‘Kent Henderson on tour’

  
Before there was Laudable Pursuit; before the Knights of the North; before Vitruvian; before there was a Traditional Observance lodge in the United States; before there was a Masonic Restoration Foundation; before this whole modern movement to introduce Freemasonry to Masonic lodges in the United States – okay, maybe not before St. Alban’s in Texas and John Mauk Hilliard’s seven rules – there was Kent Henderson and Lodge Epicurean 906 in Victoria, Australia. And this spring, Henderson will be here in the Northeast on a speaking tour, with stops in New Hampshire, Boston, and we’re working on New Jersey.

His treatise titled Back to the Future was practically a VSL to those of us in the early years of the previous decade who knew there had to be more to Freemasonry than the tedium and mendacity provided by the service club lodges that overwhelmingly dominate the Order here in America. Here is Guideline No. 1 in Back to the Future: “The aim of the lodge in all its endeavours will be quality, in ceremonial, in workings, and in after proceedings. We believe quality must be paid for.” So you see the self-evident culture shock.

Go hear Kent Henderson speak. Ask him about Epicurean, its ethos, conception, founding, obstacles, success, and current state.

More on the potential New Jersey date as soon as I firm up some details.

MAGPIE EDIT: Bro. Kent’s visit to the United States has been canceled. Another time, perhaps.

     

Click the images to enlarge.

  

‘Masonic Week 2010: Society of Blue Friars’

    
This edition of The Magpie Mason is the fifth attempt to catch up on 2010 events I haven’t told you about. Every time I post one of these, I remember yet another, so this may take a while. In fact, this one dates to Masonic Week 2010, nearly a year ago, and I want to finish catching up before this Masonic Week arrives in only two weeks!



Blue Friar No. 93 Thomas W. Jackson, left, and the newest Blue Friar, No. 99, Pierre “Pete” Normand, Jr. react to a funny remark from Blue Friar 95, Mark A. Tabbert (not shown) at the 66th Annual Consistory of The Society of Blue Friars February 12 during Masonic Week 2010 in Alexandria, Virginia.

Friday, February 12, 2010

After the dual meetings of the Knight Masons, it was time for the 66th Annual Consistory of The Society of Blue Friars. The likelihood of cronyism is much lower here because, while it is not stated as such in the rules, it evidently is a longstanding tradition that those tapped to join the Consistory be published authors or otherwise reputable writers and educators. I’d rather hang out with these guys any day.

The perils of the snowy weather affected this meeting also. It was said, but I still don’t know if in jest, that Grand Abbot S. Brent Morris would not be able to attend, for although the major roads had been cleared of the record snowfall by Friday morning, he wasn’t about to shovel his driveway! Well, he’s earned that right.

So, the lovely and talented Tom Jackson of Pennsylvania – the mere mention of whom induces agita in some grand officers I know – assumed the presiding officer’s duties, and did a fine job of welcoming the 2010 Blue Friar – that’s No. 99, for those keeping score: Pierre “Pete” Normand, Jr. of Texas!

I’ll admit from the start that I cannot do justice to Bro. Pete’s Masonic resume, but here are the obvious highlights:

• Past Master of Sul Ross Lodge No. 1300, Texas;
• Past Master of St. Alban’s Lodge No. 1455, Texas;
• editor, (the former) American Masonic Review;
• Past Master and Fellow of Texas Lodge of Research;
• author, The Texas Masons: The Fraternity of Ancient Free & Accepted Masons in the History of Texas;
• editor, The Plumbline, the newsletter of the Scottish Rite Research Society;
• Honorary SGIG (33°), A&ASR-SJ; and
• Founding Fellow of The Masonic Society.

After 11-and-a-half months, my notes are among That Which Was Lost, but Pete’s address concerned something near and dear to the Magpie Mason’s heart: the origins and successes of what now is called European Concept and Traditional Observance practices. His presentation followed the outline sketched by someone else I’m fond of: Bro. John Mauk Hilliard. In brief, and with my own editorializing:

Excellence in ritual: Before thinking that phrase speaks for itself, please understand that the excellence involves more than perfect memorization and flawless recitation, because artistic ability is equally vital. You see, the benefit ought to belong to the aspirant, in the form of his comprehension and enlightenment. It is not about the ritualist and his next gold pin.

