‘The first law of the lodge’

    

At the Fourth Manhattan District’s Protocol Class yesterday.

You think you know something about Freemasonry, but then attend a Masonic Protocol class.

That’s where the Magpie Mason was twenty-four hours ago, joining three lodge brothers and others from the Fourth Manhattan District at Masonic Hall for instruction in the finer points of dos and don’ts. Actually, I shouldn’t have written “lodge brothers.” It’s lodge brethren.

If you think yourself above protocol instruction because you’ve read Waite, Wilmshurst and whatever, get used to the idea of being wrong about that. Approaching my twenty-seventh anniversary in Freemasonry, even I was very curious about what would be imparted to us yesterday. Sure, I knew most of the material already—even I can learn osmotically over time—but a lot of it contradicted what I had learned earlier in life as a—cough—“New Jersey Mason,” and some of it was new to me.

It was in 1924 when Grand Lodge, at the suggestion of MW Arthur S. Tompkins, made the Bible presentation part of lodge life. ‘I am glad to report that my recommendation…has been adopted by many lodges,’ he said before Grand Lodge in May of that year. ‘I hope it may become a universal custom, one that shall indelibly impress upon the mind of every new Mason the fact that the Holy Bible is the Great Light in Masonry; that the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man is the cornerstone of our fraternity; and that our first duty to is to God, and the Sacred Book should be the lamp to our feet and a light to our paths.’ 

“We study Protocol because we are convinced of its powers to help maintain harmony,” said RW Bro. Tomas Hull, Grand Director of Ceremonies. “It is a form of courtesy to the individual and a manifestation of respect to the Craft. Harmony is the first law of the lodge. Where discord enters, Freemasonry leaves.”

In the I Knew That category, for examples:

 - No one may tread across the Master’s Carpet.

 - No smoking, food, or drink is permitted in the lodge room.

 - The Inner Door may be used only during degrees.

In the Contradictions Department:

 - Never say “Blue Lodge” or “Symbolic Lodge,” but say “Master Mason Lodge” or “Masonic Lodge.”

 - Do not say “Worshipful Sir” or any other “Sir.” (I’ll never be able to break that habit!)

 - Do not say “To you and through you.” (I can break that habit.)

Under New (to me) Material:

 - There are no “Open Installations” or other events, but instead are “Public.”

 - Do not say “grace the East,” which I’ve never heard before.

 - Do not say “Sitting Master,” although I never knew where that came from anyway.

There was an awful lot more. As my lodge’s tiler, much of the instruction was idiomatic to my responsibilities. Make sure you avail yourself of this and the other courses offered in your district!

     

‘Freemasonry: the Daughter of the Enlightenment’

    

It’s not on their website yet, but the 2024 Charles A. Sankey Lecturer will be Professor Cécile Révauger. That’s both in person and online, to wit:

2024 Charles A. Sankey Lecture

in Masonic Studies

Sunday, April 14 at 3 p.m.

Sean O’Sullivan Theatre

Brock University

Professor Cécile Révauger,

Professor Emerita of English

at Bordeaux University, France

on “Freemasonry, the Daughter

of the Enlightenment:

from Religious Tolerance

to Universalism”

Generously sponsored by the Grand Lodge of AF&AM of Canada in the Province of Ontario. To attend in person at BrockU, please reserve your ticket(s) online here and clicking on the tickets link. Tickets are free.

There will also be a livestream for those who cannot attend. Click here.

     

‘2024 Magpie speaking tour’

    

Royal Arch apron on display at the GWMNM.

The Magpie Mason’s calendar of speaking engagements is filling up fast with two dates packed into the 366-day leap year that is 2024!

The Royal Arch companions at Eureka Chapter 7 in beautiful Orlando, Florida want to fly me down for their next convocation for some reason. Actually, their next meeting will be tonight, but after that the next meeting will be Thursday, March 14.

Eureka meets in Eola Lodge 207’s building, located at 3200 East Grant Street. (Happy 100th anniversary!) There I will reprise my talk on Kabbalah and Royal Arch Masonry. I changed the title so it don’t look like the same lecture I’ve been delivering for ten years, so now it is “Mystical Interpretations of Royal Arch Symbols.”

Leave it to me to visit Florida after winter. Wear something red, and I’ll see you there. 7:30 p.m.

In May, on a date to be determined, I’ll join the brethren at Audubon-Parkside Lodge 218 (another A-P Lodge!) in New Jersey. We had a date picked, but it seems the lodge is relocating, and therefore its schedule is changing, but we’ll work it out.

