‘Big news from the SRRS’

    

A few major announcements emanated from the Scottish Rite Research Society in recent days.

Mark Dreisonstock, 33°

First, Adam Kendall has exited the position of editor of Heredom, the society’s annual book of transactions. (Give the guy a break. He’s a few months away from becoming Master of Quatuor Coronati 2076.) Stepping into that role is Mark Dreisonstok, editor of The Scottish Rite Journal.

And online membership services are expanding. From the publicity:

We’ve got great news! SRRS Online, the society’s first online platform, will be released this fall! SRRS members will be able to:

‣ Access all issues of The Plumbline

‣ Access all issues of Heredom

‣ Pay current and past dues

‣ Update contact/shipping information

‣ Access SRRS material on desktop or mobile phone, anytime, anywhere in the world

‣ Get SRRS news all in one source

‣ Get links to SR Bookstore and Master Craftsmen 

The best part? It’s included with your membership at no additional charge.

We are also working on an online-only subscription tier, great for our international brothers and those who prefer access to digital-only content.

Congratulations to everybody! Look for Heredom 33, Adam’s last volume, in the autumn. The call for papers for Vol. 34 has gone out.

     

‘Happy to receive Lodges of Sorrow after all’

    

I wasn’t looking forward to reading this latest bonus book from the Scottish Rite Research Society. There’s more than adequate morbidity in the world, so the title Lodges of Sorrow conveyed all I needed to form an irrational aversion, but never judge a book by its title. Lodges of Sorrow. Craft, Rose Croix, Kadosh contains much beautiful language our ancestors composed to provide solace and purpose for the most trying of times, and I was extra pleased to see it reached deeper into the past, before Scottish Rite’s birth, to eighteenth century London and America.

In their Introduction, Arturo de Hoyos and Chris Ruli begin at the beginning: our first clue of the existence of a Third Degree. Samuel Prichard’s Masonry Dissected ritual exposure from 1730 tells of KS ordering HAB be “decently buried.”

“The theme of Hiram’s burial was an important feature of the Scots Master degree, which was the earliest known ‘high degree’ after Master Mason,” they add. “Conferred in London as early as 1733, the Scots Master degree soon spread to continental Europe.”

In actual funerals, they recall the burial of a Bro. Ellis, “a member of the ‘lodge at Antwerp Tavern,’” who was said to have been interred in the presence of his lodge brothers which itself was said to have been a first since 1717. They then note how decades later William Preston published the basis of our funerary rites in his book Illustrations of Masonry in 1772.

Returning to historic events, the Masonic funerals, with processions, of both Joseph Warren in 1776 (like HAB, Warren was disinterred and buried again properly) and George Washington in 1799 are recounted.

Unsurprisingly, Albert Pike authored a Funeral Ceremony and Lodge of Sorrows ritual for Scottish Rite Masons. Intended to be worked by Chapters of Rose Croix, but to honor anyone of the A&ASR, these later were put into practice for murdered President James A. Garfield, 14°.

In 1887, Pike additionally wrote ceremonies specifically for degrees 30 to 33, and, four years later, these would be employed for their author in a private midnight ceremony inside the Scottish Rite Cathedral in the District of Columbia. Days later, his coffin was transferred to a Congregational church, where a second midnight Kadosh service was performed, this time in the presence of Supreme Council, Grand Lodge, and the Masonic Veteran Association (where Pike had been president).

This Introduction merits twenty pages in a Heredom, but here it primes the reader for the following 130+ pages of funeral rituals and their contexts. First come five optional versions of Lodge of Sorrow and Ceremony at Final Resting Place, and here is where we find much of that gorgeous rhetoric that seemed to have been so common in the nineteenth century. One excerpt I especially like:

The lips of the departed speak to us sermons that cannot be translated into words. Most eloquently, they tell us how vain, and empty are all the ambitions, the disputes, the rivalries, and the struggles for rank and reputation in human life. Our Brother, whose soul has now departed, is indifferent to praise or censure, to undeserved eulogy or equally undeserved blame, to all the prizes of human greatness, to all the beatitudes of human love. Often it is said, yet it is always a solemn and impressive thought, that in the grave all men are equal, the prince and beggar, the warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable.

And, later, from that Knight Kadosh piece:

It is midnight, and a new day begins for us. Our Brother has finished his earthly probation. Death is the inexorable creditor whose indulgence nothing in the world can purchase. Every moment that sees a newborn child laugh at the light, sees also a man die, and hears the cry of a breaking heart, and the lamentations of those who sit, lonely and in the desolation of affliction, no longer seeing the faces dearly loved.

