The Square and Compasses
From Alfred Dodd's The Personal Poems of Francis Bacon, 1931
From the Collected Edition of Francis Bacon's Prose Works by Dr. Peter Shaw in 1733. The first collection to appear after the Emergence of the Freemasons in 1723 It unmistakably links Francis Bacon with the Craft. There is the Square and Compasses, the Globe, the T.T. and Cross Symbol found in the 1723 Book of Constitutions, the Palette denoting that he is a Painter or Poet who paints with words (like "F.B. Pictor et Architectus" in the Rosicrucian Fama) the New Organ - symbolising the New Philosophy told in the Instauration Part VI - and a Mask to denote he was a Concealed Writer. The Eagle of the Higher Degrees broods over the Engraving.
The Royal Arch Masonic Jewel of 1805
From Alfred Dodd's The Personal Poems of Francis Bacon, 1931
This illustration indicates the connection of the Royal Arch Degree with Fra Rosi Crosse for it carries the Seal 287 It is unlikely that this particular Jewel was numbered as a reference to the Chapter Stone of Friendship, Stockport, formed in 1793. It never has been customary to engrave a Chapter number on the Arch Jewel nor is it done today.
The hanging Basket was the Elizabethan Emblem signifying "a collection of things." For the sun in the Centre was the Symbol for "God's First Creature which was Light," the "Lux" of the Rosicrucians and the "All-Seeing Eye" which Gilded the earth whereupon it gazeth of the Freemason.
Sonnet XX
A Woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Hast thou, the Master-Mistress of my Passion:
A Woman's gentle heart but not acquainted
With shifting change as is false woman's fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling (1)
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A Man in Hue, all 'Hues' in his controlling, (2)
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth. (3)
And for a Woman wert thou first created; (4)
Till Nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for Women's pleasure,
Mine be thy Love (5) and thy Love's use their Treasure. (6)
NOTES
1. Apollo was the God of the Sun...the 'eye' which rolls steadily in its orbit as 'it' gazeth on the earth. "God's First Creature, Light." Francis Bacon.
2. Hue = Passion, Shape,
3. The Love-Urge.
4. As a Creator.
5. As a Creative Poet.
6. As Children.
The modern Arch Jewel closely follows the above illustration but it carries no number or date. On the circle and scroll is written in Latin two significant sentences - "If thou canst comprehend these things thou knowest enough," and "Nothing is wanting but the Key."
The only English words on one side are placed upside-down along the base of the triangle above the English Letters which are set in the circle between "stops" thus:
It was a favourite Rosicrucian Device to place words upside-down to call attention to them. [As also writs in the Northumberland Manuscript.] "The object of upside-down printing was to reveal, to those deemed worthy of receiving it, some secret concerning the Founder." says Sir E. Durning Lawrence. The "Stop," "Stop" on either side of the "AL. AD" are intended to make the reader pause and consider that they actually spell "A LAD." The "Lad" of the Royal Arch Companions was the same "youth" whom the Rosicrucian say was their Founder. He was the "extraordinary young man" whom Bro. De Quincey said, had "hoaxed" the world by burying the genesis of the Craft in a Comedy, "L.L.L."
The numerical totals of the words on both sides of the Jewel associate Francis Bacon with the Craft in a most remarkable manner. Individually and collectively they spell out his cypher signatures. [For more on this subject, check out Rob's excellent Web site Light of Truth.] On the face of the Jewel the letters give the correct numbers for Fr. Bacon, Kt., Shakespeare, Francis, F. Bacon, etc. The acrostics on the first letters of words give Bacon-Shakespeare, Fr. Bacon, F. St. Alban, Bacon. The obverse side gives, similarly, consistent results including "Francis Tudor."
This has been confirmed by a recognised authority on numerical Cyphers, B.G. Theobald, B.A., author of Francis Bacon Concealed and Revealed.
The name of the Elizabethan Solomon is thus invisibly written on every Royal Arch Jewel by the numbers of Pythagoras, the Pyramid Emblem being associated with the Higher Degrees; with learning "Bacon's own image of Knowledge as a Pyramid," (Prof. Nichol); [unfortunately, after further research and according to the British Library authorities, no such letter in Bacon's hand formed in a pyramid has been recorded or registered in the library archives-Lochithea 2008] and with Alciat's Emblems with which "Francis Bacon had a very close connection." (W.L. Goldsworthy.)
To Freemasons in Particular
From Alfred Dodd's The Personal Poems of Francis Bacon, 1931
Modern Freemasonry was created as an Ethical System by William Shake-Speare shortly before 1589. Its progress as an Organised Body is told in the 1623 Shakespeare Folio. It did not evolve from a rude illiterate class of labourers, navvies, plasterers and stone masons - strugglers for a bare pittance and crushed by Church and State - whose right to organise was denied by Parliament and whose Lodge organisation was crushed out of existence by State Edicts from 1530.
There was no organised body of operative masons in Queen Elizabeth's reign. Their lodges had disappeared years earlier by an edict of 1425.