This talk will cover two broad topics: choosing best practices for lodge life (I’m avoiding “The O Word” because it makes some people crazy), and finding the right subscription memberships for further Light in Masonry.

I’m exhausted just talking about these.

     

‘The Bowl and the Pipe’

   

Title page.

This edition of The Magpie Mason is a long one. I share with you a chapter from The Evolution of Freemasonry: An Authentic Story of Freemasonry, Profusely Illustrated with Portraits of Distinguished Freemasons and Views of Memorable Relics and Places of Singular Masonic Interest by Delmar Duane Darrah in 1920. This chapter reflects on the convivial traditions of smoking and drinking in lodge during Freemasonry’s early years. Some of it is a little humorous; there are a few mentions of New York Masonry; and it concludes on a happy, hopeful note. I added a few photos and other graphics. Enjoy.

GL of BC&Y

The Bowl and the Pipe

In his indulgences, man has ever sought the bowl and the pipe. The early Masonic fathers, like the balance of the human race, had their weaknesses. An examination of their customs and habits shows them to have been devotees of the banquet board and the bar, as well as generous consumers of the weed.

The first Masonic lodges held their meetings in a tavern where they had ready access to the tap room. It was not so much the absence of proper places of meeting which caused the primitive lodges to assemble in the hostelry of the town, but it was because they could find in the tavern that which contributed to the gastronomic characteristics of the society for conviviality was the dominant feature of those early Masons and the knife, fork, and corkscrew were to them greater in their symbolism than the plumb, square, and level.

At the GWMNM.

Let it be understood that the hour of refreshment was not a mere company of Masons drinking, but the lodge room itself became nothing more or less than a barroom. One of the important pieces of furniture in the early lodge was what was known as the Mason’s glass, or drinking cup, which had a very thick bottom. Its purpose was to permit each brother to drink the other’s health, the heavy bottom enabling the drinkers to pound the table. In the revelry, the Master and Wardens were especially favored with long stemmed glasses called constables, which were capable of holding a quart. The conversation at these festive boards would not bear repetition in polite society, so strongly was it tinctured with profanity, vulgarity, and coarse jests. Dr. [George] Oliver relates that in lecturing a lodge meeting, the volume of smoke arose in the fury of a burning prairie and his address was frequently interrupted by calls to the barkeep for more beer and wine.

Poster at L.J. Peretti in Boston.

Such practices were not confined solely to the lodge. They affected the Grand Body as well, for in 1775, a rule was passed by the Grand Lodge of England that no one should smoke tobacco until the Grand Lodge closed. This rule was evidently ignored, for in 1815, it was revived and reaffirmed.

However shocking these statements may be to the Mason of today, it must not be forgotten that his brethren of two hundred years ago were simply doing whatever everybody else did, and their conduct was but a reflection of the social conditions of those times. The dominant sin of the eighteenth century was that of over indulgence. Dr. Emmons, an eminent divine, preached a sermon in 1719 in which he declared that multitudes might be seen every where wallowing in drunkenness.

On display at the GWMNM.

Even as late as one hundred and twenty-five years ago, drunkenness was a common thing. Nearly everybody drank—ministers drank, deacons drank, and laymen drank, while a church ordination service always had more toddy than prayer. Intemperance was found not only in public houses and in public places, but in private families as well. At an ordination service held in Boston about one hundred years ago, the incidental charges connected with the affair included three pails of bitters, eighteen pails of punch, eleven pails of wine, five mugs of flip and three pails of toddy. It is apparent that the carrying capacity of the divines of that period would make them eligible for membership in the most approved city club of today. As late as sixty or seventy years ago, people raised their barns with whiskey, christened their children with port wine, went to funerals full of toddy, came home and drank more.

The lodge records of the earliest periods make frequent mention of the hour of refreshment. Brother D. Murray Lyon, the Scottish historian, declares the banquet to have been recognized as an institution by the Masonic Craft by reason of an ordinance proclaimed in the year 1599. One reason assigned for the decline of the old operative societies was the failure to hold the annual feasts and the restoration of these customs by those responsible for the revival of Freemasonry had much to do with its future success. The reception of a new candidate appears from the old records to have been generally accompanied by a dinner. Sometimes the bill was paid from the general fund, and, at others, by each participant assuming his share of the cost. When the Grand Lodge was organized at York in 1725, among the rules adopted were the following:

Every first Wednesday in the month a lodge shall be held at the house of a brother according as their turn shall fall out.

