‘A humble, daring, and eloquent banner’

    

time.com

Today is Flag Day in the United States. This is a holiday, but not a federal holiday that would close government offices and financial institutions. Flag Day has been a traditional observance in American life since 1916; while that may not compute to a great span of years, we today definitely inhabit a completely different world that eschews traditions. To almost all appearances, we have become a people conditioned to indifference toward our nationality and our symbols because of some alleged guilt for which we are supposed to atone in perpetual despair.

Why observe on June 14? It was on that date in 1777 when the Second Continental Congress voted to make the Stars and Stripes our country’s flag.

It was Woodrow Wilson who issued the presidential proclamation in 1916 to “rededicate ourselves to the Nation, ‘one and inseparable,’ from which every thought that is not worthy of our fathers’ first vows of independence, liberty, and right shall be excluded, and in which we shall stand with united hearts for an America which no man can corrupt, no influence draw away from its ideals, no force divide against itself, a Nation equally distinguished among all the nations of mankind for its clear, individual conception alike of its duties and its privileges, its obligations and its rights.”

The fourteenth of June was not designated Flag Day by law until 1949, when President Truman signed House Joint Resolution 170.

Between 1916 and 1949, New York Freemasonry made its own rules which, it could be argued, were befitting of those times. Grand Master Robert H. Robinson, speaking to Grand Lodge assembled in Masonic Hall on May 2, 1922, said in reflection on the previous year:

On June 14, 1921, National Flag Day was celebrated by Masonic lodges in nearly every corner of the State, and it is our hope that this birthday of our Flag may every year be made a veritable feast day in the Craft. Masonry inculcates loyalty to State and Nation, and it is for us, as citizens of our beloved country, to keep ever alive the wisdom, the loyalty, and the patriotism of our forefathers. I quote from a memorable document on “Your Flag and Mine”:

“If anything in the world symbolizes the realization of the dream and aspirations of men, it is surely the Stars and Stripes. It has been said that young men dream dreams and old men see visions, but never before in the whole history of our race had the prophetic souls of men more surely recognized the coming of a new and better age than when Old Glory was first flung to the breeze.

 

“It is the symbol of the hopes, the aspirations, the struggles, the sufferings, the victories, the happiness, the progress-in short, the very lives of more than one hundred million people.

 

“The world has never known a banner more humble in its origin, yet more daring in its conception, and more eloquent in its appeal to the hearts and minds of men the world over. For nearly a century and a half it has flung forth a message to liberty-loving peoples of all lands, bidding them welcome to a land of opportunity, a land where there are neither kings nor czars, princes nor peasants, a land where all men are brothers with equal liberty and justice for all. And its message has been heard and answered.

 

“There were but 3,000,000 persons, or about one-half of the present population of New York City, in the entire United States when the flag sent forth its message over land and sea, and the civilized world laughed cynically at the ‘great experiment.’ But men’s hearts thrilled and are still thrilling at the great experiment which has become the embodiment of the greatest ideal in government the world has ever known. Men came and tasted of liberty and found that it was good.

 

“Today, more than 100,000,000 Americans—men, women, children—stand ready to defend their ideal with their lives, if need be, even as the little handful of patriots 140 years ago fought and died for the same ideal. Whether they be newcomers or citizens whose forefathers sought refuge on these shores, it matters not now. Americans by birth and Americans by adoption make common cause of the Flag and the ideal for which it stands.”

My honored successor, I am sure, will have a message for you this coming Flag Day couched in his own fearless and inspiring words. I cannot myself lose this opportunity of impressing upon you, men of the Grand Lodge, the nobility and far reaching effect a yearly general celebration of Flag Day would have upon the life and vitality of our Craft, and if there is nothing else in the address read to you this afternoon that invites your attention, I beg your earnest, your patriotic, and your liberty-loving loyalty to the glorification of “your flag and mine,” our glorious banner of liberty.

MW Arthur Tompkins

Robinson’s “honored successor” was MW Arthur Tompkins (the brilliant visionary who signed my lodge’s warrant!) Several weeks later, he encouraged New York’s lodges to commemorate Flag Day. At his direction, Grand Lodge’s Bureau of Social and Educational Service provided lodges ideas for programs they could adopt, plus books, poems, and other relevant literature, including an essay of 6,000 words on the subject of the U.S. flag.

