‘It was twenty years ago today…’

     

On this date way back in 2000, two “e-Masons” founded a discussion group that would wield influence far beyond what anyone could have guessed on that day.

Bro. Josh Heller of Pennsylvania and Bro. Chris McClintock of Ireland had been admins of a group named All Things Masonic, which had a select membership of Freemasons curious about everything from ritual to Rosslyn. On May 8, 2000, after eGroups had been acquired by Yahoo!, the duo launched Masonic Light.

I was not present for the beginning, but found the group during a search of Yahoo! for Masonic groups late one night at the end of January 2001. I was admitted to the Masonic Light group, and nothing for me would be the same.

The Wayfarer by Hieronymus Bosch,
oil on panel, c. 1500. Click to enlarge.

Discussions were cordial exchanges between Masons with questions and Masons with answers. I tiptoed in during some chat about symbolism found in art. Thinking everyone already knew about what I had to offer, I felt a little foolish telling the group about Hieronymus Bosch’s The Wayfarer, which I had learned of only recently from John J. Robinson’s book A Pilgrim’s Path, which employs the work for its cover art. Painted circa 1500, it shows a man leaving a decadent scene and heading toward a promising future. The initiated eye will discern elements in the painting that are very familiar. (The magpie at lower right is purely coincidental!) Anyway, my modest contribution to the discussion was received with appreciation and wonder. I was hooked.

In 2001, I was in my fourth year as a Master Mason, and I was in a jurisdiction that provided no venue where you could learn anything more than ritual and etiquette. (For the past five years, I am very happily laboring in New York.) Being engaged in the Masonic Light Yahoo! Group was greatly rewarding and, therefore, addictive. I don’t know if the social media we have today were even concepts back then; the ML group communicated through email, and the output could be voluminous. Don’t ask me why I remember this detail, but I recall the month of March 2003 saw more than 3,000 messages shared. That’s a lot. To be clear, there was much friendly banter that leavened the dazzling exchanges of facts and views, but there was hefty substance overall.

The Light that was beamed from all directions and reflected a thousand fold brought together Masons from all over the world, and, more importantly, from jurisdictions of all kinds. There were we mainstreamers, and Prince Hall Affiliation, and PHO, and various female grand lodges, and on and on. There even was a French-speaking man who was part of some self-initiating movement! And we all got along. (Sure there were occasional problems, but harmony prevailed.) We would open a lodge of sorrows upon the death of a member, beginning with the very missed George Helmer.

This was the influential power that I mentioned at the start. By 2002, I was attending AMD Weekend in Washington, DC (now Masonic Week in Virginia), and a large number of us were meeting in person. Janet Wintermute arranged lunches for us at Old Ebbitt Grill. Not only was it great to put faces to personalities, but having our conversations over food and drink, and cigars, whether at the hotel lobby bar or upstairs in the hospitality suites late into the night are fond memories. I’m tempted to name names, but I inevitably will forget someone vital to the experience, so I won’t risk it. Suffice to say a great many leaders, educators, authors, speakers, thinkers, mystics, artists, and other doers found unity in this Masonic Light group, and they have made obvious impacts on Freemasonry in the United States.

This blog was launched, in part, thanks to Masonic Light. There were many late nights I would return home from some amazing event in New York City and, instead of seeking sleep like a wise person, I would sit down at the computer and tell the story of what I had just experienced. Hodapp sometimes would reproduce these missives on the Dummies blog (like here and here), and soon I started blogging on my own.

Available via Amazon.

Bro. Heller and Bro. Gerald Reilly wrote a book about our group. Titled The Temple That Never Sleeps, it was published in 2006 and told of ways shared experiences among Masons via the web could carry the fraternity forward. Reflecting on that, right now at this moment when there are multiple lectures, conferences, toasts, etc. happening via Zoom and other platforms daily to unite Freemasons all over the world, shows a prescience that few grasped back then. “You can’t replace lodge meetings!” some thundered, and they were right—until you can’t hold lodge meetings.

