‘Follow me: Freemasons walking tour’

     
I probably shouldn’t even post this—I learned of this New Jersey event just now, practically accidentally through social media, so I’m sorry for the too late notice. I believe registration was closed yesterday, although tickets seem to remain available still. I don’t know how, where, or if the lodge has publicized this at all, but here’s the word from the Morris County Tourism Bureau:

The Freemasons in Morristown

July 23, 1 to 2:30 p.m.

Masonic Lodge

Jacob Arnold’s Tavern on Morristown Green

George Washington was among 68 officers in attendance at a December 27, 1779 Masonic meeting held in Morristown at Jacob Arnold’s Tavern celebrating the Festival of St. John the Evangelist. The American Union Lodge was meeting locally to select a grand master, and General Washington was one of the choices. It is estimated that of the 10,000 officers who served during the Revolution, 2,000 were Masons.

The Freemasons formed their own local lodge, Cincinnati No. 3, in the early 1800s. Many of the most prominent residents throughout the town’s history have been members. Here’s a chance to tour their building (c. 1931) on Maple Avenue with Masons and view the displays and artifacts in their onsite museum and library which opened in 2015.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about the “secret society” of the Masons, here’s your opportunity.

Saturday, July 23 at 1 p.m. The tour will be held at 39 Maple Avenue, Morristown. Tour size is limited to 30. Cost: $15. Metered parking is available on adjoining side streets.

The Summer 2016 Historical Walking Tour Series from the Morris County Tourism Bureau is being generously sponsored by AAA Northeast and Whole Foods Market, Morristown.

The Morris County Tourism Bureau is a Destination Marketing Organization that positively affects the economy of Morris County by promoting the area’s exceptional historic, cultural, and recreational opportunities by providing services to residents, business travelers, and tourists.
     

‘Hodapp to visit Cincinnati Lodge’

     

Courtesy Travis Simpkins

Chris “Freemasons for Dummies” Hodapp is scheduled to visit historic Cincinnati Masonic Lodge No. 3 in New Jersey for a speaking engagement on Monday, June 13. The lodge is located at 39 Maple Avenue in Morristown.

That’s all I got.

See you then, Bro.
     

‘Masonic miscellany’

     
This edition of The Magpie Mind admittedly is a mess, but here are announcements of some great local events, so be sure to scroll all the way through.

Last weekend, I had the chance to enjoy some time in my alma mater’s main research library and, instead of doing something useful, I poked through a tiny bit of the thousands of unusual texts pertaining to Freemasonry. Here are just a few images:

• Tomorrow night, The American Lodge of Research will meet to hear Worshipful Master Michael Chaplin present his paper “Patron Saints of the Operatives.” Eight o’clock in the Colonial Room on 10 at Masonic Hall (71 West 23rd Street in Manhattan).

• Monday, November 9 is the deadline for booking your seat at the Scottish Rite Valley of Central Jersey’s Rose Croix celebration featuring Billy Koon:

Click to enlarge.

• Next Wednesday, Bro. Mohamad will speak at Livingston Masonic Lodge in New Jersey:

Click to enlarge.

• Congratulations to the new officers of the Masonic Library and Museum Association: President Aimee Newell, Vice President Brian Rountree, Secretary Cathy Giaimo, and, returning for another term, Treasurer Eric Trosdahl.

• The MLMA’s 2016 annual meeting is planned tentatively for October at the Lee Lockwood Scottish Rite Library and Museum in Waco, Texas.

• Speaking of Masonic libraries, the Grand Lodge of Nebraska dedicated its library and museum last month at the grand lodge headquarters in Lincoln.

• On Sunday, November 8, Cincinnati Masonic Lodge No. 3 in Morristown, New Jersey (39 Maple Avenue) will unveil the Morristown Masonic Center Museum and Library with an opening reception. Dignitaries to include the chairman of the New Jersey Historical Commission, the chairman of the Morristown Historic Preservation Commission, and RW Bro. Glenn Visscher of the Museum of Masonic Culture in Trenton (and a Past Master of the lodge). 

• Looking around the interwebs, I recently found the finest source of Masonic news: The Past Bastard. Click here and be amazed!

• Madison Masonic Lodge No. 93 in New Jersey has undertaken the project of replacing the headstone of Jepthah B. Munn, who was Grand Master of Masons for the State of New Jersey in the 1820s. Donations are welcome here.

