ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
FREEMASONRY
AND ITS KINDRED SCIENCES
by ALBERT C. MACKEY M. D.
Browse the Encyclopedia by clicking on any of the letters below.
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W
The twenty-third letter of the English alphabet, which originated in the Middle Ages, is a double V, and is peculiar to the English, German, and Dutch alphabets.
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W
An abbreviation of Worshipful, of Wrest, of Warden, and of Wisdom .
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WAECHTER, EBERHARD, BARON VON
Lord of the Chamber to the King of Denmark, and Danish Ambassador at Ratisbon; was born in 1747. He was at one time a very active member of the Rite of Strict Observance, where he bore the characteristic Knighthood name of Eques a ceraso, and had been appointed as Chancellor of the German Priories of the 7th Province.
When the spiritual schism of the Order made its vast pretensions to a secret unaccountably derived from unknown superiors, whose names they refused to divulge, Von Waechter was sent to Italy by the old Scottish Lodge of which Duke Ferdinand was Grand Master, that he might obtain some information from the Pretender, and from other sources, as to the true character of the Rite. Von Waechter was unsuccessful, and the intelligence which he brought back to Germany was unfavorable to Von Hund, and increased the embarrassments of the Strict Observance Lodges. But he himself lost reputation.
A host of enemies attacked him. Some declared that while in Italy he had made a traffic of Freemasonry to enrich himself; others that he had learned and was practicing magic; and others again that he had secretly attached himself to the Jesuits. Von Waechter stoutly denied these charges; but it is certain that, from being in very moderate circumstances, he had, after his return from Italy, become suddenly and unaccountably rich. yet Mossdorf says that he discharged his mission with great delicacy and judgment.
Thory, quoting the Beytrag zur neuesten Geschicte, or the Bearer of New History (page 150) says that in 1782 he proposed to give a new organization to the old Templar system of Freemasonry, on the ruins, perhaps, of both branches of the strict Observance, and declared that he possessed the true secrets of the Order. His proposition for a reform was not accepted by the German Freemasons because they suspected that he was an agent of the Jesuits (ActaLatomorum i, page 152).
Kloss (Bibliographie, No. 622b) gives the title of a work published by him in 1822 as Worte der Wahrheit an die Menschen, meine Brüder, Word of Truth on Humanity, my Brethren. He died May 25, 1825, one, perhaps, of the last actors in the great Masonic drama of the Strict Observance.
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WAGES
The whole period of the Middle Ages in England was in one aspect of it a struggle of barbarism against civilization, but on the question of wages it would be paying them a tribute to describe them as barbaric; wages were savage, savagely low and savagely cruel, and next only after war were the ruling class's most brutal weapon of subjugation, and that remains true after every possible allowance is made between the purchasing power of a shilling then and a shilling now. A bookkeeper in the reign of Edward I records "that one Master Mason was paid 6d per day, and five Masons were paid 4d per day."
Bro. Edward Conder, from whose Hole Craft these figures are being taken, notes that in 1336 a Mason received one shilling a day. In 1342-1400 typical wages for Freemasons working on Westminster Abbey ran 4d; 10/6 for two Masons for 21 days; two Masons at 2 shillings per week; two for two weeks 6 shillings; for "Master Yevele Chief Mason, " one of the greatest of architects, "100 shillings per annum"; etc.
In 1402 Henry IV forbade Masons to work by the week, or to receive pay on feast days, and ordained that on a day before a holiday when they stopped at 3 P.M. they were to receive only one-half day's pay—"in ye name of Godde." One Royal Act forbade Freemasons to be paid more than 5' shillings per day. In 1495 a statute fixed visages for Freemasons at 4d with meals furnished, 6d without meals during the long-day half of the year, 3d and 5d respectively during the other half; the fad a day began at 5 A.M. In Henry VIII's time a Master received 12d a day; a Warden 5d a week; setters 3 8d per week; clerk of the works, 8d per day; under-clerks, 6d per day. At page 93 of his Gleanings Frown Westminster (Oxford London; 1861) George Gilbert Scott prints a number of specimens of the Westminster Fabric Rolls, the oldest being for 1253 A.D. In that year the average wage for Masons was 1 10d per week. In 1271 an expert Master Mason received 2' 6d per week.
