‘Journal 58: Masonic beginnings and ends’

    

Issue 58 (Fall 2022) of The Journal of the Masonic Society has been out several weeks; I just finished reading it, and am delighted to report it is another enlightening and entertaining collection of articles.

Anyone chagrined over Freemasonry’s future ought to behold Antonio Mantica’s “The View from the Starting Line,” in which he inspires with his personal story of seeking the mysteries of the Order. The 28-year-old Fellow Craft of Lexington Lodge 1 in Kentucky likens his Masonic journey to a marathon, which makes sense, and he invokes the story of Eliud Kipchoge, the Kenyan runner who incredibly redefined the marathon, making it an enterprise of less than two hours. It’s not that Mantica wants speed in his travels; instead he appreciates Kipchoge’s ambition to uplift his performance “to another level.” And the runner didn’t train alone. He employed no fewer than forty-one fellow long distance racers to compel him forward—not just to move faster, but to “pass on a message that no human is limited.”

With a similar mindset, our young brother hurdled various personal and cultural potential obstacles in his Masonic path, and he joined the very excellent Lexington Lodge, happy to discover he had been accepted by “a group of respectful men…who listened, comprehended, and met me on the level.”

While at this stage of Masonic development, any Fellow Craft is justified in being a receptor of good and wholesome instruction, but this brother both desires Light and intends to reflect it. “I also see the opportunity to offer my own experiences as a helping hand to my brothers in Freemasonry,” he writes. “As a ten-year student of physics, I cannot help but make the analogy of laser light, where light bounces back and forth off mirrors inside of a ruby cube, giving energy to nearby atoms until they have enough energy to light themselves, causing a coherent beam of red light to radiate from the apparatus.” Fiat lux rubrum, my brother.

Pennsylvania’s Seth Anthony is back, this time delivering a brief story about the New York City locus of both the Cerneau Rite and the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis and Misraim. Mott Hall is no longer standing, but in its time the building became the place where Masons of these orders met. The Mott family was prestigious in the medical profession during the nineteenth century, and Dr. Alexander Mott was Puissant Lieutenant Grand Commander of the Cerneau Rite from the 1870s until his death in 1889. It makes me smile to see a Pennsylvania Mason write of the Cerneau Scottish Rite. (Visit a lodge in the Keystone State, and you learn why.)

Another Kentucky Mason, W. Bro. Brandon Garrett of Elkhart Lodge 568, also exhibits a scientific mindset and an interest in the Fellow Craft Degree in his “Reality: A Subjective User Experience in the Gateway Interface.”

“We don’t observe our reality. We recreate it,” he says. “Granted, we don’t continuously recreate the entire world every moment, just our panoramic perspective.” Linking this to one aspect of the Five Steps toward the Middle Chamber, Garrett reminds us our senses have their limits. “Reality is much the same [as] a user interface of what we need to deal with while working on a physical plane,” he writes. “The mechanical movements of consciousness, the soul, or even the unseen forces of nature, such as gravity, could be viewed and observed if allowed a glimpse into the running background behind our reality.”

Speaking of reality, Masonic Society Fellow Michael Moran, another Pennsylvanian, in his “Practical Use of Reflection,” explains how his habit of periodically taking off time from work as a university professor informs his growth as a Mason. “Reflection can be enormously helpful to identify what really happened…as opposed to relying on what can be faulty memory,” he says. The difference between reflection and recollection lies in “reviewing accumulated notes and records.” That journalistic practice of taking notes and referring to them later forces one to be honest and avoid the pratfall of remembering the good and suppressing the bad of the past. The goal is to plan for the future, and have vision for it. Moran (also The Journal’s book reviews editor) resolves to continue educating himself in Masonry and also keep encouraging others in their learning. The fraternity is lucky to have him.

Andrew Nechetsky, another Pennsylvanian, of Pen Argyl Lodge 594, reflects on Abraham Lincoln, tying Lincoln’s thoughts on God and man to the Craft’s. Bro. Nechetsky sums up Lincoln’s purported approbation of Freemasonry and his alleged petitioning for the degrees before calling for some symbolic and obviously posthumous making a Mason of the sixteenth president.

