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

1 10 BLUE
BOHEMIA
Blue Masonry. The degrees of Entered
Apprentice, Fellow-Craft, and Master Mason
are called Blue Masonry .
Blue Master. In some of the high degrees,
these words are used to designate a Master
Mason.
Board of General Purposes . An organization
attached to the Grand Lode of England,
consisting of the Grand Master, Pro
Grand Master, Deputy Grand Master, the
Grand Wardens of the year, the Grand
Treasurer, the Grand Registrar, the Deputy
Grand Registrar a President, Past Presidents,
the President of the Board of Benevolence,
the Grand Director of Ceremonies, and twenty-four
other members. The President and
six of the twenty-four members are annually
nominated by the Grand Master, and the
remaining eighteen are elected by the Grand
Lodge from the Masters and Past Masters of
the Lodges. This board has authority to
hear and determine all subjects of Masonic
complaints, or irregularity respecting Lodges
or individual Masons, when regularly brought
before it, and generally to take cognizance of
all matters relating to the' Craft .
Board of Belief . See Relief, Board of .
Boaz. The name of the left hand (or
north) pillar that stood at the porch of King
Solomon's Temple. It is derived from the
Hebrew ] b, "in," and ty oaz, "strength,"
and signifies "in strength!' (See Pillars of
the Porch.)
Bochim. (O"», weepings .) A password
in the Order of Ishmael . An angel spoke to
Hagar as she wept at the well when in the
wilderness with her son Ishmael . The angel
is looked upon as a spiritual being, possibly
the Great Angel of the Covenant, the Michael
who appeared to Moses in the burning bush,
or the Joshua, the captain of the hosts of Jehovah
.
Bode, Johann Joachim Christoph .
Born in Brunswick, 16th of January, 1730 .
One of the most distinguished Masons of his
time . In his youth he was a professional
musician, but in 1757 he established himself
at Hamburg as a bookseller, and was initiated
into the Masonic Order. He obtained
much reputation by the translation of Sterne's
Sentimental Journey and Tristram Shandy, of
Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield ; Smollett's
Humphrey Clinker ; and of Fielding's Tom
Jones, from the English ; and of Montaigne's
works from the French . To Masonic literature
he made many valuable contributions ;
among others, he translated from the French
Bonneville's celebrated work entitled Les
Jesuites chasse s de la Magonnerie et leur poignard
brines par les Masons, which contains a
comparison of Scottish Masonry with the
Templarism of the fourteenth century . Bode
was at one time a zealous promoter of the Rite
of Strict Observance, but afterward became
one of its most active opponents . In 1790
he joined the Order of the Illuminati obtaining
the highest degree in its second class, and
at the Congress of Wilhelmsbad he advocated
the opinions of Weishaupt . No man of
his day was better versed than he in the history
of Freemasonry or possessed a more valuable
and extensive library ; no one was more
diligent in increasing his stock of Masonic
knowledge, or more anxious to avail himself
of the rarest sources of learning . Hence, he
has always held an exalted position among the
Masonic scholars of Germany. The theory
which he had conceived on the origin of Freemasonry-a
theory, however, which the investigations
of subsequent historians have
proved to be untenable-was, that the Order
was invented by the Jesuits, in the seventeenth
century, as an instrument for the reestablishment
of the Roman Church in England,
covering it for their own purposes under
the mantle of Templarism. Bode died at
Weimar on the 13th of December, 1793 .
Boeber, Johann. A Royal Councilor of
State and Director of the School of Cadets at
St . Petersburg during the reign of Alexander
I . In 1805 he induced the emperor to revoke
the edicts made by Paul I . and himself against
the Freemasons. His representations of the
true character of the Institution induced the
emperor to seek and obtain initiation . Boeber
may be considered as the reviver of Masonry
in the Russian dominions, and was Grand
Master of the Grand Lodge from 1811 to 1814 .
Boehmen, Jacob. The most celebrated
of the Mystics of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, born near Gorlitz, in 1575
and died in 1624 . His system attracted, and
continued to attract long after his death,
many disciples in Germany. Among these, in
time, were several Freemasons, who sought
to incorporate the mystical dogmas of their
founder with the teachings of Freemasonry,
so as to make the Lodges merely schools of
theosophy. Indeed, the Theosophic Rites of
Freemasonry, which prevailed to a great extent
about the middle of the last century in
Germany and France were indebted for
most of their ideas to tie mysticism of Jacob
Boehmen .
Bohemann, Karl Adolf Anderson . Born
in 1770, at J6nkbping in the south of Sweden .
H was a very zealous member of the Order of
Asiatic Brethren, and was an active promulgator
of the high degrees. Invited to Sweden,
in 1802, by the Duke of Sudermania, who was
an ardent inquirer into Masonic science, he
was appointed Court Secretary . He attempted
to introduce his system of high degrees into
the kingdom, but having been detected in the
effort to intermingle revolutionary schemes
with his high degrees, he was first imprisoned
and then banished from the country, his society
being interdicted. He returned to Germany,
but is not heard of after 1815, when he
published at Pyrmont a justification of himself
. Findel (Hist., p . 560) calls him an impostor,
but he seems rather to have been a
Masonic fanatic, who was ignorant of or had
forgotten the wide difference between Freemasonry
and political intrigue .
Bohemia . A Lodge named "The Three
Stars " is said to have been established at
Prague in 1726, and other Lodges were subse-