Round the little island of our being on which we follow our various pursuits of toil and craft, of usefulness or mischief, throbs the illimitable ocean of Eternity upon which, round the isle, a broad circle of impenetrable darkness brooding lies. But beyond that zone the outer ocean sparkles, and its white-crested waves dance in the light; and somewhere in the distance the Islands of the Blessed are dreaming, girdled by the peaceful waters. here, in our present home, we live our little life, waiting to be called to other duties elsewhere; and one by one our loved ones and our cherished friends glide away from us unseen, and are swallowed up in the darkness which is the shadow of the broad wings of Death.

Each of us belongs to some little colony of hearts that hath a life of its own, its private and inner life, apart from that of the mass of Humanity which eddies round it in endless agitations, having with it no sympathies nor any memories of association. When one of its members dies, it is as if a limb were severed from the body. The wound heals, but the limb is missed as long as the body lives. Thus is the body of our Order here mutilated today, and therefore we mourn.

I was pleased also to see an illustration from Thomas Johnson’s A Brief History of Freemasonry from 1782.

I can’t say Lodges of Sorrow is mandatory reading for Freemasons. It is a window—a tall and wide and colorfully stained glass aperture—overlooking part of our past. If you’re going to read it, do so while keeping in mind the Masonic obsequies you have witnessed, and consider the possibility that today’s ceremonies lack a weighty sincerity. The standard lodge service has become just another piece of ritual work to memorize, which too often—at least in my experience—results in a perfunctory and fast recitation.

I wonder if there is a grand lodge in the country that even allows a Scottish Rite service, whether at midnight or high twelve.

     

‘Welcome to these Eleven Gentlemen of Charleston’

     

Available from the SRRS. Click here.

Speaking of Masonic writers named Harris (see Tuesday’s post), the Scottish Rite Research Society’s new bonus book for members is Ray Baker Harris’ Eleven Gentlemen of Charleston, his collection of biographical sketches of the brethren who founded the Mother Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. It has been out about a month, and now is available for sale to everyone. Even autographed copies, signed by Arturo de Hoyos and B. Chris Ruli, can be had.

I am no longer a Scottish Rite Mason (buy me a beer sometime and I’ll tell you, &c., &c.), so this material isn’t as fascinating to me as it would have been earlier in life, but I maintain an appreciation for these founders. I’ve never really known anything about them, except that four were Jewish, which I consider to be a remarkable circumstance given demographics and, frankly, odds.

Originally published in 1959, Eleven Gentlemen was written by Harris while serving as Supreme Council’s Librarian. It must be nice to have the library and archives of the modern Southern Jurisdiction as your workplace. As you know, the original Supreme Council for the United States of America was established May 31, 1801 (this volume is part of the Supreme Council’s dodransbicentennial—look it up—anniversary celebration), but what you might not have known is how its archives were destroyed during the Civil War.

The Supreme Council was seated at Charleston, which suffered repeated devastations. The war began there in April 1861 with the attack on Fort Sumter, located on a man-made island in Charleston Harbor. That December, a fire destroyed much of the city. Through the war, the U.S. Navy heavily shelled Charleston. Near the war’s end in 1865, as Gen. Sherman’s army plowed through South Carolina, Confederate forces fled the city after setting fires to destroy more of it.

This book’s introduction quotes Albert Pike at the May 1878 Supreme Council session:

I am often asked why we do not publish our old Transactions, to which I am compelled to reply that we have none to publish. We have no record of the transactions at Charleston from 1801 to 1860. What minutes we had were destroyed, with many papers, pamphlets, and books of the Secretary-General during the war. I never saw any of them, and do not know how full or how meagre they were.

So, don’t feel inferior if, like me, you know little about Scottish Rite’s founding brothers.

Because I want you to enjoy, and profit from, the book, I won’t overshare its contents, but let me just name the founders and supplement the list with life dates and birth & death places:

    Abraham Alexander: born circa 1743 in London; died February 21, 1816 at Charleston.

    Isaac Auld: born February 25, 1770 in Pennsylvania; died October 1826 in South Carolina.

    Thomas Bartholomew Bowen: born circa 1742 in Ireland; died July 12, 1805 near Charleston.

    Frederick Dalcho: born October 1770 in London; died November 24, 1836 at Charleston.

    Moses Clara Levy: born circa 1749 in Poland; died March 1839 at Charleston.

