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

444 LEXINGTON
LIBERAL
stars disappear at the approach of the sun's
light. The learned reader will also recollect
that in the Greek language lukos signifies both
the sun and a wolf. Hence some etymologists
have sought to derive louveteau, the son of a
Mason, from louveteau, a young wolf. But
the more direct derivation from louve, the
operative instrument is preferable .
In Browne's Master Key, which is supposed
to represent the Prestonian lecture, we
find the following definition :
"What do we call the son of a Freemason?
"A lewis .
"What does that denote?
"Strength .
"How is a lewis depicted in a Mason's
Lodge?
"As a cramp of metal, by which, when fixed
into a stone, great and ponderous weights are
raised to a certain height and fixed upon their
proper basis, without which Operative Masons
could not so conveniently do .
"What is the duty of a lewis, the son of a
Mason, to his aged parents?
"To bear the heavy burden in the heat of
the day and help them in time of need, which,
by reason of their great age, they ought to be
exempted from, so as to render the close of
their days happy and comfortable .
"His privilege for so doing?
"To be made a Mason before any other
person, however dignified by birth, rank, or
riches, unless he, through complaisance, waives
this privilege."
[The term occurs in this sense in the Constitutions
of 1738 at the end of the Deputy
Grand Master's song-in allusion to the expected
birth of George IIİ, son of Frederick,
Prince of Wales :
"May a Lewis be born, whom the World
shall admire, Serene as his Mother, August
as his Sire ."
It is sometimes stated that a Lewis may be
initiated before he has reached the age of
twenty-one ; but this is not so under the English
Constitution, by which a dispensation is
required in all cases of initiation under age,
as was distinctly stated at the meeting of the
Grand Lodge of England held on December
2, 1874 . The Scotch Constitution, however,
does allow a Lewis to be entered at eighteen
years of age. (Rule 180.)
No such right is recognized in America,
where the symbolism of the Lewis is unknown,
though it has been suggested, not without
some probability, that the initiation of
Washington when he was only twenty years
and eight months old, may be explained by
a reference to this supposed privilege of
Lewis .-E . L. H .]
Lexington, Congress of. This Congress
was convoked in 1853, at Lexington, Kentucky,
for the purpose of attempting to form
a General Grand Lodge .* A plan of constitution
was proposed, but a sufficient number
of Grand Lodges did not accede to the
proposition to give it efficacy .
* See General Grand Lodge .
Libanus. The Latin name of Lebanon,
which see .
Libation. Among the Greeks and Romans
the libation was a religious ceremony, consisting
of the pouring of wine or other liquid upon
the ground, or, in a sacrifice, upon the head
of the victim after it had been first tasted by
the priest and by those who stood next to him .
The libations were usually of unmixed wine,
but were sometimes of. mingled wine and
water . Libations are used in some of the
chivalric and the high degrees of Masonry .
Libavius, Andreas . A learned German
physician, who was born at Halle, in Saxony
and died at Coburg, where he was rector ol
the Gymnasium in 1616 . He was a vehement
opponent of Paracelsus and of the Rosicrucians
. In 1613 he published at Frankfort
his Syntagma selectorum alchimia arcanorum,
in two folio volumes, and two years after, an
Appendix, in which he attacks the Society of
the Rosicrucians and analyzes the Confessio
of Valentine Andrea. De Quincey has used
the works of Libavius in his article on Secret
Societies.
Liber . Liberty. Of which the eagle, in
the Rose Croix Degree, is symbolical . Liberty
of thought, speech, and action, within the
bounds of civil, political, and conscientious
law, without license . A book, and hence the
word library, or collection of books . It was
also one of the names of the god Bacchus .
The freedom which knowledge confers . Liber,
the bark, or inner rind of a tree, on which
books were originally written ; hence, leaves
of a book and leaves of a tree ; or, similarly in
Latin, folio of a book, the foliage of a tree .
Thus, the "tree of knowledge" becomes the
"book of wisdom" ; the "tree of life" becomes
the "book of life ." (See Lakak Deror
Pessah and Libertas .) The Bridge mentioned
in the Sixteenth Degree, Scottish Rite, has
the initials of Liberty of Passage over its
arches.
Liberal Arts and Sciences. We are indebted
to the Scholastic philosophers of the
Middle Ages for the nomenclature by which
they distinguished the seven sciences then
best known to them . With the metaphorical
spirit of the age in which they lived, they called
the two classes into which they divided them
the trivium, or meeting of three roads, and the
quadrivium, or meeting of four roads ; calling
grammar, logic, and rhetoric the trivium, and
arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy
the quadrivium . These they styled the seven
liberal arts and sciences, to separate them from
the mechanical arts which were practised by
the handicraftsmen. The liberal man, liberalis
homo, meant, in the Middle Ages, the man