‘Masonic Ph.D. program in Scotland’

    

Magpie file photo

Robert Burns in bronze in Central Park.

A Ph.D. program at the University of Glasgow is of interest to Freemasons. Just my rotten luck, as I’m about to commence studies in trainspotting, but maybe this is right for you. From the publicity:

The Scottish Masonic Scholarship

A Ph.D. scholarship on the topic of Robert Burns and Freemasonry, funded by Scottish Freemasons, is offered at the University of Glasgow. Full-time fees and stipend are included for a period of three years.

The successful candidate will have access to Masonic archives and collections in Edinburgh and elsewhere, and also will undertake some travel for research purposes to other places. The Ph.D. scholar will be expected to work on outreach activity, including contributing to the curation of an exhibition and delivering presentations on “Burns & Masonry.”

The scholar will be supervised and have access to resources from within the world-class Centre for Robert Burns Studies (recipient of the prestigious Queen’s Anniversary Prize in 2023). 

Candidates need to apply by July 31 with a cover letter, full curriculum vitae, and two academic references to Professor Gerry Carruthers here.

Selection will follow an interview and a pro forma application to the Graduate School of the College of Arts and Humanities at Glasgow. Informal enquiries to Prof. Carruthers are welcome in the first instance.

Thanks, Brent!

     

‘The Mother Lodge’

    

Via Twitter

It’s Mother’s Day here in the United States, so I thought I’d share with you Bro. Rudyard Kipling’s “The Mother Lodge.” (Copied and pasted from the Kipling Society website. Click here for the poem’s context and history.) Kipling was from Lodge Hope and Perseverance 782 (EC) in Punjab, India.

The Mother Lodge

There was Rundle, Station Master,

An’ Beazeley of the Rail,

An’ ’Ackman, Commissariat,

An’ Donkin’ o’ the Jail;

An’ Blake, Conductor-Sergeant,

Our Master twice was ’e,

With im that kept the Europe-shop,

Old Framjee Eduljee.

Outside - “Sergeant! Sir! Salute! Salaam!”

Inside - “Brother,” an’ it doesn’t do no ’arm.

We met upon the Level an’ we parted on the Square,

An’ I was Junior Deacon in my Mother-Lodge out there!

We’d Bola Nath, Accountant,

An’ Saul the Aden Jew,

An’ Din Mohammed, draughtsman

Of the Survey Office too;

There was Babu Chuckerbutty,

An’ Amir Singh the Sikh,

An’ Castro from the fittin’-sheds,

The Roman Catholick!

We ’adn’t good regalia,

An’ our Lodge was old an’ bare,

But we knew the Ancient Landmarks,

An’ we kep’ ’em to a hair;

An’ lookin’ on it backwards

It often strikes me thus,

There ain’t such things as infidels,

Excep’, per’aps, it’s us.

For monthly, after Labour,

We’d all sit down and smoke

(We dursn’t give no banquets,

Lest a Brother’s caste were broke),

An’ man on man got talkin’

Religion an’ the rest,

An’ every man comparin’

Of the God ’e knew the best.

So man on man got talkin’,

An’ not a Brother stirred

Till mornin’ waked the parrots

An’ that dam’ brain-fever-bird.

We’d say ’twas ’ighly curious,

An’ we’d all ride ’ome to bed,

With Mo’ammed, God, an’ Shiva

Changin’ pickets in our ’ead.

Full oft on Guv’ment service

This rovin’ foot ’ath pressed,

An’ bore fraternal greetin’s

To the Lodges east an’ west,

Accordin’ as commanded.

From Kohat to Singapore,

But I wish that I might see them

In my Mother-Lodge once more!

I wish that I might see them,

My Brethren black an’ brown,

With the trichies smellin’ pleasant

An’ the hog-darn passin’ down;

An’ the old khansamah snorin’

On the bottle-khana floor,

Like a Master in good standing

With my Mother-Lodge once more.

Outside - “Sergeant! Sir! Salute! Salaam!”

Inside - “Brother,” an’ it doesn’t do no ’arm.

We met upon the Level an’ we parted on the Square,

An’ I was Junior Deacon in my Mother-Lodge out there!

     

‘Tubal Cain and the first plow’

    

I hope all of you read The Square magazine. The periodical’s social media of yesterday brings our attention to its September 2021 issue, particularly an article on Charles Mackay by W. Bro. Kenneth C. Jack. I leave it to you to read that, but for this edition of The Magpie Mason I share one of Mackay’s poems. “Tubal Cain” is found in volumes either of Mackay’s own work or in collections of various poets.

