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

86 AUGER
AUSTRIA
Auger. An implement used as a symbol
in the Ark Mariners Degree .
Augustine, St . See Saint Augustine .
Augustus William, Prince of Prussia .
Born in 1722, died in 1758 . Brother of Frederick
the Great, and father of King Frederick
William II . A member of Lodge "Drei
Weltkugeln " Berlin .
Aum . A mystic syllable among the Hindus,
signifying the Supreme God of Gods,
which the Brahmans, from its awful and sacred
meaning, hesitate to pronounce aloud,
and in doing so place one of their hands before
the mouth so as to deaden the sound .
This triliteral name of God, which is as sacred
among the Hindus as the Tetragrammatain
is among the Jews is composed of three Sanskrit
letters, souncfing AUM . The first letter,
A, stands for the Creator ; the second, U, for
the Preserver ; and the third, M, for the Destroyer,
or Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva . Benfey,
in his Sanskrit-English Dictionary, defines the
word as "a particle of reminiscence " ; and
this may explain the Brahmanical saying,
that a Brahman beginning or ending the reading
of a part of the Veda or Sacred Books,
must always pronounce, to himself, the syllable
AUM ; for unless that syllable precede, his
learning will slip away from him, and unless
it follow, nothing will be long retained . An
old passage in the Parana says, "All the rites
ordained in the Vedas, the sacrifices to fire,
and all sacred purifications, shall pass away,
but the word AUM shall never pass away, for
it is the symbol of the Lord of all things ."
The word has been indifferently spelled, O'M,
AOM, and AUM ; but the last is evidently the
most proper, as the second letter is 00 = U
in the Sanskrit alphabet .
Aumont . Said to have been the successor
of Molay as Grand Master, and hence called
the Restorer of the Order of the Templars .
There is a tradition, altogether fabulous, however,
which states that he, with seven other
Templars, fled, after the dissolution of the
Order, into Scotland, disguised as Operative
Masons, and there secretly and under another
name founded a new Order ; and to preserve
as much as possible the ancient name of Templars,
as well as to retain the remembrance
of the clothing of Masons, in which disguise
they had fled, they chose the name of Freemasons,
and thus founded Freemasonry .
The society thus formed, instead of conquering
or rebuilding the Temple of Jerusalem, was to
erect symbolical temples. This is one of the
forms of the Templar theory of the origin of
Freemasonry .
Aurora . In Hebrew the light is called Aur,
and in its dual capacity Aurim . Hence Urim,
lights-as, Thme, Thummim perfections .
Ra is the sun, the symbolic god of the Egyptians,
and Ouro, royalty. Hence we have
Aur, Ouro, Ra, which is the double symbolic
capacity of "Light ." Referring to the Urim
and Thummim, Re is physical and intellectual
light, while Thme is the divinity of truth
and justice .
Aurora is the color of the baldrio worn by
the brethren in the Sixteenth De of the
Scottish Rite, which in the legend is ee said to
have been presented by King Darius to the
captive Zerubbabel on presentation of his
liberty, and that of all his people, who had
been slaves in Babylon for seventy years .
Auserwahlten. German for Elu or Elect .
Austin . See Saint Augustine.
Australasia . The first Masonic Lodge
in this region was held in 1803 at Sydney,
but was suppressed by the Governor, and it
was not until the year 1820 that the parent
Lodge of Australasia was warranted to meet
at Sydney by the Grand Lodge of Ireland ; it
is now No . 1 on the New South Wales register
and named the "Australian Social Mother
Lodge." After that many Lodges were warranted
under the three Constitutions of England,
Scotland and Ireland, out of which in
course of time no less than six independent
Grand Lodges have been formed, viz ., South
Australia (founded in 1884), New South Wales
(1888), Victoria (1889), Tasmania (1890),
New Zealand (1890), and Western Australia
(1900) . [E . L. H .1
Austria. Freemasonry was introduced
into Austria in 1742, by the establishment at
Vienna of the Lodge of the Three Cannons .
But it was broken up by the government in
the following year, and thirty of its members
were imprisoned for having met in contempt
of the authorities . Maria Theresa was an
enemy of the Institution, and prohibited it in
1764 . Lodges, however, continued to meet
secretly in Vienna and Prague . In 1780,
Joseph II . ascended the throne, and under his
liberal administration Freemasonry, if not
actually encouraged, was at least tolerated,
and many new Lodges were established in
Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and Tram l-
vania, under the authority of the Grand Lodge
of Germany, in Berlin . Delegates from these
Lodges met at Vienna in 1784, and organized
the Grand Lodge of Austria, electing the
Count of Dietrichstein, Grand Master . The
attempt of the Grand Lodge at Berlin to make
this a Provincial Grand Lodge was successful
for only a short time, and in 1785 the Grand
Lodge of Austria again proclaimed its independence.
During the reign of Joseph II ., Austrian
Masonry was prosperous. Notwithstanding
the efforts of its enemies, the monarch could
never be persuaded to prohibit it . But in
1785 he was induced to issue instructions b
which the number of the Lodges was reduce
so that not more than three were permitted to
exist in each city ; and he ordered that a list
of the members and a note of the times of
meeting of each Lodge should be annually delivered
to the magistrates .
Joseph died in 1790, and Leopold II . expressed
himself as not unfriendly to the Fraternity,
but his successor in 1792, Francis II .,
yielded to the machinations of the anti-Masons,
and dissolved the Lodges . In 1801 he
issued a decree which forbade the employment
of anyone in the public service who was
attached to any secret society . Masonry is