‘NYU is next prospect for campus lodge’

    

WSN

New York University may become the next institution of higher learning to inspire the chartering of a Masonic lodge, according to Grand Lodge’s Fraternity of Campus Committee.

I hope they reconsider.

This committee, inspired by the UGLE’s Universities Scheme effort to connect the Craft to colleges and universities, has thus far led to the founding of lodges affiliated with both Columbia University and City University of New York. They are in the news this month for permitting some of the lowest forms of Leftist scumbaggery on their campuses. (For clarity, the lodges meet in Masonic Hall, not on campus.)

NYU does also, but police have been able to intervene because NYU doesn’t have a private campus; it’s properties open onto public streets and parks, which allows the city to interrupt the Islamo-Nazi outbursts somewhat, depending on the political will of the feckless mayor, who’s been partying in Miami while this has been happening.

An NYU lodge was an idea I had ages ago (there are mentions of this in past posts), long before there was a Fraternity on Campus Committee, but I reconsidered more recently because of the character of the university today. Personally I no longer admit to having any connection to the place. I did contact NYU twice more than a decade ago, via its Affinity Clubs office, about investigating the feasibility of discerning any interest in a Masonic lodge among the university community… and didn’t get any reply.

It’s been a nuthouse for generations, of course, but today NYU allows racially segregated housing—that’s black students willfully separating themselves from everyone else—and the entire suite of anti-Americanism from the political Left, including this recent Islamo-Nazi paroxysm. 

This degradation was underway during my time there as an undergraduate. One of the last stories I filed as an editor of The Washington Square News more than thirty years ago was on a University Senate meeting where the little commissars imposed Free Speech restrictions. I totally misread the writing on the wall, thinking it was merely a dumb fad that would be forgotten. Free Speech codes—at a university!? It seemed impossible. One of the creeps responsible, as I recall, had the first name Boaz.

Getty Images

(Click here to watch one brilliant supergenius admit she doesn’t know why she is protesting.)

My unsolicited advice to the committee is fuhgeddaboudit. I guess there aren’t any normal, healthy schools among the big money institutions, but there must be others amid the more affordable schools elsewhere in New York. Believe me, NYU doesn’t want us. Even if its students have heard the word Freemasonry, they count us as part of the white supremacist patriarchy blah-blah. The fraternity doesn’t need them.

     

‘Dead Sea Scrolls online conference next week’

     

New York University will host “New Discoveries on the Dead Sea Scrolls,” an international online conference, starting Sunday. The four-day virtual event is open to the public, with free admission, but registration—for each day—is required, so click here.

From the publicity:

Dead Sea Scrolls

in Recent Scholarship

May 17-20

Registration for each day of the conference, organized by New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and with the Friends of the Israel Antiquities Authority, is required by visiting the department’s events page.

Sessions include the following:

• Canon and Authority
• Archaeology, Realia, and Science
• Interpreting Dead Sea Scrolls Texts
• Science, Technology, and the Scrolls
• Ideology and Theology
• Qumran and the Sect
• Hebrew Bible and its Interpretation
• Cave 11 and the Temple Scroll
• Law and Liturgy

The four-day event will include presentations from researchers at the following institutions: Israel Antiquities Authority, University of Haifa, Yeshiva University, University of Manchester, Hebrew University, Yale University, University of Nebraska, University of Groningen, Bar Ilan University, Brite Divinity School, Catholic University of America, University of Maryland, University of Birmingham, NYU, University of Vienna, McMaster University, University of North Carolina, University of Toronto, Oxford University, University of Notre Dame, Uppsala University, University of Kansas, and Universität Göttingen.

The conference is supported by the Friends of the Israel Antiquities Authority in collaboration with NYU, the Global Network for Advanced Research in Jewish Studies, and NYU’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies.

It was nearly 30 years ago when microfilm(!) images of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were hard to come by, were shared with NYU, an event I covered for the student newspaper. I’ll be glad to watch the findings today’s researchers will discuss next week—if I can understand and follow along.

     

‘Freemasonry and the Visual Arts’

     
“Freemasonry is a beautiful system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols….”