Yes, well, continuing with mortality, Bro. Jack Freund of Reynoldsburg Lodge 340 in Ohio, and a 32° Mason, brings his doctoral knowledge of Information Systems to bear in an impressive article that analyzes how death and immortality are regarded in the degrees of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite (Northern Masonic Jurisdiction) in his “From Darkness to Light to Darkness Again” near the back of this issue of The Journal.

He ably presents a technically dense subject in plain language, but that doesn’t mean I can summarize it rightly here. But, he zeroes in on twenty-one words conveying ideas of death and immortality to see how the AASR-NMJ rituals reveal those ideas. He’s been a Scottish Rite Mason for more than a decade, and he presents his findings through a half-dozen bar graphs of analyses. He concludes “Through the daily application of the Scottish Rite core values, we can find a path to kindle and fan the flames of that divine spark inside us all.”

My opinion of the NMJ (I call it the Non-Masonic Jurisdiction) differs, but I admire his positivity.

And that’s not all!

The Journal includes a variety of regular features. The President’s Message from New York’s RW Bro. Oscar Alleyne beckons us to muster our fortitude even in our interpersonal relationships “to perhaps face trials and personal persecutions in defense of a just and worthy cause.” From the Editor’s Corner, Michael Poll pulls back the curtain on the inner workings of The Journal, as he celebrates his twenty-fifth issue as Editor in Chief. A newly added item, titled “Masonic Minutiae,” by Second Vice President Mark Robbins, puts questions to you for your research and edification. The Book Reviewers tell us about four recent titles you may want to read. First Vice President Greg Knott’s “Through the Camera’s Lens” takes us to Oklahoma City National Memorial which honors the many deaths of the terrorist bombing of 1995.

No, of course I didn’t forget “Vetus Viginti Septem” by W. Bro. M. Christopher Lee, Master of Butler Lodge 254 in Missouri. The Latin translates to “Old Twenty-Seven,” and this work of creative writing borrows from Scottish Rite. It’s fiction, so I can’t give it away.

Click here to join the Masonic Society and begin receiving The Journal every three months. It’s the best Masonic magazine out there. As you have seen here, it doesn’t only commemorate the fraternity’s history, but it also gives voice to those who think ahead.

I forgot the cover! The front cover photo is by W. Bro. Wayne Dyer, who cast his eyes and camera to the East and shot this photo of the beautiful lodge room in Penarth Masonic Hall in Cardiff, Wales. With a meeting space like this, I don’t know why the Prince of Wales wouldn’t petition one of the lodges, like Windsor 1754.

     

‘Masonry: History and Characters Through Philately'

     

News today from the Masonic Philatelic Club concerns a new ebook that illustrates the history of Freemasonry via philately.

Alvaro Montoya Merino of Colombia has published Masonry: History and Characters Through Philately, a 319-page guided tour through 2000 postage stamps. Surely a labor of love.

From the publicity:

The present work, collects more than 2000 postage stamps with 1200 Masonic characters, presented in ten groups according to their activities and achievements that ended up changing our history.

I think the author has made some mistakes in the Famous Masons department, but these pages share stamps from around the world and back into the past. It’s comprehensive, with thousands of images, and even includes papal anti-Masonry.

Read it here.

     

‘Fez photos wanted!’

    

The Chap, Britain’s essential periodical, put out a call today for your finest fez photograph. (Well, maybe not yours.) They’re not asking for fraternal fezzes, but they didn’t say no either. Mystic Prophets, heed the announcement:

“A fez is not just something to wear. It grants reverence to the wearer.”

Nasser Abd El-Baset

fez maker

Your Fez

Photos Requested

Hot on the heels of our current edition comes CHAP Winter 22, which happens to coincide with the centenary of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon. Thus to pass over mention of that superb item of Egyptian headwear, the fez, would be a dereliction of duty.

We therefore request that any readers in possession of a fez, whether purchased in the old bazaar in Cairo or elsewhere, send us a photographic image of themselves wearing said louche item of Egyptian headwear, for publication in the Winter edition.

Please send any such photographs here.

To mark the centenary of Tut’s tomb being opened, we shall be meeting the great-grandson of the fifth Earl, and current custodian of Highclere Castle, George Herbert.

Colleen Darnell will be providing precise archaeological insight into the excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, while our main interview, entirely unconnected with Egyptian mummies, is with acting legend and all-round chap Sir Michael Caine.