“The display of bunting by Masons throughout the State added materially to the observance of the day and patriotic exercises were conducted in many of the Lodges,” MW Townsend Scudder, chairman, said in his report on the matter.

And, in fact, on Flag Day 1921—at this very minute, actually—Sea and Field Lodge 1 hosted a Flag Day observance inside the Grand Lodge Room. Secretary William C. Prime reported to Grand Lodge how “upwards of 2,000 Master Masons from the Metropolitan District and neighborhood, at which addresses were made by Hon. Martin W. Littleton, Brother Job E. Hedges, by Rear Admiral Reynold T. Hall, Gen. Barbour, and by Bishop Wm. T. Manning. A large delegation of servicemen attended with colors, which were massed with appropriate ceremony, and the occasion was one of dignity, as befitted it, and truly memorable.”

There are many more details to share, but you get the point. My point in this edition of The Magpie Mason is I believe we have lost something. Of course our fraternity is much smaller today, so there is less talent and fewer hands to set to labor, but we unintentionally have accommodated modernity too much in our thinking. We ought to be honoring Flag Day right now. We have more than 400 lodges. Are any marking today’s holiday? I haven’t heard of any.

Our city tonight is polluted with other flags, symbols that divide people, shout for fringe cultic identities, and even encourage warfare. Our gentle Craft possesses an antidote to much of what ails society, and that the simple symbolism of a Flag Day celebration can signal to a weary and uncertain public that they are not alone—that unity with other citizens can be found.

     

‘We should ever be industrious ones’

    

kmyu.tv

The Bee Hive

Is an emblem of industry, and recommends the practice of that virtue to all created beings, from the highest seraph in heaven, to the lowest reptile of the dust. It teaches us, that as we came into the world rational and intelligent beings, so we should ever be industrious ones, never sitting down contented while our fellow creatures around us are in want, when it is in our power to relieve them, without inconvenience to ourselves.

When we take a survey of nature, we view man, in his infancy, more helpless and indigent than the brutal creation: he lies languishing for days, months, and years, totally incapable of providing sustenance for himself, of guarding against the attack of the wild beasts of the field, or sheltering himself from the inclemencies of the weather. It might have pleased the great Creator of heaven and earth to have made man independent of all other beings but, as dependence is one of the strongest bonds of society, mankind were made dependent on each other for protection and security, as they thereby enjoy better opportunities of fulfilling the duties of reciprocal love and friendship. Thus was man formed for social and active life, the noblest part of the work of God, and he that will so demean himself, as not to be endeavoring to add to the common stock of knowledge and understanding, may be deemed a drone in the hive of nature, a useless member of society, and unworthy of our protection as Masons.

Jeremy Ladd Cross

The True Masonic Chart, or Hieroglyphic Monitor, Containing All the Emblems Explained in the Degrees

1854 edition

The Beehive State adopted a new design for its flag Saturday, one that emphasizes the beehive at its center more so than the previous flag.

That banner, which displays the Utah seal at center, will remain in use for official ceremonies and events. This new flag employs the colors blue, white, and red, symbolizing blue skies, snowy mountains, and the redrock canyons, respectively.

To the uninitiated eye, the beehives in both the new and old flags befit the state’s one-word motto: Industry. (The state insect, unsurprisingly, is the Western honey bee.) The initiated eye, though, should be able to connect the beehive to Utah’s Mormon history and, from there, to Freemasonry. It’s a long and complicated story, but the first members of the Latter Day Saints Church included a number of Freemasons.

Joseph Smith, founder of the church, was made a Mason at sight by the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Illinois in 1842 while the congregation was based in Nauvoo. Within eighteen months, there were five Masonic lodges consisting of Mormons in Nauvoo, then one of the largest cities in the Midwest. In time, the Mormons would move to Utah, and would repudiate Freemasonry and secret societies.

Researchers have presented the facts many times over the generations, and I urge you to hit the books if the subject moves you.

The beehive (one word these days) enters Masonic ritual via Jeremy L. Cross’ The True Masonic Chart, first published in 1819. Another story with many details, so read up on him too.

     

     

‘Brethren and allies in the Masonic war’

     

Allies Day, May 1917 is an oil-on-canvas by American artist Childe Hassam from 1917. It is said to be the most famous of his ‘flag paintings,’ and it captures a scene on Fifth Avenue, not far from his studio.

