Swedish Rite has left a permanent impression on all of these countries. As far back as the year 1030 A.D., Danish power controlled Norway. Soon a Swedish King was chosen over Norway, 1036, and then in 1380 a King of Denmark became ruler of the sister nations.

So it continued until 1814 when Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden and this union lasted until June, 190S, when a Swedish Prince was chosen as King Haakon VII. Some few Lodges in Norway erected by Danish authority came under the control of the Grand Lodge of Sweden when the two countries were politically united, this Grand Lodge being formed in 1759.

A separation of the countries, Sweden and Norway, involves a governing division Masonically and there is a Grand Lodge of Norway. From 1796 by Royal Edict all Swedish Princes have been members of the Craft. A Civil Order was also instituted by the King, Charles XIII, Grand Master, to be conferred on the Princess and no more than thirty others of the tenth Degree of the Rite, which is dominantly Christian. The Grand National Lodge of Berlin, uses a like Ritual. A Provincial Grand Lodge operated from May 7, 1793, under the Grand Lodge Zur Sonne, the latter having its headquarters at Bayreuth, Germany. This was constituted as the Grand Lodge Den Norskc Polarstjernen on May 8, 1920.

• NOTUMA

A significant word in some of the advanced Degrees of the Templar System. It is the anagram of Aumont, who is said to have been the first Grand Master of the Templars in Scotland, and the restorer of the Order after the death of DeMolay.

• NOVA SCOTIA

A slab of rock discovered in 1827 on Goat Island in the Annapolis Basin was found to be engraved with the Square and Compasses and the date 1606, but the history of it remains unknown and nothing can be guessed of its origin. The first Lodge in Nova Scotia was established at Annapolis by authority of the Saint John's Grand Lodge of Massachusetts at some time previous to 1740. Nova Scotia was originally governed by the Provincial Grand Master of New England, whose authority extended over all North America, but on September 24, 1784, Brother John George Pvke was appointed Provincial Grand Master of a Provincial Grand Lodge formed that day and warranted the previous June. On January 16, 1866, all the Scotch Lodges but one called a meeting at which it was decided to summon a Convention on February 20. A Grand Lodge was duly formed and Brother W. H. Davies elected Grand Master. In 1869 the remaining Scotch Lodge and the English District Grand Lodge united with the new body under the name of The Grand Lodge of Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons of Nova Scotia.

• NOVICE

1. The Second Degree of the Illuminati of Bavaria.

2. The Fifth Decree of the Rite of Strict Observance.

• NOVICE, MAÇONNE

That in French is to say a female Mason who is a Novice. It is the First Degree of the Moral Order of the Dames of Mount Tabor

• NOVICE, MYTHOLOGICAL

The French title is Novice Mythologigue. The First Degree of the Historical Order of the Dames of Mount Tabor.

• NOVICE, SCOTTISH

In French the title is bodice Ecossaise. The First Degree of initiation in the Order of Mount Tabor.

• NOVITIATE

The time of probation, as well as of preparatory training, which, in all Religious Orders, precedes the solemn profession at least one year. By Dispensation only can the period of time be reduced. Novices are immediately subject to a superior called Master of Voices, and their time must be devoted to prayer and to liturgical training.

• NUK-PE-NUK

The Egyptian equivalent for the expression "I am that I am."

• NUMBERS

The symbolism which is derived from numbers was common to the Pythagoreans, the Cabalists the Gnostics, and all mystical associations. Of all superstitions. it is the oldest and the most generally diffused. Allusions are to be found to it in all Systems of religion; the Jewish Scriptures, for instance, abound in it, and the Christian shows a share of its influence- It is not, therefore, surprising that the most predominant of all symbolism in Freemasonry is that of numbers. The doctrine of numbers as symbols is most familiar to us because it formed the fundamental idea of the philosophy of Pythagoras. Yet it was not original with him, since he brought his theories from Egypt and the East, where this numerical symbolism had always prevailed. Jamblichus tells us (On the Pythagorean Life, 28) that Pythagoras himself admitted that he had received the doctrine of numbers from Orpheus, who taught that numbers were the most provident beginning of all things in heaven, earth, and the intermediate space, and the root of the perpetuity of Divine beings, of the gods and of demons. From the disciples of Pythagoras we learn, for he himself taught only orally, and left no writings, that his theory was that numbers contain the elements of all things, and even of the sciences. Numbers are the invisible covering of beings as the body is the visible one. They are the primary causes upon which the whole system of the universe rests; and he who knows these numbers knows at the same time the laws through which nature exists.