     

‘Masons and obelisks in NYC’

    

“These Freemason Obelisks in NYC Align?!” is a one-minute video uploaded to YouTube yesterday, already garnering tens of thousands of views and thousands of likes, purporting to illustrate a linear placement of “Masonic obelisks” along a longitudinal stretch of Manhattan.

Mr. Ariel Viera, host of Urbanist, is not disrespectful nor sensationalist about this curio of a subject, and the production is lighthearted and edited for alacrity, but is his thesis correct?

Were the historic people he says were Freemasons actually brethren of the Craft? If so, would that be why the city erected monuments to them? Would it be remarkable for monuments placed on or near Fifth Avenue to appear vertically straight when seen via satellite? Is it all a coincidence…or international Masonic conspiracy?! You decide!

Some background on New York’s Cleopatra’s Needle here.

     

‘Loyalty and Kindness on research lodge’s agenda’

    

Williamsburg Lodge 6

Civil War Lodge of Research is heading to Colonial Williamsburg for its next communication.

That’ll be Saturday, December 3 and of course will feature Colonial Williamsburg attractions to enhance the experience of meeting inside Williamsburg Lodge 6. From the publicity:

Friday, December 2

6:30—Dinner at Craft 31

Saturday, December 3

9 a.m.—coffee, etc. at the lodge

10 a.m.—lodge opens

Noon—lunch

1 p.m.—open installation of officers

Colonial Williamsburg will be open. (Most government houses, family homes, and historic trade areas charge for admission.) Bruton Parish Church will be open for self-tours until three o’clock.

Colonial Williamsburg

5 p.m.—Colonial Williamsburg’s Grand Illumination (musket fire, pyrotechnics at the Capitol, live music on several stages in the historic areas).

6:30—Dinner at Mellow Mushroom followed by libations at Precarious Beer Project across the street.

For the meals, please book your seats in advance by contacting the lodge secretary here.

I’d really love to attend, but it’s a little too far. It’s like driving to Masonic Week, but with another two hours to go. Plus, The American Lodge of Research will be at West Point Lodge on Thursday night, so it’s a busy time.

     

‘The ALR in two weeks’

    

The American Lodge of Research will meet again Tuesday the 25th. We’ll be inside the Colonial Room of Masonic Hall at seven o’clock. Speaking that evening will be MW Bill Sardone, the Grand Lodge of New York’s immediate Past Grand Master and one who gets much of the credit for seeing this lodge revived and returned to labor last year.

He will present his personal history with the Order of DeMolay, a story reaching back more than fifty years, including his stint as New York’s first State Master Councilor and his term more recently as International Grand Master. He will illustrate his talk with DeMolay artifacts, the likes of which you probably haven’t seen before.

All Master Masons are welcome to attend, so please reserve in advance here.

Attire: suit and tie. Aprons are provided. We don’t host a meal, but I bet a post-meeting prandial gathering will be arranged off-site.

Look for us next on Thursday, December 1 at West Point Lodge 877 in Highland Falls for an unprecedented joint meeting with this historic lodge, located just outside the Military Academy.

     

‘Masonic art contest winners'

    

Every grand lodge ought to have an arts contest, but it is the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania that does it every year. It’s October, so it must be time to announce the winners of the “Embodying Masonic Values” art competition of 2022.

The Grand Lodge has been showcasing art linked thematically by Masonic imagery since 2018. This is the fine arts, not performing arts, literature, or anything else. As always, the entries are very interesting. Some pieces’ connections to Freemasonry are stronger than others’ and, God knows, some exhibit greater skill than others, but maybe all that’s in the eye of the beholder.

The Best in Show choice is Madeline Davis’ “Renovatio Ritus, Dedication.” The porcelain vessel measures, in inches, 8x4x3.

GL of Pennsylvania

‘Renovatio Ritus, Dedication,’
by Madeline Davis.

The artists says “This is documentation of the ritual vessel Dedication in use. Renovatio Ritus is a renewal ritual, asking for Clarity, Truth, and Dedication. We find ourselves in search of answers, so we turn to religion, dogmas, and science to satiate our need to know all, yet we will never will.” It’s yours for $400.

Dennis Darkeem’s medium is photography, and his 20x20 photograph titled “Balance” is the winner of the Grand Master’s Prize.

