Finding the Middle Path: Esoteric and Non-Esoteric Freemasonry

There are two groups in Freemasonry, the so-called “Esoterics” and “Non-Esoterics,” who too often do not get along. They should. After all, they need each other.

This, to my mind, is best illustrated by an image I have observed floating around the Internet for a decade. It’s the High Priestess card in the Rider Waite tarot deck with the Kabbalistic “Eitz haChayim” (עץ החיים) or, in English, The Tree of Life, superimposed upon it.

My own version of it is pictured above, along with a box of cigars. Because, as in the statement often is attributed to famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. It does not really matter if Freud ever said or wrote that. The point is that things are not always metaphors or symbols for something else.

That said, I think it’s equally possible for them to be and not to be – all at the same time.

My observation of the High Priestess Card and Tree of Life pairing is that individuals, especially those esoterically inclined, who see the connection for the first time, generally experience a kōan moment. That is to say that their minds are completely blown. There is a good deal to be gained in such a moment, i.e. when the mind is absolutely blank. That seems to be the aim of a good portion of esoteric study, inside Freemasonry and out. The aim being to assist the neophyte in unraveling hidden or higher truths deep within themselves and stretching outward to farthest reaches of the Universe.

The image itself supposedly originated with an unknown individual, possibly the late Paul Foster Case, who noted that if you draw circles around the pomegranates on the card and then draw lines between them the image drawn resembles the Tree of Life. The problem is that the tree of life cannot actually be constructed through the process. As is the case with many of these studies, this exercise breaks down under non-esoteric scrutiny.

There are no pomegranates on the card to represent the lower Sephirot, namely Yesod and Malkuth. Thus, the High Priestess’ knees and toes, along with one end of the crescent moon, must be pressed into service. A circle around the cross at the center of her chest also is required. Without those pomegranate-free circles, there is no Tree of Life on the card. The decision to accept any part of the picture, in an exercise to connect an image, leaves us open to circles, squares, and other doodles on the card.

The Kabbalistic Tree of Life

In my observation, the esoterically inclined Brother may declare that, simply by making that perfectly reasonable observation, the non-esoterically inclined Brother is just not open to the experience and not worthy of the special knowledge imparted. The non-esoterically inclined Brother may reply that the whole thing is nonsense and then try to turn the subject toward something practical, such as an upcoming fundraiser.

That, in turn, frustrates the esoterically inclined Brother, who sees the upcoming fundraiser as meaningless compared to the exploration in search of answers about life, the universe, etc. The Brothers with opposing viewpoints might even start squabbling at this point, each implying that the other should be more like themselves.

That argument generally leaves those individuals in the middle thinking both of the original points is valid and worth considering. They may wonder why those on either side cannot get along.

To be clear, as a historian in Freemasonry I have endured my own share of being annoyed with esoterically inclined writers who, to my mind, flippantly make up historical events to bolster their own writings. Quite recently, I heard an operative alchemist claim that medieval architecture originated with the Templars, stating it as a fact without supporting documentation, something more academically minded Templar scholars would have no trouble refuting.

Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight, who were big deals when I came into Freemasonry about a decade ago, have been seen by some to invent things to bolster the message and lessons they want to get across.

Which, I think, is the point. For esoteric writers, the focus is on the message or lesson they are trying to teach not necessarily about the complete historical accuracy of the facts underlying their arguments.  They may ignore some historical data or information if it is seen as cumbersome, irrelevant, or diminishing to their argument. 

Non-esoteric writers may prefer to establish their messages and lessons in well-documented and verifiable historical analysis. To do otherwise, may seem to these writers as “making up history.” They also might express a certain irritation that esoteric books far outsell non-esoteric tomes.

Both points of view are valid, but both sides also often also forget to take a hard look at themselves.

I suppose it might be helpful, even this late in the blog, to define the term “esoteric”, which is no easy thing. Merriam-Webster lists the popularity of the word “esotericism“as being in the bottom 30 percent of popular words and defines it as “the quality or state of being esoteric.”

The Concentric Spheres of “The Key to Dante’s Divine Comedy,” by Augustus Knapp

The same source defines “esoteric” as pursuing something “designed for or understood by the specially initiated alone” (my emphasis) or “requiring or exhibiting knowledge that is restricted to a small group.”

To be “non-esoteric,” in Freemasonry and without, would be not to be part of that specially initiated group or to not have that knowledge restricted to the small group. Or, I suppose, to reject all that.

Brothers on both sides live in the same place. They really do, but they fail to recognize the concentric spheres – spheres that share the same center – which make up that place. In Freemasonry, there are those who labor in the Inner Order, they who keep the Light; and those who labor in the Outer Order, they who keep the lights on.

There is no point in making sure the power bill is paid to keep the lights on if there is no Light to keep; and the Light cannot very well be kept if the power bill is not paid to keep the lights on.

There are Brothers who prefer the Outer Order. They enjoy the sumptuous banquets, the social functions, and getting out into the world to show how good Freemasons can be. The Outer Order excels at financial planning, in setting aside trusts for the future, for that is where the Outer Order lives. They are careful to remember the past and plan for the future.

The Brothers of the Inner Order live in the Now. They see Freemasonry as a body of individual seekers of Light, an heir to the ancient mystery schools, and a system to impart morality, ethics, and the benefits of mutual service. The Inner Order tends to dismiss the past as unimportant and reckons the future will take care of itself. For them, clarity and correctness about the past and future is a secondary concern to the now.

Ancient Mystery School Symbolism

Then there are those achingly tolerant Brethren, “hybrids,” who can pass between the spheres and see value in both. They historically have been in the minority in Freemasonry but, in my observation, their numbers are increasing. I see them as Brothers deeply rooted in the center. I wish there were more of them.

I am not the first to observe this disharmony between the spheres. Bro. Robert Davis, in his 2010 paper “The Path of the Esotericists Among Us,” pointed out that “no sincere adept’ would force truth on someone not prepared to contemplate it. “We all know Masons who believe with all their heart there is nothing spiritual about the rituals of Masonry,” Bro. Davis wrote. 

There are those who claim there is nothing to learn beyond the ritual words. There are even more who are appalled when it is suggested that Kabbalistic, Alchemical, or Hermetic associations might be made from a study of the Degrees of Masonry. Never mind that every aspirant is told before he receives the very first Degree that Masonry is a course of hieroglyphic instruction taught by allegories. Oh well. As obvious as this may seem to the esoteric minded among us, there is little to be gained by arguing with those who aren’t listening.

I would add to Davis’ point that there *is* a middle path. It is worth seeking, and Esoterics and Non-Esoterics need to tolerate, if not respect, each other.

Until we can all be there, I continue to hope that Brothers of the Inner and Outer orders will learn to respect and tolerate each other. I hope that they will try – please try – not to encroach too much into the opposite sphere. At least not until they are ready to do so harmoniously and fully recognizing that the Brother in the opposite sphere who does not get you and who is not open to your experience is the Brother who makes sure that you do and are.