That snippet of ritual language differs from place to place; it sometimes goes “a peculiar system,” but the larger point about allegory and symbol is what matters. A study of Masonic thought vis-à-vis visual arts is a natural path to blaze, and fortunately a book was published last November that imparts the findings of more than a dozen scholars who examined the fine arts and material culture brought to fruition by and for Freemasonry around the world these past three centuries.

I’m embarrassed to admit I completely missed a roundtable discussion of this very book hosted last Friday at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, but you and I can profit from hearing from one of this book’s editors in three weeks when the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library will host Professor Reva Wolf for a lecture. From the publicity:

Symbols, Trade Cards, Portraits

and Figurines: Case Studies

at the Intersection of Freemasonry

and the Visual Arts

Thursday, February 27

6 to 8 p.m.

Masonic Hall

71 West 23rd Street, Manhattan

RSVP here

With the dramatic rise of Freemasonry in the eighteenth century, art played a fundamental role in its practice, rhetoric, and global dissemination, while Freemasonry, in turn, directly influenced developments in art. Professor Reva Wolf’s lecture provides an overview of diverse approaches to the study of Freemasonry and art, the wide range of art and places that its history encompasses, and some challenges inherent to the subject.

Prof. Reva Wolf

Reva Wolf is Professor of Art History at the State University of New York at New Paltz, where she teaches courses on art of the eighteenth century to the present and on methods and history of art history. She received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and is the author of Goya and the Satirical Print (Godine, 1991), Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s (University of Chicago Press, 1997), and numerous articles and essays. Her co-edited book, Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward: Historical and Global Perspectives, was recently published by Bloomsbury Visual Arts. Professor Wolf has been awarded an Ailsa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, and an NEH Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, among other fellowships, to support her research. She is a recipient of a State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.


And about that book! Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward: Historical and Global Perspectives is edited by Wolf and Alisa Luxenberg, and published by Bloomsbury Visual Arts. It’s an academic text, which is a nice way of saying it retails for more than a hundred bucks, so shop around.

It unites scholars, some of whom you’ve read about previously on The Magpie Mason—David Bjelajac, William Moore—to lead the reader on a tour of Europe, the New World, Near East, and beyond to document how art and architecture have been inspired by the Masonic mind.

“The enormously rich visual culture generated by Freemasonry has not received the attention it deserves from art historians,” says Professor Andrew Prescott of the University of Glasgow, no stranger to the educated Mason. “This pioneering collection of essays provides fascinating and tantalizing illustrations of the rich artistic legacy of Freemasonry in many different countries ranging from Europe and America to Haiti, Iran and India across media, including paintings, prints, metalwork, jewelry, ceramics, and architecture.”

The book’s contents include:


Freemasonry in Eighteenth-Century Portugal and the Architectural Projects of the Marquis of Pombal by David Martín López

The Order of the Pug and Meissen Porcelain: Myth and History by Cordula Bischoff

Goya and Freemasonry: Travels, Letters, Friends by Reva Wolf

Freemasonry’s “Living Stones” and the Boston Portraiture of John Singleton Copley by David Bjelajac

The Visual Arts of Freemasonry as Practiced “Within the Compass of Good Citizens” by Paul Revere by Nan Wolverton

Building Codes for Masonic Viewers in Baron Taylor’s Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France by Alisa Luxenberg

Freemasonry and the Architecture of the Persian Revival, 1843-1933 by Talinn Grigor

Solomon’s Temple in America: Masonic Architecture, Biblical Imagery, and Popular Culture, 1865-1930 by William D. Moore

Freemasonry and the Art Workers Guild: The Arts Lodge No. 2751, 1899-1935 by Martin Cherry

Picturing Black Freemasons from Emancipation to the 1990s by Cheryl Finley and Deborah Willis

Saint Jean Baptiste, Haitian Vodou, and the Masonic Imaginary by Katherine Smith


This lecture hosted by the Livingston Library will take place inside the Jacobean Room on the eighth floor of Masonic Hall—I guess in anticipation of a large crowd. Photo ID is required to enter the building. See you there.

Evidently, our library is in great hands! Congratulations to the Trustees and to Director Alex Vastola.
     