GL of Pennsylvania

‘Balance’ by Dennis Darkeem.

This is available for $1,200.

The Best in Category for oil painting is this straightforward 18x18 “A Pair of Compasses” by P.J. Mills.

GL of Pennsylvania

‘A Pair of Compasses’ by P.J. Mills.

Available for $2,000.

You can view all the winners and other entries here, but let me close with Bro. Juan Sepulveda’s Best in Category for drawing and prints: “Unlocking Independence.”

GL of Pennsylvania

‘Unlocking Independence’ by Juan Sepulveda.

That’s ink, chalk, and charcoal on paper—I think those come up in one of the degrees!—and it can be yours for $300.

     

‘Knapp-Hall tarot to return again’

    

No details were given, but a brief remark on social media Thursday promises the return of the elusive Knapp-Hall tarot deck.

As in J. Augustus Knapp and Manly P. Hall.

Out of stock at the Philosophical Research Society, the historic cards have been wait-listed for a long while. Looks like the wait is nearly over.

Some background info here and here.

     

‘BBC: The Templaaars!’

    

Last night, BBC 4’s In Our Time program reviewed the historic Knights Templar in a conversation among scholars who also refuted the notion, popular among some Freemasons, that the medieval warriors were the ancestors of Masonry.

It’s a sober-minded, authoritative, 50-minute finding of facts. (Keep listening beyond the host’s sign-off at 42 minutes.) Melvyn Bragg is joined by Jonathan Phillips, of the University of London; Helen Nicholson, of Cardiff University; and Mike Carr, of the University of Edinburgh.

The Masonic moment comes at 41 minutes, when Freemasonry’s templarphilia is laughed off as a “weird pseudo-history.”

The program’s webpage also gives a reading list of fourteen books. John J. Robinson did not make the grade.

Enjoy.

     

‘R.I.P. masonicdictionary.com’

    

Something last week reminded me of the venerable masonicdictionary.com, and upon venturing to visit, I found it was no more. Stephen Dafoe, the creator of the—I’ll call it—innovative resource, left Freemasonry years ago, so I guess it is understandable how he may have tired of paying to maintain the site and domain.

There was a lot to it, but the main attraction was a trove of essays in the twenty-first century revival of Masonic critical thinking. The writers (The Knights of the North), at Stephen’s prompting, tackled various problems facing the Masonic Order, from A to Z.

Too little, too late, perhaps, but I feel some pride when I recognize one of our bluntly voiced analyses impacting a lodge’s or grand lodge’s thinking. (Some grand masters believe good ideas come from their conferences, but that’s not exactly right.) Sorry to see it go.

The Knights of the North effectively became the Masonic Society in 2008.

The only remnant is a table of contents on this old Dummies post. My own contribution, a modified version of which I still trot out for speaking engagements, is reproduced here.

     

‘Pamela Colman Smith at the Whitney'

    

A.E. Waite

Born on this date in 1857 in Brooklyn: Arthur Edward Waite, initiated into Freemasonry September 19, 1901 in Runymede Lodge 2430 in Buckinghamshire, England (Worshipful Master in 1910).

His is a vexing biography. Click here for R.A. Gilbert’s paper from the 1986 Ars Quatuor Coronatorum and read of Waite’s—what I’ll call—duality of nature. He is remembered for books on Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, and Golden Dawn, but it seems some personality foibles leached into his mystical life. We’re all human. I have no problem with him, except that his A New Encyclopædia of Freemasonry is so disorganized as to prove the mystics ought to keep out of the reference and history book business.

It is beyond the confines of Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, and Golden Dawn where Waite’s name is best known, as he was the designer of the most ubiquitous tarot cards: the Rider-Waite deck. Rider was the publishing company that printed the cards. Waite provided the concepts for the illustrations. And the third wheel was the artist who brought those ideas to life: Pamela Colman Smith. Thus we reach the point of this edition of The Magpie Mason.

Pamela Colman Smith (1878-1951) was an English mystic and artist known to Waite through the Golden Dawn, and she was chosen to create the seventy-eight images of this new tarot deck. Following Waite’s specifications, we understand how some of these cards display Masonic hints. Anyway, the Whitney Museum of American Art currently exhibits “At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth Century American Modernism,” which includes Smith and the tarot cards. The show will close February 26, 2023. From the publicity:

“At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth Century American Modernism” showcases art produced between 1900 and 1930 by well known American modernists and their now largely forgotten, but equally groundbreaking peers. Drawn primarily from the Whitney’s permanent collection, it provides new perspectives on the myriad ways American artists used nonrepresentational styles developed in Europe to express their subjective responses to the realities of the modern age.