Masonic Light still exists, but last year Yahoo! gutted its groups by eliminating all the web-based features. It’s a shame to have lost years of files and photos we shared, but the elimination of every single message exchanged among ourselves is really terrible. I actually used that massive body of information as reference materials. Some years back, I started a Facebook group for us hoping to recapture the magic, but about two years ago Facebook shut us down, citing its “community standards” bullshit.

But life goes on. Bro. McClintock is working on a new book. The Measure of Light will be a follow-up to his The Craft and the Cross, and will cover more than Freemasonry, such as mythologies, Neolithic stone structures, the Great Pyramids, and more.

Someone in the group at one point coined the term “bristers,” a contraction of brothers and sisters, to use in salutations to all of Masonic Light’s members, so to them all—wherever dispersed about the face of the earth—I say Happy Anniversary, Bristers!
     

‘More Light’

     
“Do open the shutter of the bedroom so that more light may enter.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(His actual last words.)

The Masonic Light group logo was designed by Bro. Drew Horn, of the Master's Jewel, in 2005.

Admit it, you have abandoned the Yahoo! Groups you once enjoyed for Masonic conversation. Facebook did us in even though it’s almost impossible to find intelligent discourse anywhere on there.

Fortunately, Josh Heller refuses to give up on Masonic Light. The co-founder, with Chris McClintock in 2000, of the most informed, diversely populated, and useful online Masonic discussion forum of early e-Masonry recently resumed the reins (from yours truly), resolved to make the group a haven for thinking Freemasons again.

After a group purge, to wash away all the obsolete email accounts and ensure the group is home only to the living, Josh has a plan that will be launched October 1. He has enlisted the help of six other members who each will take possession of one day of the week to spark discussion. These are:

Sundays: Josh Heller
Mondays: Magpie Mason
Tuesdays: Charlie Persinger
Wednesdays: Jason Mitchell
Thursdays: Clay Anderson
Fridays: Rashied Sharrieff-Al-Bey
Saturdays: Gerald Reilly (the famous Gerald Reilly)

We do welcome new members. Check us out here.
     

‘Knuffels to Rotterdam’

     

From her Facebook page, Betty Langenberg
with two of her beloved dogs.

Freemasonry, going back to the first grand lodge’s first book of jurisprudence, published 1723, is said to be best understood when it “becomes the Center of Union, and the Means of conciliating true Friendship among Persons that must have remain’d at a perpetual Distance.” The authors weren’t talking about geographic or physical distance, although in retrospect that may make sense, but were alluding to the artificial barriers of religious opinions that estranged Roman Catholics from Protestants, and that also divided Protestants by their differing denominations. And then there was politics! In modern times, that Center of Union that closes any “perpetual distance” often exists on the internet. The term “E-Masonry” was coined in the book The Temple That Never Sleeps, written by Josh Heller of Pennsylvania and Gerald Reilly of the United Kingdom. Heller is the co-founder, with Chris McClintock of Ireland, of a discussion forum named Masonic Light; Reilly is one of that group’s original conversationalists. T3NS, as the book is known among us, recounts the history of the group, making clear the wonderful alchemy created when Freemasons of numerous backgrounds, from a galaxy of lodges, and of both sexes unite in respectful discussion of all things Masonic. (Actually, “All Things Masonic” was the name of the original e-group. It became Masonic Light in May 2000 after Yahoo! acquired the e-groups.)

It is difficult to explain the bond that existed among those of us who were regular participants in the free flowing conversations that made this group so special. On February 20, 2004, Tim Wallace-Murphy phrased it this way:


“Perhaps I am simply a romantic old Irish curmudgeon who still has both feet planted firmly in mid-air, but … there is indeed a spirit of community among us, one which manifests itself in compassion for any members illness or miss-fortune; delight in members’ achievements and a growing sense of fraternity that crosses all man-made boundaries of class, culture, religious belief, as well as those barriers imposed by nature such as geographical location. ’Tis surely better to progress slowly over a long period of time to create an ambience which lasts longer than we will as individuals.”