Crossing the Language Barrier to Make that Daily Progress in Freemasonry

When I was a very new Freemason, I unintentionally allowed the language barrier to create errors in two of my early papers.

In one paper, I referred to the “broached thurnel” as “Freemasonry’s lost immovable jewel.” In the other paper, I referred to the “fulminate,” used to create a bright flash during a crucial point in an initiation, as “an old Freemasonic tradition,” strongly implying – because I believed it was – that it was no longer used in Freemasonry anywhere.

I was wrong on both counts. I’ve seen the broached thurnel is almost every French Lodge I’ve visited. While I’ve never seen a fulminate used in a French Lodge, I did see one in a store room there and was assured that some Lodges in Paris do still include it in their work.

It really doesn’t matter that other largely-English language scholars have made the same mistake about both of these items, that I could cite their works and still turn out quite a thorough paper. That I was wrong because I didn’t know I was wrong doesn’t explain it away.

Ignorance not only is no excuse; it’s dangerous. Freemasons are the shock troops in the war against ignorance. It is not a good thing for a Freemason to spread ignorance rather than fight it.

Neither paper ever was published. I doubt they ever will be, and with these errors born of ignorance, that’s a good thing.

I’m not aware of any Masonic tradition that does not direct Freemasons to make a daily progress in Masonry, which generally is reckoned as spending part of each day learning something about the Craft that the Freemason didn’t know before. In addition to the seven liberal arts, early 20th Century Masonic scholar Roscoe Pound, in the April 1915 edition of The Builder, identified five areas appropriate for Masonic Study: Ritual, History, Philosophy, Symbolism, and Jurisprudence.

Certainly, for Freemasons in Anglo-centric countries, it’s no real problem to find Masonic works in English. However, making that daily progress only in one’s mother tongue, cuts a Freemason off from progress to be gained in other parts of the world, and necessarily, renders their efforts in isolation to become isolated, provincial even. That leaves the Freemason open to the sorts of errors that I made and, worse, stunts that progress.

I believe it is incumbent upon Freemasons to open their daily progress enough to include works from other languages.

My observation is that English-only Masonic readers seem to be OK with pictures sourced from other language cultures. Images based on engravings by Louis Travenol, better known as “Léonard Gabanon,” of French Blue Lodge Masonry long have been popular illustrations in English-language Masonic books and papers, particularly in general works about the first three degrees. Daniel Beresniak’s very popular Masonic picture book “Symbols of Freemasonry” was first published in 2000 but clearly uses delightful images sourced from French Freemasonry.

Images, it seems, don’t become trapped behind the language barriers but words do.

And yet, there’s plenty in French Masonic scholarship in particular to motivate an otherwise English-only reader to blow the dust off a French-to-English dictionary or keep a browser window open to Google Translator. When I realized my errors in those two papers were caused by my ignorance of French Masonry, it didn’t take me long to find the works of Swiss occultist Joseph Paul Oswald Wirth, who wrote extensively about the Blue Lodge. More recently, I’ve been studying Philippe Langlet’s 2009 “Les sources chrétiennes de la légende d’Hiram” (comes with a very cool CD) and Joseph Castelli’s 2006 “Le Nouveau Regulateur du Macon – Rite Français 1801.”

One of my personal favorite works in French Masonic scholarship is Maurice Bouchard and Philippe Michel’s “Le Rit Français d’origine 1785,” published this past July. That was a follow up to Michel’s “Genèse du Rite Écossais Ancien et Accepté,” the most recent edition of which was published in February and also resides on one of my shelves.

Michel’s most recent work details what also is known as the “Primordial of France” (Rit Primordial de France) or even “canonical” (canonique) French Rite so widely worked in France today. It isn’t often a Masonic reader can read which paragraphs of a rite are connected to what passage or receive an explanation of how any rite was reconstituted, complete with columns, tables, symbols. And if the English reader allows the French language of the work to be a barrier, then the reader won’t get any of that at all.

I’m not suggesting that no efforts have been made at cross-cultural/language research in Freemasonry, because there has been a limited – though notable – amount of that. Lilith Mahmud’s “The Brotherhood of Freemason Sisters,” about gender history in Italian Freemasonry, was published by University of Chicago Press in 2014.

A very good sequel to Margaret Jacob’s 1991 “Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe” and the UCLA History Department Professor’s 2006 “The Radical Enlightenment – Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans” is her 2011 “Les Premières franc-maçonnes au siècle des Lumières.” That book, co-authored in French with Arizona State University’s Janet Burke, was published in French by the Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, prefaced by noted French Masonic scholars Cécile Révauger, Jean-Pierre Bacot, and Laure Caille.

Masonic works in languages other than English certainly are readily available, especially online. Detrad offers the very best in French language Masonic work, I’ve had delightfully opportunities to drool over books in their brick-and-mortar location next door to the Grand Orient de France in Rue Cadet, Paris. An entire paper was written in 2008 about Spanish-language Masonic books printed in the U.S. The Spanish language Masonic research journal “Revista de Estudios Históricos de la Masonería” actively produces Masonic works in that language.

The tools are there to do this work, the individual Freemason just needs to do it.

Yes, overcoming the language barrier as part of one’s daily progress in Freemasonry is work, and it’s far from easy. However, no one who is work shy should become a Freemasonry – no more than anyone who becomes a Freemason should become lazy. The results are worth it but actually doing that work is its own reward. The work is, after all, the thing.

 

 

 

Neil Morse and the Lost Knoop Paper

Neil Wynes Morse has been looking for a missing paper written by a giant in Masonic scholarship during the first half of the 20^th Century but that was, nonetheless, rejected for publication shortly before the author’s death.

He’s not the only one looking. However, Morse is one of the world’s leading experts in Masonic ritual development, President of the Australia and New Zealand Masonic Research Council and is scarily good at finding things others likely give up for lost. If he can’t find it, the paper likely won’t turn up in any obvious place.

The paper’s title is known, “Dr. Anderson and the Charges of a Freemason,” and it was written by noted economist and Masonic scholar Douglas Knoop. It was rejected for publication after receiving a thumbs down by a high ranking officer of the United Grand Lodge of England shortly before Knoop died in the fall of 1948.

Douglas Knoop, from the frontispiece  of vol 48 of Ars Quatuor Coronaturum

Among the last people, then, to know where the paper was were members of the Manchester Association for Masonic Research (MAMR). “It sounds as if the chaps in Manchester know about the document,” Morse told me during an online interview. “And with the number of people who’ve looked at the Knoop papers over the years, I’m surprised it hasn’t seen the light of day, assuming that it exists.”