    John Mitchell: born circa 1741 in Ireland; died January 25, 1816 at Charleston.

    James Moultrie: born September 1766 in Charleston; died there November 20, 1836.

    Le Comte Alexandre Francois Auguste de Grasse: born February 14, 1765 in Versailles; died June 10, 1845 at Paris.

    Jean Baptiste Marie Delahogue: born circa 1744 in France; died April 13, 1822 at Paris.

    Israel De Lieben: born circa 1740 in Prague; died January 28, 1807 at Charleston.

    Emanuel De La Motta: born November 2, 1760 on St. Croix, West Indies; died May 17, 1821 at Charleston.

Interesting to note six were born in the 1740s and the others between 1760 and ’70, showing two age groups in unity. Alexander and Mitchell died within weeks of each other in 1816; Dalcho and Moultrie died within days in ’36. Only two were born in what would become the United States. Eight died in or near Charleston, and Auld about forty miles away. The four Jewish brethren (Alexander, De La Motta, De Lieben, and Levy) are interred in the Coming Street Cemetery, the oldest Jewish burial ground in the American South. Yes, Moultrie was from the prominent Moultrie family. He was a nephew of the Revolutionary War general who designed my favorite flag of the war.

In typography, a ligature is a single character formed by joining two or more characters.

I close this edition of The Magpie Mason with praise for a style element you are sure to notice while reading. In its typography, Eleven Gentlemen features the Adorn font family. You see the ligatures—connected pairs of letters, like ct and st. For example, “Past Master” appears as “Past Master.” Something special for the typophiles. Here on this rude blog, you see their use disrupts line height, but the book is smooth reading.

   

‘Heredom update’

    

Scottish Rite Research Society

Not part only, but the whole of life is a school. There never comes a time, even amidst the decays of age, when it is fit to lay aside the eagerness of acquisition, or the cheerfulness of endeavor.

 

Albert Pike

Morals and Dogma

Sublime Elect of the Twelve

Yes, we have an update from Editor Adam Kendall on the production schedule of the Scottish Rite Research Society’s upcoming books. To wit:

Heredom Vol. 32 is at the printer, to be sent to all members starting October.

Bonus Item: Chronology of the Supreme Council is at the printer.

2025 Bonus Item: Funerals of the AASR (including Rose Croix) is in layout and we hope to get that out by end of year.

2026 Bonus Item: 11 Gentlemen from Charleston is in layout and will be sent to the printer after Funerals.

We aim to provide you with the very best in thought provoking and informative material. Thank you very much for your patience and support!

Scottish Rite Research Society

Contents of Heredom 32.

     

‘The Plumbline gauges libraries and museums’

    

The Plumbline for Summer 2025.

I hope you enjoyed a fitting St. John’s Day celebration with your lodge (or other Masonic group), and made some memories. Yesterday also saw the publication of the summer issue of The Plumbline, the quarterly newsletter of the Scottish Rite Research Society.

In the skilled hands of Editor Chris Ruli, this periodical now begins measuring the libraries and museums that serve the Masonic fraternity, visiting the Grand Lodge of Iowa’s massive repository of books and artifacts on its first stop. Assistant Grand Librarian and Curator Julia Wells is profiled. She is known to some of us via the Masonic Library and Museum Association, but did you know she comes from a Masonic family going back generations?

The library itself is a renowned institution. I’m assuming that, because it’s not in a congested coastal city, it has the most square footage of any of the major research libraries serving the Masonic world. I hope to visit one day.

Elsewhere in the pages of the now digital newsletter, Ruli defines for us the Archive Maturity Matrix. This is a trestleboard archivists may employ to quantify the sufficiencies and deficiencies of their facilities, and to chart improvements where needed.

I’ll see if I may bootleg this for the MLMA’s newsletter.

Been wondering what will be this year’s bonus book? Look for Chronology of the Supreme Council, 1801-1859 soon.

To join the SRRS, click here.

     

‘Back in the SRRS’

    

(With apologies to Dirk McQuickly of the Rutles.)

A tiny preview of this year’s Heredom
seen this week on social media.

Just because you’re not a Scottish Rite Mason doesn’t mean you cannot be part of the Scottish Rite Research Society. After an embarrassingly long absence from the SRRS, I rejoined yesterday, inspired by Chris Ruli’s visit to The ALR (see post below).

