‘Lodge with No Name 10,000’

    

S. Khan photo

The United Grand Lodge of England consecrated its 10,000th lodge Tuesday. It is a grand lodge that does not recycle lodge numbers, so this is a true sequential 10,000 since 1813.

So, what is this lodge’s name? Lodge Sine Nomine.

What’s that mean? Lodge with No Name.

Five of Nine Club photo

MW Bro. Peter Geoffrey Lowndes, Pro Grand Master, led the ceremony, which took place inside beautiful Lodge Room 10 in Freemasons’ Hall, London.

chelt_mason

It is said Sine Nomine is a lodge for young Masons. From what I’ve read, it is not grouped in the Affinity/Specialty class of lodges and, as yet, has not decided on a ritual to work (UGLE has dozens). The lodge will meet three times a year at Great Queen Street: second Thursday of January (installation), third Friday of June, and fourth Friday of October, always at six o’clock.

Congratulations to all!

Those of you who know me probably have noticed my gift for sussing the unfavorable aspect of even the best news and, so, here too I also consider the reality of these new lodges not representing growth of the fraternity. With nominally 10,000 lodges, you might think the country has half a million Masons (not that big numbers themselves are desirable), but membership actually is contracting. Furthermore, with the loss of lodges, there is an inevitable disappearance of rituals.

I wish I had the answers. The world patently needs Freemasonry, but that actually is a big part of what ails us.