‘Prestonian Lecture 2015’

     
The United Grand Lodge of England has announced the Prestonian Lecture for 2015, titled “Wherever Dispersed: The Traveling Mason,” to be presented by Bro. Roger Burt of Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076, among other Masonic affiliations.

Read and download the paper here.

Roger Burt, Ph.D. enjoyed a lengthy academic career at the University of Exeter, where he is an Emeritus Professor, studying and teaching the effects of the Industrial Revolution on society. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Geological Society, and a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. In Freemasonry, Burt is a Past Master of Vectis Lodge No. 3075 in West Kent; a Past Master of Quatuor Coronati; a Royal Arch Mason; and an Honorary Professor in what was the Center for Research into Freemasonry at the University of Sheffield.

Magpie file photo

Front: Trevor Stewart and Roger Burt. Rear: John Acaster and Peter Currie
at Alpha Lodge No. 116, December 12, 2007.

A Prestonian Lecturer is appointed annually by UGLE to promote education among the brethren in the jurisdiction. By tradition, the lecturer travels about England presenting his work, and raising funds for a charity of his choice. In more recent years, it has become common for Prestonian Lecturers to travel abroad, with a number of them accepting speaking engagements in New Jersey and elsewhere in America. I shot this photo of Bro. Trevor Stewart (Prestonian Lecturer 2004) and Bro. Burt December 12, 2007 at Alpha Lodge No. 116 in East Orange.

Additionally, the Norman Spencer Prize for 2014 has been awarded to Bro Michael Karn of Temple of Athene Lodge No. 9541 in Middlesex, England for his paper “English Freemasonry During the Great War,” which presented the effects of the First World War on English Masonic lodges. The Spencer Prize is QC2076’s only honor named for a person; Norman Spencer served as Master of the lodge in 1959-60. In 1970, two years after Spencer’s death, the lodge instituted this tradition of honoring scholarly achievement in this way. He was a veteran of the First World War, having served in Egypt and France, making this year’s prize-winning paper an apt choice.

My thanks to The Canberra Curmudgeon, Bro. Neil Wynes Morse, for this news from England.

In closing, let us pray and send healing energies to Bro. Trevor Stewart, who is facing a daunting health challenge at this time. My brother, you are in my thoughts often, and I wish there were something I could do to spare you this trial. I hope to sit in lodge with you again soon.
     

‘Exeter nixes EXESESO’

     

The Spring issue of ESSWE Newsletter, the periodical of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism, reports the closure of Exeter University’s Centre for the Study of Esotericism. The text of the article is reproduced below.
(h/t Mark Stavish.)

Exeter MA in Western Esotericism

and EXESESO Close

By Mark Sedgwick

Exeter University has announced the closure of the Exeter M.A. in Western Esotericism and of the Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism (EXESESO). Both were started in 2005 by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, whose early death in 2012 triggered the closure of the program and of EXESESO.

The program and EXESESO opened in 2005, with Goodrick-Clarke as professor and a number of part-time lecturers, including Peter Forshaw (who now teaches in the Amsterdam M.A. program), Hereward Tilton, Clare Goodrick-Clarke, and Christopher A. McIntosh. It was the third European program of the kind, joining Paris and Amsterdam, from which it differed in that it was a part-time distance-learning program, taken over two years. It was supported financially by the Blavatsky Trust, a British charity set up in 1974 “to advance education in and promote or further the study of or research into religion, philosophy, and science” in cooperation with the Theosophical Society in England.

The program started with eight students, and within five years had admitted more than ninety M.A. students and several Ph.D. students. By 2012, five Ph.D. dissertations had been completed (one on Theosophy), and eight were in process (two on Theosophy). A small cloud over the program’s success was cast by occasional rumors of lack of rigor and of some students failing to distinguish clearly enough between academic study and their own personal practice, however, and according to a senior researcher who preferred to remain anonymous, Exeter was not entirely happy with the program. It consisted of a number of optional modules and two required modules before the thesis, one on “The Western Esoteric Traditions: Historical Survey and Research Methods” and one on “Theosophy and the Globalization of Esotericism.” This perhaps gave Theosophy a slightly more prominent position than some would see as appropriate, but only slightly, as the role that Theosophy has played in the development of modern Western Esotericism has certainly been major.

Goodrick-Clarke’s early death in 2012 marked the beginning of the end. According to Exeter’s press office, the decision to close the center and program followed “an internal review and discussions with the [Blavatsky] Trust,” and Goodrick-Clarke’s death “sat alongside consideration for the program as a whole.” Exeter’s press office was unable to comment on the conclusions of the internal review, but there were suggestions that it was not entirely positive. Exeter has made arrangements for the centre’s remaining Ph.D. students to complete their projects in the history department, where there are still scholars working on related subjects, such as Richard Noakes, whose research interests include Victorian psychical research, and Catherine Rider, who recently published Magic and Religion in Medieval England. But Europe now once more has only two M.A. programs in Western Esotericism, not three, which is an unfortunate setback for the development of the study of Western Esotericism in Europe.