One such anthology from 1905 England, The Poets and the People, published by what was the Liberal Publication Department, an arm of that country’s National Liberal Federation, employs verse in documenting how the term liberalism once had meant belief in, and upholding of, liberty. It’s an amazing book, uniting Robert Burns, William Wordsworth, P.B. Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, and Mackay, plus more than a dozen other voices raised for freedom, decency, democracy, and patriotism. (Its editor, the renowned Alfred Henry Miles, contributes his sonnet titled “Let There Be Light!” which inveighs against the darkness of ignorance and bigotry.)

But was Charles Mackay a Brother Freemason? That’s inconclusive. The headline of Bro. Jack’s article says yes, but near the bottom of the story he concedes that “a question mark should be appended” to the headline. There seems to be no easily obtainable proof of Mackay’s initiation or membership, which I think is too unusual for a well known man of letters.

     

‘This day of all days’

   

GWMNM photo

The nineteenth of June in the United States is known as Juneteenth, the commemoration of the emancipation of slaves finally brought to fruition in 1865. Last night, the George Washington Masonic National Memorial in Virginia was alit in colors of the Pan-African flag in tribute. Here’s why that’s wrong, even though benevolently inspirited.

Juneteenth is an American holiday that represents victory in the cataclysmic war that ended slavery here. (Slavery persists in Africa today, but no one is supposed to discuss it.) Americans suffered deaths and disfigurements in numbers that wouldn’t be seen again until the Second World War, and not seen again since. It had to be fought and won. The Civil War was existential. The colors displayed on the Washington Masonic Memorial, and anywhere else, for Juneteenth ought to be red, white, and blue. There is no reason why a Masonic landmark in this country should participate in supplanting America’s traditional universal symbols with those of divisional or otherwise limited identities. Don’t we get enough of that everywhere else?

Get with it, Memorial peeps! “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

I leave you with this poem by a Brother Mason from the nineteenth century. This was composed in 1890, when the poet was eighteen years old.

Emancipation

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Fling out your banners, your honors be bringing,

Raise to the ether your paeans of praise.

Strike every chord and let music be ringing!

Celebrate freely this day of all days.

Few are the years since that notable blessing,

Raised you from slaves to the powers of men.

Each year has seen you my brothers progressing,

Never to sink to that level again.

Perched on your shoulders sits Liberty smiling,

Perched where the eyes of the nations can see.

Keep from her pinions all contact defiling;

Show by your deeds what you’re destined to be.

Press boldly forward nor waver, nor falter.

Blood has been freely poured out in your cause,

Lives sacrificed upon Liberty’s altar.

Press to the front, it were craven to pause.

Look to the heights that are worth your attaining.

Keep your feet firm in the path to the goal.

Toward noble deeds every effort be straining.

Worthy ambition is food for the soul!

Up! Men and brothers, be noble, be earnest!

Ripe is the time and success is assured;

Know that your fate was the hardest and sternest

When through those lash-ringing days you endured.

Never again shall the manacles gall you.

Never again shall the whip stroke defame!

Nobles and Freemen, your destinies call you

Onward to honor, to glory and fame.

     

‘An Ode to the Freemasons’

     

Today is World Poetry Day. Poet Maria Matuscak penned the following verse, which was read aloud by the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Canada in the Province of Ontario one day in 2017 on the occasion of a cornerstone ceremony there.

An Ode

to the Freemasons,

Gathered Here Today

Walk onward, brothers, arm-in-arm
towards the giants rising in your midst. Together you form a chain
……..which will ensure the monsters of poverty and intolerance
……..your line taught, unyielding to the false gods
…………..that feed the starving masses in your streets. For you
care not
Who is the Creator,
…….God or Man: the goal is simply to strive.
For you hold, you hold tight
And dear you are stone
And one of you cannot sink if his brothers hold him tight.
Whom but God could wrench the wounded man
……from your embrace? And you march forward,
……toward an ever-receding horizon, but the point is:
………..you march.
……………..And you do not stop.
……………..And those who cannot march on their own accord
……….you carry,
And the cornerstone too weighs upon your shoulders,
The one you brought with you here, today,
The one you set down as a reminder,
That one bears the weight of the whole,
That there may or may not be a final stair
…….but still you keep climbing
…….because the rain falls with equal benediction on you all.

Click here to see an interview with Ms. Matuscsk.

     

‘Hope.’

     

Hope.

