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

266 FIRE
Masonic bodies, because each member is
bound to the discharge of these duties by a
motive more powerful than any that could be
furnished by a pecuniary penalty . The imposition
of such a penalty would be a tacit acknowledgment
of the inadequacy of that
motive, and would hence detract from its
solemnity and its binding nature . It cannot,
however, be denied that the records of old
Lodges show that it was formerly a common
custom to impose fines for a violation of the
rules .
Fire. The French, in their Table Lodges,
called the drinking a toast, feu, or fire .
Fire Philosophers . (See Theosophists .)
Fire, Pillar of. (See Pillars of Cloud and
Fire.)
Fire, Purification by. (See Purification
.)
Fire-Worship . Of all the ancient religions,
fire-worship was one of the earliest, next
to Sabaism ; and even of this it seems only to
have been a development, as with the Sabaists
the sun was deemed the Universal Fire.
"Darius," says Quintus Curtius "invoked the
sun as Mithras, the sacred ancj eternal fire ."
It was the faith of the ancient Magi and the
old Persians, still retained by their modern
descendants the Parsees . But with them it was
not an idolatry. The fire was venerated only
as a visible symbol of the Supreme Deity, of
the creative energy, from whom all things
come, and to whom all things ascend . The
flame darting upward to meet its divine
original, the mundane fire seeking an ascension
to and an absorption into the celestial
fire, or God himself, constituted what has
been called "the flame-secret" of the fireworshipers
. This religion was not only very
ancient, but also very universal . From India
it passed over into Egypt, and thence extended
to the Hebrews and to the Greeks, and has
shown its p ower and prevalence even in modern
thought. On the banks of the Nile, the
people did not, indeed, fall down like the old
Persians and worship fire, but they venerated
the fire-secret and its symbolic teaching .
Hence the Pyramids (pyr is Greek for fire),
the representation of ascending flame ; and
Jennings Hargrave shrewdly says that what
has been supposed to be a tomb, in the center
of the Great Pyramid, was in reality a depository
of the sacred, ever-burning fire . Monoliths
were everywhere in antiquity erected to
fire or to the sun, as the type of fire . Among
the Hebrews, the sacred idea of fire, as something
connected with the Divine Being, was
very prominent . God appeared to Moses in a
flame of fire ; he descended on Mount Sinai
in the midst of flames ; at the Temple the fire
descended from heaven to consume the burntoffering
. Everywhere in Scripture, fire is a
symbol of the holiness of God . The lights on
the altar are the symbols of the Christian God .
The purifying power of fire is naturally deduce3
from this symbol of the holiness of the
element . And in the high degrees of Masonry,
as in the ancient institutions, there is a purification
by fire, coming down to us insensibly
and unconsciously from the old Magian cultus.
In the Medieval ages there was a sect
of "fire-philosophers"-philosophi per
-who were a branch or offshoot of Rosicrucianism,
with which Freemasonry has so much
in common . These fire-philosophers kept up
the veneration for fire, and cultivated the
"fire-secret," not as an idolatrous belief, but
modified by their hermetic notions . The y
were also called "theosophists," and through
them, or in reference to them, we find the
theosophic degrees of Masonry, which sprang
up in the eighteenth century . As fire and
light are identical, so the fire, which was to
the Zoroastrians the symbol of the Divine
Being, is to the Mason, under the equivalent
idea of light the symbol of Divine Truth, or
of the Grand Architect .
Firrao, Joseph . A cardinal priest who, in
1738, published the edict of Pope Clement
XII. against Freemasonry .
Fish. The Greek word for fish is IXwi .
Now these five letters are the initials of the
five words In?oovs Xpta°ros Oeov Ttos &ori p,
that is, Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Savior .
Hence the early Christians adopted the fish as
a Christian symbol ; and it is to be found on
many of their tombs, and was often worn as an
ornament . Clement of Alexandria, in writing
of the ornaments that a Christian may constantly
wear, mentions the fish as a proper
device for a ring, as serving to remind the
Christian of the origin of his spiritual life, the
fish referring to the waters of baptism . The
Vesica Piscis, which is an oval figure, pointed
at both ends, and representing the air bladder
of a fish, was adopted, and is still often used as
the form of the seal of religious houses and confraternities
. Margoliouth (Vest . of Gen . Freem .,
45) says : "In former days, the Grand Master
of our Order used to wear a silver fish on his
person ; but it is to be regretted that, amongst
the many innovations which have been of late
introduced into the society to conciliate the
prejudices of some who cannot consistently be
members of it, this beautiful emblem has disappeared
."
Five. Among the Pythagoreans five was a
mystical number, because it was formed by
the union of the first even number and the
first odd, rejecting unity ; and hence it symbolized
the mixed conditions of order and disorder,
happiness and misfortune, life and
death . The same union of the odd and even,
or male and female, numbers made it the symbol
of marriage . Among the Greeks it was a
symbol of the world, because, says Diodorus,
it represented ether and the four elements .
It was a sacred round number among the Hebrews
. In Egypt, India, and other Oriental
nations, says Gesenius, the five minor planets
and the five elements and elementary powers
were accounted sacred . It was the pentas of
the Gnostics and the Hermetic Philosophers ;
it was the symbol of their quintessence, the
fifth or highest essence of power in a natural
body . In Masonry, five is a sacred number,
inferior only in importance to three and seven .
It is especially significant in the Fellow-Craft's