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

LUX
LYONS 455
light . "In the thought," says Cox, "of these
early ages, the sun was the child of night or
darkness ." (Aryan Myth ., i ., 43 .) So lux being
truth or Masonry, and tenebrce, or darkness,
the symbol of initiation, lux e tenebris is Masonic
truth proceeding from initiation .
Lux Flat et Lux Fit . Latin . "Let
there be light, and there was light ." A motto
sometimes prefixed to Masonic documents .
Luz . An ever-living power, according to
the old Jewish Rabbis, residing in a small
joint-bone existing at the base of the spinal
column . To this undying principle, watered
by the dew of heaven, is ascribed the immortality
in man .
"R . Joshua Ben Hananiah replied to
Hadrian, as to how man revived in the world
to come, `From Luz, in the back-bone .' When
asked to demonstrate this, he took Luz, a
little bone out of the back-bone, and put it in
water, and it was not steeped ; he put it in the
fire, and it was not burned ; he brought it to
the mill, and that could not grind it ; he laid
it on the anvil, and knocked it with a hammer,
but the anvil was cleft, and the hammer
broken ."
L. V . C . Letters inscribed on the rings of
profession, worn by the Knights of Baron von
Hund's Templar system . They are the
initials of the sentence Labor Viris Convenit .
Labor is suitable for men . It was also engraved
on their seals.
Lyon, David Murray. This well-known
writer and historian of Freemasonry in Scotland
was initiated in 1856 in Lodge Ayr St .
Paul, No . 204, on the roll of the Grand Lodge
of Scotland . He was a printer by trade and
was at one time employed by the Ayrshire
Express Company . In 1877 he was appointed
Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge
of Scotland and held the post until 1900. He
died on January 30, 1903 .
He was, without doubt, the foremost Masonic
student of Scotland, either of this or
any other period ; and the results of his
continuous and arduous researches are to be
found in all the books and periodicals of the
Craft for the last twenty years, both at home
and abroad . It is simply impossible to furnish
anything like an accurate and complete list of
his many valuable contributions to Masonic
magazines. . His chief works have been
the History of the Mother Lodge Kilwinning,
Scotland, the History of the Old Lodge at Thornhill,
and, finally, the History of the Ancient
Lodge at Edinburgh (Mary's Chapel), from
the sixteenth century . This grand work,
which was published in 1873, has placed its
author in the front rank of Masonic authors .
[E . L . H .]
Lyons, Congress of. A Masonic congress
was convoked in 1778, at the city of Lyons,
France, by the Lodge of Chevaliers Bienfaisants
. It was opened on the 26th of November,
and continued in session until the
27th of December, under the presidency of M .
Villermoz . Its ostensible object was to procure
a reformation in Masonry by the abjuration
of the Templar theory ; but it wasted its
time in the correction of rituals and in Masonic
intrigues, and does not ap pear to have
been either sagacious in its methods, or successful
in its results . Even its abjuration of the
Strict Observance doctrine that Templarism
was the true origin of Freemasonry, is said to
have been insincere, and forced upon it by the
injunctions of the political authorities, who
were opposed to the propagation of any system
which might tend to restore the Order of
Knights Templar.