‘Philalethes to host Hamilton at Masonic Week’

    

Belated Happy 96th Anniversary wishes to the Philalethes Society, which reached that milestone Sunday.

Speaking of Masonic Week (see post below), the Society has two events among the February festivities on the calendar. On Friday the seventh at 7 p.m., it’ll be time for the annual banquet. The after dinner speaker will be Bro. Billy Hamilton of Texas, who will present “The Victorian Innovators.” From the publicity:

Bro. Hamilton will focus on Kenneth R.H. Mackenzie and his influential correspondence circle, including Major Frances George Irwin, John Yarker, and William Wynn Westcott. The title is inspired by J. Ray Shute and his own circle of innovators, who would later play a similar role in American Freemasonry. We will examine their friendships, alliances, and conflicts in their own words through their personal correspondence. He will also discuss the diverse degrees and rites they worked on, from those accepted in mainstream Masonry today, such as SRIA, the Red Branch of Eri, and the Red Cross of Constantine, to those now considered clandestine, including the Primitive Rite and Sat B’Hai.

The banquet is open to all Masonic Week attendees and their guests. Tickets are $60 and must be reserved at the Masonic Week 2025 website.

The following morning, at 10:30, the 97th Annual Meeting will open. Publicity again:

The Annual Assembly of the Philalethes Society will be held on Saturday, February 8 at 10:30 a.m. The meeting agenda includes annual reports from the Officers and the consideration of all matters which may lawfully come before it. The meeting is open to every Masonic Week attendee. All members of the Philalethes Society in good standing (dues current for 2025) are considered voting members.

In the meantime, this latest issue of the quarterly journal is fantastic, thanks in part to Marsha Keith Schuchard’s piece “Gershom Scholem and Marsha Keith Schuchard: A Most Unlikely Correspondence, 1975-1980.” Excerpted (and apologies for the lack of context):

The allusions to Jews and magicians in Swedenborg’s diaries present a difficulty to the historian, because they are couched in a peculiar, symbolic language. Moreover, Swedenborg confounds actual, identifiable people with anonymous “spirits,” though he later explained to the Queen of Sweden that all his spirit-conversations were based on actual acquaintances, whether from personal experience or from “reading.” Two Masonic scholars, Gabriele Rossetti (father of the painter) and Ethan Allen Hitchcock (military adviser to Abraham Lincoln) claimed that Swedenborg’s cryptic language and veiled allusions were a deliberate usage of Masonic terminology, which would be comprehensible to initiates but not to outsiders... . My own theory is that many of the characters were actual people and that others function like Luzzatto’s maggid, i.e., psychological projections of Kabbalistic instructors or exteriorization of mental images gained through Kabbalistic meditations.

It’s a dizzying paper, to say the least, but if you are part of, or at least interested in, quirky European systems of Freemasonry, this is for you. And if you’ve followed Schuchard’s singular field of research, this illustrates how she got there. It is a fascinating—and amusing in the academic milieu— conversation. Enjoy.

In addition, and also concerning The ALR as with the post below, the lodge’s WM aims to revive Knickerbocker Chapter, the Philalethes’ New York City group, for dining and education. Interested brethren should contact the Master.