Showing posts with label Tenth Manhattan District. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tenth Manhattan District. Show all posts

Thursday, October 31, 2024

‘Happy Garibaldi anniversary’

    

Just in time for Garibaldi Lodge’s 160th anniversary year, a pipe maker, that I unhappily cannot identify, seems to have produced a briar bearing the handsome likeness of Giuseppe Garibaldi. This photo shows a page in the October issue of Arbiter magazine. It is being circulated on social media by Al Pascià to promote its Ovalina shape, two of which are seen resting on the page. Maybe this Garibaldi briar is made by that venerable pipe-maker
, but I cannot find any info on the web about it.

Anyway, the actual anniversary of the lodge’s constitution passed on June 11, but the brethren will meet tomorrow night at eight o’clock in the Corinthian Room for its regular communication. (It’s impossible to choose a favorite lodge in the Tenth Manhattan District, but I’m drawn to Garibaldi because of the French Rite EA° it famously confers, in Italian, to the delight of hundreds of visiting Masons.)

Magpie file photo
From the 150th anniversary.

Garibaldi 542 was the first lodge under the Grand Lodge of New York to work in the Italian language. There was confusion in the Craft at the beginning, as the lodge was trilingual—Italian, French, and English—so that the DDGM had to direct the Worshipful Master to keep the lodge’s proceedings in Italian, per the Dispensation granted by Grand Lodge.

The lodge’s namesake, of course, is the Italian freedom-fighter and Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy. Did you know Giuseppe Garibaldi resided in Staten Island for a time? Read more about Garibaldi 542’s history here.

Happy anniversary!
     

Wednesday, July 17, 2024

‘Agüeybaná: New York’s new lodge’

    
GLNY
Grand Master Steven A. Rubin and Assistant Grand Secretary Richard W. Bateman display the freshly printed dispensation for Agüeybaná Lodge, which will meet in New York City.

Dispensation was granted last week for a lodge in New York City to begin meeting in the Tenth Manhattan District. MW Grand Master Steven A. Rubin briefly announced the launch today:


I am pleased to share that, on this day, I signed the Dispensation for Agüeybaná Lodge UD, the newest lodge in the Grand Lodge of New York. Agüeybaná was the principal and most powerful chief of the Taino people on Boriken, modern-day Puerto Rico, when the Spanish first arrived on the island on November 19, 1493.


Agüeybaná is a historical name on the island. An online Taino dictionary, and other sources, put it as The Great Sun, and show its significance in late fifteenth and early sixteenth century Puerto Rico. (And, needless to say, lovers of fine tobaccos recognize the name Taino, as the tribe also lived on Cuba. Cohiba was named for the Taino word for the rolled tobacco leaves these indigenous people smoked.)

Its first meeting will be Thursday, September 26 at 7 p.m. in the Doric Room on eight for the Installation of Officers.

The Tenth Manhattan, “the Cosmopolitan Tenth,” is home to our lodges that work in foreign tongues, like French, Italian, and Spanish.

Congratulations to all the brethren. ¡Salud!
     

Monday, October 23, 2023

‘Garibaldi Lodge schedules its EA°’

    

Sure it’s six months out, but add it to your calendar so you don’t forget. Historic Garibaldi Lodge 542 in the Tenth Manhattan District will confer the Entered Apprentice Degree next April.

This is the famous French Rite ritual as worked in the Italian language. With plenty of Alchemical and Rosicrucian symbolism, it likely is very different from what you are accustomed to.

Apprentices and Fellows are welcome (as always, they would be accompanied by a MM from lodge) and, in fact, are seated in the East with all the dignitaries.

Advance reservations are required. While the Grand Lodge Room is Masonic Hall’s largest space, it is not without seating limitations. The first time I witnessed this degree, the Fire Department inspected and evicted several busloads of Pennsylvania Masons (they were the last ones in) because the room’s lawful capacity had been exceeded. Click here and follow the instructions.

Bring photo ID to enter the building, Masonic ID to work your way into the lodge, and your apron.
     

