The word Heredom has been given several interpretations. Firstly, from the Latin "Heres domus - heir of the house", which has led some people to discover the word in the eighteenth century dictionaries as a variant form for "heirdom" - the state of being an heir and going further and reading into the word an inheritance of divine origin. Secondly, from the Greek "hieros domus - holy house", a rendering which speaks for itself. And thirdly, from the Hebrew "Har Edom - mountain of the earth" and then ranking it with other holy mountains in the Sinai, Moriah and Tabor. The human mind given persistence and a little imagination, can find plausible explanation for anything.
We could be quiet happy to regard it as a made-up word, a sort of Tolkien word, suggestive of mystery and magic and romance, and to associate it with other entrancing words of knightly chivalry, like King Arthur's Avalon and his sword Excalibur, or Knight Roland's ivory horn Olivant or his sword Durandai. A similar mystique surrounds the knightly order of the Pelican and Eagle. The eagle has been the symbol of royal power from the earliest times. The Romans called it the bird of Jupiter and it was borne on their military standards. An eagle was released from the funeral pyre of a dead Emperor to symbolise the arrival of his soul amongst the gods. The eagle of our jewel is, of course, the eagle of Exodus 29.4 with its wings extended as if rising in the air.
In christian art this is the symbol of St John the Evangelist, and since he is the Preacher, it often appears on church lecterns. There are many notable examples, perhaps the most famous being that so magnificently sculptured by Nicolo Pisano in the cathedral at Pisa. Pelican is a Greek word. The fable of the Pelican feeding its young is probable of Egyptian origin but it comes to us from a fourth century bishop Epiphanius and then from St Augustine as a symbol for redemption. The pelican in its Piety was taken up as an emblem (or charge) in Heraldry, represented by the bird vulning her own breast, The device became well known and its shape led to strange uses of the word 'pelican', for a curved tabulated vessel for distilling liquors and for a dental instrument with a curved beak for extractions. In Shakespear's Richard the Second, old John of Gaunt replies to the King's chiding, "That blood already, like the pelican, And in Dante's Paradiso appear even more appropriately are lines which in translation read, "This is he that lay on the breast of our pelican, It is almost as though Dante, recalling John as the beloved disciple who lay on the Master's breast at the Last Supper and to whom the dying Jesus entrusted the care of his mother, had some foresight of our Order in the way he connected St John with the Pelican. These thoughts were put together in 1990 by V\Ill\Bro Keith Stewart 33° our Grand Librarian as a clinical research of the history of the Name of our Degree. I hope you found it interesting, and although it does not give any firm answers, it does leave us with some possibilities to consider and some insight into the possible origins of some of the symbols of our rite. |