I shot these photos Monday in the Presbyterian cemetery across the street from the lodge and, as you can see, this stone has seen better times.

Munn deserves the overdue attention. He was grand master during the age when grand masters were graaaand! A quick history:

In 1837, the Grand Lodge of New York expelled a number of Masons and closed a few lodges that were at labor in New York City. (I haven’t yet learned why they were expelled.) These brethren regrouped and called themselves St. John’s Grand Lodge. At that time, the Grand Lodge of New Jersey adopted a resolution voicing its support of New York’s authority to expel these Masons. This resolution was passed to make it clear from the start that all New Jersey lodges were prohibited from having communication with this clandestine grand lodge.

However, St. John’s Lodge No. 2 in Newark (it became No. 1 later) ignored the prohibition and other, less formal, requests from individual grand officers, and had Masonic intercourse with these New York guys, hosting them in their lodge, etc. For their role in this, Jepthah Munn and John Darcy, both past grand masters, were punished by Grand Lodge of New Jersey for defying grand lodge’s order to not interact with those expelled Masons.

During all of this, some New York lodges, in retaliation for the New Jersey past grand masters’ meddling in this episode, refused to allow New Jersey Masons to visit their lodges. This feuding continued for a number of years, even into the 1850s. What has to be remembered during all of this is that this period is the tail end of the anti-Masonic era that came in the wake of the “Morgan scandal” that nearly saw the fraternity in New York and New Jersey wiped out. For example, in 1842 New Jersey Freemasonry consisted of 162 Masons in eight lodges. So this bickering is kind of like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Also, this episode is not all that unusual in the 19th century history of New York Masonry. In the early years of the 1800s, a split between the “country lodges” and the “city lodges” took place that really caused problems. Two very real grand lodges coexisted until 1827, when they united.

Anyway, the clandestine grand lodge Munn aided is not unknown to New York scholars (there actually is a New York lodge named after Munn). He was an interesting man: Born in East Orange in 1780, where there is a Munn Avenue; a renowned medical doctor, who served as president of the Medical Society of New Jersey in 1828, and a co-founder and eventual president of the Morris District Medical Society; a respected member of the New Jersey General Assembly.

He was made a Mason in 1804 in Paterson Orange Lodge 13; affiliated with Cincinnati No. 3 in Morristown, serving as Master from 1809 to 1814; was warrant master of Chatham Lodge 33 (now Madison 93) from 1814 to 1819; and affiliated with St. John’s No. 1 in 1850. Was elected Senior Grand Warden of Grand Lodge in 1817, and served as Grand Master from 1820 to 1824.

Because of his activity in the New York episode, Munn—and this is why I’ve been crazy about him from the minute I learned of him about seven years ago—was subjected to charges of unmasonic conduct in 1842. Charges dropped the next year. Censure was imposed by Grand Lodge in 1850, but withdrawn in 1852. He continued to attend grand lodge communications through 1860, until ill health slowed him down. He died in 1863 in Chatham.
     

‘WTF?!’

    
I leave town for two days, and some nut tries to burn down Cincinnati Lodge?

The lodge, chartered in 1803, is a special lodge in New Jersey Masonry; it is named for the Society of the Cincinnati. The brother who saved the building from devastating arson is well known about the apartments of the temple. I cannot even fathom what he went through and accomplished. The following is a story from the local paper:

Drew Jardine planned to snow-blow around the Morristown Masonic Center Friday night but said he wound up wrestling with a man who burst into the center carrying jugs of gasoline and hollering that he would burn the place down. Morristown Police Capt. Steve Sarinelli identified the suspect as John Mowbray, 50, of Morris Township.

“It’s unclear what his motive was,” Sarinelli said. There was vandalism to the Masonic Center a few days before Friday’s incident and police are exploring a possible connection between Mowbray’s alleged break-in and the earlier criminal mischief, Sarinelli said.

In an interview Saturday morning in the sitting room of the circa-1930, Colonial center on Maple Avenue, Jardine said he was waiting for the snow to wane so he could clear the sidewalks when he heard the front door being forced open around 10:20 p.m. “It’s a stroke of luck I was here. The building could have been burned down,” said Jardine, 57, a member of the center’s building committee. Jardine said he confronted the intruder, a stranger in his fifties, who was carrying four quarts of gasoline in milk containers. Jardine said he exchanged blows with the man, who was trying to get up stairs to the center’s second floor, and he was able to wrestle him to the floor. The jugs fell during the scuffle and one broke open so that the center’s sitting room and foyer still reeked of gasoline Saturday morning.