 

Punchbowl c. 1800 at the GWMNM.

The bowl shall be filled at the monthly lodge with punch once; ale, bread, cheese, and tobacco in common, but if anything more shall be called for by any brother, either for eating or drinking, that brother so calling shall pay for it himself, besides his club.

 

The Master or Deputy shall be obliged to call for a bill exactly at ten o’clock if they meet in the evening and discharge it.

In the records of the Witham Lodge, to which reference has already been made, is a bylaw defining the duties of officers and the penalty for non-compliance, a “bottle of wine to be drunk by the brethren after the lodge is closed, to make them some past amends.”

At Warren Lodge 32 a few years ago.

Dr. Oliver, in referring to the time when he served as Master of the lodge in the early part of the nineteenth century, spoke of the refreshments as being abstemious and moderate. The amount for each brother being strictly limited to three small glasses of punch, and this was seldom exceeded except at the annual festival when a pint of wine was allowed. He says the brethren were disposed to increase the allowance but this was forbidden and no lodge addicted to intemperance could be found.

In their revelry, the brethren made a practice of giving to the furniture of the room fanciful titles and to impose a fine of a bottle of wine for calling any article by its proper name. The table was called a workshop; the chairs, stalls; the candles, stars; the bottles, barrels; the glasses, cannons; and the liquor, powder. If person asked “How do you do?” the party challenged, if a Mason, would drink to the other’s health, and when in a mixed company, a member of the Craft who desired to make known his affiliation with the society would, after drinking, turn his glass down.

Lawrence Dermott, in writing concerning the Bacchanalian feasts of the Craft says: “It was thought expedient to abolish the old custom of studying geometry in the lodge and some of the younger brethren made it appear that a good knife and fork, in the hands of a dextrous brother, over proper materials, would give greater satisfaction and add more to the conviviality of the lodge than the best scale and compasses in Europe.”

It is not to be supposed that these assemblages of Masons were wholly for the purpose of satisfying the appetite. The minutes of Witham Lodge, at Lincoln, of the date January 2, 1732, record: “Bro. Every recommended Mr. Stephen Harrison, of the City of London, music-master, as a proper person to be a member of this society, and proposed to give a guinea towards the charges of his initiation; Sir Cecil Wray proposed to give another guinea; Sir Christopher Hales, half a guinea, to which Sir Cecil Wray added another guinea; and in regard that Mr. Harrison might be useful and entertaining to the society, the lodge agreed to admit him for the sum of £3/13/6” or about $17.00 in our money. This goes to prove that our ancient brethren very early recognized music as a liberal art.

Punning was a favorite amusement and was intended to test the mental capacity of the participants. Another pastime was called crambo and required ready wit and keen perception to pass it freely around the board. It consisted in the Master reciting a line of poetry or proposing a toast to which every brother present was expected to improvise a line, and upon his failure to produce a corresponding rhyme he was penalized by being required to purchase an extra round of drinks for the company.

These carousals did not find favor with the entire membership of the Craft. Some of the brothers were very sensitive over the matter and considered that lodges meeting at taverns were guilty of an impropriety. Accordingly in 1778 a proposition was broached providing for the raising of a sum of money to be used in the construction of a Masonic Hall. One of the arguments offered being that the meetings of the fraternity in public houses gave it more the air of a bacchanalian society rather than one of gravity and wisdom.

Humidor on display at the GWMNM.

It must not be understood that the practices under discussion were confined solely to our English cousins. The records of the Grand Lodge of New York disclose the information that in 1772, Master’s Lodge, held at Albany, passed an order that “the Tiler be furnished 12 pint bowls for which he shall be accountable,” and anyone breaking them was to forward 8 pence for each one destroyed. Eleven years later, the Treasurer was ordered to procure for the use of the lodge one quarter cask of Lisbon or Sherry wine, five gallons of spirits, two loaves of sugar and two dozen glasses. Four years later a rule was passed that no brother be allowed to drink more than one-half pint of wine each lodge night and that the stewards be instructed to see that the rule was fully complied with.

Hoffman 412 in New York.