‘Discovering Greece and Rome in Gotham’

     
I really need to pay closer attention to the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art. Located just a mile north of Masonic Hall, the ICAA offers great events, to wit:

Classical New York:

Discovering Greece and Rome

in Gotham

Thursday, September 27

6:30 to 8:30

20 West 44th Street, first floor

Register here

During the rise of New York from the capital of an upstart nation to a global metropolis, the visual language of Greek and Roman antiquity played a formative role in the development of the city’s art and architecture. Join Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis, Matthew McGowan, and Francis Morrone, three of the authors of the upcoming book Classical New York: Discovering Greece and Rome in Gotham (Fordham University Press), for an evening of interdisciplinary exploration of New York City’s classical roots.

Classical New York examines the influence of Greco-Roman thought and design from the Greek Revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries through the late-nineteenth-century American Renaissance and Beaux Arts period and into the twentieth century’s Art Deco. At every juncture, New Yorkers looked to the classical past for knowledge and inspiration in seeking out new ways to cultivate a civic identity, to design their buildings and monuments, and to structure their public and private spaces.

Following an introduction to classical reception and its importance in New York City, the three authors will speak on their papers from Classical New York:

Fordham University Press

• Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis’s “The Gould Memorial Library and Hall of Fame: Reinterpreting the Pantheon in the Bronx”

• Matthew McGowan’s “In Ancient and Permanent Language: Artful Dialogue in the Latin Inscriptions of New York City”

• Francis Morrone’s “The Custom House of 1833-42: A Greek Revival Building in Context.”

Copies of Classical New York: Discovering Greece and Rome in Gotham will be available for purchase following the event.

Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis is Assistant Professor and Acting Executive Officer of the M.A. Program in Liberal Studies (MALS) and director of the MALS track Archaeology of the Classical, Late Antique, and Islamic Worlds at the City University of New York. She majored in history, archaeology, and classics at Cornell University, where she graduated summa cum laude, and she earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in archaeology at Oxford University. She has taught at Oxford and Royal Holloway–University of London. Macaulay-Lewis is the editor or author of five books, including the 2017 work Housing the New Romans: Architectural Reception and Classical Style in the Modern World, and the author of over a dozen articles on ancient Roman and Islamic gardens and architecture.

Matthew McGowan is Associate Professor and Chair of Classics at Fordham University. He is interested in Roman poetry, ancient scholarship, and classical reception. He has published broadly on a variety of Greek and Latin topics and is the author of Ovid in Exile: Power and Poetic Redress in the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto (Brill, 2009). Alongside editing Classical New York, he is compiling a guide to the Greek and Latin inscriptions of New York City. He teaches a wide range of courses, from classical myth to Latin prose composition, and has instituted the spoken Latin table at the Rose Hill campus. He was President of the New York Classical Club (2009-15) and is now Vice President for Communications and Outreach for the Society for Classical Studies.

Francis Morrone is an architectural historian and the author of eleven books including Guide to New York City Urban Landscapes (W.W. Norton, 2013); The New York Public Library: The Architecture and Decoration of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (with Henry Hope Reed, W.W. Norton, 2011); and architectural guidebooks to Philadelphia and Brooklyn. As a historic preservation consultant he has written countless building histories and neighborhood surveys in New York and beyond. He worked as an art and architecture critic for the New York Sun. Collectively, his work represents one of the most comprehensive bodies of research on the built history of New York City.

The Gould Memorial Library and Hall of Fame. My alma mater’s previous library in the Bronx. Only a tiny piece of it was relocated to Washington Square, where the current library stands. Bobst Library looks...ah, different.

     

‘Testament of Solomon the King’

     
Many years ago, I had the good luck to speak from the lectern at a statewide Allied Masonic Degrees event. While the title of my presentation is long forgotten, I recall it discussed the narratives of several tales of King Solomon—one from an extra-biblical Jewish source, and the other from a Muslim source. (My primary source was a trio of books penned by a favorite professor from my university days.) It went over very well, partially because outside in the world a war was being fought between Israel and one of its perennial tormentors. The Jewish text inspired the book described in the publicity below from Ouroboros Press, a book I think you will want to read.