Sunday, January 30, 2022

‘Chagall and Hesse contests’

   
Please pardon my sloppy cross-outs.

Were this the work of any other District of Manhattan lodges, I would be shocked, but being as it comes from the Tenth Manhattan, I am approvingly delighted and want to report on it despite never having written here previously about any youth contest. But the Tenth Manhattan is a special grouping of lodges.

Well, we’re all special. The First Manhattan, for instance, has some of the oldest lodges in New York (and North America). The Fourth is home to lodges organized by profession. My lodge, Publicity 1000, for media people; St. Cecile 568 for show business entertainers; Kane 454 for intrepid Arctic explorers; et al. The Tenth Manhattan is comprised of foreign language and otherwise exotic and ethnic lodges: Garibaldi 542, l’Union Francaise 17, and eleven others of French, Greek, Italian, Sephardic, Spanish, et al. identities. “Cosmopolitan” is a word used, in certain contexts, to describe Freemasonry, and I’d employ it here.

So, we have a writing contest named for Hermann Hesse, and a drawing competition named after Marc Chagall!


Chagall (1887-1985) was a native of Russia who emigrated to France to pursue his destiny in the fine arts. He was made a Mason in Paris. Grand Orient, I think, but don’t quote me. (I like to imagine he, Juan Gris, and others were of the same lodge, but I have no idea.) Hesse (1877-1962), as far as I know, was not a Freemason. Of course, his interest was in Eastern thought, but the two are not mutually exclusive.

When I was Master of my earlier lodge in 2005, my final “From the East” message to the brethren was not something I wrote, but was a few excerpted sentences from The Journey to the East, Hesse’s post-World War I novella that every Freemason ought to know:


For our goal was not only the East, or rather the East was not only a country and something geographical, but it was the home and youth of the soul, it was everywhere and nowhere, it was the union of all times. Yet I was only aware of this for a moment, and therein lay the reason for my great happiness at that time. Later, when I had lost this happiness again, I clearly understood these connections without deriving the slightest benefit or comfort from them. When something precious and irretrievable is lost, we have the feeling of having awakened from a dream. In my case this feeling is strangely correct, for my happiness did indeed arise from the same secret as the happiness in dreams; it arose from the freedom to experience everything imaginable simultaneously, to exchange outward and inward easily, to move Time and Space about like scenes in a theatre. And as we League brothers travelled throughout the world without motorcars or ships, as we conquered the war-shattered world by our faith and transformed it into Paradise, we creatively brought the past, the future and the fictitious into the present moment.


It was from this story, which I first read at age fifteen, that I learned the master is a servant—wise counsel I’ve offered to many an advancing Senior Warden. I recall reading this book the first time I heard the Police’s “Wrapped Around Your Finger” on the radio. Serendipity, if you know the lyrics.
     

Thursday, January 20, 2022

‘A History of Calendars’

    

I have been remiss in helping publicize the activities of the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library, but let me begin again. Next Thursday, one of the Assistant Grand Lecturers of the Tenth Manhattan District will present “A History of Calendars” in an online discussion.

VW Bro. Christophe Lobry-Boulanger will lead us through the chronology of…well, chronology. From calendars of the ancient world to medieval times and onward, with explanation of solar, lunar, and other systems, our lecturer will tell us why we mark the days as we do.

This will begin at seven o’clock and can be seen on YouTube. Make your reservation here.

Anne Frank Center
VW Bro. Christophe Lobry-Boulanger is a Past Master of La Loge France La Clemente Amitie Cosmopolite 410, one of our francophone lodges here in Manhattan. Without the temple, Bro. Christophe serves his fellow man by laboring in humanitarian relief around the world under the auspices of the United Nations. I leave it to you to internet search his name, but it seems to me he is a Mason we all can admire.

Suddenly I crave a chardonnay champagne.
     