Masonic education: Lodges must teach the meaning of Masonry by instructing the brethren in the meanings of our rituals and symbols, as well as in overall philosophy, history, jurisprudence, and other aspects of Masonic culture. Why does this need to be pointed out?

Table Lodge/Festive Board: Is there a better way to spread the cement than to dine together, sharing a convivial ritual experience? Great food, great company, great conversation. We aspire to these in our other walks of life, so why not in the lodge?

Charity: The real thing, and not just having the treasurer cut a check to this or that or the other, but having the brethren sink their hands into the mortar of their community, giving their own time, talent, and toil to benefit others.

Attire: Proper dress for the Speculative Mason really should be black tie, plus regalia that is equally resplendent. It is often said in Masonry that it is the inner qualities of the man, and not his outer characteristics, that make him suitable to the Craft, but it is forgotten how that message originally was directed to wealthy Masons, and now it is commonly misinterpreted as an excuse for the less motivated among us (I’m as guilty as anyone) to not go the sartorial extra mile.

Exclusivity in membership: There is no reason to initiate every man with a pulse. In my jurisdiction, if you can fog a mirror, pay the paltry petition fee, and pass a criminal background check, you’re in. Consequently we are well stocked with men who really should have joined the Elks or Kiwanis. Those are worthy organizations that need good people too. Instead, they are Masons, and they are the reason why so many lodge events and projects are incongruent with the sophistication of our Order’s teachings and ethos.

Commitment: Whether a brother sits on the sidelines or labors his way to the East, every Mason needs to support his lodge in tangible ways. Attendance and participation are required. Lodges that do not demand these do not get them. My lodge has about 500 members, 450 of whom exist only in a database.

It’s a short list, and it is irrefutable. Amazingly, in 2011 these guidelines still are heretical to many.

I can’t wait for the 67th Annual Consistory next month on Friday the 11th.

    

American Lodge of Research

     

The elected officers of American Lodge of Research for 2009.

It was another fine meeting of American Lodge of Research Thursday night, with brethren elected to membership, officers elected to their 2010 stations, and a very useful paper delivered. ALR meets three nights per year, in March, October, and December. It is the oldest lodge of Masonic research and education in the United States, receiving its warrant from the Grand Lodge of New York in 1931.

The secretary’s desk was a busy sight. It was announced that the new book of transactions, with research papers presented in 2007, was published recently, and that copies have been mailed to the members. The next book will cover both 2008 and 2009, and will be out next year.

In the new members department, two worthy brethren were elected to Active Membership, which is achieved by those who do the work of the lodge: writing and presenting papers. W. Bro. Philippe of Heritage Lodge No. 371, and W. Bro. Gilbert Ferrer, Master of Shakespeare Lodge No. 750 have been immortalized! And a good thing too, because Gil was to be the speaker for the evening.

Among those elected to Corresponding Membership was Bro. Luther from Cornerstone Lodge No. 37, who might actually learn about this good news by reading The Magpie Mason. Surprise!

And, as always, there were plenty of familiar and friendly faces. Aside from WM Bill Thomas and his officers, there were John Simon-Ash, Mark Koltko-Rivera, and John Mauk Hilliard, one of the deans of Masonic education in the United States, who dutifully took the vacant Senior Master of Ceremonies chair. And also Bro. Alessandro (with short hair!), and Bro. Frank, and about 35 others.

One cannot attend lodge at 23rd Street without being dazzled by the diversity of regalia on display. My unofficial Magpie Apron Award for the evening goes to the young Mason who was sporting a most elegant apron from a Scottish Constitution lodge he joined in Belgium while serving in the U.S. Army attached to NATO.

But on to the paper for the evening. W. Bro. Ferrer, an attorney by profession, employed his expertise in both logic and rhetoric to illustrate the illogic and incoherence of anti-Masons, particularly the fundamentalist Christian sort indigenous to the United States who appear on the John Ankerberg Show.

If you’re familiar with fundamentalist Christian anti-Masons, then you know how they operate:

They present themselves as the experts on Masonry; and since they all are in agreement on their opinions, then those opinions are facts; and therefore it is up to Masonry to defend itself. And of course there are numerous instances of jerking quotations out of context, and of citing obscure writings as popularly accepted texts for Masonic education purposes.