An evidence of what the conduct of Masons one hundred and fifty years ago may have been is suggested by the first article of a bylaw adopted May 22, 1771, by Solomon Lodge, formed at Poughkeepsie, New York: “In open lodge without order or decency, a dissolution must be the consequence. Therefore, at the third stroke of the Master’s hammer, a profound silence shall be observed, and if any brother curses, swears, or says anything irreligious, obscene, or ludicrous; offers to lay any wagers; interrupts another brother who is speaking to the Master; or hisses at what he is or has been doing; holds private committees; appears unclothed or with his hat on; or smokes tobacco in open lodge; or is disguised in liquor during lodge hours, such offending brother, shall for the first offense, be gently reproved and admonished by the Master; for the second offense, shall be fined one shilling; for the third offense, be fined two shillings; and for the fourth offense, to be immediately expelled from the lodge, and never be admitted again as a member or visitor unless he be balloted for and received in like manner with a strange brother, paying all fines due as per these bylaws; and eight shillings as a new admission fee if he chooses to be reinstated as a member.”

St. John’s Lodge No. 2, of Connecticut, which was organized February 26, 1754, adopted a bylaw providing that any brother guilty of profanity during lodge hours was to be fined one shilling; and any brother so void of shame as to disguise himself in liquor was to be fined two shillings, should he come to lodge in that condition, and be dismissed for the night. But whatever may have been the customs and the practices of those fathers in Masonry in the early and formulative periods of the society there were simply reflected in the lodges the same customs and habits that characterized people generally.

It stands to the everlasting credit of Masonry that it has outlived its ancestors and their environment. It has been a pioneer in the movement toward temperance, and today drunkenness is a Masonic misdemeanor punished by proper discipline. The habit of patronizing barrooms is not in accordance with Masonic ethics. Profanity and coarse jests are seldom heard in a place of meeting. Gentlemanly conduct, intellectuality, culture, and high morality, even to religious severity, are apparent everywhere. Thus by a long process of evolution, Freemasonry has passed from a convivial association to an institution of strong moral force seeking the elevation of the human mind and the cultivation of the social virtues.

     

‘Widows Sons may return to lodge’

    

Cornerstones photo

Widows Sons chapter in New York City.

In an edict published yesterday afternoon, our Grand Master granted a moratorium on the 2017 restrictions placed on the Widows Sons motorcycle riders here in the Grand Lodge of New York.

The Widows Sons Masonic Riders Association, according to its website, is “an International Association comprised of Master Masons in good standing who are members of their local Widows Sons Chapter.”

The website also says: “The Widows Sons was founded in 1999 with the intention to offer aid and assistance to Masonic Widows and Orphans. Still holding strong to that commitment, the Widows Sons offers regular charitable donations to Masonic and other charities to help benefit many people throughout the world.”

Also:

“Our focus is to:

- Contribute to the relief of our Widows & Orphans;

- Introduce the sport of motorcycling to our Masonic Brothers;

- Raise Masonic Awareness in the world of sport motorcycling;

- Support our Blue Lodge through regular attendance and assisting with lodge events; and

- Represent the fraternity in a positive light at all times.”

In his action Saturday, Grand Master Richard Kessler says “during this past summer recess, several motorcycle enthusiasts who are Master Masons in good standing have petitioned...for reconsideration based upon their assurance of good conduct and pray for an appeal to reverse the original decision and edict prohibiting any communication or interrelation with ‘The Widows Sons Masonic Riders Association’ and its affiliates by fellow Masons.”

The previous edict from MW Jeffrey Williamson, dated September 19, 2017, asserted there had been “multiple instances of disparaging conduct unbecoming of a Master Mason by an assortment of members of the organization clearly demonstrating that ‘The Widows Sons Masonic Riders Association’ has not achieved a level of Masonic maturity, decorum, and dignity required by those who seek association with the Grand Lodge.” It also mentioned how grand lodges elsewhere in the country held misgivings about this group.

The riders’ website reports there are 387 chapters worldwide, with 280 in the United States. Three in New York are listed: Cornerstones Chapter in New York City; Stonecutters Chapter on Long Island; and Traveling Men Chapter at Troy.

Cornerstones photo

Cornerstones Chapter in New York City.

The 2017 edict did not forbid the existence of the Widows Sons (the absence of an apostrophe drives me bananas), but did bar the riders from functioning on Masonic locations and at Masonic events in the Grand Jurisdiction of New York. A biker could race his Screamin’ Eagle through the gaping loophole that is the silence on what the Widows Sons could do in public, which probably explains Cornerstones Chapter’s continued activities between these two edicts as documented in photographs on its Facebook page.