If you remember the game show Concentration, you may appreciate pattern recognition skills. This edition of The Magpie Mason is inspired by a match made of mind in me while reading a book of Grand Lodge proceedings and recollecting the painting above.

On this date, and at this very hour, in 1917, the Grand Lodge of New York opened its 136th Annual Communication inside the Grand Lodge Room of Masonic Hall, off Fifth Avenue.

Among the orators that day were Bro. Theodore Roosevelt, former President of the United States—whose remarks deserve their own Magpie post—and a Brother Mason visiting from Canada.

Less than a month earlier, the U.S. Congress declared war on Germany, bringing America into what we today term World War I.

The Canadian visitor was The Hon. William Renwick Ridell, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ontario. With his nation being integral to the British Empire, and having deployed an enormous number of troops—disproportionate to its population, in fact—to France and Flanders, Ridell could not have neglected to discuss the war that day. The comforting notion of Freemasonry transcending nationalities to cement a Brotherhood of Man has its practical limits, you understand.

I can’t reproduce Ridell’s complete remarks here, so I’ll zero in on what prompted my memory of Childe Hassam’s Impressionist painting Allies Day, May 1917.

Most Worshipful Sir and Brother Masons: I was prepared this afternoon to make a set speech. I prepared myself with manuscript and notes. I threw them away after the reception which I have received from you, my brethren of the United States, and I shall speak to you as a brother—as an American, if you will, because I was born on the Continent of North America, and a Briton as I am to my fingertips, and Canadian to the last drop of my blood, I claim the privilege and the heritage which Americans have wrought out for Canadians and Americans and Britons together. ...

But our Masonry as we know it, our Speculative Masonry as we know it, the Ancient Free and Accepted Masonry as we know it—it was organized and placed in systematic form and made eternal by the work of the English Masons who had drunk deep of that which characterized the Masons and that which characterized the Englishmen, that which characterizes all those who have received even a part of their institutions from old England: liberty.

Let it not be forgotten, Oh you Americans, proud of your own United States and of your Declaration of Independence—let it not be forgotten that the Declaration of Independence is the last outcome of the long struggle for liberty which took place in the little island from the time of the Dark Ages—because the English could never willingly bow the knee to the tyrant, and he was the only man throughout the ages—and I am not even excepting my own ancestors of Scotland—the only man throughout the ages who never yet bowed the knee to a tyrant. That freedom which characterizes English Freemasonry characterizes our own Freemasonry. When we are told that when English Freemasonry was introduced into France and Germany that which characterized it most was its brotherhood, we begin to appreciate the significance of our brotherhood. It was Masonry’s brotherhood which attracted the attention of the Frenchmen and which attracted the attention of the Germans, and it was its brotherhood which was the great theme throughout all these lodges which had their origin, which spring out from the great mother across the sea. ...

This is a Masonic war. This is a war for that which Masonry has always stood, for which Masons stand, for which Masonry must always stand, unless it denieth itself and sells itself for a mess of pottage. This is a war for the brotherhood of the world. This is a war for that which is the finest characterization in public life of the democracy of the Masonic life, of the brotherhood of the Masonic Lodge: democracy. ...

Masonry is democracy; true Masonry is democracy. There are no grades in Masonry. The degrees in Masonry are open to all honest men alike. Those there are indeed in authority over us, but those are elected by the free vote of their fellow Masons. There is no King or Kaiser or Czar born to govern and born to rule. Masonry is in itself democracy, and it is for that reason that this war should appeal to all Masons. ...

Coming down Fifth Avenue today I saw a sight that made my heart leap for joy: The Stars and Stripes, Old Glory, hanging in the center, flanked by the Tricolor of France and the blood red banner of England. That is the place for the American flag. It is the place for the American flag to be in advance of both those flags and between them. There was the American Revolution, sir, which was the origin and spur for the French Revolution, and it was that thin line of farmers which stood embattled on Bunker Hill, owing little to the recruiting officers and none to the drill sergeants, but everything to their own strong hearts and determination to be free, it was that thin line of farmers standing on Bunker Hill which forced democracy, which was nearly dead in England, which forced democracy to the front. ... If the United States spends their last man and last dollar, it is their intention that the very soul of Masonry shall not die from off the face of the earth.

Childe Hassam (1859-1935) studied in Paris in the late 1880s. While he is considered an Impressionist, and does employ those techniques here, he also uses an architectural precision that you can see in the many clear lines that shape the pieces in the composition.