For example, the characters studied by Ferrer had mailed questionnaires to 50 grand lodges in the United States. Half replied to the questionnaire. Of those 25, a total of four stated that Albert Pike’s widely distributed (but frankly, rarely read) tome Morals and Dogma was a valid source of Masonic information. Therefore, they cite M&D as a kind of Masonic bible and, naturally, they use its index to find all kinds of scary ideas to misquote or otherwise abuse to alarm their legions of the dangers of Freemasonry.

Yes, these people still exist in 2009. In the United States.

Here is one quotation from M&D that especially frightens the antis:

Masonry, around whose altars the Christian, the Hebrew, the Moslem, the Brahmin, the followers of Confucius and Zoroaster, can assemble as brethren and unite in prayer to the one God who is above all the Baalim, must needs leave it to each of its initiates to look for the foundation of his faith and hope to the written scriptures of his own religion. For itself it finds those truths definite enough, which are written by the finger of God upon the heart of man and on the pages of the book of nature. Views of religion and duty, wrought out by the meditations of the studious, confirmed by the allegiance of the good and wise, stamped as sterling by the response they find in every uncorrupted mind, commend themselves to Masons of every creed, and may well be accepted by all.

In the Temple Room at the House of the Temple in Washington stands this massive altar of black and gold marble. (It’s bigger than my car.) Upon it rest copies of the volumes of sacred law of the world’s major religions.

W. Ferrer performed an expert job of demolishing not only the thoughtless opinions held by this particular strain of anti-Mason, but also the very methods it employs to form those opinions. These antis seize a similarity Masonry might share with, say, sun worship, to draw the conclusion that Masonry is sun worship. They rely on non-sequiturs to connect dots that otherwise never could be connected to claim that Freemasonry is incompatible with Christianity. They cite the fate of William Morgan in 1826, an aberration in Masonic history, to paint Freemasonry as a secret society that threatens the very existence of America in 2009.

The paper sparked a lively discussion afterward, with the brethren sharing many ideas varying from suggested readings to articulate replies to this form of anti-Masonry. It was Bro. Alessandro of Mariners Lodge No. 67 who simply pointed out that the question is not “Is Freemasonry compatible with Christianity?” (it certainly is), but “Is this form of Christianity compatible with Freemasonry?” (it certainly is not).

WM Bill Thomas called on brethren around the room who had raised their hands waiting to speak, and the conversation shifted from how one benighted group views Freemasonry to how Freemasons view Freemasonry. It is a great debate within Freemasonry about its own identity: Is Masonry nothing more than a host of spaghetti dinner fundraisers or is it a private society of exceptional men exploring the great mysteries of human existence?

W. Bro. Sam from Mariners suggested that Masonry is not a “secret society” because a secret is learned but once, whereas a mystery is gradually explored through continuous search. Bro. Mark Koltko-Rivera, who appeared on television this afternoon on the Discovery Channel’s Hunting the Lost Symbol, asserted “we really do have secrets. Secrets are forbidden to be spoken; they are ineffable. We hold our rituals in confidentiality, and no one has the right – in the United States of America – to criticize us for it!”

The next Regular Communication of American Lodge of Research will be Monday, December 28 when the newly elected officers will be installed. The inaugural paper of the new Worshipful Master, Bro. P.F. De Ravel D’esclapon, is titled “The History of French Lodges in New York City, 1760 to 1800.”

(I’m looking forward to hearing this paper. The francophone side of the Grand Lodge of New York, such as L’Union Française Lodge No. 17 – are there others? – is of particular interest to The Magpie Mason. Somewhere in the back of my mind is the goal of introducing these lodges to La Maison Française at NYU. French House maintains a limitless schedule of literary readings, fine arts exhibits, symposia, and other cultural happenings in support of French culture, and I hope to bring the subject of Freemasonry to its attention. French Freemasonry’s past, present, and future offer a lot to talk about! The arts, politics, faith, and other subjects could be starting points toward innumerable discussions. I’m digressing myself a bit too much here.)

Brethren, make an evening of it. Before the meeting be sure to duck into the Limerick House next door for dinner. After the meeting, the brethren take their time saying good night, preferring to mingle in the lodge room and hallway to chat. The stalwarts head out for cocktails.

