‘Mark Stavish in the Reading Room’

    

Craftsmen Online’s next discussion in the Reading Room will feature Bro. Mark Stavish and the chapter titled “Occult Masonry in the Eighteenth Century” of his book The Path of Freemasonry. Click here for the reading material. Click here to join the discussion on Wednesday, October 30 at 7 p.m.

I have not read this book, but if Mark wrote it, then we’d be wise to invest the time to read it. Publisher Inner Traditions says:

A practical guide to the symbols and rituals of Freemasonry as a path of spiritual development and self-realization.

Explaining how Freemasonry promotes personal growth through the symbolic building of self and an inner Temple of Wisdom, Mark Stavish explores different areas of Masonic experience, including sacred symbols, tools, and rituals. He provides simple exercises and practices to help internalize and personalize the lessons presented, including dreamwork, journaling, meditation, and prayer.

• Shares the history and meaning of Freemasonry and its symbols

• Offers thoughtful explorations of different areas of Masonic experience, drawing on esoteric doctrines and paralleling them with experiences found in daily life

• Provides simple exercises and practices to help internalize and personalize the lessons presented, including dreamwork, journaling, meditation, and prayer

In this practical guide, Mark Stavish details the spiritual lessons and rituals of Freemasonry as a step-by-step path of spiritual development and self-improvement for both Masons and non-Masons—men and women, alike. He explores the history and meaning of Freemasonry and its symbols, from its origins in the Temple of Solomon to the medieval guilds to the Renaissance, and explains how the Craft promotes personal growth through the symbolic building of self and an inner Temple of Wisdom in much the same way that Masonry’s rituals symbolize the building of Solomon’s Temple in accordance with the mystical architectural instructions of Hiram.

Drawing on esoteric doctrines, including the Qabala, alchemy, sacred geometry, John Dee’s angelic magic, and the secrets of the Gothic cathedral builders, each chapter addresses an area of the Masonic experience, paralleling them with experiences each of us finds in our own lives. The author provides simple practices to help internalize and personalize the lessons presented, including dreamwork, journaling, meditation, prayer, and understanding sacred architecture. The author also examines the crafting and use of the spiritual and symbolic tools of Freemasonry, such as the trestle, or tracing, board and the Chamber of Reflection.

Providing the tools to make the Craft an initiatic experience of self-improvement, the author shows that, ultimately, the Masonic experience is the human quest for self-realization and self-expression, so that we each may find our place in the Temple of Wisdom.

Mark Stavish is a respected authority on Western spiritual traditions. The author of 26 books, published in seven languages, including The Path of Alchemy and Kabbalah for Health and Wellness, he is the founder and director of the Institute for Hermetic Studies and the Louis Claude de St. Martin Fund. He has appeared on radio shows, television, and in major print media, including Coast to Coast AM, the History Channel, BBC, and the New York Times. The author of the blog VOXHERMES, he lives in Wyoming, Pennsylvania.

Mark is at labor in Wyoming Lodge 468 in his hometown.

     

‘In the Reading Room: Craftsman, Warrior, Magician’

    

The Reading Room, one of the many features of Craftsmen Online, will host Angel Millar next month. From the publicity:

The Reading Room will open Monday, July 30 at 8 p.m. (ET). Our panel that evening will be RW Michael LaRocco, RW Clifford T. Jacobs, and Bro. Jason W. Short, with special guest Bro. Angel Millar.

Our reading selection is from Bro. Millar’s The Three Stages of Initiation Spirituality: Craftsman, Warrior, Magician.

Click here to download your free copy of this material. Click here to find the Zoom meeting.

     

‘Daily Masonic Progress starts now’

    

This morning begins the collaboration of Craftsmen Online and RW Bro. Darren Allatt of Australia, blogger and podcaster extraordinaire. He has been guiding his own audience through his production, “Daily Masonic Progress,” and now he joins Craftsmen Online’s podcast team. His segments will appear on Thursdays.

Craftsmen Online, while based in New York, is not an official voice of the Grand Lodge of New York, although that august authority endorses the independent platform. It was launched about four years ago, during the pandemic, by RW Steve Rubin, now our Deputy Grand Master, and W. Bro. Michael Arce, a veteran broadcaster of many years experience.

Darren Allatt is a Past Master of The Leichhardt Lodge 133, and is a Past Junior Grand Warden of the United Grand Lodge of New South Wales & Australian Capital Territory. He has been writing brilliantly on Substack for almost a year. I recommend his blog without any hesitation, mental reservation, etc.

With all that out of the way, you should listen to two episodes of the Craftsmen Online podcast unveiled this morning. Click here to enjoy a 27-minute Arce-Allatt interview. Click here to make your Daily Masonic Progress with the 10-minute debut.

