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. W∴ An abbreviation of Worshipful, of Wrest, of Warden, and of Wisdom.
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 [...]
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 [...]
WAGES OF A MARK MASTER
See Mark Master’s Wages
WAGES OF A MASTER MASON, SYMBOLIC
See Foreign Country
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
WALES
The earliest Lodges in Wales were two at Chester and one at Congelton, all three established in 1724, and Doctor Anderson records that Grand Master Inchiquin granted a Deputation, May 10, 1727, to Hugh Warburton, to be Provincial Grand Master of North Wales, and another, June 24th in the same year, to Sir Edward Mansel, [...]