Personally, I’m indifferent to the Widows Sons. I’d rather see more personal development circles, mindfulness exercises, book clubs, and historical societies in Freemasonry but, if the bikers honor their good behavior pledge, who am I to say?

     

‘Texas Masonic politics to be Masonic Society discussion’

    

The Masonic Society has announced its keynote speaker for our annual dinner next month during Masonic Week at Crystal City, Virginia.

President Oscar Alleyne says Bro. Billy Hamilton, Master of Texas Lodge of Research, will discuss Masonic politics in Texas. From the publicity:

Billy Hamilton

The Masonic Society is excited to announce that W. Bro. Billy Hamilton will be the 2024 TMS Dinner Speaker at Masonic Week on Friday, February 9 at 7 p.m. His topic involves civil politics spilling over into the lodge room, a Texas standoff between Masons and a guy fending off an armed posse with a canon at his house.

Just to clarify, the title of the talk will be “Allen and Williams: Masonic Politics in the Republic of Texas.”

Bro. Billy Hamilton is the Worshipful Master of Texas Lodge of Research and is a Past Master of Fort Worth Lodge 148. He is a co-host of the Fort Worth Masonic Podcast and is one of the organizers of Texas MasoniCon, an annual Masonic educational conference.

Bro. Hamilton was the General Manager of the Grand Lodge of Texas Library & Museum in Waco from 2020 to 2022. He has been published in The Journal of the Masonic Society, Knight Templar magazine, Fraternal Review, and Texas Lodge of Research’s Transactions.

His book, Ancient Mysteries and Modern Masonry: The Collected Writings of Jewel P. Lightfoot, is available through Westphalia Press or Amazon.com.

Tickets for this event can be purchased at Masonic Week’s Registration link here.

      

‘Rhode Island bets on Stand-Up Guys’

    

A still from the video. Click here to view the 30-second spot.

There may be no more effective way to see how a grand lodge views both Freemasonry at large and its own individuality than through its advertising. Yesterday, the Grand Lodge of Rhode Island revealed a 30-second video on Facebook (also to be seen on WPRI television’s website) to summarize for the public its understanding of what it is to be a Freemason in 2024.

According to the message, it’s about being a “stand-up guy.”

“What does it mean to be a stand-up guy?” the video asks. It’s about being a good neighbor, friend, and citizen who exhibits morality, charity, and loyalty is the reply.

I don’t know if this is the opening salvo of a campaign to come, but it’s a more thoughtful message than the insipid and hubristic “Not Just a Man. A Mason.” campaign that won’t go away. This “Stand-Up Guy” approach conveys a yankee simplicity that I’d guess would resonate in the Ocean State—America’s smallest state, home to only about 490,000 men aged 18 to 54.

Another still from the video.

(The Grand Lodge is home to almost 2,800 Masons, according to data published by the Masonic Service Association of North America.)

“Your brothers are waiting,” says this ad in conclusion. I hope their lodges find who they’re looking for.

     

‘Research chapter offers English Mark, banners presentations’

    

Massachusetts Chapter of Research will host its regular online gathering tomorrow at 7 p.m. to hear two presentations—but I don’t know where! From the anemic publicity:

We will have two speakers at our January Convocation:

Comp. Adri Leemput, of Cambridge Royal Arch Chapter, will speak on the Mark Master Degree as worked by the Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons of England and Wales and its Districts and Lodges Overseas.

Ex. Jeffrey S. Bennett, of Arlington Chapter 376 in Texas, will continue his lecture series with a presentation on the Banners of the Veils.

If you find out where on the web this will be, please leave a comment below.

     

‘To be known and hailed as Menorah Lodge’

    

Menorah Lodge 249 75th anniversary pin.

On this date 100 years ago, my original “mother” lodge was set to labor. This lodge no longer exists, but be that as it may.

