‘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.

     

‘This lodge is your lodge’

     
The Fourth Manhattan District, known among New York Masons as “The Capital of the Metropolitan Districts,” includes a fascinating diversity of Craft lodges. For starters, there is my own lodge, Publicity 1000, and amid the others is historic St. Cecile Lodge 568—known as The Lodge of the Arts. It meets in the early afternoon because its brethren are employed in the evenings performing the theater, music, etc. of the New York City nightlife that brings us all together.

There will be a special program before its next meeting on Tuesday. From the publicity:

Our upcoming Stated Communication on Tuesday, October 4 at 1 p.m. will be preceded by a Lodge of the Arts tribute honoring Woody Guthrie’s birthday, “This Land is Your Land.” While Guthrie was not a Free and Accepted Mason (to the best of our knowledge), he certainly was a traveling man among Traveling Men, a troubadour for “brotherhood, freedom, and equality,” in solidarity with Kindred Souls & Brothers of the Craft, such as John Steinbeck.

That’s Masonic Hall, at 71 West 23rd Street, in the Empire Room on 12. (Security is pretty tight these days, so bring ID and proof of Masonic membership.)
     

‘Bebergal at Morbid Anatomy on Friday’

     

Season of the Witch author Peter Bebergal will appear at The Morbid Anatomy Museum Friday night to present findings that seem not to have made it into his new book. From the publicity:

Friday at 8 p.m.

$10 tickets available here

The Morbid Anatomy Museum

424A Third Avenue in Brooklyn

Presented by Phantasmaphile

and The Morbid

Anatomy Museum

Drawn largely from research and ideas related to his new book Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, author Peter Bebergal will present a multi-media presentation of the ways in which the aesthetics and mythos of rock and roll have been deeply influenced by the painters, writers, and composers of the 19th century. Bebergal will narrate a secret occult history of rock that owes its mystique to people like Aubrey Beardsley, Austin Osman Spare, Alphonse Mucha, Alexander Scriabin, and others, as well as the pomp and circumstance of the magic fraternities of that century’s Occult Revival.

Peter Bebergal is the author of Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, Too Much to Dream: A Psychedelic American Boyhood, and The Faith between Us: A Jew and a Catholic Search for the Meaning of God (with Scott Korb). He writes widely on music and books, with special emphasis on the speculative and slightly fringe. His recent essays and reviews have appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, The Quietus, BoingBoing, and The Believer. Bebergal studied religion and culture at Harvard Divinity School, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


In the meantime, I hope to see you Wednesday night at St. Cecile Masonic Lodge’s annual holiday party. Grand Lodge Room at Masonic Hall, located at 71 West 23rd Street in Manhattan. This is the lodge of show business folk, so there will be live music. Details here: