‘Steven Tyler’s ancestor was a Freemason’

    

BBC1

A seven-year-old episode of the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? uploaded to YouTube yesterday explains how rock star Steven Tyler has a New York Freemason in his ancestry.

With Tyler for a name, maybe that shouldn’t surprise, but as daughter Liv, the actress, undertook the genealogy research, she discovered how Steven’s mother’s side of the family included George Washington Elliott.

BBC1

Elliott (1838-1918) was at labor in Schuyler Lodge 676 in Schuylerville. He also was a York Rite Mason in Home Chapter and Washington Commandery, as well as an Eastern Star, according to a 1912 locally published book furnished to Tyler by Saratoga County Historian Lauren Roberts. He also was a Civil War veteran of both Gettysburg and Antietam.

“It may have even elevated his status in society that he was a member of the Masons,” Roberts explained.

It also was determined that Elliott had African-American roots, which confirmed an intuition the rock star descendant said he felt about himself.

BBC1

The relevant segment of the episode runs less than nine minutes.

     

     

‘BBC: The Templaaars!’

    

Last night, BBC 4’s In Our Time program reviewed the historic Knights Templar in a conversation among scholars who also refuted the notion, popular among some Freemasons, that the medieval warriors were the ancestors of Masonry.

It’s a sober-minded, authoritative, 50-minute finding of facts. (Keep listening beyond the host’s sign-off at 42 minutes.) Melvyn Bragg is joined by Jonathan Phillips, of the University of London; Helen Nicholson, of Cardiff University; and Mike Carr, of the University of Edinburgh.

The Masonic moment comes at 41 minutes, when Freemasonry’s templarphilia is laughed off as a “weird pseudo-history.”

The program’s webpage also gives a reading list of fourteen books. John J. Robinson did not make the grade.

Enjoy.

     

‘Vivat! £16K firing glasses’

    

BBC

A guest on BBC One’s Antiques Roadshow startled one of the program’s experts last week upon producing a pair of firing glasses dating to the eighteenth century. The episode, shot at Woodhorn Museum in Northumberland for this forty-fourth year of the show, was broadcast Wednesday night (and was shown again several hours ago).

Appraiser Andy McConnell appeared impressed by the glassware, which he precisely identified as not only Masonic firing glasses, which would be obvious to one in his field, but also as crafts from William Beilby and family.

BBC

McConnell explained the intricate process by which Beilby (1740-1819) enameled the pieces, before estimating their value at £16,000–which is ten thousand above the sum their owner had paid at auction.

“These glasses are absolutely the cream,” said McConnell, a historian and writer of glass topics. “So here we have the Masonic Compasses, and the Square on the other side, with this style of white floral branding around the top. They are a well known set.”

The British Museum shows such a tumbler, which it dates to 1768, on its website.

Anyway, enjoy the four-minute video here.

     

‘BBC video today is latest publicity win’

     

A three-minute video from the BBC today is the latest in a number of recent positive portrayals of Freemasonry in British news media following the release of the United Grand Lodge of England’s 2020 Annual Report.

I know what you’re thinking: “British journalism, Eddie—best in the world.”

Well, have a look. Click here for “Freemasons: Young people ‘on waiting lists’ to join notoriously secretive society.”

And now, Tatler is in on it!

     

‘Live respected and die regretted’

     

Associated Press

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, Baron Greenwich, died yesterday at Windsor Castle, just two months shy of his hundredth birthday.

Rather than try to compete with, or expand on, the many eulogies and other good thoughts prompted by the death yesterday of Bro. Philip Mountbatten, I think it best to forward to you Bro. David Staples’ summation, as expressed to the BBC earlier today.

Staples is the Grand Secretary of the United Grand Lodge of England.

Courtesy Met GL

Click to enlarge.

     

‘Light! Camera! Aprons!’

     
What a great night at Masonic Hall underway now! As this edition of The Magpie Mason goes to press, a film crew from Pinstripe Productions Ltd. from Glasgow is filming inside the Livingston Library for an upcoming BBC Scotland documentary on Robert Burns and the importance of Freemasonry to his life and work, but just a little more than an hour ago they were filming a group of us making believe we were in lodge assembled for a philosophical discussion.

Forget Hollywood glitz, this is Glasgow glamour!

The production company contacted Grand Lodge a week ago to express its desire to include New York Masons in this documentary to illustrate how Burns’ poetry is beloved in America. None other than RW Bro. Piers Vaughan—a U.S. citizen with a Brighton accent—was put in command of organizing this thing. (He has experience managing CBS News in Masonic Hall.) So, after securing the permission of the Grand Master, of the Masonic Hall Trustees, and, most importantly, of the building management staff, he was able to corral everybody inside the Empire Room on 12, while securing the altar cloth (but no Washington Bible) and regalia of venerable St. John’s Lodge No. 1 so we’d all look good. We’re told this will be broadcast in the United Kingdom next Burns Night.

As I mentioned, the crew is now in the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library interviewing Librarian Morgan Aronson and Curator Catherine Walter on the library’s various Rabbie Burns artifacts and books, but for our segment, we were seated in the Empire Room for a talk on the Masonic symbolism of the Number 3.

Piers, standing, addresses the East, with RW Jim,
RW Earnest, and Bro. Parker listening.

It was great fun. Nothing was scripted, and I think about 20 of us took turns to be upstanding for the Worshipful Master, holding the Sign of Fidelity, and expounding on the various meanings the Number 3 has to the Masonic Order.

Our impromptu Junior Warden.

I didn’t take a lot of notes because we were supposed to look natural, but the discussion ranged from religious trios (Father, Son, Holy Spirit; Osiris, Isis, Horus) to Masonic ritual (three degrees, three ancient grand masters, three to open a lodge, “three distinct knocks,” three raps of the gavel, etc., etc.) to Craft symbolism (three stages of life, the Trivium, three symbolic supports, Theological Virtues, etc., etc.) and a lot more, even from outside the fraternity, such as the three equal branches of American governance. None of this has anything directly to do with Robert Burns, Freemasonry’s Poet Laureate, but the point was to display to the television audience how a Masonic lodge functions. The more than half-hour discussion probably will be distilled to a half-minute clip in the final production, I’d guess.

Later someone noted there were 33 of us in the meeting!

At some point during the exhibition, The Magpie Mason rose, stood on the Sign of Fidelity, and suggested:

Worshipful Master, in Freemasonry we see the Freemason himself embodying the Number 3. By symbolically being the Rough Ashlar in need of moral improvement; and by being the builder himself who endeavors that work; and finally by becoming the Perfect Ashlar at the end of life’s labors, it is Masonic Man who is the Number 3.

(When it looked as though things were winding down, I also offered: “This is off topic, but when we get to the Festive Board, we will charge our cannons and fire three times,” hoping for more of a laugh than I got!)

WHY IN THE EAST?—Wearing a kilt tonight got
you plum seating for the shoot!

So, those of you in the U.K. should expect to see us, however briefly, on January 25, 2017—Burns Night. Maybe the program will make it to American viewers on one of the BBC cable channels eventually.

God, I love New York Freemasonry.
     

‘Ten signs that you are becoming a Freemason!’

     
Brand new from humorist Tom Gauld, by way of The Guardian, and I suppose in tribute to the recent series on BBC1:

Click to enlarge.

(If you didn’t know, Freemasonry figures prominently in Tolstoy’s epic.)