Menorah Lodge in Bayonne, New Jersey was formed and began meeting Under Dispensation on Wednesday, January 9, 1924. They were U.D. for only a few months because, on April 16, the Grand Lodge granted a warrant to the brethren. The official record, in the form of a memo to the Grand Lodge, says:

Your Committee on Dispensations and Warrants, to whom was referred the question of granting a warrant to Menorah Lodge, U.D., beg leave to report that the petitioners are all regularly dimitted Masons of Arvada Lodge, No. 141, of the jurisdiction of Colorado; Golden Rule Lodge, No. 159; Fraternity Lodge, No. 262, of the jurisdiction of Michigan; Heroine Lodge, No. 104, of the jurisdiction of Missouri; Oriental Lodge, No. 51; Orient Lodge, No. 126; Bethel Lodge, No. 207, of the jurisdiction of New Jersey; National Lodge, No. 209; Marshall Lodge, No. 848; Mount Sinai Lodge, No. 864; Pilgrim Lodge, No. 890; Elbe Lodge, No. 893; Menorah Lodge, No. 903; Elmer Lodge, No. 909; Paul Revere Lodge, No. 929; Audubon Lodge, No. 930, of the jurisdiction of New York; Jellico Lodge, No. 527, of the jurisdiction of Tennessee, and were set to work by the Most Worshipful Grand Master on the ninth day of January, 1924; that they conferred the Entered Apprentice Degree on fourteen candidates; the Fellow Craft Degree on eight candidates; that seven petitions are awaiting action; that they have secured a safe and suitable lodge-room in which to do Masonic work; that they have secured suitable paraphernalia and have $2,017.96 in the treasury.

Your committee, therefore, recommend that a warrant be granted to Samuel S. Cohen, as Worshipful Master; Maurice Shapiro, as Senior Warden; and Martin I. Marshak, as Junior Warden; and their associates, for a Masonic lodge at Bayonne, Hudson County, to be known and hailed as Menorah Lodge, No. 249, F&AM.

Fraternally submitted,

A.M. Loudenslager,

Donald J. Sargent,

Thomas Rogers, Jr.,

Albert S. Riehle,

Joseph F. Lenox,

Committee.

Trenton, N.J., April 16th, 1924.

On motion, duly seconded, the report was received and recommendation adopted—and the rest is history. Seventy-three years later, yours truly was made a Mason in this lodge.

As you might guess from the lodge’s name, it was a lodge comprised mostly of Jewish Masons. The local men came from so many other lodges because Jews always seemed to have been blackballed when petitioning the existing lodges in that city. Purely coincidental, I’m sure.

Also by coincidence, likewise on April 16, 1924, a lodge that met in the City of Elizabeth received its warrant. This lodge also no longer exists, but it was Mt. Nebo 248. My grandfather was made a Mason there in 1968, and served in the East in 1976.

Anyway, it was on Saturday, May 3, 1924 when Menorah Lodge was constituted, and its officers installed, by MW Andrew Foulds, Jr. and a retinue of Grand Lodge officers during an emergent communication of the Grand Lodge. (Mt. Nebo would follow two days later.)

The Grand Master would return to Menorah, or at least at a banquet the lodge hosted in Newark, on May 28.

That “safe and suitable lodge-room” the Menorah brethren secured was in the Odd Fellows Hall at Broadway and Twenty-Ninth Street. I think the hospital stands there now. They met on the first, third, and fifth Mondays of the month (except July and August, and when legal holidays coincided). The lodge had fifty-two members at the end of the 1924 calendar year.

It was a fluke how I found my way to Menorah Lodge in 1997. At that time, I resided pretty far from Bayonne and in a town that had two lodges within its borders too, but I was glad it worked out that way. In retrospect, though, I must admit I’m sorry I didn’t act on my desire for Masonic Light years earlier. I was a student in the late eighties and early nineties, attending university just a mile south of Masonic Hall in New York City. I wouldn’t have had time to serve competently as a lodge officer then, but I would have attended meetings, and I wish I had knocked on that door some time around 1990.

Bro. (and Noble) Warren G. Harding.

In conclusion, while reading about these events, I discovered how a lodge named for the recently deceased U.S. president also was set to labor on the identical timeline. Warren G. Harding Lodge 250 in Woodcliff went through the same process: set to labor U.D. on January 9, 1924; and constituted May 3—just a few hours before Menorah Lodge. President Harding had died on August 2, 1923. He had been made a Mason at Marion Lodge 70 in Ohio in 1901. I otherwise never heard of this lodge.

     

‘Masonic Research District meeting’

    

Sunday afternoon brought the long-anticipated Zoom meeting of the Grand Lodge of Virginia’s Masonic Research District hosted by District Deputy Grand Master Shelby Chandler.

Virginia has five lodges of Masonic research (with a sixth on the way), and they were grouped into one district several years ago rather than each remaining an oddball within its geographical district. The purpose of this meeting, very prudently, was to allow the District Deputy to present his DDGM program once to all these lodges to avoid taking time away from their chosen presentations during his individual Official Visits. (My lodge, Civil War Lodge of Research 1865, will receive RW Chandler at our July 13 meeting at Jackson Lodge 19 in Delaware, likely the only lodge meeting I’ll be able to attend this year.)