Testament of Solomon the King

Notes on King Solomon’s Magic Ring

Indexed Demonology,

Angelology, and Deities

Fine Book Arts:

72 pages with ornaments,

illustrations, and index

All editions are now being bound

and will begin shipping in April

Title Page

Solomon, son of David, is famous in many texts of Western Esotericism as being a master of magic and wisdom. His fame extends through Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The Solomonic grimoire cycle is among the most cited and most used of magical texts, and the Testament of Solomon provides a background for one of Solomon’s potent acts: the building of his Temple. Dating from the first to third centuries A.D., this apocryphal text describes how King Solomon summoned, bound, and commanded a host of demons to build his Temple through the use of a Magic Ring. In addition to the original text, the book also includes an appendix on the lore surrounding Solomon’s Magic Ring and an index of more than 100 names of angels, demons, and gods mentioned in the text.

Ouroboros Press

Orders accepted here.
     

‘Dead Sea Scrolls conference next month’

     

If you believe Qumran has something to do with your secret society, then you ought to attend educational conferences like this one to improve yourself. NYU does it again. (While a student there decades ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Professor Schiffman, who was the lead researcher when the university obtained the Scrolls on microfilm in the first release of the treasures outside of Israel.) From the publicity:

The Rose-Marie Lewent Conference:

The Dead Sea Scrolls at 70

The NYU Center for Ancient Studies, in conjunction with the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, announces the Rose-Marie Lewent Conference:

The Dead Sea Scrolls at 70

November 16-17

Hemmerdinger Hall

Silver Center for Arts and Science

32 Waverly Place, Manhattan

Free and open to the public

Thursday, November 16

Session 1: The Community/Communities behind the Dead Sea Scrolls

9:15 a.m. Welcome
Matthew S. Santirocco, NYU

9:30 a.m. What Does Archaeology Tell Us about the Community/Communities behind the Dead Sea Scrolls?
Jodi Magness, University of North Carolina

10:15 a.m. Archaeology and Text: Khirbet Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Lawrence H. Schiffman, NYU

Session 2: Insiders and Outsiders in the Dead Sea Scrolls

11 a.m. Sectarians and Their Semantic Domain: How Best—or Least Badly—to Identify the People of the Dead Sea Scrolls
Maxine Grossman, University of Maryland

11:45 a.m. Isolated in the Judean Desert? The Qumran Sectarians in Imperial Contexts
Alexandria Frisch, Ursinus College

Session 3: The Projects of the Israel Antiquities Authority

2 p.m. The Conservation and Preservation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 70 Years Later
Pnina Shor, Israel Antiquities Authority

Session 4: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Mysterious

2:45 p.m. Magic and Demonology in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Retrospect and Prospect
Joseph Angel, Yeshiva University

3:30 p.m. Angelology, Exorcism, and Other Ancient Jewish Sciences: Before and After the Dead Sea Scrolls
Annette Yoshiko Reed, NYU

4:15 p.m. The Scope and Purpose of Encrypted Writing in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Jonathan Ben-Dov, University of Haifa

Session 5: Keynote Address
5:30 p.m. Introduction: The Dead Sea Scrolls at 70
Lawrence H. Schiffman, NYU

6 p.m. Violence and the Dead Sea Scrolls in Scholarship and Popular Media
Alex P. Jassen, NYU

7 p.m. Public Reception

Friday, November 17

Session 6: Sacred Texts and Their Interpretation

9 a.m. The Emergence of the Biblical Text and Canon in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls
Armin Lange, University of Vienna

9:45 a.m. How They Read the Genesis Apocryphon Then and How We Read It Now
Moshe J. Bernstein, Yeshiva University
Session 7: God and Humans

10:30 a.m. The Offering of Lips: What is Prayer in the Dead Sea Scrolls?
Daniel Falk, Pennsylvania State University

11:15 a.m. Some Thoughts about Prayer, the Divine, and the Human Self at Qumran
Angela Kim Harkins, Boston College

This event is generously supported and co-sponsored by the Salo W. and Jeannette M. Baron Foundation, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and the NYU Dean of the College of Arts and Science, the Dean for the Humanities, the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science, the Center for the Humanities, the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, and the Religious Studies Program.

This conference is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Center for Ancient Studies here.
     

‘Contemporary Art and Esoteric Traditions’

     
This recurring event at New York University has no connection to Freemasonry or the other main subjects discussed on The Magpie Mason, but I’d say there is a tangential artistic sympathy in it. From the publicity:

Occult Humanities Conference

Contemporary Art and Scholarship

on the Esoteric Traditions

October 13-15

New York University

Barney Building

34 Stuyvesant Street

New York City

Hosted by Phantasmaphile and New York University’s Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions, the third Occult Humanities Conference will present a wide array of voices active in the cultural landscape specifically addressing the occult tradition through research, scholarship, and artistic practice. Tickets available here.

