Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

BANQUET BARD 97
such as they are, agreeing on this point . But,
as has been before said, ere is some diversity
of o inion as to the colors of each, and necesy
as to the officers by whom they should
be home.
Some of the Targumists, or Jewish biblical
commentators, say that the color of the banner
of each tribe was analogous to that of the
stone which represented that tribe in the
breastplate of the High Priest . If this were
correct, then the colors of the banners of the
four leading tribes would be red and green,
namely, red for Judah, Ephraim, and Reuben,
and green for Dan ; these being the colors of
the precious stones sardonyx, ligure, carbuncle,
and chrysolite, by which these tribes were represented
in the High Priest's breastplate .
Such an arrangement would not, of course, at
all suit the symbolism of the American Royal
Arch banners .
Equally unsatisfactory is the disposition of
the colors derived from the arms of Speculative
Masonry, as first displayed by Dermott in his
Ahiman Rezon, which is familiar to all American
Masons, from the copy published by Cross,
in his Hieroglyphic Chart. In this piece of
blazonry, the two fields occupied by Judah
and Dan are azure, or blue, and those of
Ephraim and Reuben are or, or golden yellow ;
an appropriation of colors altogether uncongenial
with Royal Arch symbolism .
We must then, depend on the Talmudic
writers solely for the disposition and arrangement
of the colors and devices of these banners
. From their works we learn that the
color of the banner of Judah was white ; that
of Ephraim, scarlet ; that of Reuben, purple ,
and that of Dan, blue ; and that the devices of
the same tribes were respectively the lion, the
ox the man, and the eagle .
'Hence, under this arrangement-and it is
the only one upon which we can depend-the
four banners in a Chapter of Royal Arch
Masons, working in the American Rite, must
be distributed as follows among the bannerbearing
officers :
1st. An eagle, on a blue banner . This represents
the tribe of Dan, and is borne by the
Grand Master of the first veil .
2d . A man, on a purple banner. This represents
the tribe of Reuben, and is borne by
the Grand Master of the second veil .
3d . An ox, on a scarlet banner. This represents
the tribe of Ephraim, and is borne by
the Grand Master of the third veil.
4th . A lion, on a white banner . This represents
the tribe of Judah, and is borne by the
Royal Arch Captain .
Banquet. See Table-Lodge .
Baphomet. The imaginary idol, or, rather,
symbol which the Knights Templars were
accused of employing in their mystic rights .
The forty-second of the charges preferred
against them by Pope Clement is in these
words : Item quod ipsi per singulas provincias
habeant idola : videlicet capita quorum
aliqua habebant tres facies, et alia unum : et
aliqua cranium humanism ha bebant . Also,
that in all of the provinces they have idols,
namely, heads, of which some had three faces,
some one, and some had a human skull . Von
Hammer, a bitter enemy of the Templars, in
his book entitled The Mystery of Baphomet
Revealed, revived this old accusation, and attached
to the Baphomet an impious signification.
He derived the name from the Greek
words, $a, baptism, and µfjrts, wisdom, and
thence supposed that it represented the admission
of the initiated into the secret mysteriesof
theOrder . Fromthisgratuitousassumption
he deduces his theory, set forth even m
the very title of his work, that the Templars
were convicted, by their own monuments, of
being guilty as Gnostics and Ophites of apostasy,
idolatry, and impurity . Of this statement
he offers no other historical testimony
than the Articles of Accusation, themselves
devoid of proof, but through which the Templars
were made the victims of the jealousy of
the Pope and the avarice of the King of France .
Others again have thought that they could
find in Baphomet a corruption of Mahomet,
and hence they have asserted that the Templars
had been perverted from their religious
faith by the Saracens, with whom they
had so much intercourse, sometimes as foes
and sometimes as friends . Nicolai, who
wrote an Essay on the Accusations brought
against the Templars, published at Berlin,
in 1782, supposes, but doubtingly, that the
fi e of the Baphomet, figura Ba f'ometi,
w ch was depicted on a bust representing the
Creator, was nothing else but the Pythagorean
pentagon, the symbol of health and prosperity,
borrowed by the Templays from the Gnostics,
who in turn had obtained it from the
School of Pythagoras .
King, in his learned work on the Gnostics,
thinks that the Baphomet may have been a
symbol of the Manicheans, with whose widespreading
heresy in the Middle Ages he does
not doubt that a large portion of the inquiring
spirits of the Temple had been intoxicated .
Amid these conflicting views, all merely
speculative, it will not be uncharitable or unreasonable
to suggest that the Baphomet, or
skull of the ancient Templars, was, like the
relic of their modern Masonic representatives,
simply an impressive symbol teaching the
lesson of mortality, and that the latter has
really been derived from the former .
Baptism, Masonic . The term "Masonic
Baptism " has been recently applied in this
country by some authorities to that ceremony
which is used in certain of the high degrees,
and which, more properly, should be called
"Lustration." It has been objected that the
use of the term is calculated to give needless
offense to scrupulous persons who might suppose
it to be an imitation of a Christian sacrament.
But, in fact, the Masonic baptism has
no allusion whatsoever, either in form or design,
to the sacrament of the Church . It is
simply a lustration or purification by water, a
ceremony which was common to all the ancient
initiations . (See Lustration .)
Bard . A title of great dignity and importance
among the ancient Britons, which was