    

‘Learn the Secret Teachings in the Reading Room’

    

Manly P. Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages covers many subjects, but one of the passages on Freemasonry will be the topic of discussion in the Reading Room, a feature of Craftsmen Online, this spring. At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 30, the panel will look into “Freemasonic Symbolism.” A taste:

The sanctum sanctorum of Freemasonry is ornamented with the gnostic jewels of a thousand ages; its rituals ring with the divinely inspired words of seers and sages. A hundred religions have brought their gifts of wisdom to its altar; arts and sciences unnumbered have contributed to its symbolism. Freemasonry is a world-wide university, teaching the liberal arts and sciences of the soul to all who will hearken to its words. Its chairs are seats of learning and its pillars uphold an arch of universal education. Its trestleboards are inscribed with the eternal verities of all ages and upon those who comprehend its sacred depths has dawned the realization that within the Freemasonic Mysteries lie hidden the long-lost arcana sought by all peoples since the genesis of human reason.

Click here for the text. Click here to join this meeting via Zoom when the time comes.

     

‘Discover the Lost Word in the Reading Room’

    

Next in Craftsmen Online’s Reading Room is a chapter of Albert Mackey’s The Symbolism of Freemasonry. From the publicity:

The Reading Room will open on Tuesday, January 30 at 7 p.m. Eastern. Our panel for the evening will be R∴W∴ Clifford T. Jacobs, Bro. Jason W. Short, R∴W∴ Bill Edwards, and V∴W∴ Michael LaRocco. This meeting is open to the public, as all persons with an interest in the Ancient and Gentle Craft of Freemasonry are welcome.

Our reading selection is from Mackey’s The Symbolism of Freemasonry. We will focus on Chapter 31: “The Lost Word” (pages 300-311). This will allow us to have a lively philosophical discussion without getting into any of the ritual work in a non-tiled setting.

Click here to download your free copy of this material. Click here to enter the Reading Room.

     

‘Find the “Lost Keys” in the Reading Room’

    

Craftsmen Online

I’ve organized a few book clubs over the years, and the second reading every time was Manly P. Hall’s The Lost Keys of Freemasonry for its brevity and the author’s enticing prose. And, because Hall wrote it about thirty years before he was initiated into the Craft, the book is kind of a curio. So I was delighted to learn today that the Reading Room at Craftsmen Online has chosen Chapter Five as the focus of its next discussion. From the publicity:

The Craftsmen Online Reading Room will re-open on Sunday, October 29 at 7 p.m. Our panel for the evening will be R∴W∴ Clifford T. Jacobs, Bro. Jason W. Short, R∴W∴ Bill Edwards, and V∴W∴ Michael LaRocco.

This meeting is open to the public, as all persons with an interest in the Ancient and Gentle Craft of Freemasonry are welcome. Our reading selection for October is from Bro. Manly P. Hall’s The Lost Keys of Freemasonry. We will be focusing on Chapter Five, “The Qualifications of a True Mason.” This will allow us to have a lively philosophical discussion without getting into any of the ritual work in a non-tiled setting.

Click here for a copy of this material. To join us, click here.

No RSVP is required to attended this event. Please save the date and Zoom link on your calendar.

     

‘The Meaning of Masonry in the Reading Room’

   

It’s been a long time since I visited W.L. Wilmshurst’s The Meaning of Masonry, but I’ll have to take it up again this month because the Reading Room at Craftsmen Online has Chapter V slated for a conversation in three weeks. From the publicity:

The Reading Room

The Meaning of Masonry, Chapter V

by W.L. Wilmshurst

Thursday, June 29 at 7 p.m.

Our panel for the evening will be RW Clifford T. Jacobs, Bro. Jason W. Short, RW Bill Edwards, and VW Michael LaRocco. This meeting is open to the public, as all persons with an interest in the Craft are welcome.

The Reading Room is sponsored by RW Steven Adam Rubin, Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of New York.

For reading material, click here. The Reading Room is here.

While this widely read classic is not for everyone, it is, in my view, essential reading. The thinking Mason ought to have a familiarity with The Meaning of Masonry and its author. As is always the case with speculative explorations of Freemasonry, the reader should remember how the text is just one man’s opinion, but anyone can receive pleasure and profit from these pages.

W.L. Wilmshurst

Walter Leslie Wilmshurst (1867-1939) was an English Mason who wrote beautifully and prolifically on the spiritual aspects of Craft ritual and symbol. He was made a Mason at Huddersfield Lodge 290, having been raised in 1890; he later affiliated with Lodge of Harmony 275, where he served as Worshipful Master in 1909. Better known is his being inaugural Master of Lodge of Living Stones in 1928. And he held grand rank, as Assistant Grand Director of Ceremonies in UGLE, in 1929.