America’s early modernists came of age during a time when the country’s predominant mood was one of youthful confidence. Racial violence and social and economic injustices existed, but so too did insurgency and social reform. American technological and engineering ingenuity had made the country the world’s largest industrial power at the same time that political Progressivism and cultural shifts, such as women’s suffrage, had upended bourgeois codes of respectability. The combination gave rise to an excitement about an era that critic Walter Lippmann characterized as “bursting with new ideas, new plans, and new hopes.”

Against this backdrop, large numbers of American artists embraced the new over the traditional and fixed by rejecting realistic depictions of the world in favor of art that prioritized emotional experience and harmonious design. The results were largely ignored by the Whitney Museum, whose loyalty was to the urban realists who formed the core of the Whitney Studio Club, out of which the museum had grown. A handful of non-representational works were acquired when the museum was founded in 1930 and more were added in subsequent decades, but it was not until the mid-1970s that the museum vigorously began to acquire vanguard art made between 1900 and 1930. While extensive, these acquisitions largely excluded work by women and artists of color. The Whitney had already begun rectifying these biases, but in anticipation of the opening of “At the Dawn,” it added more works by these artists to the collection. The result is an exhibition that recasts the story of American art by celebrating the mood of optimistic excitement with which American artists embraced modern styles and illuminates the complexity and diversity that are at the heart of the American experience.

In 1909, Pamela Colman Smith was commissioned to design a set of seventy-eight tarot cards by A.E. Waite, the leader of the Independent and Rectified Rite of the Golden Dawn, a secret, mystical society to which Smith belonged. Known as the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck, it was the first to feature fully illustrated, symbolic images on each card, and integrated Judeo-Christian ideas into a visual vocabulary that often drew heavily on occult magic. Stylistically, the designs in the deck reflect the era’s widespread embrace of the sinuous, organic lines of Art Nouveau and the flowing patterns of Japanese prints. Smith used the style in her tarot cards and in watercolors, such as The Wave to suggest the existence of a mystical occult world beyond the visible one.

Click here for a quick video.

Seeing how Smith was English, I’m not sure how she fits into an exhibition of American artists, but that’s okay. In closing, let me offer the stock disclaimer on how tarot cards are for reflection, circumspection, contemplation, etc., and never for divination.

     

‘Lodge by lantern light’

   

Warren Lodge 32’s Masonic Hall was built in 1865 in the Italianate style.
It was relocated to its present site in 2011.

I’ll conclude September with my scattered recollections of a terrific night seven weeks ago at Warren Lodge 32 way up in Schulztville for the occasion of a most enjoyable festive board by lantern light.

I’ll tell ya: If you ever want to hold a meeting or meal outside at night by lantern light, go for it.

Warren 32 is New York’s last remaining “moon lodge,” meaning a lodge that meets on or about the night of the full moon. This special festive board was hosted on Saturday the thirteenth, which actually was two nights after August’s full moon (a Sturgeon Moon), so the convenience of the guests was accommodated by waiting for the weekend. And we guests turned out in force. I think I counted about sixty seated around the U-shaped “lodge” outdoors under the tent, and the travelers greatly outnumbered our hosts. A caravan of Grand Lodge officers, headed by Grand Master Kessler and Deputy Grand Master Rubin, arrived, obviously having come from a previous event somewhere.

Other brethren visited from around New York, New England, and elsewhere. I was invited to sit between Masons from New Hampshire and Massachusetts. There’s clearly a special energy present when meeting traveling Masons and being able to talk about things in common, however small. I told the brother from New Hampshire that I had been to the Manchester Temple two months prior for Masonic Con, and told the Massachusetts brother about my visits to two lodges on Cape Cod last year. Conversely, I was told about a tour of Masonic Hall in Manhattan.

Portrait of Augustus Schultz hangs in the East.