And there is more to ALR than its meetings. WM Thomas has taken the lodge “on the road” somewhat this year, hosting the sojourning Prestonian Lecturers and taking them to Albany. And he was a recent guest lecturer at Nutley Lodge No. 25 in New Jersey. And don’t forget the occasional social function at the Cigar Inn!
     

‘Free to keep secrets’

     

Standing before a bookcase stocked with a complete set of AQCs, author James Wasserman addressed a packed room May 29 at the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Library at the Grand Lodge of New York.

Author James Wasserman was the guest lecturer for “Freemasonry and the Quest for Liberty” at the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Library at the Grand Lodge of New York May 29, promoting his latest book The Secrets of Masonic Washington: A Guidebook to Signs, Symbols, and Ceremonies at the Origin of America’s Capital.

I think library Director Tom Savini should be proud. It was an excellent event that drew a standing room only crowd, which is amazing considering how many other things there are to do in New York City on a warm, still, summertime Friday evening. The Master of The American Lodge of Research was there, as was the Junior Warden of Civil War Lodge of Research, and other accomplished people in the field of Masonic education, like John Mauk Hilliard. But it seemed as though most of those present were not Masons, which indicates to me that Freemasonry can pique the interest of educated adults by hosting cultural events in elegant settings.

“Freemasonry is the spiritual component of the greatest political experiment in history,” said Wasserman, introducing his thesis of the Craft’s significance in the birth of the American Republic. He divided Freemasonry’s inevitability into three historical epochs. The first is Biblical history, wherein we see man attempting to govern himself in Eden, followed by that gradual evolution of patriarchal leadership, from Noah to Moses. His point: that the political governance we know today has a spiritual basis. He illustrated this with a recollection of the prophet Samuel who sagely warned the Israelites that they should be careful what they wish for when it comes to hoping for a king to lead them. Investing their faith in a temporal king would displease the Lord. Quoting 1 Samuel 8:10-14:

And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked of him a king.... This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.... And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards.... and give them to his servants.

A period of about 500 years in which the Hebrews would be ruled by kings ensued, ending with the Babylonian Captivity. This, Wasserman said, would not have escaped the notice of those who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence, with its list of grievances against George III.

We remember the somber observation of the Declaration’s first paragraph, where it is stated that people with sufficient cause have the right to dissolve political ties with others for their self-preservation. Then of course there is the immortal, stirring, poetic clarion of the second paragraph.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

What many of us probably forget is the list of several dozen very specific complaints enumerated against the Crown, “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny,” and that foreshadow the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

At approximately the same time Samuel’s warning came to fruition, Classical Greece and Rome were giving the world new forms of government, Wasserman explained. Direct democracy was practiced by the former (c. 500 BCE to 322 BCE), and an embryonic form of representational government was established by the latter (c. 509 BCE to the first Caesar). Greek Democracy proved to be unwieldy and inevitably dysfunctional; Roman politics morphed into militarism, which led to empire and “bread and circuses” until “leaner, meaner and hungrier barbarian tribes” undid it, he added. A millennium later, the Catholic Church proved to be the stabilizing force that established a political hegemony over Europe’s many regional rulers. This brings us to Wasserman’s second, if ironic, historical period of Freemasonry’s eventuality: feudalism.

While this term often is applied to other places and times, feudalism is the political and legal system of medieval Europe in which peasants, who were bound to the land on which they lived, were in effect possessions of the lords who owned those lands. Needless to say, these peasants, or “serfs,” had no political rights or access to justice. Even the advent of the Magna Carta in 1215, a revolution well remembered by the Founding Fathers, did not adequately address the rights of the peasantry. This backdrop reveals the glaring contrast embodied by the operative stone masons who were free to travel to practice their craft.

From the 12th to the 16th centuries, thousands of cathedrals, churches and other stone structures were built across the British Isles and throughout Europe, Wasserman explained, “about 1,200 of them, in 25 countries, remain today.” Their existence is thanks to “skilled craftsmen, geometricians and architects” who were permitted and capable of electing their own officials, occupying their own residential areas, tending to their own charitable and health care benefits for their workers and dependents.

Masons developed the guild system, which expanded on those existing freedoms, adding the ability to establish rates of pay, delineation of responsibilities, prevention of fraud and, of course, systems of recognition – those ritualized answers to questions that affirm ownership of one’s mind.