Even if The Meaning of Masonry isn’t meaningful to you, I encourage reading his other titles, particularly the inspiring The Ceremony of Initiation (1932) and The Ceremony of Passing (1933). The various times I’ve started book clubs, I have put these brief texts in the curriculum to the brethren’s praise.

     

‘Craftsmen Online Super Fans unite!’

    

Starting today, Craftsmen Online, the clearinghouse of Masonic education and news launched during the pandemic to keep Light shining, offers content reserved for those who wisely pay the inordinately modest subscription fee. I signed up yesterday (I’m a sucker for exclusivity).

You know the podcast, with its 3,000 episode downloads per month; and you’ve read the blog; and you receive the newsletter; and maybe you’ve attended the Reading Room; and perhaps you’ve benefitted from the ritual education and the historical research (I think that’s everything!), so now we happy few who pony up five bucks a month can partake of:

• subscriber-exclusive podcast episodes with select guest stars
• access to exclusive Zoom meetings with special guests
• podcast episodes without ads
• early access to the episodes

Excerpted from the publicity:

From the beginning of Craftsmen Online, RW Steven Adam Rubin and I have been dedicated to producing quality products. We see this as more than a project to provide a place for Brothers to connect during the pandemic, but as a long-term resource to unite Masons across the internet who seek more Light in Freemasonry.

After three seasons, with our early episodes being broadcast to an audience, thanks to your generous support, we have grown our reach to all jurisdictions in the United States and beyond! Now it is time to offer you, our listener, an opportunity to take your experience to the next level.

Today, we proudly announce the Craftsmen Online Podcast Super Fan subscription. Podcast enthusiasts will be able to listen to our episodes early and ad-free, with special subscriber-only episodes with select guests who go deeper and continue their discussions—and we will offer you the opportunity to interact with these select guests virtually during VIP Zoom webinars.

Bro. Michael Arce

Co-Founder and Podcast Host

The inaugural podcast with paid subscription features Ohio’s Bro. Jason Short, who speaks on “An Exploration of Words and Widows,” in which he delves into Biblical content borrowed for the EA°. There also is a PDF we may download for further tutelage.

The Craftsmen Online Podcast Super Fan subscription comes via Patreon, which marks its tenth anniversary this month. It really is that simple. While Craftsmen Online is created by New York Masons, its content befits all the brethren wheresoever dispersed about the face of the earth. That’s you! Click here to sign up. If you are yet unfamiliar with this top rated podcast and the other attractions of Craftsmen Online, click here to inspect the warrant, as it were.

     

‘M&D’s Apprentice up for discussion in the Reading Room’

    

Masonry should be an energy, finding its aim and effect in the amelioration of mankind. Socrates should enter into Adam and produce Marcus Aurelius; in other words, bring forth from the man of enjoyments the man of wisdom. Masonry should not be a mere watchtower, built upon mystery, from which to gaze at ease upon the world, with no other result than to be a convenience for the curious. To hold the full cup of thought to the thirsty lips of men; to give to all the true ideas of Deity; to harmonize conscience and science, are the province of Philosophy. Morality is Faith in full bloom. Contemplation should lead to action, and the absolute be practical; the ideal be made air, food, and drink to the human mind. Wisdom is a sacred communion. It is only on that condition that it ceases to be a sterile love of Science, and becomes the one and supreme method by which to unite Humanity and arouse it to concerted action. Then Philosophy becomes Religion.

You didn’t get that in your EA Degree, didja?

Those sentences are a snippet of the first chapter, titled “Apprentice,” of Morals and Dogma by Albert Pike. This chapter is the material for the January 31 meeting in the Reading Room, hosted by Craftsmen Online. Click here for the text.

Sponsored by Deputy Grand Master Steven A. Rubin, the Reading Room is a hybrid meeting space with an in-person panel for discussion that the rest of us may join via Zoom. Hosts Bill Edwards and Michael LaRocco will welcome Cliff Jacobs and Walter Cook at seven o’clock to delve into this opening chapter of M&D.

All Master Masons in good standing are welcome to attend. (If you miss it, catch it later on YouTube.) For more information, visit Craftsmen Online here.

     

‘Freemasonry as a Way of Awakening’

    

Through the kind offices of Bro. Michael Arce and the team at Craftsmen Online, my review of Rémi Boyer’s Freemasonry as a Way of Awakening appears in that website’s blog section as of yesterday, and I reprint it here today. Make sure you peruse the entire site. The podcast episodes are essential listening. My thanks to the principals for welcoming my attempted writing.