The Pythagoreans, said Aristotle (Metaphysica xii, 5), make all things proceed from numbers. Dacier (Life of Pythagoras), it is true, denies that this was the doctrine of Pythagoras, and contends that it was only a corruption of his disciples. It is an immaterial point. We know that the symbolism of numbers was the basis of what is called the Pythagorean philosophy. But it would be wrong to suppose that from it the Freemasons derived their system, since the two are in some points antagonistic; the Freemasons, for instance, revere the nine as a sacred number of peculiar significance, while the Pythagoreans looked upon it with detestation. In the system of the Pythagoreans, ten was, of all numbers, the most perfect, because it symbolizes the completion of things; but in Masonic symbolism the number ten is unknown. Four is not, in Freemasonry, a number of much representative importance; but it was sacredly revered by the Pythagoreans as the Tetractys, or figure derived from the Jewish Tetragrammaton, by which they swore.

Plato also indulged in a theory of symbolic numbers and calls him happy who understands spiritual numbers and perceives their mighty influences Numbers according to Plato, are the cause of universal harmony and of the production of all things. The Neoplatonists extended and developed this theory, and from them it passed over to the Gnostics; from them probably to the Rosicrucians, to the Hermetic philosophers and to the Freemasons.

Cornelius Agrippa has descanted at great length in his Occult Philosophy, on the subject of numbers. "That there lies," he says, "wonderful efficacy and virtue in numbers, as well for good as for evil, not only the most eminent philosophers teach, but also the Catholic Doctors." And he quotes Saint Hilary as saying that the seventy Elders brought the Psalms into order by the efficacy of numbers.

Of the prevalence of what are called representative numbers in the Old and New Testament, there is abundant evidence. "However we may explain it," says Doctor Utahan (Palmoni, page 67), "certain numerals in the Scriptures occur so often in connection with certain classes of ideas, that we are naturally led to associate the one with the other. This is more or less admitted with regard to the numbers Seven, Twelve, Forty, Seventy, and it may be a few more. The Fathers were disposed to admit it with regard to many others, and to see in it the merles of a supernatural design." Among the Greeks and the Romans there was a superstitious veneration for certain numbers. The same practice is found among all the Eastern notionist entered more or less into all the ancient systems of philosophy; constituted a part of all the old religions; was accepted to a great extent by the early Christian Fathers; constituted an important part of the Cabala; was adopted by the Gnostics, the Rosicrucians, and all the mystical societies of the Middle Ages; and finally has carried its influence into Freemasonry.

The respect paid by Freemasons to certain numbers all of which are odd. is founded not on the belief of any magical virtue but because they are assumed to be the type or representatives of certain ideas. That is to say, a number is in Freemasonry a symbol, and no more. It is venerated, not because it has any supernatural efficacy, as thought the Pythagoreans and others, but because it has concealed within some allusion to a sacred object or holy thought, which it symbolizes. The number three, for instance, like the triangle, is a symbol; the number nine, like the triple triangle, another. The Masonic doctrine of sacred numbers must not, therefore, be confounded with the doctrine of numbers which prevailed in other systems. The most important symbolic or sacred numbers in Freemasonry are three, five, seven, nine, twenty-seven and eighty-one. Their interpretation will be found under their respective titles (see Odd Numbers). The subject is also discussed in Doctor Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry; Numbers, their Occult Power and Mystic Virtues, W. Wynn Westcott, Supreme Magus, Rosicrucian Society of England; Numbers, their Meaning and Magic, Isidore Kozminsky, and Rabala of Numbers, Sepharial.

• NUMEROLOGY

Numerology is to arithmetic what astrology is to astronomy. It is a form of occultism in which magical properties are attributed to the natural numbers; and it is probable that it has been more or less experimented with in Europe since the Thirteenth Century Kabbalists introduced it into some of their most obscure pages it is reported that at the present time the Kabbala and numerology are virtually synonymous among Jewish Kabbalists in the Near East, of whom there are a few but who carry little weight. It was the fashion for generations to father numerology on Pythagoras; and in the small scraps of information about him available in the periods before modern archeology there appeared to be ground for that doctrine; but the theory is now abandoned; it is believed that what Pythagoras discovered (as in harmonics) was the fact that numbers are not mere words, mere subjective devices of men's minds, but are true objectively, and describe properties which belong inherently to material things.

There is no evidence of any infiltration of numerology into Freemasonry. The builders of the cathedrals were too sound and intelligent in their knowledge of geometry, made too much practical use of it, to give countenance to fuzzy, unreal, heterodox occultists about numbers and geometrical figures professing magical powers. They believed in no form of fortune-telling. Nor is there anywhere evidence that Speculative Masons believed in it. The Monitorial Lectures of the Second Degree in which the numbers 3, 5, 7 occur were either written or adopted by William Preston, an orthodox Christian of the latter half of the Eighteenth Century to whom any form of occultism would have been abhorrent. . so would it have been to his predecessors, Drs. Desaguliers and James Anderson. (See article in this Supplement on WAITE, ARTHUR EDWARD; he wrote much on the subject, and out of a very wide knowledge.)