Looking forward to reading the scholarship this excellent group gathers and presents to us. Heredom Vol. 32 is due this fall. There’s also The Plumbline newsletter, in electronic form now from what I hear, plus the annual bonus book, which never disappointed me in the past.

SRRS

Click here to join or rejoin or renew.

     

‘New editor at The Plumbline’

    

“Behold, I will set The Plumbline in the midst of Masonic periodicals, and Chris Ruli shall be its editor.”

I imagine it went something like that, but all we have to go on is Chris’ modest announcement on social media:

On the thirty-third anniversary of The Plumbline’s release, I’m excited to announce that the Scottish Rite Research Society Board of Directors has elected me to serve as the publication’s editor.

The publication serves more than 3,500 members around the U.S. and abroad. Back in 1991, Rex Hutchens laid out the first issue (then just referred as the Society’s newsletter) and it became a source of news, commentary, perspective, and research. In taking on this position, I plan to shift it back to that original concept while also highlighting good papers whenever possible.

As a former contributor, I’m excited to see where this can go. It’s also nice to be associated with past editors like S. Brent Morris, Pete Normand, Robert Davis, Adam Kendall, and Aaron Shoemaker. Stay tuned.

Send your letters, requests, inquiries and anything else you want shared here.

The Plumbline of course is one of the benefits of membership in the Scottish Rite Research Society, with the annual Heredom collection of research papers and a bonus book.

Art de Hoyos

SRRS bonus book.

The bonus now in the mail to members is Étienne Morin: From the French Rite to the Scottish Rite by Arturo de Hoyos and Josef Wäges. The new Heredom is Vol. 31, edited by Adam Kendall with Associate Editor…Chris Ruli!

When he’s not authoring books, speaking before Masonic audiences, and editing others’ work, he’s out jogging. Congratulations, Chris!

     

‘SRRS in Memphis next month’

    

The Scottish Rite Research Society will host its third symposium in Memphis next month, and the call for papers is out. From the publicity:

Call for Papers:

2024 SRRS Symposium

The Scottish Rite Research Society is accepting papers for its annual symposium to be held in Memphis, Tennessee on Saturday, October 19, 2024. Interested applicants must complete the form available here to be considered a symposium speaker. The deadline to submit papers is October 1, 2024. Accepted speakers will be notified via email several days after the deadline with further details.

Viable papers must be:

scholarly or academic in nature with a focus on the history, philosophy, symbolism, biography, or ritual of the Scottish Rite, Freemasonry, and/or an affiliated group;

the speaker’s own research that has not yet been published in Masonic or non-Masonic publication, with exception to a recent or upcoming SRRS publication; and

long enough to present on the topic for 15-20 minutes, plus additional time for question and answer by SRRS participants.

The SRRS symposium will be held in-person and virtually for remote participants and more details will be provided in the coming weeks. Accepted speakers will not be reimbursed for travel to the symposium, and are therefore encouraged to present virtually. If you have any further questions, please contact Chris Ruli here.

I don’t think I knew the SRRS had such events, but I don’t get out much.

     

Scottish Rite Symposium next month’

    

Unless my memory really is failing, this is the first I’ve heard of this, but the Scottish Rite Research Society has a symposium planned for next month, and the call for papers is out. From the publicity:

The Indiana University Center for Fraternal Collections and Research is proud to host the 2023 Scottish Rite Research Society Symposium on October 14, 2023. Everyone is welcome to attend! The event will be held in the historic McCalla Building on the beautiful campus of Indiana University.

The symposium will feature a mix of presentations and panels. The Scottish Rite Research Society is one of the most dynamic forces in contemporary Masonic research, making it a natural partner for IU’s Fraternal Center.

The schedule of speakers will be posted as presenters are confirmed.

Call for Papers

The SRRS is interested in papers of interest to Society members, such as history of Freemasonry and the Rite, Masonic symbolism and philosophy, development and changes in ritual over time, and similar topics. Download the Call for Papers document for details. The deadline for submission of papers is October 1, 2023.

     

‘Food for thought in Tennessee’

     

Magpie file photo.

This portrait of General Andrew Jackson by Charles Wilson Peale hangs in the office of the Grand Master of Pennsylvania in the Masonic Temple in Philadelphia. I don’t think art historians, or anyone else, are aware of its existence. I shot this photo in October 2007.


I typically avoid matters of Masonic politics and recognition on The Magpie Mason—I doubt my own powers of persuasion, and I don’t find these foibles all that interesting—but as today is the (249th) birthday of Andrew Jackson, there is something I cannot resist pointing out.