FREEMASONRY AS A WAY OF AWAKENING

BY RÉMI BOYER

ROSE CIRCLE PUBLICATIONS 2020, 142 PAGES, PAPERBACK, $19.95

France’s Rémi Boyer has immersed himself for decades in studying philosophies and initiatory rites, among other things, and has authored a book for understanding Freemasonry. His knowledge and experience lead him to see Masonic initiation as metaphysical, and his prose is patient and instructive, but while Freemasonry as a Way of Awakening presents brilliantly conceived and stated ideas, it may confound Freemasons of the Anglo-American tradition—that is to say, most of us.

The first two paragraphs prime the reader:

“From the outset, let’s state the paradox. Initiation is not thought of, it manifests itself, it is realized, outside of all linearity conducive to thought in which the person de-realizes himself. Initiation is ‘unstoppable’ only in a state of non-thought. Silence is required. The more the literature devotes pages to the subject, the more the so-called initiatory orders multiply and the less they encounter, not only ‘initiates,’ but the ‘initiatables,’ who themselves are rare. Time is confusing while the initiatory ushers in fusion with Being. 

“Initiation is by nature indefinable, elusive as the Spirit. Always, it is an initiation to one’s own original nature or ultimate reality, to the Real, to the Absolute, to the Divine, to what remains, no matter the words, since, precisely ‘there,’ there are no words.”

So, you see, 2B1ASK1 is not a consideration here. Boyer writes of and for the Egyptian Rite.

Likewise, our notions of receiving Light and of “making good men better” are blurry in Boyer’s vision. It’s not that they are contrary or unimportant goals, but this author likens initiation to art. He sees those two as avenues for “controlled madness, madness that allows the overcoming of the limits of the conditioned person.”

Masonic initiation, as Boyer recommends, is comprised of seven stages: the request for initiation; analysis of the request; passage under the blindfold; initiation instruction and orientation to the tradition; the “first” initiation; the initiatory work; and evaluation. As a blindfold conjures a familiar image and key aspect of our own rituals, I’ll skip to No. 3 and explain what Boyer intends. Employing the blindfold is not so much to keep the candidate in a state of darkness until the moment comes to bring him to Light; the blindfold here indicates “a plunge conducted by the candidate into the darkness of self.” It is akin to the alchemical decomposition of raw matter, and the unmasking heralds the start of awakening. “It must leave a slight crack in the continuity of the person” so that initiation will “turn this slight crack into a fissure” and the deeper the fissure, the deeper it descends into the depths of the psyche, and the more it allows the radiance of the light of Being.”

To be sure, there are passages of this book that ring clearly to the Anglo-American Masonic ear. Chapter 8 is titled “Dysfunctions in the Initiatory Process,” and it begins with a description familiar to many of us: “Internal struggles, competitions between organizations, the ‘professionalization’ and ‘commodification’ of initiation are commonplace. They reflect the radical break with traditional rules and principles and the lack of initiatory work by the leaders of these organizations more concerned with their careers than with their awakening.” Still, even these disappointments can be overcome, Boyer explains, by those on a quest who can see beyond the habits of fallible people.

Where our Freemasonry prescribes moral lessons to make a good man better, Boyer shows us a different way down the Masonic path. Actually, there isn’t a single path, as “the initiate is always at the center of an infinity of possible paths.” It’s about psychology, and the context of everything must be respected. The potential candidate for initiation must not be regarded only as someone seeking admittance, but he has to be considered as a person with a psyche shaped by age, social and economic status, family life, any traumatic past experience, and other factors that cause the interviewer “to harmonize himself” with the petitioner. Even the generations and geography are significant (time and space are important understandings in this book), as the author plainly points out how seeking Masonic membership in Paris today is very different from when the city was held by Nazi forces during World War II.

The lengthiest, by far, and possibly most illustrative chapter of the book is devoted to questions that you might have for the author. In fact, they are questions put to Boyer in seminars he conducted in Europe. From “What is the ultimate function of ritual?” to “What is the true nature of the work of a venerable master?” and fifteen others all serve to enlarge finer points from the main body of the text. And then follow nearly fifty pages of appendices that, sometimes, might qualify as Too Much Information!

Freemasonry as a Way of Awakening, published in English for the first time, truly can rouse the Brother Mason of the Preston-Webb-Cross tradition to see how some brethren in Europe tend to their labors. It’s never a question of one way is superior to another. As always with Boyer, context is crucial, as “initiation in a lake village does not rely on the myths that underlie a mountain initiation.”