Like any wise Masonic scholar, Knoop had a good day job. He was an economist by profession, being appointed an assistant lecturer at Manchester University shortly after he graduated there and in 1910 he was put in charge of the Economics department at the at The University of Sheffield, where he became a professor in 1920 and worked until shortly before he died in 1948. He also served on various trade boards and, during World War II, he worked at the Ministry of Munitions. He wrote extensively about his field in economics. The annual “Knoop Lecture,” “Knoop Prize” and the “Knoop Centre” in the Economics Department at The University of Sheffield are named after him.

He became a Freemason in December 1921 when he joined University Lodge No. 3911 at Sheffield and for almost three decades pursued an impressive Masonic career, during one period simultaneously occupying the chair in five different Masonic bodies. As a scholar, he was a regular contributor to Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076’s annual Ars Quatuor Coronaturum (AQC), the world’s longest continuously running and arguably most prestigious Masonic research journal.

He was a Prestonian Lecturer who at times teamed up with fellow scholar G.P. Jones to produce a fairly vast number of papers and books. The best known of his books in Masonic scholars include “The Genesis of Freemasonry,” “Early Masonic Pamphlets,” “Early Masonic Catechisms” and “The Medieval Mason: An Economic History of English Stone Building in the Later Middle Ages and Early Modern Times.” One would be very hard pressed to find a good modern work on Masonic scholarship that doesn’t include Knoop’s work in its bibliography.

He certainly was influential in Masonic research circles during his time, so it’s a bit surprising to turn up the story about his final paper, as Morse did earlier this year when he came upon a mention of it in the MAMR Transactions for 1948[1]. Further information came to light about the paper when a later published history of MAMR was consulted and there Morse came upon what little is definitively known about Knoop’s final paper[2]:

“An unusual fate befell one paper this year. WBro Professor Douglas Knoop PAGDC paid what proved to be his farewell visit to Manchester, when he read a paper entitled ‘Dr. Anderson and the Charges of a Freemason’. His paper was controversial and he submitted a copy to the Grand Secretary [of the UGLE], who requested that it not be published.”

That’s all, no explanation of why it was controversial and why the Grand Secretary of the UGLE, Sir Sidney White, asked for it not to be published. The paper’s name doesn’t sound especially controversial, so the idea that it was is quite intriguing, no less so considering Knoop died at age 65 on 21 October 1948, shortly after his last paper was rejected.

Morse went on a search to find the paper, searching for clues in such places as Knoop’s obituary in the AQC and in Colin Dyer’s “History of the First 100 years of Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076,” as well as online searches and queries to other scholars.

Morse soon discovered that R.A. Gilbert, co-author with John Hamill of “World Freemasonry: And Illustrated History” and other significant works, had made an attempt to find the paper but had not succeeded. Gilbert did, however, turn up the additional tidbit that “only his death shortly afterwards prevented a first class row”[3].

Morse also contacted the UGLE’s Museum and Library in London as the Grand Secretary in 1948 did have a copy and the library still holds some correspondence about the paper[4]. Unfortunately, the staff reported there was no copy of the paper there, though they wish there was; that searches have been made in the past but those searches were not successful.

The library does have Knoop’s letter to the Grand Secretary, dated 21 June 1948, with a penciled note by QC member John Dashwood stapled to the back, and White’s reply dated the following 26 July[5].

Knoop’s letter indicates the MAMR had a copy of the paper but that he, Knoop, wanted it back if it could not be published. It was, after all, the era before word processors and printers, when full manuscripts were very precious things, so Knoop’s paper might have been returned to him. There also is the very real possibility that, because the paper was controversial, it was destroyed.

The trail of the paper goes cold from there and Morse presently knows of nowhere else to look. “That’s not to say that a copy exist doesn’t somewhere,” Morse said. “It seems to me possible that a copy may be included in a file of various bits and bobs called ‘Knoop papers NES’ or similar – and not necessarily in either London or Manchester.”

“I remain optimistic that the paper will surface at some stage. But I won’t be holding my breath.”

---

[1] MAMR Transactions, Vol XXXVIII, state on page 161 ‘Unfortunately, this is unavailable for publication in the Transaction’.

[2] Specifically, “More Masonry Into Men: the Story of Manchester Lodge and Association for Masonic Research With Suggestion for a Course of Masonic Reading and An Index to the First Forty Volumes of the Transactions (1909-1950)” by Fred L Pick, printed for the MAMR in 1951 (page 56).

[3] (AQC 107, 1995, p.4)

[4] AQC v107, p4 and fn 28 on p7. The material is not catalogued online.

[5] All of which is under copyright, so anyone who wants to see it has to visit the library and inquire.

Marie Bourgeois Goaziou and North American Co-Freemasonry

The woman to whom Co-Freemasonry in North America arguably owes a great debt of thanks, Marie Bourgeois Goaziou, died 100 years ago this year.

It’s doubtful that North American Co-Freemasonry would have survived if not for her. And, yet, there is not one comment, letter, paper, or quotation of hers that is known. She had to have been an interesting lady. For now, we have to take that on faith.

Like many women in history, what we think we know about Marie Goaziou is based on the men in her life, though we don’t know that much about even them. Her father’s name was John Bourgeois, but we know little more about him than his name. The same can be said for her mother, Marie Lepis[1]. She was born 24 July 1866[2] in Namur, the capital city of Wallonia in Belgium, where the Meuse and Sambre rivers meet.

Nothing is know about her childhood, even if she had siblings, though we do know she could read and write as she later helped in her husband’s newspaper business. Literacy alone would have set her apart from a lot of contemporary working class girls in her time.

We also don’t know what her parents did for a living but we do know that the family arrive to Pennsylvania, via Canada, when she was six years old. By 1883, they were living in the mining town of Houtzdale[3]. Shortly after her 17^th birthday, Marie Bourgeois saved Co-Freemasonry in North American almost two decades before it was founded by convincing a young Louis Goaziou, future Grand Commander of the Order, not to return to his home in France.

Goaziou had arrived in Houtzdale from a fairly comfortable life in Brittany and spent the next two years mining coal and hating it. He was the best educated coal miner in the region, but it didn’t help. In midsummer of 1883, 19-year-old Goaziou sold his mining tools and announced to his friends that he was going home on a Monday.

“On Saturday, we had a farewell party at the boarding house with music and dancing,” Louis Goaziou later recalled[4].

Louis Goaziou also recalled meeting Marie at that party, but that seems unlikely. Houtzdale was a small community, and it seems impossible this could have been their first meeting. What seems more likely is that he noticed her for the first time. In the more than two years he’d lived there, Marie had blossomed into an attractive young woman. He was badly smitten.

He walked her home from the party and, that same night, discussed marriage with her and her parents. Marie Bourgeois was firm. She was willing to marry him, but she didn’t want to leave her parents. Louis Goaziou had to choose between going home or remaining in the United States to marry Marie Bourgeois and return to the coal mines he hated. He chose to remain.

They were married in Houtzdale on the 28th of August in 1883.

