‘Brent Morris visits The ALR!’

    

Most of the group present at The ALR March 31 for Brent Morris Night inside the Colonial Room of Masonic Hall.

Still scrambling to catch up on recent events, so let me recount The ALR’s two latest meetings.

First, March 31. We had big plans for the evening—initially. We aimed to present Fellowship diplomas to three heroes in the field of Masonic learning: Arturo de Hoyos, S. Brent Morris, and Piers A. Vaughan. You know them. No need to recapitulate their curricula vitae.

The American Lodge of Research has three tiers of membership. We all begin as Corresponding Members; after satisfying writing criteria, we may, possibly, one day, maybe, be elected to Active Membership; and those happy few, if they excel at research or other service to the cause of Masonic learning, might be considered for election, by the Actives, to become Fellows. We award that last one extremely seldomly. (There are other research lodges that bestow their honors with less diligence, but that’s their problem.)

Brent and Yves.

So, we learned early that Art wouldn’t be able to travel to New York City on that night. We learned late that Piers wouldn’t be able to attend also. But, frankly, when you have Brent Morris on the bill, you’ve got all you need. And that’s without the magic tricks. Actually, the lodge could have spent a minute preparing. In the division of ceremonial labor, when our Marshal escorted Brent to the East, where he was greeted by Worshipful Master Yves Etienne, it was Conor who introduced our guest to the lodge, and then I presented the diploma. That should have been vice versa, as Conor, himself a Fellow, designed and published the diploma, and would have spoken to what this distinction means. I, having known Brent many years, would have introduced him with an embarrassing wealth of biographical triumphs. But, it went the way it did and, for better or worse, that actually wasn’t my only snafu of the night. I know everyone’s memories of the occasion will be filled with what went right, which was Brent’s presentation to the lodge.

With Art and Piers sharing the billing, we had planned a “Stump the Band” kind of event, with everyone pitching questions to our new Fellows, as knowledgable and experienced as anyone can be, but I doubt there’d have been any stumping. With Brent solo, he instead told us about the labor that went into cracking the cipher that long concealed the Craft rituals of the Rectified Scottish Rite.

If you have read Committed to the Flames, Art’s and Brent’s book on this secret code, its author, and the rituals themselves, then you know all about it, but the brethren present were new to this subject. (And, if you know the book, you’ll recall The ALR factors into the story.)

Brent’s illustrious career has encompassed teaching mathematics, statistics, computer security, and cryptology at Duke, Johns Hopkins, and George Washington universities, as well as The National Cryptologic School. This will get the conspiracy goofballs worked up, but he also was a cryptologic mathematician at the National Security Agency for a quarter-century. So you can see why he’d want to decipher a vexing code that possibly only its creator ever knew.

I’ll try to summarize the story. Circa 1826, Robert Benjamin Folger, age 23, a physician and a new Mason at Fireman’s Lodge 368 (and later in I.R.A. 2) here in New York, filled a pocket-sized commonplace book with his own cipher of the Rectified Rite’s Craft rituals. This was not like anything you’ve seen in any Masonic ritual book, nor was it the Pigpen Cipher, or any other coded alphabet that might come to mind.

The code had been cracked twice in the twentieth century, first by W. Bro. Wil Baden in the 1950s, another New York Mason; and again by Mr. Donald H. Bennett in the ’80s. Proving it’s a small world, Bennett was inspired by the article “Fraternal Cryptography” Brent recently had published on the subject. Neither man was aware of Baden’s success.

Brent Morris sporting his UGLE regalia.

Baden cracked the code using what they call the “matched plain and cipher” technique made possible by the inclusion of some English text in Folger’s pages, which Baden compared and contrasted with symbols in the cipher. Bennett employed the “cipher text only” method involving “classical cryptanalytic techniques.” His findings are revealed in his paper “An Unsolved Puzzle Solved” in Cryptologia magazine.

Honestly, it’s a bit much for me to comprehend, but some basics were discovered: Folger’s code masked English words; it is read from left to right, top to bottom; the same encryption style is employed throughout, and twenty-six symbols stand for English characters; words are represented by clusters of symbols; and identical repeats of many words are seen. Get Committed to the Flames for the full story.

The book also contains the amazing (to me, at least) biographical details of Folger’s medical career and Masonic activities. Not your typical lodge sideliner!

The Q&A was fruitful and continued into the dinner hour. I was serving as Acting Secretary for the meeting, and it was my pleasure to bring to the lodge’s attention one petition for membership submitted by an aspiring brother from Indiana. Maybe you’ve heard of him: Chris Hodapp! I emailed my congratulations to Chris within minutes of the lodge closing. (I mean we voted him in!)

The next evening with The ALR came a month later when we hosted our annual table lodge on April 29. Worshipful Master Yves provided the ritual (in my twenty-nine years, I don’t think I’ve seen the same table lodge ritual twice), and we heartily toasted seven times in the company of Grand Master Steve Rubin, then in his final week in office. Always a great time.

At The ALR annual table lodge on April 29.

In lieu of an after dinner speaker, the Grand Master used his traditional time for remarks to have us all rise and share a little about ourselves, which is an important exercise, especially in a research lodge where practically everyone hails from a different Craft lodge.

As reported elsewhere on The Magpie Mason, we will gather again next Saturday—the 30th—at Ulster Lodge 193 in Saugerties. Then we’ll conclude the year on Tuesday, June 30 at Masonic Hall for our Annual Meeting, with elections and installation. Hope to see you around.