Francis Bacon conceived the idea of resurrecting the Operative Craft of Temple Builders on an Ethical Basis which did not centre round actual work and wages and was therefore outside the law which forbade meetings respecting such things. It was he who created the Rituals. They did not "evolve." With a band of Law Students at Gray's Inn he organised the first Ethical Craft Lodges, the Arch and Higher Degrees, at Twickenham Park.
Tempest Act V, s.I, L.242.
The Oracle
And there is in this business more than Nature
Was ever conduct of: Some Oracle
Must rectify our knowledge.
In a Freemason's Lodge the Oracle that speaks with authority on things Masonic in a Worshipful Master. Since the Author wishes the discerning reader to know the kind of Oracle he has in his mind, he writes the words so that the first letters fo the three lines spell "A.W.M."
All Masons know that "A.W.M." is the abbreviated Ritual Code for "A Worshipful Master."
- And Some...
Albert G. Mackey, M. D.: An Encyclopaedia Of Freemasonry And Its Kindred Sciences, 1874 - On Francis Bacon
Bacon, Francis. Baron of Verulam, commonly called Lord Bacon. Nicolai thinks that a great impulse was exercised upon the early history of Freemasonry by The New Atlantis of Lord Bacon. In this learned romance Bacon supposes that a vessel lands on an unknown island, called Bensalem, over which a certain King Solomon reigned in days of yore. This King had a large establishment, which was called the House of Solomon, or the college of the workmen of six days, namely, the days of the creation. He afterwards describes the immense apparatus which was there employed in physical researches.
There were, says he, deep grottoes and towers for the successful observation of certain phenomena of nature; artificial mineral waters; large buildings, in which meteors, the wind, thunder, and rain were imitated; extensive botanic gardens; entire fields, in which all kinds of animals were collected, for the study of their instincts and habits; houses filled with all the wonders of nature and art; a great number of learned men, each of whom, in his own country, had the direction of these things; they made journeys and observations; they wrote, they collected, they determined results, and deliberated together as to what was proper to be published and what concealed.
This romance became at once very popular, and everybody’s attention was attracted by the allegory of the House of Solomon. But it also contributed to spread Bacon’s views on experimental knowledge, and led afterwards to the institution of the Royal Society, to which Nicolai attributes a common object with that of the Society of Freemasons, established, he says, about the same time, the difference being only that one was esoteric and the other exoteric in its instructions.
But the more immediate effect of the romance of Bacon was the institution of the Society of Astrologers, of which Elias Ashmole was a leading member. Of this society Nicolai, in his work on the Origin and History of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, says: “Its object was to build the House of Solomon, of the New Atlantis, in the literal sense, but the establishment was to remain as secret as the island of Bensalem - that is to say, they were to be engaged in the study of nature - but the instruction of its principles was to remain in the society in an esoteric form. These philosophers presented their idea in a strictly allegorical method. First, there were the ancient columns of Hermes, by which iamblichus pretended that he had enlightened all the doubts of Porphyry. You then mounted, by several steps, to a chequered floor, divided into four regions, to denote the four superior sciences; after which came the types of the six days’ work, which expressed the object of the society, and which were the same as those found on an engraved stone in my possession. The sense of all which was this: God created the world, and preserves it by fixed principles, full of wisdom; he who seeks to know these principles - that is to say, the interior of nature - approximates to God, and he who thus approximates to God obtains from his grace the power of commanding nature.”
This society, he adds, met at Masons’ Hall in Basinghall Street, because many of its members were also members of the Masons’ Company, into which they all afterwards entered and assumed the name of Free and Accepted Masons, and thus he traces the origin of the Order to the New Atlantis and the House of Solomon of Lord Bacon.
It is only a theory, but it seems to throw some light on that long process of incubation which terminated at last, in 1717, in the production of the Grand Lodge of England. The connection of Ashmole with the Masons is a singular one, and has led to some controversy. The views of Nicolai, if not altogether correct, may suggest the possibility of an explanation. Certain it is that the eminent astrologers. -
On Abbreviations - A.W.M.
Dr. Mackey does not give the above-mentioned abbreviation in his prinicipal list but is worth stating his comments on abbreviations:
Abbreviations of technical terms or of official titles are of very extensive use in Masonry. They were however, but rarely employed in the earlier Masonic publications. For instance, not one is to be found in the first edition of Anderson’s Constitutions. Within a comparatively recent period they have greatly increased, especially among French writers, and a familiarity with them is therefore essentially necessary to the Masonic student.
Frequently, among English and always among French authors, a Masonic abbreviation is distinguished by three points, in a triangular form following the letter, which peculiar mark was first used, according to Kagon, on the 12th of August, 1774, by the Grand Orient of France, in an address to its subordinates. No authoritative explanation of the meaning of these points has been given, but they may be supposed to refer to the three lights around the altar, or perhaps more generally to the number three, and to the triangle, both important symbols in the Masonic system.