She could not have known that by convincing Goaziou to remain, Marie Bourgeois also insured that he was around during the chaotic period in 1908 when Goaziou effectively saved Co-Freemasonry in North America. She likely did know that she was entering the hard working world of a late 19^th Century coal miner’s wife. The couple had eight children together – half of whom died in infancy and only three of whom made it to adulthood[5]. Of those three, one, their oldest daughter Clemence, died only days shy of her 18^th birthday.

Life as a western Pennsylvania coal miner’s wife had a certain predictability to it, but Louis Goaziou was no ordinary coal miner, so Marie Goaziou could have been no ordinary miner’s wife. Goaziou became embroiled in union activism, as well as Anarchist and then Socialist politics, as together the two embarked upon a peripatetic life. By 1885, they were in MacDonald, where he worked loading coal machine and whispered “union” to his co-workers.

He did that too much and lost his job in MacDonald the following spring, sending the Goazious back to Houtzdale. Two years later, they were in Hastings in neighboring Cambria County before returning again to Houtzdale two years after that. Louis Goaziou also joined the Knights of Labor and became active in other radical workers groups.

Louis Goaziou’s health began to fail. He suffered at least one bout of measles and developed lung ailments that would plague him much of the rest of his life. Marie Goaziou presumable nursed him through much of that. It didn’t stop him from fighting for union representation among the miners of western Pennsylvania, despite the efforts of mine owners to starve the family out.

While the family was in Hastings, Louis Goaziou obtained a small Kelso printing press and started the first of a series of newspaper. The earliest were small, little more than leaflets, but they culminated in Union des Travailleurs, published in Charleroi. Goaziou family tradition states that Marie Goaziou kept the books for the newspapers and that the remaining ledgers are in her hand.

In 1902, Union des Travailleurs came to the attention of Antoine Muzzarelli, a French Freemason who was trying to found Co-Freemasonry in North America and was looking for the first Master of the new Order’s first Lodge. After corresponding with Louis Goaziou for about a year, Muzzarelli arrive in Charleroi on the 17th of October in 1903. There he met with more than a dozen men who crowded into the living room of the Goaziou home at 730 Washington Avenue.

That same evening, Louis Goaziou asked his wife if she’d like to become a Freemason. She said, “Yes.”

Two days later, Marie Goaziou became one of the first women Co-Masons in North America when she was Initiated, Passed, and Raised into Alpha Lodge No. 301 in Charleroi, becoming a Charter member of the Lodge. Louis Goaziou probably was in the East that day, only one day after his own Initiation, Passing and Raising. Alpha Lodge’s record is not complete, but Marie Goaziou appears to have remained active in Alpha Lodge, as well as, acting as hostess to a number of Co-Masonic leaders. These leaders included Muzzarelli and later members of the National Council, who often stayed at the Goaziou home when they were in town. In this way, she likely exercised influence, though she lacked authority, so long as her health remained good.

Unfortunately, in about 1906, Marie Goaziou’s health began to fail[6]. She had developed what her death certificate later described as “biliary cirrhosis of [the] liver,” which may have been caused by a severe case of hepatitis: an illness that was at epidemic proportions in the early 20^th Century Western Pennsylvania coal fields. In late 1906 into the following spring, Marie Goaziou spent months in hospital and ever underwent surgery, which seems to have brought only little relief. Over the next decade, she was ill more often than she was well and her husband, whom she’d nursed through years of his own illnesses and whose own health remained precarious, now nursed her.

Marie Goaziou died on April 5, 1917 in the family’s apartment over their print shop in Charleroi. She was 50 years old. Her death was reported on the front page of the local newspaper.

It can be difficult at times to nail down one Brother’s contribution to any Masonic Order, but the debt Co-Freemasonry owes to Marie Bourgeois Goaziou is clear enough, even if her own words and ideas haven’t survived. Thanks to her, North American Co-Freemasonry did survive.

[1] Her parents’ names are listed on Marie Goaziou’s death certificate, preserved by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I have found those names nowhere else, so additional research is needed.

[2] Ibid and her Memory Card, preserved in the Archives of the Honorable Order of American Co-Masonry, the American Federation of Human Rights.

[3] From Louis Goaziou’s dictated brief autobiography, “Written enroute to and at El Paso for Initiation Ceremonies”, also preserved in the Order’s archives.

[4] Ibid.

[5] See page 3 of eulogy delivered at Louis Goaziou’s funeral in 1937, preserved in the Order’s archives.

[6] See Andrée Prat’s “Louis Goaziou (1864-1937)”, published in Cahiers de la Commission d’Histoire, Fédération française du Droit Humain, n°9 /février 2004.

 

The Real Origins of Prince Hall Freemasonry

A paradox in Freemasonry, where Brothers are supposed to have a high regard for truth, is that the same Brothers have been known to downplay, ignore, and suppress truth that is found to be inconvenient.

The so-called “clandestine” roots of Prince Hall Freemasonry is one inconvenient truth that author and researcher E. Oscar Alleyne, a member of Wappingers No. 671, which labors under the Grand Lodge of New York, wasn’t afraid to talk about during a recent conference. Specifically (*SPOILERS*), that the first Prince Hall lodge, African Lodge No. 1, wasn’t founded on March 6, 1775 with assistance from a so-called “regular” military lodge. Instead, the date likely was in 1778 and assistance came from a degree peddler (*END SPOILERS*).

It was not unusual in the 18th Century for lodges to independently form on their own and then go looking for a Grand Lodge to provide them with a charter or warrant. In that context, African Lodge’s true origins are nothing to be concerned about. Brothers have been anyway, Alleyne said during an all-too-brief presentation of his paper at the International Conference of Masonic Research Lodges, the ICOM, this past May in Toulon, France.

“Some people don’t like the truth of this story because they think it means that Prince Hall was clandestine or was irregularly made,” Alleyne said.

Getting stuck on that notion misses the greater point: that African Lodge overcame racism, the then current enslavement of most peoples of color in North American, and the war-encroaching international politics to come into being, Alleyne said. “They were able to accomplish something that didn’t seen accomplishable,” he said.

I strongly recommend reading the online version of Alleyne’s paper, including maps and documents I’ve never seen before, because a brief summary is all I can offer here. Alleyne cites as his text John L. Hairston’s “Landmarks of our Fathers: A Critical Analysis of the Start and Origin of African Lodge No. 1,” edited by Alleyne. Hairston, a publisher, author, and researcher, is a demitted member of Harmony Lodge No. 2, which labors under the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Washington, and a member of University Lodge 141, which labors under the Grand Lodge of Washington.