Wild seas of tossing, writhing waves,
A wreck half-sinking in the tortuous gloom;
One man clings desperately, while Boreas raves,
   And helps to blot the rays of moon and star,
   Then comes a sudden flash of light, which gleams on shores afar.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson was born on this date in 1875 in New Orleans. She graduated from Straight University in New Orleans and worked as an elementary teacher. She was a Harlem Renaissance poet, journalist, short-story writer, playwright, and activist for civil rights and women’s suffrage. Her works include Violets and Other Tales (The Monthly Review, 1895) and The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories (Dodd, Mead and Company, 1899). She married Paul Laurence Dunbar in 1898, though they later separated. She died September 18, 1935 in Philadelphia.

“Hope.” originally appeared in Violets and Other Tales.


Courtesy Academy of American Poets.

The Anchor and the Ark are emblems of a well grounded hope and a well spent life. They are emblematical of that Divine Ark, which bears us over this tempestuous sea of troubles, and the Anchor, which shall safely moor us in the peaceful harbor where the wicked cease from troubling, and weary are at rest.

Lecture of the MM°

     

‘Sing a song of seasons!’

     

Autumn Fires

Robert Louis Stevenson

In the other gardens

And all up in the vale,

From the autumn bonfires

See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over,

And all the summer flowers,

The red fire blazes,

The grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!

Something bright in all!

Flowers in the summer,

Fires in the fall!

There isn’t much talk in Freemasonry of the equinoxes. It’s all about the solstices, starting, even, with an allusion during the First Degree—as another dichotomic pair, like checkered pavement, directional opposites, twin pillars, spirit and matter, and other contrasts balanced for harmony.

My lodge is located in the middle of Manhattan, so an autumn bonfire like Stevenson recommends would be impractical. The building trustees would suffer paroxysms of all sorts. Still, there is much the individual can do to acknowledge the quick period of “equal night” that strikes at this very moment. For me, the autumn fires will involve the transition from Virginia pipe tobaccos to mixtures containing healthy doses of Latakia. Maybe wear some tweed to lodge. Nothing pumpkin spice, thanks.

Robert Louis Stevenson is said to have been a Brother Mason in Scotland. My query via social media to the Grand Lodge there went unrequited, but in his Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he delves very much into paradoxical human nature: good versus evil; public versus private; civilization versus barbarism. Just as we do in our lodges.

From Stevenson’s novella: “I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.”

And so it goes in our initiatic rituals. Darkness overcome by Light at first; Ignorance cleansed by Knowledge in the second; and Death defeated by Eternal Life in the Sublime Degree. We can’t have one without the other in the perpetual labor.
     

‘Their primitive Mason mark’

     
The Provincial Grand Lodge of Derbyshire maintains a busy presence on social media (and frequently does me the honor of sharing links to this website), and this morning published this poem by an unknown writer.

Mason Marks

They’re traced in lines on the Parthenon,

Inscribed by the subtle Greek;

And Roman legions have carved them on

Walls, roads and arch antique;

Long ere the Goth, with vandal hand,

Gave scope to his envy dark,

The Mason craft in many a land

Has graven its Mason mark.

The obelisk old and the pyramids,

Around which a mystery clings,-

The Hieroglyphs on the coffin lids

Of weird Egyptian kings,

Syria, Carthage and Pompeii,

Buried and strewn and stark,

Have marble records that will not die,

Their primitive Mason mark.

Upon column and frieze and capital,

In the eye of the chaste volute, -

On Scotia’s curve, or an astrogal,

Or in triglyp’s channel acute,-

Cut somewhere on the entablature,

And oft, like a sudden spark,

Flashing a light on a date obscure,

Shines many a Mason mark.

These craftsmen old had a genial whim,

That nothing could ever destroy,

With a love of their art that naught could dim,

They toiled with a chronic joy;

Nothing was too complex to essay,

In aught they dashed to embark;

They triumphed on many an Appian Way,

Where they’d left their Mason mark.

Crossing the Alps like Hannibal,

Or skirting the Pyranees,

On peak and plain, in crypt and cell,

On foot or on bandaged knees; -

From Tiber to Danube, from Rhine to Seine,

They needed no “letters of marque;” -

Their art was their passport in France and Spain,

And in Britain their Mason mark.

The monolith grey and Druid chair,

The pillars and towers of Gael,

In Ogharn occult their age they bear,

That time can only reveal.

Live on, old monuments of the past,

Our beacons through ages dark!

In primal majesty still you’ll last,

Endeared by each Mason mark.

Anonymous

     

‘The Word’

     
The Word
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Oh, a word is a gem, or a stone, or a song,
Or a flame, or a two-edged sword;
Or a rose in bloom, or a sweet perfume,
Or a drop of gall is a word.