The Warren Lodge brethren made this a history nerd-friendly event. They had a brother appear in the character of Bro. Augustus Schultz, the benefactor of the lodge who died too young at 26 in the 1860s, and bequeathed to Warren Lodge the funds that enabled it to purchase the land and construct the meeting hall where Warren was at labor until 2011. (Bro. Schultz did likewise for a local church.) That’s Schultz, as in Schultzville, the lodge’s original hometown until the building was picked up and relocated half a mile north to stand next to the Clinton town hall.

You may have guessed the lodge was named for Revolutionary War hero Joseph Warren, and an additional attraction of the night was the attendance of a descendant of Warren. I think his name is Keith, but don’t quote me. Grand Master DeWitt Clinton issued its warrant.

A small altar, as was furnished centuries ago.

The U.S. flag featured fifteen stars from 1795 to 1818.

The festive board was great. Unlimited quantities of good food plus red wine for the usual toasts. The vino was Cribari, a label unknown to me. I’ll have to ask Bro. Cupschalk if he knows it, because we were drinking from shot glasses, for the obvious reason, and tasting was not a priority.

The weather was perfect: sunny blue skies during the day; cool and dry after sundown. Great company. A satiating meal amid a mellow ambiance thanks to the scores of small lambent flames in the lanterns. I failed to bring a briar and a sweet Virginia mixture, thinking it would have been forbidden, but evidently I could have joined RW Rubin, who was savoring his vanilla cavendish. I hope Warren does it again next August—and I’m bringing a pipe if they do. Harry says they’re looking at July 29, 2023.

Masonic Hall from the rear at dusk.
The octagonal cupola is a hallmark of Italianate architecture.

     

‘1730 Fellow-Craft’s Degree’

     

Thank you for reading The Magpie Mason. Today, we begin our fifteenth year together.

Publicity Lodge 1000 returned from its Summer Refreshment on Monday the twelfth, beginning a new year of Masonic labor. The Magpie Mason was scheduled to present a discussion of Masonic educational value, so, with a Ceremony of Passing on the trestleboard for an upcoming meeting, I chose the Fellow Craft Degree as that topic of conversation. And not just any second degree, but the one printed in 1730 by one Samuel Prichard in his essential ritual exposure Masonry Dissected, newly published by the Masonic Book Club. Masonic rituals, Masonic lodges, Masonic grand lodges, Masonic everythings were very different 300 years ago. All of it was very basic compared to what we have today.

I explained how when Masons think of lodges, we understandably envision the modern lodge room, with its varied furniture, seating arrangement, equipment, décor, etc., but things were primitive in the early eighteenth century when lodges met in tavern dining rooms or in private homes. There were no tall pillars flanking the Inner Door (there was no Inner Door!), and instead the brethren spoke ritually of J and B, explaining their purposes and describing their looks, using language similar enough to what we know today.

I told the lodge I was going to read the ritual of the degree. Read the ritual?! That could take hours! Yet the ritual of that period was very basic as well, consisting of a call-and-response dialog among the Worshipful Master and the brethren (not unlike our current Opening and Closing rituals) that spans only five pages of the MBC edition. The Fellow Craft Degree of 1730 included no elaborate floor work, no lengthy monolog lecture or other ceremonious orations, no hoodwink, nor other elements we today expect. Some of those features already were revealed to the candidate during the “Enter’d ’Prentice’s Degree,” and so went forsaken in the second degree. Anyway, reading the entire “Fellow-Craft’s Degree” ritual required only a couple of minutes. I won’t transcribe it all here, but do recommend to you the new book from the MBC. They will have more copies for sale after the subscription sales have been satisfied. (I saw Lewis Masonic had it listed for sale the other day, but it seems to be gone from their website now.)

Unsurprisingly, the letter G is very significant to the degree. I’ll share this brief passage. It rhymes and is in question-and-answer form. The dialog is between the Master and different brethren in the lodge (not the candidate, who wouldn’t be capable of answering), so you really had to know your ritual because you wouldn’t know which answers you’d be expected to recite on any given evening.

Q. Can you repeat the letter G?

A. I’ll do my endeavor. In the midst of Solomon’s Temple there stands a G, a letter fair to all to read and see, but few there be that understands what means that letter G.

Q. My friend, if you pretend to be of this fraternity, you can forthwith and rightly tell what means that letter G.

A. By sciences are brought to light bodies of various kinds, which do appear to perfect sight, but none but males shall know my mind.