The Grand Master’s Official Visit to the Masonic Research District will be February 3 at George Washington Lodge of Research 1732 at Fredericksburg.

Chandler’s discussion yesterday consisted of a detailed introduction of MW Jack Kayle Lewis, the new (and 178th) Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Virginia, including his very impressive resume of academic and professional achievements, plus his family life and other notable points, including his ambitious plans for his term. If you were wondering about the police badge design of Lewis’ Grand Master pin, it is inspired by his many decades in law enforcement.

Then came the designs upon Chandler’s trestleboard. I won’t cover it all, but here are some of the slides he displayed during his talk:

Click to enlarge.

Sorry for the blur.

I am starting to see the wisdom of us New Yorkers having our own DDGM for our four research lodges. (There is interest in starting a fifth in the Hudson Valley.) It is wise to have an ombudsman representing the research lodges to the Grand Lodge, bringing assistance when needed.

Of course we have our own festivities planned for New York, but if you’re in Virginia, get to this one.

I know it’s far off, but add to your calendars the Grand Lodge of Virginia’s Lafayette Bicentennial Gala on October 5.

     

‘New year, new Grotto’

    

Azim Grotto, “The Handsomest Grotto in the Realm,” has new officers and a new schedule of social events for 2024.

Monarch Brian

Officers were elected three weeks ago, at which time Brian Donlon was cajoled into the Monarch’s chair. Congratulations! He has the support of a veritable dream team of Mystic Prophets in the officer stations.

But the bigger news is the Lucky 7 Club, a yearlong schedule of social gatherings around New York City on the seventh of each month. Why seven? Azim is the seventh Grotto to have been chartered, which happened way back in 1893.

As today is January 7, this first Lucky 7 event will take place from noon to four o’clock at Down the Hatch on West Fourth Street (between Sixth and Seventh) in the Village. The details:

Bottomless Brunch Menu

Noon to four

$35 per person

All drafts and mimosas

with eight wings or french toast sticks

w/sausage links and choice

of waffle fries, tots or onion rings

Standard Menu

Noon to Close

$6 shots of Tullamore Dew Green Tea

and Tullamore Dew

$5 all cans and bottles

(High Noon excluded) 

Monarch Brian, he say:

In an attempt to make Grottoing fun again, we are going to make it more convenient as well. This year we will be starting the Lucky 7’s Club. A movable feast of Grotto, if you will. On the seventh of every month, we will meet at a different dive bar or event space throughout the five boroughs, regardless of what day it lands on or who can attend. Whether it’s two Prophets or twenty in attendance, the idea is to bring Grotto closer to each of our homes throughout the boroughs and make it as convenient as possible to come and hang out more often—if within the length of your leather whip… I mean cabletow.

The very first Lucky 7’s Club meeting will be January 7, and as many of you know, the day before, our very own Past Monarch Anthony Ruffini will be installed as Potentate of Mecca Shriners. Many of us will be in attendance and it will be a very beautiful ceremony followed by a lot of celebrating. So the theme of our very first “Club meeting” will be recovery.

We will meet at Down the Hatch in Greenwhich Village for bottomless brunch. I’m sure many of you know the area is known for college/dive bars, and Down the Hatch is no exception. So bring your fez (or don’t) and come join Azim.

Sadly, the Magpie Mason will be unavailable for this one, but I promise to be a Seventh Day Eventist in the future. (Actually, I think I know this place, but in my day it had a different name.) Enjoy, Prophets! Brunch is the most important meal between breakfast and lunch!

    

‘Millar returns to library lecture series’

    

The Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library of the Grand Lodge of New York will resume its lecture series this month, hosting Bro. Angel Millar for a return engagement. From the publicity:

Freemasonry, Fringe Masonry,

and Ritual Magic!

By Angel Millar

Thursday, January 25

7:30 p.m.

RSVP here.

Angel Millar

The most influential occult orders of the modern age were either founded by Freemasons or influenced by Masonic ritual, but was this due to a deep insight into the true meaning of the Craft? A subversion of its symbolism and history? A simple misunderstanding? Angel Millar explores Freemasonry and related traditions such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Ordo Templi Orientis, Wicca, Angular Magic, and Chaos Magic.