You may choose your word like a connoisseur,
And polish it up with art,
But the word that sways, and stirs, and stays,
Is the word that comes from the heart.

You may work on your word a thousand weeks,
But it will not glow like one
That all unsought, leaps forth white hot,
When the fountains of feeling run.


“The Word” originally appeared in New Thought Pastels (Elizabeth Towne, 1906).

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was born on November 5, 1850 in Johnstown Center, Wisconsin. Her poetry collections include Poems of Passion (W.B. Conkey Company, 1883) and Poems of Peace (Gay & Bird, 1906). She died on October 30, 1919.


Courtesy Academy of American Poets. Visit poets.org
     

‘Mysticism and Spirituality series at RCC’

     
Next month, the Rosicrucian Cultural Center in New York City will host a series of nine conversations of ways mysticism and spirituality intersect with art and popular culture. The Center is located at 2303 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard. Each hour-long meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. From the publicity:

Steven A. Armstrong

The facilitator of each meeting, Steven A. Armstrong, M.A. Hum., M.A., M.Div., is a professional historian, philosopher, and teacher based in the San Francisco Bay area. He currently serves at the Grand Lodge in Membership Services. He is an active member of both the Rosicrucian Order and the Traditional Martinist Order, and has served as an officer in both Orders.

His current areas of interest include how the Primordial Tradition permeates all world traditions, and the way in which the Rosicrucian and Martinist paths provide a unique and unifying viewpoint on those traditions. He is the author of more than 30 published papers, articles, and podcasts, and is a lecturer for the RCUI. Steven is no stranger to the greater New York City area, as he was an undergraduate at Yale University, and received two Masters Degrees studying at the Rose Hill Campus of Fordham University in the Bronx.

At each meeting, Armstrong will lead the discussion and provide examples of relevant works, but those in attendance also may bring selections they have used for mystical and spiritual purposes.

Monday, June 19

Mysticism and Spirituality

in Popular Music

Wednesday, June 21

Mysticism and Spirituality

in Classical Music

Thursday, June 22

Mysticism and Spirituality

in Poetry

Friday, June 23

Mysticism and Spirituality

in Science Fiction

Monday, June 26

Mysticism and Spirituality

on Broadway

Tuesday, June 27

Mysticism and Spirituality

in Popular Music

Wednesday, June 28

Mysticism and Spirituality

on the Silver Screen

Thursday, June 29

Mysticism and Spirituality

in Classical Music

Friday, June 30

Mysticism and Spirituality

on the Small Screen

     

‘Moments of Vision’

     

Magpie file photo

Eighteenth century French engraving depicting First Degree ritual on display at the Livingston Library in Masonic Hall.

On Friday, Garibaldi Lodge 542 will meet in the Grand Lodge Room to confer its famous Entered Apprentice Degree. This is the French Rite ritual, entrusted to Garibaldi by l’Union Française Lodge 17, that Garibaldi works in Italian. It is heavy with alchemical and Rosicrucian meanings that one would expect in a European Masonic initiation, and near the end of the ceremony, the Youngest Entered Apprentice has thrust upon him a jolting moment of clarity.

Today is the last day of National Poetry Month. Launched in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets, the celebration highlights the importance of poetry to us all by reading, by honoring poets past and present, by sharing books of poems, and by organizing support for poets and poetry. With this in mind, here is a great from 100 years ago.

Moments of Vision

Thomas Hardy

That mirror
     Which makes of men a transparency,
     Who holds that mirror
And bids us such a breast-bared spectacle to see
     Of you and me?
     That mirror
  Whose magic penetrates like a dart,
     Who lifts that mirror
And throws our mind back on us, and our heart,
     Until we start?
     That mirror
   Works well in these night hours of ache;
     Why in that mirror
Are tincts we never see ourselves once take
     When the world is awake?
     That mirror
   Can test each mortal when unaware;
     Yea, that strange mirror
May catch his last thoughts, whole life foul or fair,
     Reflecting it—where?
     

‘A Prayer in Spring’

     

Spring Day at Jeløya by Edvard Munch,

1915, oil on canvas, privately owned.

A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;

And give us not to think so far away

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,

Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;

And make us happy in the happy bees,

The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird

That suddenly above the bees is heard,

The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,

And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,

The which it is reserved for God above

To sanctify to what far ends He will,

But which it only needs that we fulfill.

Robert Frost

The Spring Equinox arrived early this morning. Happy Rosicrucian New Year! We even had nice weather to enjoy today in these parts. (New York, not Jeløya.)