I’d better come to the point.

I was admitted to this eclectic and wonderful group in January 2001. Not finding anything remotely akin to the Masonic education I expected from my lodge and the many Masonic fraternities I had joined since 1997, I looked to the internet for informative and inspiring Masonic discussion and instruction. Yahoo! Groups were big at the time. I signed up for a number of them, including Paul Bessel’s MasEd (as in Masonic Education) forum, and it was there where I encountered a female Mason named Betty Langenberg from the Netherlands. Specifically, she was with—at that time—Pythagoras Lodge No. 5, under the Dutch Grand Lodge of Freemasonry for Men and Women, located in Rotterdam. (Later in life, she would affiliate with Loge Ziggurat in the Hague.)

More than the novelty of “meeting” a woman Freemason, it was Betty’s knowledge, wisdom, warmth, and humor that cemented many friendships between her and many of us in the group.

On March 8, 2001, after consulting with both Josh and Chris, I invited Betty to join us on Masonic Light. It would initiate a whole new dynamic in our group discussions. Janet Wintermute arrived after a few days. Then Nadia from Athens. And Vera from Belgium. And many more over the years, most electing to avoid conversation, and others commenting in reserved tones, but many gregariously joining in the sharing of Light. I’d say we all benefitted. Personally, by the time I was being installed Master of my lodge in 2004, I felt I possessed a somewhat worldly perspective on Masonic life. I certainly was more understanding of the Craft’s teachings, and their diverse interpretations, than most of my peers who served in the East of their lodges near me at that time. There probably were about fifty MLers (there have been many hundreds who have been members these sixteen years) whose participation in the group discussions have enriched my personal Masonic experience immeasurably. I will remain indebted always.

And there were private chats outside the group.

Sister Betty and I talked (I mean e-mails) at some length, off and on, for many years. Our respective frustrations with Masonic bureaucracy. Our mutual love of tobacco. The weirdness on the streets of the Netherlands I sometimes followed in the news. Her repeated offers to let me crash on her couch should I ever visit her country. I regret not acting on this, not only because I haven’t traveled to the Netherlands since 1990, but naturally because it would have been amazing to meet up and make the personal connection (and maybe even get a tour of her lodge and grand lodge!). I never closed that “perpetual Distance.” There just never seemed to be enough time.

We all have so little time.

Betty Langenberg wrote poetry. (Click here to read a few poems.)

Brother

Brother, is there something between you and me?

The east is glowing in a golden candlelight,

we listen to Mozart, and think in different languages,

Yet, I understand you, as you understand me.

I dont know your place in your society,

I do not know to which God you daily pray,

There must be thousands things that seperates you and I.

Brother, is there something between you and me?

You make the sign and know the word.

I know you now,

although you live under a different sky;

You are my brother, seated next to me.

Brother is there something between you and me?

Between us, in the chain, the secret lives.

I heard your heart, as you heard mine,

and from countless miles, we recognize.

Betty passed away January 6 after a long illness. She was 66 years old. Her funeral service was held January 12. Her remains were cremated.

I didn’t intend to post this edition of The Magpie Mason on the fifteenth anniversary of Betty’s joining us on Masonic Light. I wanted to do it in January, but I sometimes procrastinate, and especially did so here. By the time I stopped dreading writing this and got to it, I observed the coincidental timing. I accept this in a very positive way!

What also is positive, and also with fortuitous timing, is Josh’s new effort to get Masonic Light revived and buzzing again. ML (and I think probably all Yahoo! Groups) has been quiet and still for several years, as we all have migrated to more modern social media platforms. To rally everyone, I launched Masonic Light 2.0 on Facebook in 2014 for the fourteenth anniversary of ML’s founding. It ain’t the same.

Betty almost always concluded her posts to the Masonic Light group with “Knuffels from Rotterdam” (or from a rainy Rotterdam, or a cold Rotterdam, or a sunny Rotterdam). Knuffels are hugs.

I close this tribute to my Masonic sister and friend with Knuffels to Rotterdam. Goodbye.