Alleyne started where most Masonic scholars and casual readers start, with the legend that Bostonian caterer and leather dresser Prince Hall. Hall, a free man of color, along with other free men of color in the same city, decided to form their own lodge after being turned away from existing lodges. According to that legend, Hall and 14 others were initiated into Freemasonry by Irish Military Lodge No. 441, under the direction of WM Sergeant John Batt, on March 6, 1775. By July of the following year, African Lodge was organized under a limited permit from Batt, and by 1779, thirty-three Brothers were listed on the rolls of the Lodge. Prince Hall later petitioned the Grand Lodge of England for a warrant or charter, which was granted June 30th, 1784.

That story, told and retold for generations and included on a number of Prince Hall websites, was written in the early 20th Century – not Freemasonry’s shiny era of accurately written histories – by William H. Grimshaw, most noted for his “Official History of Freemasonry Among the Colored People” published in 1903.

“Grimshaw probably was the person who caused the most problems with this story,” Alleyne said. “Grimshaw made up stories about things that didn’t happen.”

Scholars then repeated those stories, which then took on other inaccuracies, others believed it all and, in that “Who Shot Liberty Valance” (When the legend becomes fact, print the legend) way, became perpetuated. Documentation that suggested otherwise was downplayed, ignored and suppressed, all in service to the legend.

Hairston’s extensive research makes a convincing case that the truth isn’t so simple as Grimshaw would have anyone believe and piecing all that together is made difficult because records are lacking, Alleyne said. The true story appears to be that neither Hall nor any of the other 14 Brothers of what would be African Lodge were made Master Masons in 1775 and Irish Military Lodge No. 441 had nothing to do with their initiations or the foundation of African Lodge No. 1.

The Lodge certainly sought assistance more locally. My ears perked up when I heard Alleyne mention Hall’s connection to the Revolutionary War hero Gen. Joseph Warren, who then was Provincial Grand Master of Freemasons in Massachusetts. After all, I’ve long been convinced that Warren was behind the consecration of St. Anne’s Lodge, a female-only Lodge of Adoption in Boston, and the making of Masons in that Lodge. But that’s another paper, expected next year.

Hall approached Warren for a warrant in March of 1775, at the same time Grimshaw alleged the Lodge was founded with help from the Irish military lodge. Warren’s death June 17 of that year during the battle of Bunker Hill shut Hall off from that opportunity, Alleyne said. Hall also sought out several other options, including connections in France.

African Lodge finally made some headway toward organization through Batt, who provided a “permit” to bury their dead and march in processions as Freemasons. However, contrary to what Grimshaw wrote, Batt had no known associations with Military Lodge No. 441 and appears to have been something of a degree seller, a common thing over the centuries. Hall likely understood the truth about Batt at the time but he continued to seek out a way for African Lodge to be “regularized”, which happened with its recognition by the Grand Lodge of England in 1784.

“This is the correct story,” Alleyne said.

 

Is Freemasonry Undergoing a Purge?

Most Freemasons, even those with little interest in the Craft’s back story, likely have noticed there’s a whole lot of revision going on, and that it’s causing no small amount of discomfort.

There’s a reason for it, says one of the revisionists, John L. Hairston, whose book “Landmarks of our Fathers: A Critical Analysis of the Start and Origin of African Lodge No. 1” questions the long-accepted back story of the foundation of Prince Hall Freemasonry.

“All of this work, all of this new history, everything being carried out right now,” Hairston told me during a recent telephone interview. “All of this tells me that there’s a purge of the lodge going on, that there is a purging of Freemasonry going on.”

Purges are never comfortable.

For generations, Freemasonic scholars had a colorful reputation for devising comforting histories about the Craft, which taken up by later scholars and uncritically told and retold. It seems everyone, including non-Masons, came to be all cozy with them.

I tend to date the change to the 1980s and the release of noted historian David Stephenson’s “The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland’s Century (1590 -1710)” and the work of his doctoral student, Lisa Kahler. These early Masonic revisionists, including Margaret Jacob, Andrew Prescott, and Susan Sommers, all have one thing in common: they are not Freemasons.

Those Brothers who have since produced their own works of revisionist history have encountered subtle pressures to which their more academic colleagues are not subject. After all, the old stories are so comfortable to so many some who’d rather all of these historians not bother. I well recall some of the ripples caused by journalist and then Freemason Stephen Dafoe’s 2014 “Morgan: The Scandal That Shook Freemasonry,” one of the best and most accurate examinations of the murder of William Morgan. The incident touched off the anti-Masonic period in the early 19th Century and came closing to eliminating Freemasonry from the U.S.

Dafoe rubbed some Masons the wrong way by making the case that Morgan was killed by Freemasons, not deported by them to Canada, a story his detractors preferred. The problem was not that Dafoe had written something untrue; it was that he’d written something true that went against the accepted, preferred, and comfortable narrative.

I’ve run into similar sentiments in my works about early women Freemasons and the history of worldwide Co-Freemasonry. It’s not that what I wrote isn’t true – it is. The problem, as I understand it, is that this truth runs counter to the long-time accepted narratives about both topics and disturbs the comfort of gender-based and Co-masons alike. And, that, the discomfort should be respected.

Hairston said he encountered much the same in the lead up to his book, which was released last year. The Seattle publisher and researcher is a demitted member of Harmony Lodge No. 2, which labors under the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Washington and also a member of University Lodge No. 141, which labors under the Grand Lodge of Washington.

Hairston also is the Editor of the “The Quill and The Sword” Masonic blog and his work has been published in a number of Masonic publications, including Living Stones, Washington Masonic Community Monitor, and the Prince Hall Masonic Journal.

Hairston said that when he was initiated into traditionally African American Prince Hall Freemasonry, he was fed the usual and comfortable stories about the origins of that branch of the Craft. That legend tells about Bostonian caterer and leather dresser Prince Hall, a free man of color, along with other 14 free men of color in the same city – “The Immortal 15” – who formed their own lodge after being turned away from existing lodges.

According to the legend, Hall and the other 14 were initiated into Freemasonry by Irish Military Lodge No. 441, under the direction of WM Sergeant John Batt, on March 6, 1775. By July of the following year, African Lodge was organized under a limited permit from Batt and by 1779 thirty-three Brothers were listed on the rolls of the Lodge. Prince Hall later petitioned the Grand Lodge of England for a warrant or charter, which was granted June 30th, 1784.

That story, told and retold for generations and included on a number of Prince Hall websites, has been uncritically passed on by scholars.

I won’t spoil all of the richness in Hairston’s book, but I will say that much of the discomfort about his work is related to the date of formation and the assistance received in formation. 

It was not unusual in the 18th Century for Lodges to independently form on their own and then go looking for a Grand Lodge to provide them with a charter or warrant. In that context, African Lodge’s true origins are nothing to be concerned about.

“Does this truthful narrative make the immortal 15 illegitimate, no it does not,” Hairston said. “It does mean that we have a mess to clean up but that’s all.”

The mess is the untruths that have been allowed to accrete around what really happened in Masonic history. Hairston first noticed problems with the date when he examined the primary documentation, much of it preserved by the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts and not especially difficult to get at. He soon discovered that the authors of the legend had access to the actual records but had chosen to write the comfortable legend instead.

