Showing posts with label Mandaeans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mandaeans. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

‘Second Circle’s St. John’s Day’

    
The New Jersey Second Circle of The Masonic Society will host its Saint John’s Day Feast on Friday, June 24 in North Brunswick, New Jersey.

An evening of good company, good conversation, and good food, with the added attraction of a very special guest speaker, awaits you.

In honor of St. John’s Day, we will welcome to our podium the Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University, who will tell us about a fascinating gnostic religion that dates back to antiquity, yet still survives today.

Dr. Charles Haberl’s topic is the Mandaean faith, a tiny Abrahamic religion that upholds John the Baptist as its ultimate teacher. This religion exists in and around Iraq, but is almost on the verge of extinction. What he has to say about the Baptist in particular should intrigue every Freemason, and the plight they suffer today makes Dr. Haberl’s presentation even more compelling.

Dr. Haberl also is an Assistant Professor at the Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures at Rutgers. He has served as an Undergraduate Fulbright Faculty Advisor and as a member of the Advisory Committee for Study Abroad Programs in the Middle East at Rutgers, as well as a juror and panelist for the United States Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarships for Intensive Summer Institutes. With James McGrath of Butler University, he received an NEH grant to translate the Mandaean Book of John in 2010. We are very fortunate to have him.

The Masonic Society’s St. John’s Day Feast
Friday, June 24 at 7 p.m.
Sir John’s Restaurant
230 Washington Place, North Brunswick

$50 per person. Reservations are required and can be made ONLY by sending your payment, via PayPal, to: masonicrsvp@gmail.com no later than Monday, June 20.

Great food: Unlimited hot hors d'oeuvres (served butler style), your choice of entree is Baked Stuffed Chicken or Roast Top Sirloin of Beef or Broiled Stuffed Filet of Flounder. Plus side dishes, salad, desserts with coffee etc., and unlimited soft drinks. (Cash bar only.)

NAME YOUR ENTREE when you transmit your payment.

It is NOT necessary to be a member of The Masonic Society to attend this special event. ALL Masons, their ladies, and friends are welcome to this fraternal and spiritual celebration of one of the Patrons of the Craft. Remember it was on June 24, 1717 when the Grand Lodge of England was formed, ushering in the age of modern Freemasonry as we know it.

Seating is limited, so no walk-ins can be accommodated. No reservations can be honored without advance payment via PayPal.
   

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

‘Sons and brothers’

Alpha Lodge Worshipful Master David Lindez, right, discusses Johannite influences on Freemasonry as W. Bro. Yoel Lee, Master of Sons of Liberty Lodge No. 301, listens. The two lodges met together last Wednesday at Alpha.


It was a joint communication of two of New Jersey’s last urban lodges last Wednesday night in East Orange, when dozens of brethren of Sons of Liberty Lodge No. 301 visited Alpha Lodge No. 116. And it was a full house. The Tiler had to break out the Royal Arch aprons just to make sure everyone was able to enter the lodge!

WM Lindez almost always begins Alpha’s communications by thanking the brethren for taking time away from their families and vocations to be there, promising them intellectual and spiritual value in return for their precious time. This evening, the brethren were presented a stimulating talk on Johannite symbolism in Freemasonry. You know that lodges are dedicated to the Holy Saints John, and that the Feast Days of St. John the Baptist (June 24) and St. John the Evangelist (December 27) were adopted for special occasions by the fraternity, but there isn’t a definitive reason why these are so.

For background, the Master told us about the Johannite tradition, a Gnostic movement that reveres St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist. One such group, called the Mandaeans, is known here as a “distant cousin” of the three major Abrahamic faiths. Followers speak Aramaic, the language spoken in the Holy Land in the time of Christ, and consider Adam their prophet while also revering John the Baptist. Indigenous to the Near East, the Mandaeans mostly have been displaced by the war in Iraq. Tens of thousands of the faithful have been relocated, many brought to the United States.

Elements of Johannite Gnosticism found in Freemasonry include the alchemical aspects of Scottish Rite rituals, as in the EA° we see at Garibaldi Lodge, and Kabbalah symbols employed in Scottish Masonry.

“In the far past of Christianity there were Johannite sects, but their residue at this day communicates little or nothing to seekers after spiritual life,” writes A.E. Waite in his “A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry.” “We have only to note therefore in the present connection the persistence with which Blue Masonry is dedicated to the Baptist and Evangelist in Scotland: It remains under their aegis to this day, as a sacred commemoration of that time when Operative Masonry lived and moved and had its being in the light of Christ. Of dedications to Moses and Solomon, Masonic Scotland knows as little as of the drift and scattermeal of liberal theology, or of a theistic Duke of Sussex. In addition to the two Saints John, Scotland maintains from year to year with solemn observance the sacred Festival of St. Thomas, especially in the Sanctuary of Mother Kilwinning.”

Coming up at historic Alpha Lodge on May 27 is the presentation of speculative papers by newly raised Master Masons:

“Archetypical Influences and the Molecular Impact of Sacred/Secret Words in Masonry” by Bro. Mardoche Sidor;

“The Pillars of Masonry” by Bro. Michael Terry; and

“Reactions to Music in Freemasonry” by Bro. Nathaniel Gibson.