Q. The Right shall.

A. If Worshipful.

Q. Both Right and Worshipful I am, to hail you I have command, that you do forthwith let me know, as I you may understand.

A. By Letters Four [the Word of EA] and Science Five [the fifth science, Geometry] this G aright does stand, in a due art and proportion, you have your answer, friend.

Q. My friend, you answer well, if Right and Free Principles you discover, I’ll change your name from friend, and henceforth call you Brother.

A. The Sciences are well composed of noble structure’s verse, a Point, a Line, and an Outside, but a Solid is the last.

Q. God’s good greeting be to this our happy meeting.

A. And all the Right Worshipful Brothers and Fellows.

Q. Of the Right Worshipful and Holy Lodge of St. John’s.

A. From whence I came.

Q. Greet you, greet you, greet you thrice, heartily well, craving your name.

A. (Candidate gives his name.)

Q. Welcome, Brother, by the grace of God.

     

‘The great mission of our fraternity’

    

The hundredth anniversary of the constitution of my lodge is a month away, so I am reading about that occasion and about the concurrent activities of Freemasonry in the State of New York. The latter is particularly impressive.

The Grand Lodge of New York obviously was a huge jurisdiction. Its lodges numbered 921 and had 272,634 Master Masons on the rolls in 1922-23. And it was a force internationally, having chartered lodges in Finland and Romania, with more planned in Hungary.

Europe’s wounds from the First World War were still being triaged, and the Grand Lodge became a leader in trying to establish an international federation of Masonic grand lodges to reconnect the fraternal bonds severed by the war. Ultimately, the Masonic International Association, the first of its kind in the Order’s history, did not come to fruition, but the Grand Lodge of New York was alone among the forty-nine U.S. jurisdictions to make the effort. Grand Master Arthur Tompkins, in his address to the Grand Lodge at the close of that term, said:

MW Arthur S. Tompkins

The spirit of strife is abroad in the world. National hatred, racial hatred, class prejudices, religious hatred, and individual hatreds are the curse of humanity and a blight upon the civilization of the twentieth century, and the world needs the influences of religion and the precepts of the Great Light in Masonry and the practical application of the Doctrine of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man to cure its ills and heal its wounds and calm the passions and subdue the prejudices of men and classes of men and nations and to bring concord, peace, and happiness to all nations. These are the only forces that can reach and regenerate the hearts of men and transform their brutal, selfish, and intolerance instincts into the attributes of love and service and toleration, and we American nations should welcome every opportunity to extend our activities and influences throughout the world….

Why cannot Masonry cooperate throughout the world to help suffering humanity and save the civilization now in jeopardy?

American Freemasonry, with all its prosperity and strength, owes to the Masons of all the countries of the world its sympathy, cooperation, the influence of its ideals, the power of its example, and the benefits of its counsel and leadership. We American Masons should not confine our activities and benefactions to our own country and our own national problems. The Masons of Europe are looking to us for leadership, and I believe that a union of all the Masonic forces in the world will be a great power, a potential force, for the promotion of the spirit of fraternity and brotherhood, peace and goodwill and may materially aid in the moral reconstruction of the world.

It’s a grandiose message to the modern ear. Quite a shift in Masonry’s focus from how Tompkins expressed it then to today. Now it isn’t even “our own national problems” (if only), but is merely the fraternity’s organizational maladies. But a century ago was patriotic times. The Grand Lodge made Masonic holidays of Flag Day and George Washington’s Masonic birthday for the lodges to celebrate. MW Tompkins urged the lodges to support public education, calling it “the cornerstone and bulwark of our liberties, and the only sure guarantee of our stability and perpetuity as a republic.” (Talk about changing times!) And, of course, there was the recent establishment of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Hospital.

Outside the sacred retreat, Arthur Tompkins was a major figure in civic and political life. A party chairman, a holder of judgeships, a U.S. Congressman. During the years he served as deputy grand master and grand master of the Grand Lodge of New York, Arthur S. Tompkins also was a New York Supreme Court justice. From what I’ve read, Tompkins simply could have asked for his party’s gubernatorial nomination in 1926, but he did not, and he endorsed another judge. In the thirties, near the end of his life, Tompkins was an associate justice of the Appellate Division.