That was frustrating, Hairston stated. “I should never had to have written this book,” he said. “This should have been written at least in the 1950s. I had been in Freemasonry only five years when I started down this path. This should have been written by earlier and better scholars than me.”

He did discover that prior scholars, particularly Henry Coil and John Sherman in their jointly written 1982 “A Documentary Account of Prince Hall and other Black Fraternal Orders,” had written about these documents before. However, that work had been largely ignored, which basically made it go away. Hairston could reasonably expect his own effort would be similarly received.

Hairston decided to share his research with scholars at The Phylaxis Society and he found them encouraging. “And they said, ‘You’ve got something here’,” he recalled.

Even with that nod, Hairston had respect for the discomfort. He knew that there were Brothers who wouldn’t like it, and had his doubts, which he shared with his editor and fellow researcher Oscar Alleyne. “And I said, ‘Oscar, why am I doing this?'” Hairston recalled.

“And he said, ‘Because you have to’.”

Naturally, the work gained early support from other scholars and news reporters in the Craft. He was featured in the 7 September 2016 edition of “The Masonic Rountable” shortly after the book was published. He also was appeared in an interview by the Masonic College of the Walter F. Meier Research Lodge No. 281 in Washington and lectured at the Seattle Scottish Rite Masonic Center.

Tony Pope, a Masonic author and researcher of no little reputation and at least equally unafraid to address sensitive topics in the Craft, in this past January’s Harashim, published by the Australian New Zealand Masonic Research Council, called Hairston’s book “a good read for history buffs, a fine example for potential researchers, and a must for anyone interested in the controversy likely to arise from it. I can hardly wait for the next volume in the series.”

However, Pope also nodded to the paradox Hairston’s work inevitably produced. “It must have taken considerable courage for Brother Hairston to pursue this line of inquiry, and to publicise the result,” Pope wrote.

Pope wasn’t the only Masonic scholar to recognize Hairston’s odd position in writing this truth. “Brother Hairston fully understands the delicate ground he treads, but he is a tireless and extraordinarily detailed and dedicated researcher,” Masonic author Chris Hodapp wrote in his review of Hairston’s book.

All that courage was required because “Landmarks of our Fathers” did discomfort many Freemasons, Prince Hall and otherwise, including grand lodge officers across the country. Their response, including their initial lack of one, was understandable, Hairston said. Grand lodges are not too concerned about history and concentrate more on maintain good relationships with other grand lodges, running the front office and keeping the greatest number of members comfortable and happy with their membership, he said.

“Then, all of a sudden, there’s this guy who hasn’t been a Freemason five years,” Hairston said. “He comes along and writes about what really happened, and it’s not the story they know, that they’ve got investment in. Then it gets published and it upsets the comfortable narrative.”

First, they ignored him, a strategy that has worked in the past. “They chose to turn a blind eye to the findings,” Hairston said, “which is surprising, because it wasn’t like the book was going to go away.”

When it didn’t go away, there next came that subtle pressure, grappling for a saving way to respond to the book and even talk of a special meeting of Prince Hall grand lodges officers to deal with Hairston’s troublesome findings.

Then, as suddenly, the pressure eased up. “I heard about it back channel,” Hairston said. “They decided that the book was great and they really didn’t want to refute the contents, they have so much other stuff to deal with and that, really, this wasn’t all that important.”

It seems cooler heads prevailed, as often happens in Freemasonry. After all, Hairston’s research in no way detracts from the story of the founding of Prince Hall Freemasonry. Instead, it simply tells that story more accurately and places it in its proper historical context, warts and all. “African Lodge is talking to us today in their own voice,” Hairston said. “And that voice will not be denied.”

His work is part of that larger trend in Freemasonry, to rewrite the legends to reflect more accurately what really happened, Hairston said. It’s necessary because something is on the horizon, Freemasonry will need to be prepared and that requires making its crooked paths straight and leveling its rough places, he said.

“How can you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been?” Hairston asked. “You can’t.”

The discomforted Brothers who still want their old narratives shouldn’t take their arguments to the revisionist historians, Hairston said. “There’s really no fighting me in all of this,” he said. “They are fighting the Universe; they are fighting something greater than themselves that feels this needs to be done. The Universe has committed itself to this revolution and anything that gets in its way will be ground to dust. It has nothing to do with me, I’m only the messenger.”

Hairston said he doesn’t know what is coming but feels certain that the work he is doing now, a book that questions the present segregation in Freemasonry, has its part to play. “There are things that can no longer go unquestioned,” he said. “In order for Freemasonry to address the coming paradigms, the old paradigms need to be addressed.”

 

Lovecraft: A Dark Place to Find Light

H.P. Lovecraft and Freemasonry. Yes, I’m going there.

A long-serving Brother in Universal Co-Masonry has been known to observe that the stars are always where they are but can be seen only against the dark night sky; and he points out that all light is worth seeking. Lovecraft is some pretty dark stuff and it could be that only the most intrepid will seek the light revealed there.

“H.P. Lovecraft, Providence and Freemasonry” is the title of The H.P. Lovecraft Archive webmaster Donovan K. Loucks’ planned paper during the Masonic Library and Museum Association’s annual meeting over the weekend of September 28 in Providence, Rhode Island.

As the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon points out on its website, Lovecraft is best known as “a writer of weird fiction,” which is true enough. His medium isn’t exactly horror, though it can be pretty scary. It isn’t exactly science fiction, though it can be geeky and, at times, intangibly technical.

However it’s defined, Lovecraft’s work beckons to the reader’s darkest, most deeply veiled interior places and lays bare what’s really there. If there happens to be light there, it is worth seeking.

H.P. Lovecraft’s Childhood Home

Depending on how “success” is defined, Lovecraft could be said to have had little of it. Born August 20, 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, his work was published only in pulp magazines, not much respected at the time. His father died in the psychiatric institution of Butler Hospital in Providence a month shy of H.P.’s 8th Birthday. His mother also died in Butler in 1921.

A pale, gaunt, brooding fellow with a piercing stare and deep, dark eyes, Lovecraft seldom went out before nightfall, suffered what he called “Night Gaunts” when he slept, never graduated from high school and failed a National Guard physical. He at times went without food to pay the postage on his voluminous private correspondence with contemporary literary ne’er-do-wells such as Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch and Clark Ashton Smith.

Beyond his innate ability to write and edit, Lovecraft had few marketable skills, generally rubbed employers and co-workers the wrong way and seldom had any so-called “regular jobs.” He died in poverty and obscurity, as do many painfully brilliant artists, at age 46 on March 15, 1937.

His work received little notoriety in his lifetime and a decade would pass before it started to be recognized for its literary importance and to be collected into posthumous volumes. In my opinion, some of his best works include “The Outsider,“”Haunter of the Dark,” “The Rats in the Walls,” “The Alchemist” and, of course, the Cthulhu Mythos stories.