• NUMERATION BY LETTERS

There is a Cabalistical process especially used in the Hebrew language, but sometimes applied to other languages, for instance, to the Greek, by which a mystical meaning of a word is deduced from the numerical value of the words of which it is composed, each letter of the alphabet being equivalent to a number. Thus in Hebrew the name of God, Jah, is equivalent to 15, because = 10 and n = 5, and 15 thus becomes a sacred number. In Greek, the Cabalistic word Abraxas, is made to symbolize the solar year of 365 days, because the sum of the value of the letters of the word is 365; thus, a=1 b=2, p=100, a=1, t=60, a=1, and s=200. To facilitate these Cabalistic operations, which are sometimes used in the advanced Degrees and especially the Hermetical Freemasonry, the numerical value of the Hebrew and Greek letters is here given.

The word Gematrta means to calculate by letters as well as numbers. While this was a late development there are traces of it in the Old Testament in the opinion of W. H. Bennett (Hasting's Dictionary of tile Bible). He says (page 660):

It consisted in the indicating of a word by means of the number which would be obtained bs adding together the numerical values of the consonants of the word. Thus in Genesis xiv, 14, Abraham has 318 trained servants, 318 is the sum of the consonants of the name of Abraham's Steward, Eliezer, in its original Hebrew form The number is apparently constructed front the name. The Apocalyptic number of the Beast is often explained by Gematria, and 666 has been discovered to be the sum of the numerical values of the letters of some form or other of a large number of names written either in Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin. Thus the Beast has been identified with hundreds of persons, e.2. Mohammed Luther, the Pope, Napoleon I, Napoleon III, ete., each of -whom was specially obnoxious to the ingenious identifier. Probably by a little careful manipulation any name in some form or other, in Hebrew, Greek, or Greek letters is here given. Latin could be made by Gematria to yield 666. The two favorite explanations are Lateinos=Latinus, the Roman Empire or Emperor, and Nero Caesar. The latter has the special advantage that it recounts not only for 666, but also for the variant reading, 616, mentioned above; as Neron Caesar it gives 666, and as Nero Caesar, 616.

Much interesting reading on the Number of the Beast is in the two volumes of a Budget of Paradozes Augustus de Morgan. Both Bennett and Morgan agree, the latter being even less impressed by the claims made by various compilers of these numerical values. Brother Frank C. Higgins has devoted considerable study to the subject and discussed it freely by articles in the New Age, American Freemason, etc., as well as in such books as the Cross of the Magi, 1912.

• NUN

The Hebrew word, meaning abash, in Syrian an inkhorn. The Chaldaic and hieroglyphie form of this Hebrew word or letter was like Figure 1, and the Egyptian like Figure 2, signifying fishes in any of these forms. Joshua was the son of Nun, or a fish, the deliverer of Israel. As narrated of the Noah in the Hindu account of the Deluge, whereby the forewarning of a fish caused the construction of an ark and the salvation of one family of the human race from the flood of waters (see Beginnings of History, by Lenormant).

Nun is the fourteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and so used in the ll9th Psalm to mean the fourteenth part, every verse beginning with this letter.

• NUNEZ

A Portuguese founder of an imitation of Knights Templar, termed the Order of Christ, at Paris, 1807.

• NURSERY

The first of the three classes into which Weishaupt divided his Order of Illuminati, comprising three Degrees (see Illuminati).

• NYASALAND

In this country of Central Africa, there have been two Lodges, one at Blantyre and one at Zomba. Both were chartered by the Grand Lodge of Scotland.

• NYAYA

The name of the second of the three great systems of ancient Hindu philosophy.

• NYCTAZONTES

An ancient sect who praised God by dav but rested in quiet and presumed security during the night.

See also

• En:Mackey's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry
• En:Albert Mackey
• Albert Mackey
• En: MACKEY - A
• En: MACKEY - B
• En: MACKEY - C
• En: MACKEY - E
• En: MACKEY - F
• En: MACKEY - G
• En: MACKEY - H
• En: MACKEY - I
• En: MACKEY - J
• En: MACKEY - K
• En: MACKEY - L
• En: MACKEY - M
• En: MACKEY - O
• En: MACKEY - P
• En: MACKEY - Q
• En: MACKEY - R
• En: MACKEY - S
• En: MACKEY - T
• En: MACKEY - U
• En: MACKEY - V
• En: MACKEY - W
• En: MACKEY - X
• En: MACKEY - Y
• En: MACKEY - Z

Links

• Phoenixmasonry http://www.phoenixmasonry.org/mackeys_encyclopedia/n.htm