He is the author of The Three Stages of Initiatic Spirituality and Freemasonry: Foundation of the Western Esoteric Tradition, among other books. He is also the editor-in-chief of Fraternal Review and is a Fellow of the Philalethes Society.

Remember: Photo ID is required to enter Masonic Hall, which is located at 71 West 23rd Street in Manhattan. The French Ionic Room is on the tenth floor.

     

‘The Freemason’s Creed’

     

What follows was published in the August 5, 1916 edition of The Freemason, one of the wonderful English Masonic periodicals printed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As best I can tell, the editor culled this from either the New Age Magazine issue of March 1915 or from Masonic Tidings, a publication in Knoxville, Tennessee. (That’s what publishing was like back then. People borrowed from each other.)

Enjoy. And Happy New Year!

The Freemason’s Creed.

The following declaration of Masonic belief was presented by Bro. Sidney Gilbreath, a member of the Thirty-Second Degree, at a meeting held recently at Johnson City, Tennessee, U.S.A.:

1. The Mason believes in God, and in the Supreme Ruler are securely founded faiths and hopes. In the God of our Rite are united all the perfected virtues of humanity and presided over by a supreme intelligence and perfect wisdom. His justice and mercy are in equilibrium and absolute harmony. We adore, revere, and love Him because He is worthy of adoration, reverence, and love, and our highest privilege is to honor Him by practicing the virtues.

2. The Mason believes that his soul is immortal, and that, escaping from its material dwelling, it shall, in perfect freedom and with unending opportunities, continue throughout eternity the worthy tasks commenced in life, and begin others not revealed in earth’s visions. We believe the immortal soul begins its life at our birth, and that we must do nothing to degrade it, to dwarf its growth, or weaken its hopes and aspirations while its habitation is human.

3. The Mason believes in religion—in the positive religion that finds its highest expression in doing good, not merely because it is a duty, but because it gives joy; a religion that not only accepts right, but wars against wrong; a religion that acknowledges the Fatherhood of God in the practice of Human Brotherhood.

4. The Mason believes in human friendships, and his Brother is his second self, whose welfare he guards as he protects and guards his own. Through misfortune no estrangement comes, and adversity only strengthens the bonds of affection. The memory of his friend is sacred, and he guards its honor as jealously as he protects the good name of the living.

5. The Mason strives earnestly toward the mastery of his passions, but has forgiveness and charity for the error of others. He dare not indulge in any excesses that would degrade his body, weaken his intellect, or deform his soul. He lends a helping hand to a weaker Brother, and points him to firmer foundations.

6. The Mason hears much, speaks little, and acts well. For a good deed his memory reaches through eternity, for a wrong or weakness forgetfulness comes with the sunset. The good name of a Brother is sacred, and within his own bosom are enfortressed the human frailties of the weak. For evil good is rendered, and strength and superiority are captive to a neighbor’s needs.

7. The Mason is a workman. He avoids idleness. He would become a master of industry and production. The world—material, intellectual, social, spiritual—is the forge where Nature is shaped, the factory where minds are fashioned, the fields where the relationships of men are nurtured, the studio where souls are polished, and in them all the Mason labors seeking the perfect man.

8. The Mason believes in purity of life; he protects virtue and guards the home. To the sacredness of fatherhood and motherhood his truest allegiance is given, and the cry of the orphan and widow to him makes the deepest appeal. To him the home, with all its joys or its griefs, its richness or its needs, its fulness or its emptiness, is ever present with supreme claims. 

9. The Mason is a champion of freedom—freedom in the national life, guaranteed by justice; freedom in work, guarded by the good angels of temperance; freedom in thought and speech, under the banners of prudence; freedom in conscience, with fortitude to meet the judgment of eternity.

10. The Mason believes in the absolute supremacy of the moral forces, and that from their arbitration there can be no appeal. He believes that the three greatest of all the moral forces in the universe are Faith, which is the only true Wisdom, and which is the very foundation of all government; Hope, which is strength, and which ensures against failure in all the worthy ambitions of life; and Charity, which is beauty, and which alone makes possible the animated united effort of men in building with their fellow men the temples of a more perfect life.

With just a little poking around, I see that Bro. Sidney Gordon Gilbreath (April 13, 1869 - January 6, 1961) was both the first president and head of the Department of Education at East Tennessee State Normal School (now East Tennessee State University), founded in 1911 for the purpose of training school teachers for Tennessee, including for what then was called the Masonic Institute.