If you do not follow anything on Freemasonry in social media, you may not be aware of the public relations disaster being foisted upon the entire Masonic fraternity in the United States by two grand lodges down south: Georgia and Tennessee. Both recently have banned gay men from Masonic membership. As usual the most comprehensive and level-headed coverage can be found on the Dummies blog. Not only is the matter examined here and there in Masonic cyberspace, but more recently NPR and other mass media outlets have reported on it.

Tennessee has taken the additional step of proscribing Masonic membership for those who cohabitate without the benefit of marriage.

Enter Andrew Jackson, Grand Master of Masons in Tennessee, 1822-24.

In a tragedy of errors when Jackson was in his early twenties, he married Rachel Robards, the daughter of Jackson’s landlord who happened to have been married already to one Lewis Robards. She erroneously believed that first marriage, a very unhappy union, had been terminated, and that she was free to marry again. This was not the case, and her wedding to Jackson legally was viewed as bigamy and adultery. The Robards’ marriage eventually was ended in divorce in 1793 on the grounds of Rachel’s adultery. She and Jackson wed for the second time, and for keeps, several months later.

This would haunt Jackson through life, although it evidently did not affect his rise through the ranks of Tennessee Freemasonry. Actually, the record of his initiation is unknown today, but we know he served as Grand Master in the early 1820s. In 1806, he killed a man in a duel who had impugned his wife’s reputation. In his campaigns for the presidency, his opponents and enemies savagely exploited the illegal adulterous first marriage for political advantage. It worked in 1824, when Jackson lost to anti-Mason fanatic John Quincy Adams when the election was settled in the House of Representatives. As for Rachel, she would not see the White House. She died December 22, 1828 after Jackson’s election to the presidency, but before his inauguration in March 1829.

Her death did not satiate the puritans, and the Jackson administration would fall apart from another matrimonial scandal when Secretary of War John Eaton’s marriage to Margaret “Peggy” O’Neill was scrutinized. Eaton, a widower at 28, was a U.S. Senator from Tennessee and a Mason in Cumberland Lodge No. 8; Peggy was married to a Navy man named Timberlake who died overseas in 1828. It was thought Eaton arranged to have Timberlake deployed overseas so he could keep time with the wife during his absence. It also was thought the widow failed to observe a traditional period of mourning her husband’s demise before marrying again. The 1820s version of real life real housewives of Washington, DC conspired to shun the Eatons, keeping the couple from having any social life within the city of power, a very potent peer pressure indeed. The animus affected President Jackson’s cabinet to the extreme point where nearly all the cabinet members would resign only two years into the administration. It also ended Vice President John C. Calhoun’s presidential aspirations, as it was his wife who organized the ostracizing of the Eatons.

Political satire during the anti-Masonic hysteria in the early 1800s included illustrations such as this one depicting President Andrew Jackson, on the right, with members of his cabinet who also were Freemasons. This drawing appears in Light on Masonry, the massive compendium of Masonic ritual exposures, edited by Arturo de Hoyos, and published by the Scottish Rite Research Society in 2008.

There is resistance among Tennessee Freemasons to what has been done, but there also is support. The Grand Lodge will convene next week for its regular elections and balloting on legislation, so we’ll soon learn how this question will be settled. Follow the Dummies blog for that news.
     

‘High Degrees discussion in Maryland’

     

Unfortunately the deadline for reservations was Friday, but I’ll announce just FYI that the Maryland Masonic Research Society will host its 11^th Annual Festive Board next Monday in Columbia, Maryland. The speakers for the evening will be S. Brent Morris and Arturo de Hoyos, presenting “The First Two Exposures of the High Degrees of Masonry.” From the publicity:

The first alleged exposure of Masonic degrees was published in 1723, and the first alleged exposure of the Master Mason Degree was in 1730. It was 33 years later that Conversations Allegoriques revealed the catechisms of ten degrees after Master Mason, and in 1766 Les Plus Secrets Mysteres des Hauts Grades de la Maçonnerie Dévoilés gave the full rituals (with costumes, scenery, props, and stage directions) for seven high degrees. Arturo de Hoyos and S. Brent Morris translated these books in 2011 and 2012 for the Scottish Rite Research Society. Their talk will discuss the evolution of high degrees and the significance of these two books.

These renowned scholars and authors will be available for book-signings after the program.

The Maryland Masonic Research Society is an independent group consisting of Masons from a variety of jurisdictions united for Masonic education and fellowship.