The arts and humanities at present are acutely interested in subjects related to the occult tradition, which represents a rich and varied visual culture that displays a complex set of relations at once culturally specific and global in their transmission. Roughly defined, the occult tradition represents a series of culturally syncretic belief systems with related and overlapping visual histories. Though there are as many ways into this material as there are cultural and personal perspectives, universal occult concerns often include a belief in some sort of magic; a longing to connect with an immaterial or trans-personal realm; and a striving for inner-knowledge, refinement of the self, and transformation of one’s consciousness—if not one’s physical circumstances.

Intensely marginalized throughout most historical periods, these traditions persist and represent an “underground” perspective that periodically exerts a strong influence on structures of dissent, utopianism, and social change. Though history is marked with several so-called “Occult Revivals,” the contemporary digital age is a perfect confluence of several factors which make this moment prime for a re-examination of all of the esoteric traditions. While the information age has allowed for easier access to previously obscure writings, imagery, and social contexts, it alternately elicits a deep desire for sensorial experiences and meaning-making when one steps away from the screen.

The presenters at the OHC represent a rich and expanding community of international artists and academics from multiple disciplines across the humanities who share an exuberance and excitement for how the occult traditions interface with their fields of study as well as the culture at large. The small scale of this conference (approximately 100 attendees) will give ticket holders an intimate look at the presenters and their views.
     

‘Illumination Lodge (UD)’

     
RW Bro. Ted Harrison is leading an effort to lend purpose to this newfangled trend of bringing teenagers into Freemasonry with an approach I can agree with, so I thought I should promote it here.

While I disagree, for reasons I think are obvious, with the growing movement in American Freemasonry to lower the minimum age for initiation to 18, in New York there now is a plan to make it worthwhile for the fraternity to make that change. I still don’t want to sit in lodge with teenagers, but I’ve been an admirer from afar of the United Grand Lodge of England’s Universities Scheme, and I like the idea of New York Freemasonry attempting something similar, although this endeavor is not quite the same thing. (As an aside, years ago I tried to work with my alma mater’s alumni relations department, which was working to organize “affinity clubs,” to create a Masonic club for NYU people, but to no avail.) Ted circulated an e-mail yesterday on the subject:

Courtesy CUNY

“Some of you may be aware that, at our last Grand Lodge session, a motion was passed to lower the admission age to 18. Since then, the Grand Master has formed the Fraternity on Campus Committee which was tasked to establish lodges to be dedicated to serving specific institutions of higher learning, and identifying young men who are interested in Freemasonry and facilitating a safe environment for them to learn and grow. After months of meetings and planning, the Committee is finally ready to start working on a lodge under dispensation which will cater to City University of New York students. Any alumni, faculty, or staff from any CUNY institution, who wishes to take part in this historic event and become founding members of this lodge, are encouraged to contact the committee here.”
     

‘Things to do in March’

     

Now through May 8

Mystery and Benevolence:

Masonic and Odd Fellows Folk Art

from the Kendra and Allan Daniel Collection

Folk Art Museum

2 Lincoln Square

Manhattan

Click here.

March 4 and 5

Red Book Conference

New York City

Click here.

Saturday, March 5

7 p.m.

The Four Ages of Man: Myth or Truth

by Robert Blejer 

School of Practical Philosophy

12 East 79th Street

Manhattan

From time immemorial and from cultures around the world there have been stories and conjectures about a Golden Age that existed when mankind first made an appearance. As in the story of the Garden of Eden, life was a paradise free from strife and unhappiness. However, the paradise lasted only for a time; eventually something led to a life less than golden. Frequently, this movement has been described in descending order of spiritual understanding and moral values, with the various stages being named after the four primary metals: gold, silver, bronze and iron.

Join us for a presentation on the Four Ages of Man as we uncover the qualities of each age and consider questions such as: what leads to the decline, is it universal or individual, is it ordained and inexorable or a choice and under humanity's control? Finally, what lessons can the seeker of truth take from these stories?

Tickets cost $25, which includes refreshments, and are available here.

Wednesday, March 9

7 p.m.