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WAGES OF A MARK MASTER
See Mark Master's Wages
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WAGES OF A MASTER MASON, SYMBOLIC
See Foreign Country
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WAGES OF OPERATIVE MASONS
In all the Old Constitutions praise is given to Saint Alban because he raised the wages of the Freemasons. Thus the Edinburgh-Kilwinning Manuscript says: "Saint Albans loved Masons well and cherished them much, and made their pay right good, standing by as the realm, did, for he gave them iis. a week, and 3d. to their cheer; for before that time, through all the land, a Mason had but a penny a day and his meat, until Saint Alban amended it."
We may compare this rate of wages in the third century with that of the fifteenth, and we will be surprised at the little advance that was made.
In Grosse and Astle's Antiquarian Repertory (iii, page 58), will be found an extract from the Rolls of Parliament, which contains a Petition, in the year 1443, to Parliament to regulate the price of labor. In it are the following items:
And from the Fest of Mighelmasse unto Ester, a free Mason and a maister carpenter by the day iiiid. with mete and drynk, withoute mete and drink iiid., ob.
Tyler or Sclatter, rough mason and meen carpenter, and other artificers concernyng beldyng, by the day iiid., with mete and drynk, and withoute mete and drynke, iiid., ob. And from the Fest of Mighelmasse unto Sister, a free Mason and a maister carpenter by the day iiid with mete and drynk, without mete and drink, iiid., ob.
Tyler, meen carpenter, rough mason, and other artificers aforesaid, by the day iid., ob, with mete and drynk, withoute mete and drynk iiid.., and every other werkeman and laborer by the day id., ob, with mete and drynk and withoute mete and drink iiid., and who that lasse deserveth, to take lasse.
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WAGES OF THE WORKMEN AT THE TEMPLE
Neither the Seriptures, nor Josephus, give us any definite statement of the amount of wages paid, nor the manner in which they were paid, to the workmen who were engaged in the erection of King Solomon's Temple. The cost of its construction, however, must have been immense, since it has been estimated that the edifice alone consumed more gold and silver than at present exists upon the whole earth; so that Josephus very justly says that "Solomon made all these things for the honor of God, with great variety and magnificence, sparing no cost, but using all possible liberality in adorning the Temple."
We learn, as one instance of this liberality, from the Second Book of Chronicles, that Solomon paid annually to the Tyrian Freemasons, the servants of Hiram, "twenty thousand measures of beaten wheat, and twenty thousand measures of barley, and twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil." The bath was a measure equal to seven and a half gallons wine measure; and the cor or chomer, which we translate by the indefinite word measures contained ten baths; so that the corn, wine, and oil furnished by King Solomon, as wages to the servants of Hiram of Tyre, amounted to one hundred and ninety thousand bushels of the first and one hundred and fifty thousand gallons each of the second and third. The sacred records do not inform us what further wages they received, but we elsewhere learn that King Solomon gave them as a free gift a sum equal to more than thirty-two millions of dollars. The whole amount of wages paid to the Craft is stated to have been about six hundred and seventy-two millions of dollars; but we have no means of knowing how that amount was distributed; though it is natural to suppose that those of the most skill and experience received the highest wages.
The Harodim, or chiefs of the workmen, must have been better paid than the Ish Cabal, or mere laborers. The legend-makers of Freemasonry have not been idle in their invention of facts and circumstances in relation to this Subject, the whole of which have little more for a foundation than the imaginations of the inventors. They form, however, a part of the legendary history of Freemasonry, and are interesting for their ingenuity, and sometimes even for their absurdity (see Penny).
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WAHABITES
A Mohammedan sect, established about 1740, dominant through the greater part of Arabia. Their doctrine was reformatory, to bring back the observances of Islam to the literal precepts of the Koran. Mecca and Medina were conquered by them. The founder of Ibn-abd-ul-Wahab, son of an Arab Sheila, born in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and died 1787. Their teachings were received by the Mussulrnan population of India, and much uneasiness has been feared therefrom.