Jardine said he managed to hold the man on the ground while he called police on his cell phone. Police confirmed that the suspect was taken into custody, charged with attempted arson and burglary, and lodged in the Morris County jail on $100,000 bail. Jardine spent the night at the center, not fearful of more intruders but resigned to tackling the snow surrounding the center, which he planned to do Saturday. He said that detectives, firemen and sheriff’s office investigators were on the premises till nearly 1 a.m. “I’d never seen that man’s face before. There are a lot of strange things in the world,” he said.
  

‘Mark Tabbert in Morristown’

     

Northern New Jersey Chapter of Rose Croix will host its next meeting in Morristown on Tuesday, November 13, when Most Wise Master Moises I. Gomez welcomes Ill. Mark A. Tabbert, 33° to the podium as our honored guest speaker.

Mark A. Tabbert

We’ll start out at Cincinnati Lodge No. 3 for a catered meal before heading around the corner to the historic Ford Mansion for Mark’s talk on the Masonic life and times of George Washington. As you know, Mark is the Director of Collections at the George Washington Masonic Memorial in Virginia, as well as the author of several thoughtful books on Freemasonry that you should have read by now.

This meeting commemorates the 260th anniversary of the Masonic raising of a young man named George Washington. Cincinnati Lodge is named for the Society of the Cincinnati, America’s oldest private society devoted to patriotic values. Founded in 1783 by American and French military officers of the American Revolution, it lives on today through its hereditary membership as a historical and educational foundation in the public service. The Ford Mansion is a mid-18th century residence that served as Gen. George Washington’s headquarters during the storied winter of 1779-80. It now is part of the National Parks Service.

So you see the theme here.

The program at Ford Mansion is open to Master Masons. Leave me a note (not for publication) with your e-mail address in the comments section if you want to attend, and I’ll get back to you.

     

‘Mozart in Mo-town’

    
The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra will return to the Community Theatre in Morristown next week to perform a Mozart program in its new “Best of” series of performances. A quartet of concerts will take the NJSO to four venues between October 14 and 17. Click here for the schedule and for tickets.

Excellent seats still are available, even at the $18 level!

Click here for audio of the selections, and to view a two minute promotional video featuring Music Director Jacques Lacombe, in his inaugural season with the NJSO.


The repertoire:

Mozart The Magic Flute Overture, K. 620

Mozart Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622
II. Adagio
Karl Herman: clarinet

Mozart Symphony No. 1 in E-flat Major, K. 16
III. Presto

Mozart Symphony No. 35 in D Major, K. 385, Haffner
Allegro con spirito
Andante
Menuetto
Presto

Tchaikovsky Suite No. 4, Op. 61, Mozartiana
III. Preghiera

Mozart Don Giovanni Overture, K. 527

Mozart Sinfonia Concertante for Flute, Oboe, Horn, and Bassoon,
K. 297b
II. Adagio
Bart Feller: flute
Robert Ingliss: oboe
Robert Wagner: bassoon
Lucinda Lewis: horn

Mozart Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551, Jupiter
IV. Molto allegro

Alex, get the Cincinnati boys together and get other there!
    

‘Chapter and chorus’

Still playing catch-up with reporting recent events. It was two weeks ago that Northern New Jersey Chapter of Rose Croix met and hosted a concert by the Men's Chorus of the Presbyterian Church in Morristown. That's our Most Wise Master wearing the red bowtie.

Actually the meeting took place in Morristown too, while our building recovers from the recent flooding.

The choir was excellent. Dividing the concert into two sets, the singers first, and not surprisingly, performed a number of religious pieces before moving into the Masonic music, featuring works by Mozart, Sibelius, and others, including Ignatz Joseph Pleyel, who composed music you may recognize from the Master Mason Degree. The choir concluded the performance with more recent works, jazz standards and show tunes among them.

