Quote:
Originally Posted by dreeness
"Widows' Sons" is a cryptic Masonic phrase.
It means "Freemasons".
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Yes, and it also means simply “widows’ sons”.
It is very common in folk tales that a male protagonist is the son of a widow. That is ostensibly what Tolkien is having Bilbo refer to.
I first came across this supposed connection in Jesse L. Weston’s
From Ritual to Romance originally published in 1920. In chapter XIV she writes:
Once started on a definitely romantic career, the Grail story rapidly became a complex of originally divergent themes, the most important stage in its development being the incorporation of the popular tale of the Widow’s Son, brought up in the wilderness, and launched into the world in a condition of absolute ignorance of men, and manners. The Perceval story is a charming story, but it has originally nothing whatever to do with the Grail. The original tale, now best represented by our English Syr Percyvelle of Galles, has no trace of Mystery element; it is Folk-lore, pure and simple. I believe the connection with the Grail legend to be purely fortuitous, and due to the fact that the hero of the Folk-tale was known as ‘The Widow’s Son,’ which he actually was, while this title represented in Mystery terminology a certain grade of Initiation, and as such is preserved to-day in Masonic ritual.
Jesse L. Weston’s
beliefs are now hardly accepted by anyone. But even in Weston’s idiosyncratic belief Sir Perceval was originally called a widow’s son because he was literally a widow’s son. T. H. Eilot’s poem
The Wasteland was indeed inspired by crank Arthurian commentary.
As I understand it, the claim is that because Tolkien once mentioned in his writing something that means something different according to secret Masonic allegory, he
must have been a secret Mason.
If the supposed phrase is
widow’s sons then it is hardly a Masonic secret that one of the Masonic Degrees is
Widow’s Son and hundreds of writers have written about
widow’s sons without meaning anything esoteric. Just look up
son of the widow folklore in Google and you will find thousands of tales among irrelevant sites.
In any case, no evidence beyond a single phrase in all his writing, a phrase that also has a common meaning, comes down to
no evidence.