V.I.T.R.I.O.L

In my observation, Lovecraft’s work is wildly popular among some of the more intense Freemasons most interested in all that V.I.T.R.I.O.L. stuff, but the author’s own brushes with Craft are hard to pin down. Lovecraft wasn’t a Freemason and neither was his father. However, his maternal grandfather, who by all accounts was the lone father figure in H.P.’s youth, the businessman Whipple Van Buren Phillips, was in 1870 a founding member of Ionic Lodge No. 28 in Greene, Rhode Island and was reckoned to be a very active Freemason.

H.P. Lovecraft’s Grandfather: Brother Whipple Van Buren Phillips

Lovecraft’s work stands on its own, it doesn’t have to be read as an exercise in self-reflection but, for the Freemason willing to go there, it’s quite an exercise. The Philosopher Graham Harman, in his 2013 “Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy” describes Lovecraft’s work as having a unique, if veiled, anti-reductionalist ontology. “No other writer is so perplexed by the gap between objects and the power of language to describe them, or between objects and the qualities they possess,” Harman says.

Yes, Lovecraft was a bit of a racist and he had other personal flaws, as do we all, but I learned long ago not to seek perfection in any artist. The work is the thing and art never apologizes.

I have a preference for the dark stuff, a great appreciation for emblems of mortality and and no real hesitance to reflect upon mortality with an eye toward living life while there’s life to live. That, for me, is the light worth seeking as revealed against the darkness; and why I read Lovecraft.

Loucks’ paper isn’t the only thing going on at the Masonic Library and Museum Association’s annual conference this year. I’ve been a member for years, and I’ve always wanted to go. I can, however, never seem to get the highly complicated, multi-level math to work. However, it’s a very good, if quiet, conference aimed not so much at research but in facilitating research and applying professional library sciences to Masonic libraries. The conference is open to all.

And with that, I’ll leave you with a bit of Lovecraft, from his 1921, “The Defence Remains Open!“:

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”

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“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”

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Ask Not What Masonry Can Do For You: Universal Co-Masonry’s Call for Greater Service

A call to greater service is part of the vision for the next five years detailed during the Honorable Order of Universal Co-Masonry’s Annual Summer Workshop at its headquarters in Larkspur, Colorado earlier this month.

The annual address by the Order’s Most Sovereign Grand Commander (M.S.G.C.), The Very Ills.^..^.. Bro.^.. Magdalena I. Cumsille 33^o, announced the call to action – illustrating the Order’s unwavering dedication to serve and assist all of Humanity. In a nod to the late President John F. Kennedy, the M.S.G.C. inspired the assembly with the following message: 

“Ask not what Freemasonry can do for you. Ask what you can do for Freemasonry.”

As part of the M.S.G.C.’s plan, the Institution of a Masonic Order of Service is a vital component of the Order’s Strategic Plan for the next five years.  The details of the plan were included in a letter from the Order’s President Matias Cumsille, issued to the Brethren of Universal Co-Masonry during the workshop.

“It has been a long-held sentiment of Masonry throughout the ages that the responsibility of service does not rely on the depth of our pockets but on the working of our hands,” Cumsille said in his letter. “The institution of the Masonic Order of Service is being established to serve our various communities in the physical world,” Cumsille wrote in his letter.

Headquarters of the Honorable Order of Universal Co-Masonry in Larkspur, Colorado.

The new service order will be available to the larger community outside of Universal Co-Masonry to request assistance, Cumsille said. “The needs of our communities are vast, and we are a source of giving hearts and giving hands,” he said.

“Masters of Lodges can work through the Masonic Order of Service to find Lodge activities of this nature as well as individual Brothers who have a passion for this type of service who wish to sign up on their own. Volunteers are required who can supply the hands through which the Masonic Order of Service will work.”

The announcement was part of a larger vision of and for the Order as it heads into the third decade of the 21st Century, a plan for the next five years announced during summer workshop on the campus in the small central Colorado town August 5th – 12th. Brothers arrived from Lodges throughout the Americas to attend the workshop, a semi-regular tradition in the Order for more than a century.

Other announcements during the workshop included the ongoing formation of a Masonic College of Art and Science to provide education for seekers throughout the world and an energy initiative for the headquarters’ campus. On the later, plans were announced to make headquarters 100% sustainable through renewable energy installation, as an example to other organizations to protect the environment, as well as reducing utility costs.

Aerial View of the Headquarters of the Honorable Order of Universal Co-Masonry

Service, as a Masonic ideal, is nothing new in the Order but external service has been less heard of in Universal Co-Masonry since its origins in the late 19th Century, though there examples, instigated mostly by individual lodges, can be recalled in the Order’s history.

For instance, in 1923, a Lodge of the Order in California joined with male-only Orders to build a facility at Berkeley University to provide a facility for the use of children of Masons attending that state university. Over the years, Brothers have participated in local causes, such of food and clothing drives, have funded scholarships and participated in other community efforts. Most recently, individual lodges in the Order have been patrons of the arts and provided money and hands for concerns nearest their premises.

Headquarters of the Honorable Order of Universal Co-Masonry

The new Masonic Order of Service will provide the means to better organize those formerly informal and local efforts. Moreover, the new initiative will improve ongoing efforts through a more centralized process, as well as, work with other ongoing initiatives in the Order, Cumsille said in his letter.

“As a United Federation of Lodges, we have an enormous synergy to draw from and, as such, there is a place for every Brother in these institutions, programs and improvements,” Cumsille’s letter stated.

Cumsille urged no Brother to “stand on the sidelines.”

“The members who have joined in the efforts for promote the Great Work in these areas need more Brothers to work alongside them. Those who want to see the world we all envision made manifest, to make perfecting humanity a reality rather than a beautiful sentiment, are asked to join in these efforts.”

Do you think Freemasonry started in 1717? Think again.

There’s been a roiling controversy in Freemasonry for almost a year but unless you’re a Masonic scholar, you may not know about it.

It has to do with the year in which modern Freemasonry, “the revival,” began. Traditionally, that watershed year has been 1717 and the formation of the first Grand Lodge in London. That would mean this year is the 300th anniversary of Freemasonry in the modern era.

Now comes Dr. Susan Mitchell Sommers, professor of history at Saint Vincent College and General Editor of the Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, and Dr. Andrew Prescott (pictured above), FSA, FRHistS, Professor of Digital Humanities, AHRC Theme Leader Fellow for Digital Transformations, University of Glasgow, to tell us that isn’t the right date. We are, Sommers and Prescott tell us, about four years off, that the actual date is 1721.

Prescott dropped that little tidbit during the Tercentenary Conference Celebrating 300 Years of Freemasonry this past September at Cambridge University. He was the last key-note speaker of that conference. Obviously, I wasn’t there but I’ve heard Dr. Prescott caused quite a stir when he effectively blew away the whole purpose of that conference. Oh, to have been a mouse under the podium in that moment.