It was the June 29, 2020 post of the great Ephemeral New York blog that introduced me to this artist and this painting. I find this image so gripping I remembered it immediately upon reading Ridell’s description of the scene.

     

‘Flag waving at Nutley Lodge’

     
Being that it’s been a month and a half since this event, I’d better stop procrastinating and get to it before my memory is old enough to qualify for a Flashback Friday post, but I had a great time at Nutley Masonic Lodge No. 25 in New Jersey on June 20. Having been invited to speak by Worshipful Master Joel (I think I’ve appeared at Nutley as a guest speaker more often than at anywhere else) in proximity to Flag Day, I presented a review of the symbolism displayed in a number of U.S. state flags. Not all 50, but about 20 of the most interesting. Needless to say several of these flags are most conspicuous to the initiated eye.

There is no reasonable claim of Freemasonry influencing these flag designs in any way, but I hoped to illustrate how instructive images Masons use are found in major and official public symbols also. I didn’t prepare much in formal remarks, so what follows are simply some notes concerning each flag.

Bro. Dave, Master of the local Rose Croix Chapter and a member of Nutley Lodge, was instrumental in bringing me back to the lectern, so of course I was sure to begin with this flag: Louisiana.

One of the alternate names of the Rose Croix Degree is Knight of the Eagle and Pelican, and one of the key symbols of the degree shows the pelican in her piety, a metaphor for love and sacrifice. For the purposes of Louisiana, the flag’s symbolism is Roman Catholic, but if you’ve read Manly Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages you probably recall the above illustration, a full-page, by Augustus Knapp, showing the full Rose Croix imagery.

Utah – The Beehive is one of my favorite Masonic symbols, and it is not uniquely Masonic. It is widely understood as a symbol of industry, but considering Freemasonry’s significance to Mormonism, which begat the State of Utah, it is an apt choice for the flag.

Alabama – St. Andrew’s Cross: St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scottish Freemasonry. This X-shape is the cross on which Andrew was crucified.

Alaska – Astronomy: the North Star and the Big Dipper.

Arizona – “As the sun rises in the East,” or sets in the West as the case may be. Thirteen rays = the original states. The colors are from the flag of Spain. The star symbolizes the copper mining industry.

Maine – We see the North Star again. “Dirigo” means “I lead.” For the Masonic eye, we have the anchor at right. The symbol of Hope.

New Jersey! – Liberty holds a staff topped with the red cap. This hat was presented to freed Roman slaves, and it appears in several state flags. The shield shows three plows to symbolize the agriculture of the Garden State. At right is the ancient goddess Ceres (grain) holding none other than the cornucopia.

New Mexico – Sometimes simple is best. What we have here is another sun symbol. There are four angles of a square. Four parts of a circle. This is a sacred symbol of the Zia tribe of Native Americans. Four is the sacred number denoting the circle of life; the four cardinal directions; four seasons; four elements.

New York – Another radiant sun. Justice stands at right with the scales—another Scottish Rite symbol. There’s that Roman slave cap again at left. The body of water is the mighty Hudson River.

Oklahoma – I included this because it has a smoking pipe. Lots of Native American symbolism built into this. That’s an olive branch.

Rhode Island – The anchor of Hope most prominently.

Virginia – Left breast bared! This is Virtus, goddess of virtue. Sic Semper Tyrannis means Thus Always to Tyrants—what John Wilkes Booth shouted after shooting President Lincoln. This was designed by George Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, but not a Freemason.

Washington, DC – Taken from the coat of arms of the Washington family–not just George Washington, but his ancestors dating to the 12th century. Benjamin Franklin said this emblem partially inspired the look of the U.S. flag. It also appears on the Purple Heart.

Magpie file photo

Washington State – Kind of speaks for itself. This Grand Lodge of New York apron is worn by RW Bro. Bill Mauer, a noted historian and trustee of DeWint House, the Washington Headquarters in Tappan.

West Virginia – The Latin motto means “Mountaineers are always free.” On top of the crossed rifles is that slave’s red cap again. To the left we see an ear of corn and also a bushel of wheat. June 20 is today: the anniversary of the state’s admission to the Union.

Wisconsin – Masonic symbols: the anchor, the cornucopia, the spade & pickaxe, as in Royal Arch Masonry.


Flag images courtesy united-states-flag.com