And, yes, he was related to Daniel D. Tompkins; theirs was a family that established roots in America in the 1640s.

On Americanism, he was an idealist. In that same speech to the Grand Lodge, he concluded:

I have heard it stated by overzealous Masons that our government is a Masonic government. If by that they mean that Masons had much to do with the early history of our Republic, its birth and growth, they are right, but if intended in the broader sense, they are wrong and such statements are only calculated to cause controversy and resentment. We hear people talk about a white man’s government, and a Protestant government. These statements are true only in the sense that there are more white people and more Protestants in our country than there are people of other colors and creeds. Our Government is not exclusively a white man’s government, or a Catholic, or a Protestant or a Jewish or a Gentile Government, in the sense that the liberties, privileges, opportunities, and all the good things of the American Republic are for one class alone or that one class or race or creed may dominate all others in respect of their liberties, rights and privileges, and never will be such a Government if the ideals and purposes of the patriot fathers, the founders of our Republic, are perpetuated. Ours is a great democracy, made up of all kinds and classes, from all nations and all tongues and creeds. It is a Government as Lincoln declared “of the people, by the people and for the people,” of and by and for all the people, Jew and Gentile, Protestant and Catholic, white and black, and we cannot set up class against class, labor against capital, Protestant against Catholic, Jew against Gentile, the white man against the black man, without impairing the stability and imperiling the perpetuity of our Republic. Our democracy cannot permanently endure unless all classes, creeds, and races are allowed to live and work and worship freely and peaceably under the equal protection of the law. Any movement that is calculated to fan and intensify the fires of religious bigotry or class antagonisms or race prejudices will be deprecated and deplored by men who love their country and who want to keep it noble and make its future greater. There are peaceful and lawful agencies for the punishment of crime, the protection of individual and property rights, the redress of wrong, the vindication of the right and the preservation of our institutions and all the things that we Masons hold dear. Let us then be true to our Masonic faith and by precept and example, by loyalty and steadfastness, strive to allay the bitterness, to close the breach, to heal the wounds that have been and are being caused by these unfortunate and unnecessary antagonisms. Let our aim and all our influence be for a universal brotherhood and a world-wide peace, that is the great mission of our fraternity.

Arthur Tompkins cocktail

In my brief reading on Arthur Sydney Tompkins, I see how he was a serious cigar lover, and that the Rockland Tobacco Company of Nyack sold a cigar named Judge Tompkins Corona with the tagline “A Supreme Cigar Verdict.” I also stumbled across the existence of a cocktail named Arthur Tompkins. I haven’t yet found its history (nor have I pinned down his politics vis-à-vis Prohibition), so I can’t conclude it is named for our past grand master, but I’ll keep looking. The recipe is simple though:

 Photos courtesy cocktailpro

     

‘Bolívar’s Scottish Rite regalia’

   

Magpie file photo

The Thirty-Second Degree collar and apron owned by Simón Bolívar. I shot this photo at Fraunces Tavern Museum twenty years ago when Tom Savini curated an exhibit of Livingston Library treasures there. I had this published in The Northern Light not long after.

One week from tomorrow, the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library will host an online discussion of the Scottish Rite regalia owned by Bro. Simón Bolívar. Bro. Alexander Vastola, Director of the library, will be the presenter, explaining Bolívar’s Masonic life, and how his Thirty-Second Degree collar and apron became the property of the library.

Thursday, September 29 at 7 p.m. Click here to register.

Simón Bolívar (1783-1830), “the George Washington of South America,” was a military and political leader essential to the liberation of multiple South American nations from Spanish colonial control, including Venezuela, Colombia, and, of course, Bolivia. His Masonic lodge is unknown, but history remembers him, with Argentine José de San Martin and Cuban José Martí, also Freemasons, as heroes of their nations’ wars of independence.

Central Park Conservancy

Our city has been adorned with several Bolívar monuments since 1891. The current statue was dedicated at Bolivar Hill in 1921. President Warren Harding, made a Mason the previous year in Marion Lodge 70 in Ohio, delivered a foreign policy speech on relations among the Americas at the dedication. The statue was moved to Sixth Avenue at 59th Street, at Central Park, in 1951, after Sixth was dubbed the Avenue of the Americas. (The statues of San Martin and Martí were added there later.)