- The Oracle
An officer in a Lodge whose duty it is to explain to a candidate after his initiation the mysteries of the degree into which he has just been admitted. The office is therefore, in many respects, similar to that of a lecturer. The office was created in the French Lodges early in the eighteenth century, soon after the introduction of Masonry into France. A writer in the London Freemason’s Magazine for 1859 attributes its origin to the constitutional deficiency of the French in readiness of public speaking. From the French it passed to the other continental Lodges, and was adopted by the Scottish Rite. The office is not recognized in the English and American system, where its duties are performed by the Worshipful Master. - Shaksper in Masonry
It should be mentioned, that within the entire Encyclopaedia Of Freemasonry And Its Kindred Sciences by Dr. Mackey, there is no reference to the name Shaksper or Shake-Speare. Only Francis Bacon's name is found. - Mason, Derivation of the Word
The search for the etymology or derivation of the word Mason has given rise to numerous theories, some of them ingenious, but many of them very absurd. Thus, a writer in the European Magazine, for February, 1792, who signs his name as “George Drake,” lieutenant of marines, attempts to trace the Masons to the Druids, and derives Mason from May’s on, May’s being in reference to May-day, the great festival of the Druids, and on meaning men, as in the French on dit, for homme dit. According to this, May’s on therefore means the Men of May. But this idea is not original with Drake, since the same derivation was urged in 1766 by Cleland, in his essays on The Way to Things in Words, and on The Real Secret of Freemasons.
Hutchinson, in his search for a derivation, seems to have been perplexed with the variety of roots that presented themselves, and, being inclined to believe that the name of Mason “has its derivation from a language in which it implies some strong indication or distinction of the nature of the society, and that it has no relation to architects,” looks for the root in the Greek tongue. Thus he thinks that Mason may come from Mao Soon, “I seek salvation, or from Mystes, “an initiate” and that Masonry is only a corruption of Mesouraneo, “I am in the midst of heaven;” or from Mazourouth, a constellation mentioned by Job, or from Mysterion, “a mystery.” Lessing says, in his Ernst und Folk, that Masa in the Anglo-Saxon signifies a table, and that Masonry, consequently, is a society of the table. Nicolai thinks he finds the root in the Low Latin word of the Middle Ages Massonya, or Masonia, which signifies an exclusive society or club, such as that of the round-table.
Coming down to later times, we find Bro. C. W. Moore, in his Boston Magazine, of May, 1844, deriving Mason from Lithotomos, “a Stone-cutter.” But although fully aware of the elasticity of etymological rules, it surpasses our ingenuity to get Mason etymologically out of Lithotomos. Bro. Giles F. Yates sought for the derivation of Mason in the Greek word Mazones, a festival of Dionysus, and he thought that this was another proof of the lineal descent of the Masonic order from the Dionysiac Artificers. The late William S. Rockwell, who was accustomed to find all his Masonry in the Egyptian mysteries, and who was a thorough student of the Egyptian hieroglyphic system, derives the word Mason from a combination of two phonetic signs, the one being MAI, and signifying “to love,” and the other being SON, which means “a brother.” Hence, he says, “this combination, MAISON, expresses exactly in sound our word MASON, and signifies literally loving brother, that is, philadelphus, brother of an association, and thus corresponds also in sense.” But all of these fanciful etymologies, which would have terrified Bopp, Grimm, or Muller, or any other student of linguistic relations, forcibly remind us of the French epigrammatist, who admitted that alphina came from equus, but that, in so coming, it had very considerably changed its route. What, then, is the true derivation of the word Mason? Let us see what the orthoepists, who had no Masonic theories, have said upon the subject.
Webster, seeing that in Spanish masa means mortar, is inclined to derive Mason, as denoting one that works in mortar, from the root of mass, which of course gave birth to the Spanish word.
In Low or Mediaeval Latin, Mason was machio or macio, and this Du Cange derives from the Latin maceria, “a long wall.” Others find a derivation in machince, because the builders stood upon machines to raise their walls. But Richardson takes a common sense view of the subject. He says, “It appears to be obviously the same word as maison, a house or mansion, applied to the person who builds, instead of the thing built. The French Maissoner is to build houses; Masonner, to build of stone. The word Mason is applied by usage to a builder in stone, and Masonry to work in stone.” Carpenter gives Massom, used in 1225, for a building of stone, and Massonus, used in 1304, for a Mason; and the Benedictine editors of Du Cange define Massoneria “a building, the French Maconnerie, and Massonerius,” as Latomus or a Mason, both words in manuscripts of 1385. As a practical question, we are compelled to reject all those fanciful derivations which connect the Masons etymologically and historically with the Greeks, the Egyptians, or the Druids, and to take the word Mason in its ordinary signification of a worker in stone, and thus indicate the origin of the Order from a society or association of practical and operative builders. We need no better root than the Mediaeval Latin Maconner, to build, or Maconetus, a builder.
Bacon's Signature