W. Trevor Stewart at Cincinnati Lodge No. 3

     
"Let me start with some heresy," said W. Bro. Trevor Stewart, beginning his lecture at Cincinnati Lodge No. 3 in Morristown, New Jersey earlier this evening. "I am not a heretic, but I am on the side of heretics. They live more interesting lives... and have more interesting deaths!"

The topic of Trevor's heresy this time is the Pillars in Masonic ritual, in a lecture that is the abridgment of a published and more technical work of research, but still covering highly useful points including: the names Jachin and Boaz; the casting of the Pillars; their use as archives for Masonry; the placement of globes atop them; and their ritual use in the modern lodge.

"King Solomon's Temple may well have not existed," said Trevor, defining his heretical speculation directly. "There is no archaeological evidence of such a large and magnificent structure, as described in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles."

These books of the Bible "were written 500 years after the events they try to describe by a priestly class" that had an educational need "to make Solomon's Temple the cultic center" of society.

And there is no trace of KST in the ancient records of the neighboring nations – Babylon, Egypt, Assyria, Greece – he added. All are "curiously silent" on King Solomon's activities, and there is no external record of Nebuchadnezzar destroying it. "The Wailing Wall is supposed to have Phoenician inscriptions, but they have not been deciphered or dated.

"Assuming it did or could have existed, there are aspects that interest Freemasons," he continued. "But they are problematic. There are problems here if you take (1 Kings and 2 Chronicles) literally as presented. But it is symbolic Freemasonry we are engaged in.

"Pillars have fascinated men since the beginning of civilization," Trevor explained. "In their view of the cosmology, they believed the heavens were supported by pillars. There is hardly any kind of ancient civilization that had no pillars, and not necessarily with religious buildings only, but with secular ones as well.

"There are about 400 words in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles that tell the story of Solomon's Temple. It was meant to house the Ark of the Covenant. It was to be a stone copy of the Tabernacle, an idealized copy, carved out almost in the same kind of dimensions, but the Tabernacle itself did not have pillars. The two pillars didn't figure into the Second Temple of Zerubbabel. The vision of the Second Temple in Ezekiel – a dream description, not a factual description – indicates that pillars were not important."

Instead, Trevor explained, meanings were communicated in single pillars with special names. There was Beth El ("the House of God") and Mizpah ("a pillar in the wilderness"). But why Jachin? Why Boaz? "The two pillars assumed a huge significance in the 18th century" when Masonic ritual took the form we know today. "Josephus didn't ascribe much significance to those names, nor did early Church figures like Bede. So why were they chosen? Is there Kabbalistic significance?"

Evidently it was during the late 17th century when a fascination of KST gripped educated people. In 1691, "a Scottish minister wrote that the Mason's Word is like a rabbinical teaching on Jachin and Boaz, with the addition of some secret signs." Books like "Orbis Miraculum" (1659) by Samuel Lee, and "Solomon's Temple Spiritualized" (1688) by John Bunyan reflected a curiosity of KST in that age when Freemasonry began to take its modern shape. It was a change of focus from the antediluvian pillars of the children of Lamech, which concerned the operative masons of previous centuries, as noted in the Regius and Cooke manuscripts. The shift progressed by 1723 upon the publication of Anderson's Constitutions, which gives a description of KST, but without naming the two Pillars. But then, the 1738 revision of the Constitutions reverts to the antediluvian pillars!

"From 1696 to 1726 we have 16 manuscripts that give us clues," Trevor said. "There is a gradual progression of Solomonic Pillars entering the lodge room." First, we see the names of the two Pillars were used in the instruction of candidates. Then there were "crude illustrations of the Pillars on tracing boards." Then there were the miniature columns at the Wardens' stations. "And finally, at the end of the 18th century, there are the full grown, or scale, pillars in the lodge room. The lodge takes on the form of a sacred space, laid East to West, like a temple, with the Pillars."

"Ancient Hebrew is a difficult language to master," he added. "There are 22 consonants with a system of vowels to help in pronunciation, but it is highly conjugated – with many tenses and moods – and no spaces between written words and sentences. And modern Hebrew is not much help.

"The Bible is inconsistent in assigning meanings to the names of the Pillars, and does not support our ritual. Dumfries Manuscript No. 4 (circa 1710), was the first time Masons tried to work out the meanings of the names, hinting at the power of God.