Mariners Lodge 67 Stated Communication

and Maritime Festive Board

Work of the Evening:

Talk by Bro. Robert G. Davis titled

“The Journey to the Mature Masculine Soul”

Masonic Hall

71 West 23rd Street

Manhattan

Doric Room, Eighth Floor

Bro. Davis is a Freemason of over thirty years standing, having served in numerous Blue Lodge, Scottish Rite and York Rite capacities. He is a Past President and Fellow of the International Philalethes Society, a Past President of the Masonic Restoration Foundation, and the author of Understanding Manhood in America, Freemasonry’s Enduring Path to the Mature Masculine, and The Mason’s Words: the History and Evolution of the American Masonic Ritual.

Maritime Festive Board Menu—a Southern-style Feast: Low Country Fried Chicken; Barbecue Beef Short Ribs; Chicken Fried Steak with White Pepper Gravy; Macaroni & Cheese; Mashed Potatoes with Brown Gravy; Creamed Spinach; Long-Cooked Collard Greens; Buttermilk Biscuits; Soda, Seltzer and Mariners Punch.

Cost per person of the Festive Board is $35, plus transaction fees. Click here.

Saturday, March 12

9:30 a.m.

New Jersey Lodge of Masonic Research

and Education 1786

Papers will be presented

535 Main Street

(Hightstown-Apollo Lodge 41)

Hightstown, New Jersey

Sunday, March 13

Grand Master’s Day at Tappan

Click here.

Thursday, March 17

7 p.m.

2016 Wendell K. Walker Lecture:

by MW William J. Thomas, Grand Master

Independent Royal Arch Lodge No. 2

Masonic Hall

71 West 23rd Street (room TBA)

Manhattan

(details to come, and will be updated here)

Friday, March 18

7:30 p.m.

“Freemasonry and the Mystic Schools of the East”

by Bro. Mohamad Yatim

Atlas-Pythagoras Masonic Lodge 10

Westfield, New Jersey

Master Masons only.

March 18-19

SteinerBooks Seminar and Party:

Engaging the Heart

NYU Kimmel Center

60 Washington Square South

Manhattan

SteinerBooks’ annual spiritual research seminar at New York University’s Kimmel Center will feature professionals actively engaged in the world in developing new heart forces in social life, law, medicine, and education. Aonghus Gordon, Peter Gruenewald, Maureen Curran, and William Manning will explore contemporary problems and offer new models and paradigms to find creative solutions and opportunities for building a more human future. Read all the details here and plan to make the short walk up town for the After Party on Saturday, March 19.

Anthroposophy NYC is honored to host the SteinerBooks Spiritual Research Seminar After Party for a second year at our branch home just a few blocks away from NYU. Following last year’s well attended and spirited evening, we’ll again be offering a meeting place for seminar attendees to gather after the weekend’s events to enjoy warm company, live entertainment, biodynamic wines, and light refreshments. The party will commence shortly after the close of the seminar on Saturday. We invite everyone to join us for hearty post-seminar conversations before heading out to explore the NYC nightlife. Thanks to SteinerBooks for their collaboration and to all those who filled our branch last year. We look forward to another evening of living community!

Saturday, March 19

1 p.m.

Discuss Spiritual Laws with Dr. Lonnie Edwards

Rosicrucian Cultural Center

2303 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd.

Manhattan

Once we learn to tap inner resources, living will be an invigorating affair continuing. We need to keep foremost in our consciousness certain principles, conditions and laws to gain access to spiritual tools and to arrive at permanent solutions to life's challenges. Through lectures, participation in meditation, and visualization exercises, we will be given the opportunity to experience the value of discussing these principles in a group setting.

Facilitating the discussions will be Dr. Lonnie Edwards, Vice President of the EGL Board of Directors, and author of Spiritual Laws that Govern Humanity and the Universe.

Tuesday, March 29

“The Relations Between Freemasonry

and the Vatican”

by Bro. Pierre F. de Ravel d’Esclapon

Cocktails at 6:30 and lecture at seven

Masonic Hall (room TBA)

$20 per person

Open to Masons, family and friends

To benefit Holland Lodge Historical Society.

March 31 through April 2

New England Masonic Academic Convocation

Grand Lodge of Massachusetts

186 Tremont Street

Boston

Tickets and necessary information here.