“Secrecy is the right of a free person,” Wasserman said, thus operative masonry is the second building-block, set atop the foundation stone of Biblical man’s struggle to establish self-rule, leading toward a culmination of individual liberty and political governance. That operative masonry, with its “magnificent edifices reaching skyward,” best represents the singular experience of a free person, for its successful transformation of mysteries, like geometry, into permanent achievements.

Of course before that zenith is reached, Europe evolves through the Renaissance, described by Wasserman as the offspring of the communion of Christianity and Islam, and the Reformation, and it is shortly thereafter that masonry undergoes an important, if enigmatic, transformation. The 17th century saw membership in masons’ lodges opened to men who had no connection to the building trades. The best known of these is Elias Ashmole (1617-92), an intellectual possessing a strong interest in Natural Philosophy, who was drawn to the society for its possession of Sacred Geometry and other hidden wisdom.

Wasserman’s third building-block, his capstone, is the Enlightenment. The labors of Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Denis Diderot, Christopher Wren and so many others gave rise to and defined the Enlightenment, when “rationality, as a means to understand reality, rejected the hopelessness of earlier Catholic thought.” To Wasserman, the United States, its Declaration of Independence, its Constitution and Bill of Rights embody mankind’s desire for spirituality. “The human soul craves religion, spirituality, and oneness with God,” he said, whereas atheism and agnosticism “leave an unsatisfied hunger in the human psyche.” And Freemasonry is a companion to this new nation and its government. It offers to the seeker after knowledge that very quest, without causing him to leave his intellect at the door of a church. “I believe that resulted in the greatest quest for human liberty in history. The United States of America and its entire legal and ethical system is based on the Bible, and it is no mistake to identify America as a Christian country. (I’m Jewish, by the way.)”

For James Wasserman, Freemasonry is the “most refined advance of Western culture.” While it consisted of wealthy elites at the time it took root in America, it grew and spread throughout the new nation when it embraced soldiers, artisans, merchants and other self-made men, proving itself to be an ordered society of far-thinking individuals who also would work outside of the lodge to help society strengthen its democracy by dismantling social and economic barriers.

It was a great event for the Livingston Library. The only problem is the talk Wasserman gave was more interesting than the book he wrote. In recent years there have been a bunch of quality books about Freemasonry that are excellent resources for Mason and non-Mason alike, and Wasserman’s “Secrets” definitely ranks among them. His book is one of the more lavishly illustrated, with dozens of outstanding color photographs – many of them close-ups – revealing the amazing details of the symbols and codes embedded in the architecture of our nation’s capital.


Monuments, statues, friezes, plaques, and other architectural voices tell the story of a peculiar system of human governance, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols that are mysterious to all but the initiated eye. But to be honest, a great many of these do not have connections to Freemasonry. To be sure, there are many Masons depicted in stone and metal, from George Washington to Albert Pike, and there are symbols that also appear in Masonic instruction, but the majority of these landmarks have oblique relationships to the Craft: Biblical figures, Greco-Roman gods, zodiac symbols, et al. “The Secrets of Masonic Washington” is valuable reading to the student of symbolism, but its Masonic education value is more contextual; in a way, it actually demonstrates that Washington, DC is not the physical manifestation of Masonic idiom that inexperienced or naïve Masonic students want to believe it is.

The stronger expressions of the Wasserman thesis are found in his discussion of the city’s man-made topography itself, and while nearly all Masons in the United States know at least a little about how Brothers L’Enfant and Washington sketched the earliest drafts of the federal city’s layout, Wasserman does a great service by poetically likening the square shape of the capital to both moral integrity, as in a square deal, and to a more esoteric understanding of the four physical elements of Fire, Air, Earth and Water. Other eye-openers include Wasserman’s perspectives on the Constitution’s relationship to the placement of the seats of the three branches of government; on the cruciform nature of the city’s design; and the spiritual harmony it all was meant to convey to the people. Invaluable reading, but outweighed by the Walking Tour that begins on page 71 that illustrates the many beautiful, but not necessarily Masonic, sights to see.

James Wasserman is not a Freemason. He said he is pursuing membership in the Craft in Florida, where he resides. It is no secret that many of the best books written about Freemasonry in the past 20 years were authored by non-Masons, and Wasserman deserves to be listed among those despite what I think might be a misguided enthusiasm to credit the Craft with too much.