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WAITE, ARTHUR EDWARD
Arthur Edward Waite: A Check list of his Writings, by Harold V. B. Voorhis, privately printed; Red Bank, New Jersey; 1932, is an exhaustive but not wholly complete list of works possessed by Voorhis of which Waite was "either the author, the compiler, the translator, the editor, or the writer of the preface or foreword. " Bro. Waite himself assisted Bro. Voorhis to make the collection as complete as possible; after Bro. Waite's death Bro. Voorhis installed his collection in the Iowa Masonic Library, Cedar Rapids, Ia., where it is housed in a special case and named the Waite Collection; the magnanimity of that act is genuinely appreciated by Bro. Voorhis many American friends and colleagues.
In the Check List the titles are: Alchemical Writings of Edward Kelly. Azoth, or the Star in the East. Belle and the Dragon. Book of Black Magic and of Pacts. Book of the Holy Grail. Braid on IIypnotism—Neurhynology. Brotherhood of the Rosv Cross. Cloud Upon the Sanctuary. Collectanea Chemica. Collected Poems Compendium of Alchemical Processes. Deeper Aspects of Masonic Symbolism. Devil Worship in France Doctrine and Literature of the Rat balah. Elfin Music: An Antholog-v of English Fairy Poetry. Emblematic Freemasonry General Bool; of the Tarot. Gift of the Spirit. Gift of Understandings Golden and Biessed Casket of Nature's Marvels. Golden Stairs. Harmonical Philosophy. Hermetic and Alchemical M ritP ings of Paracelsus. Hermetic Museum.
Hidden Church of the Holy Graal. History of Magic. Holy Kabbalah. Horlich's Magazine. Israfel, Letters Visions and Poems. Key to the Tarot. Lamps of Western Mvstieism. Lexicon of Alchemy. Life of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin. Lives of Alchemvstical Philosophers. Lucasta, Parables and Poems. Lumen de Lumine. Lyric of the Fairyland. Magical Writings of Thomas Vaughan. Mysteries of hIagie. New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry. View Pearl of Great Price. Obermann. Occult Sciences. Ode to Astronomy and Other Poems. Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Prentice Mulford's Story. Prince Starbeam Psyche.
Quest of the Golden Stairs. Raymond Lully. Real History of the Rosicrucians. Saint-Martin. Secret Doctrine in Israel. Secret Tradition in Alchemy. Secret Tradition in Freemasonry. Some Characteristics of the Inner Church. Songs and Poems of the Inner Church. Songs and Poems of Fairyland. Soul's Comedy. Steps to the Crown. Strange Houses of Sleep. Studies in Mysticism. Tarot of the Bohemians. Transcendental Magic. Triumphal Chariot of Antimony.
Turba Philosophorum. Unknown World. Way of Divine Union. Works of Thomas Vaughan. World's Great Religious Poetry. Zodiac of Life. Magazine articles in Horliek's Magazine; Psyche; The Master Mason; The Builder (five); Light; Occult Review; Transactions of the Society Rosicruciana in Anglia.
Waite was not interested in Masonic History properly so called, and as represented by Mackey, Gould and Hughan; in fact, as his private correspondence and his published works prove, he was wholly mis taken about the point and purpose of it, as when he insisted that Gould had tried to prove that a few illiterate stone-masons had fathered Speculative Freemasonry. Moreover when his specifically Masonic writing is sifted out of the mass of his writings it is of surprisingly slender volume even his New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry is less about Masonry than about occultism; and the amount of history in his Emblematic Masonry is scarcely more than a trifle. His theory was that a few occultists like Ashmole and Fludd were bearers of the "Secret Tradition," brought it into Masonry, and by means of doing so were the instruments by which the Operative Craft was made over into the Speculative Fraternity. He gives very little data and no proof for this theory, which has not been accepted; and it has made so little impression that in Ars Quauor Coronatorum and the Transactions of other Lodges of Research his name is seldom referred to, and his theory is not discussed.
It is in the fields of occultism and of mysticism and in the borders between the two that his massive and permanent fame will always rest; his works on the Rose Cross and on the Grail are his own masterpieces, and at the same time are masterpieces of the whole literature which they dominate. (American Masons Will find a surprise in this paragraph from Bro. Voorhis's brochure, page 1: "Born in Brooklyn, New York~ U. S. A., in the year 1857, of Connecticut paternal ancestry, his English mother took him to England at the age of two, following the death of his father, and he has never returned to America. ")