Thursday, June 15, 2017

‘EAº with Rosicrucian elements next Tuesday’

     
Courtesy worldofstock.com
The Empire State Building no doubt will be illuminated in the blue, white, and red of the Tricolour when l’Union Française No. 17–this is J.J.J. Gourgas’ lodge and the oldest lodge in the Tenth Manhattan District–will confer the Entered Apprentice Degree on four candidates, in ritual descendant from the French Rite, with purification elements of Rosicrucian origin kept alive since 1797.

This is where Garibaldi Lodge’s EA° comes from.

Tuesday, June 20 at 6 p.m.
Masonic Hall
71 West 23rd Street, Manhattan
French Doric Room, tenth floor



The degree will begin at 6:45, after which no one will be admitted.

The Tenth Manhattan is home to the lodges permitted to work exotic Craft degrees in French, Italian, and Spanish (and maybe other tongues).

Photo ID is required to enter Masonic Hall, and your current membership card is required to work your way into the lodge room. Bring your apron too. The brethren will retire to a nearby restaurant afterward ($50 per person, cash only).
    

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

‘Tuesday morning news’

     
Magpie coverage of the stellar lecture on Plato’s Divided Line at the School of Practical Philosophy Saturday night is still to come, but in the meantime I just want to throw out some news briefs from the past few days.

First up, let’s all congratulate Adam Kendall on his election to membership in Quatuor Coronati Lodge 2076! Amazing! (This isn’t the Correspondence Circle. This is the actual lodge—“the premiere lodge of Masonic research in the world,” etc., etc.)

I bet he doesn’t even read The Magpie Mason anymore, but that’s okay. Once you attain such exalted heights, everything changes. So I am told.




Courtesy @davisshaver
‘The Bond’


On Saturday, the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania unveiled a pair of bronze statues of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin on the sidewalk outside its headquarters Masonic Temple in Philadelphia. Named “The Bond,” they depict Washington showing his Masonic apron, that he received as a gift from Lafayette, to Franklin. The actual apron is exhibited inside the building, in the museum. The statues themselves are a gift from Shekinah-Fernwood Lodge 246, which meets in the Temple. They are the creation of James West. Check out his most impressive website here.



Courtesy Ashmolean Museum

Sunday night I wrote a short essay on the early history of Freemasonry that might be published somewhere, and I included not only the inevitable mention of Elias Ashmole and his initiation into the fraternity in 1646, but also mentioned his bequest that created Oxford University’s museum of art and archaeology, the Ashmolean. And just by coincidence, today is the anniversary of its opening day in 1683. It is the first university museum. Happy anniversary!


I have been writing here about Henry David Thoreau several times of late in this bicentennial year of his birth. Last Friday, the Morgan Library and Museum—a stunning place to visit—opened its exhibition “This Ever New Self: Thoreau and His Journal.” This collection of unpublished writings dwarfs his published work in volume, and gives far more insight into Thoreau the man. More than 100 items have been assembled for this exhibit. It will close September 10. Click here.


Next week, on Thursday the 15th, the Spiridon Arkouzis Lecture Series in Masonic Studies will continue with Iván Boluarte being hosted by the Tenth Manhattan District to present “Pre-Columbian Builders.” Seven o’clock at Masonic Hall in 1530. Photo ID to enter the building, etc.


And finally, and returning to the School of Practical Philosophy (12 East 79th Street), it is having a book sale, and some recordings have been added to the inventory on sale. From the publicity:


Courtesy School of Practical Philosophy

JUST ADDED: Select recorded-lecture titles on sale at a 20 percent discount in our wonderful Get Ready for Summer Sale.

Plan ahead and stock up to make your summer an enlightening and enjoyable break. Consider books and CDs as treasured gifts to pass on to friends and family.

During this event, a large portion of our inventory is sale priced at a 20 percent discount and recorded lectures have just been added. Subject areas included: scripture, philosophy, history, language, government, literature, and economics.

Discounted titles will be sold as long as inventory remains, but we suggest you make your choices early since availability may be limited.

Note: Items cannot be put on hold or reserved by anyone for purchase. Sale applies only to the Bookstore in our New York City location.