But there is no obvious reason why they were chosen to establish some special significance, he continued. "And why only two pillars when the numbers three, five and seven are so important? Is it an ancient principle of duality" or because there were only two degrees at that time?

At this point Trevor realized time was growing short, and he progressed quickly to the other subtopics he wanted to cover before the hour grew too late.

"Where were the Pillars cast?" he asked. "2 Chronicles tells us in the clay grounds between Succoth and Zeredathah, but there is no archeological evidence of copper refining there. There is no evidence they had sufficient quantity of copper to make the Pillars, as described, but there is some evidence of importing copper ingots from Turkey at about 1,200 BC," not too long before the time of KST. "But it is highly unlikely that ancient peoples knew how to cast brass."

Addressing the ritual description of the Pillars as repositories of archives, Trevor asks why anyone would seal vital information inside hollow pillars where there would be no access. "I found it a ridiculous explanation as a young Mason from practical terms," he recalled. "But what you have is this: a confusion of the children of Lamech pillars with the Solomonic pillars.

"There was a huge industry in Egypt-mania in the 18th century, which explains why the composers of our ritual made the Pillars the containers of archives." Egyptian hieroglyphics, in the time before the Rosetta Stone made sense of them, were appropriated for Craft ritual purposes and projected upon the two Pillars as records of ancient wisdom.

And supposing that ritual was written by committee, "and that committee not leaving well enough alone, added globes" to the tops of the Pillars.

"The globes are an English invention," Trevor said. "This was the Age of Discovery" when images necessary to navigation were important. By contrast, the French did not use globes, but "went in a totally different direction," using bowls instead, as "containers or vessels."

So why do we use our two Pillars?

"If we are Speculative Masons, we want to use symbols for our purposes. Why do we have the Pillars? Because the candidate enters between them," and that they are always in the West "is not an accident. It is a statement about Kabbalah.

"The 10 sephiroth is the Tree of Life. There are three parallel columns ranging from severity to mercy as ways of looking at 10 emanations of God, to depict the impossible.

"The third is the middle column: the balance between severity and mercy. It is possible that by placing the candidate between the Pillars, he is supposed to be that balance. Aren't we supposed to be balanced men? Happy, useful men in society? It is possible that by placing the candidate between them, we are making a statement.

"I offer it for your criticism and analysis. The Pillars are not there by accident, but we don't think about them enough.

"We have this tradition in England called 'Lodges of Instruction,' " he continued. "At first I thought 'Great! I'm going to be instructed in this!' but they really are lodges of rehearsal.

"A special plea, if I may: This basic symbol of when we first come into the lodge? Make it useful in some class of instruction."

It was getting late, but there was time for a question-and-answer session.

One brother asked if anything connected Sir Isaac Newton to Masonic ritual.

"Yes," Trevor replied. "He was obsessed with Solomon's Temple, and his disciples were Masons and Fellows of the Royal Society. He was an alchemist in physics, but he was working on a manuscript for 50 years... right up until 14 days before he died because he wanted to establish the measure of the cubit as a means to measure the earth and determine the longitude and latitude."

Another asked about the use of two pillars in alchemical symbology, and if that figures into the evolution of Masonic identity.

"I've been to 36 libraries owned by 36 Freemasons of the 18th century," Trevor said. "They all had the same alchemical texts. They had magpie minds."

Your correspondent couldn't resist teasing the guest speaker a bit. "Trevor, the timing of your 'heresy' is impeccable," said I. "We're now a few hours into the Jewish New Year!"

The Worshipful Master's presentations to Trevor included two books. Cincinnati Lodge, chartered in 1803, is named for the Society of the Cincinnati, the organization founded in 1783 by American and French officers of the American Revolution to perpetuate lasting contact among these veterans. Its first president was George Washington, who made Morristown a vital strategic base of operations during the Revolution. One of the books given was "Private Yankee Doodle," the memoirs of Joseph Plumb Martin, who served there under Washington. The other was "Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior," which is commonly attributed to Washington, but actually is an older guide to gentlemanly conduct introduced to Washington at a young age.




Bro. Stewart is employed in a speaking tour of the area, and other parts of the country, through the next two weeks, appearing in numerous Masonic, Martinist and Rosicrucian venues. The companion, or concluding, lecture to Monday night's presentation will be delivered Wednesday, Oct. 8 at historic Alpha Lodge No. 116 in East Orange.