‘Mecca marks a magician’s birth’

    

Mecca Shrine chose McSorley’s
for its premier First Friday bash.

The nobles of Mecca Shrine, the mother shrine of the entire Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine world, gathered at McSorley’s Friday night to commemorate the birth of one of their own.

As you’ll see on his Mecca petition, Houdini
called himself an author, lecturer, and mystifier.

Harry Houdini, one of the most famous celebrities of the early twentieth century, was a magician, illusionist, and escape artist whose exploits drew thousands who came to watch in an age when mass media meant newspapers.

History says Houdini’s birthdate was March 24,
but Houdini, on his Mecca petition, said April 6.

The 150th anniversary of Houdini’s birth will be March 24 April 6, but Mecca has a new inspiration to get together and party: First Fridays.

Just launched, on the first Friday of the month, the nobles and their ladies will convene somewhere for food and drinks, not unlike the Lucky 7 plan at Azim Grotto, when the prophets do likewise on the seventh day of the month (this Thursday, in fact, at the Trailer Park down the street from Masonic Hall).

Houdini was a Master Mason at St. Cecile Lodge 568.

I haven’t been there since before the pandemic.
Good to see it hasn’t changed!

I guess Thom ordered his ale off the kids menu.

Mecca says they donated an antique fez
to McSorley’s museum.

The photos speak for themselves. Good to see Deputy Grand Master Steve Rubin getting out of the house for once!

(The Magpie Mason is not a Shriner. I had been with Salaam many years ago. What happened was the Knights of the North had a demit contest and—just to get on the scoreboard, y’understand—I gave up the Shrine and Sciots.)

All photos courtesy Mecca Shrine 1.

     

‘Symposium: Masonry and magic’

    

It’s a little early to look to June, but the California brethren are planning something I bet everyone will enjoy. The twenty-eighth of that month will be the hundredth anniversary of the raising to the Sublime Degree of Bro. Harry Houdini in St. Cecile Lodge 568 here in the city. The Grand Lodge of California will commemorate the occasion with its symposium “Bro. Harry Houdini: The Master Mystic and the Masonic Ties to Our Craft.”

This will be online only at ten o’clock (our time) on that Wednesday night.

The presenters on the bill are four Masons who are magicians too: MW Randall Brill, Grand Master; Maynard Edwards, of Invisible Lodge; S. Brent Morris (you know him); and Ralph C. Shelton, of Ye Olde Cup & Ball Lodge 880.

Click here to register. Read all about it here.