Sommers gave a version of the paper during the World Conference on Fraternalism, Freemasonry, and History in Paris this past May.

Prescott’s talk at the Tercentenary Conference are similar to those given during the Dr. Charles A. Sankey Lecture Series in Masonic Studies the previous June. In his talk then, Searching for the Apple Tree: What Happened in 1716?, Prescott said the difficulty with the date lays in the account by James Anderson, author and editor of the Constitutions of the Free-Masons.

Anderson claimed that in 1716 four Masonic lodges from London met together at the Apple Tree Tavern in Charles Street, close to the centre of Covent Garden, and agreed to revive the annual feast. The following year, says Anderson, on 24 June 1717, those lodge met again at the Goose and Gridiron and there elected a grand master.

“The traditional and accepted story of the foundation of the grand lodge comes entirely from Anderson,” Dr. Prescott said during his Sankey lecture. “It appears for the first time in the second edition of the Book of Constitutions, published in 1738, 20 years after the event it describes and shortly before Anderson’s death.”

Anderson didn’t mention this story in his 1723 edition and no other publication mentions the event at all, despite the fascination the popular press had for Freemasonry, Dr. Prescott said. “It comes out of the blue in 1738,” Prescott said.

Not everything that Anderson wrote about was undocumented, exactly, Sommers said during her talk in Paris. “We can trace some of the sources Anderson used to write his history and they are all problematic,” he said.

Anderson did his best, she said. “Unfortunately, he also takes liberties when writing his history,” she said.

Which leads to one inevitable conclusion. “Without corroborating evidence, we must discard the canonical story,” Sommers said.

Sommers and Prescott then give, at length, their reasons why 1717 isn’t the correct date and that 1721 more likely is. One detail he points out is the 1721 Initiation of William Stukeley in London, at a tavern called “The Salutation”, which Stukeley later said had been the first initiation in the city in many years and that it had been complicated by the difficulty in finding enough Freemasons in the work the ceremony. “The claim that it had been difficult to find members to attend this lodge to initiate Stuckeley is very surprising if Grand Lodge had been founded four years previously in a tavern that is only two or three minutes walk from The Salutation,” Dr. Prescott observed.

Anyone who wants to read the Sommers-Prescott paper will find it in the newly release QCC publication “Reflections on 300 Years of Freemasonry” newly published by Lewis Masonic.

Dr. Prescott’s observations has Masonic scholars, the world over, all a flutter but most Freemasons are blissfully unaware.

The good news is that, if Sommers and Prescott are right, then we have four more years to plan a celebration of the real 300th Anniversary.

 

Freemasonry and the Ancient Mysteries?

When I turned that corner in the Paris Catacombs this past May, having already crossed the stone portal into the massive ossuary and read its famous warning, “ARRÊTE! C’EST İCİ L’EMPİRE DE LA MORT“ (“Stop! This is the Empire of the Dead”), I came into first contact with the remains of the estimated 6 and 7 million people stored there. My mind went entirely blank.

My next thought was recollection of a conversation I had with a California male-only Mason years ago when I still was a Fellowcraft. He was a member of a traditional observance lodge – still quite rare in the U.S. – that wanted to restore traditions removed by a grand lodge that no longer wanted to scare anybody. “Karen,” he said. “I want my skulls back.”

I come from a Masonic tradition that never lost its skulls and other emblems of mortality. So it was and has been difficult for me to more than pity his poverty. Masonically, I was like some folks who scribble out a donation to help starving children in far-off lands they themselves never expect to visit.

In the catacombs, I came to better understand that far-off land and to more fully grok what the skulls are for:

“Stop traveler and cast an eye,

As you are now so once was I,

Prepare in time make no delay

For youth and time will pass away.”

Many of the more esoteric Masonic writers doubt little at all that Freemasonry is a direct descendant of the ancient mystery schools. It is the same class of writers who will tolerate no challenge, no questions, and no suggestions that they might be mistaken and will dismiss those who bring those challenges, questions, and suggestions as just not being open to the experience. I observe that the majority of their readers are quite satisfied with what light those unchallenged assertions provide.

There are, of course, other writers of sterner academic metal who doubt, with justification, Freemasonry’s direct connection to the ancient mystery schools. These prefer to recognize those ancient mystery schools as metaphysical traditions that were harmonious with other contemporary and so-called “mysteries” but no later than that. Auguste and Alphonse Mariette, wrote in their “Monuments of Upper Egypt“, published in 1890, that ancient Egyptian mystery schools hinted to neophytes their own hidden spark of the divine.

“To the initiated of the sanctuary, no doubt, was reserved the knowledge of the god in the abstract, the god concealed in the unfathomable depths of his own essence. But for the less refined adoration of the people were presented the endless images of deities sculptured on the walls of temples.”

However, even the Mariettes were not fully convinced about that. “Unfortunately, the more one studies the Egyptian religion, the greater becomes the doubt as to the character which must definitely be ascribed to it,” they wrote in the following paragraph on the same page.

Many a neophyte, in as many traditions, have mistaken the symbol for the thing. They as often mistake similarity for proof of connection. Apples and oranges have many points of comparison, being fruits that are roughly round, can be peeled and grow on trees, but they are not genetically connected. Apples and oranges do, however, remain what they are.

Fully understanding the lessons of any mystery school, regardless of its origin, means barriers must be passed. The official website of the Paris catacombs warns that folks with heart or respiratory problems, who suffer from a “nervous disposition” or who are young children, should not make the visit. Clearly, one must be a fit and proper person. Neither the rash nor fearful to apply.

Those who qualify too often face other barriers. Bringing the ancient mystery schools, such as those of Isis and at Eleusis, into full focus can be difficult for those who see everything through Judeo-Christian-Muslim lenses. The mystery school promises nothing about the divine and provides no universal absolutes or pathways to heaven or hell. They tell no one what to believe.

For those who make it past all those barriers, the mystery school does its best to quicken a personal evolution in each individual, to awaken in them a knowledge of themselves, and to prepare them for the more personal lessons will spring up in their everyday lives from places where those lessons had always been; but they’d never noticed before. The mystery school does that, in large part, through symbol and near-dream-imagery ritual to trigger in the neophyte a stark recognition of who they already are, will be and where they were headed.

That’s what the skulls are for.

The idea is that if you know where you’re headed, the end that awaits us all, then you’ll better appreciate and actually live the life you will have and will not be too terrified when it is over. You will have actually lived while you could and will not be plagued in the end by regrets.

The greatest students in those schools become wise through a series of shared experiences but they also recognize in other students a lack of full understanding. It doesn’t seem to matter. Even those who don’t quite get it can still work the same ritual and still pass on the same ideas. It’s quite possible to transmit on wisdom without understanding it.

I’m not convinced that Freemasonry has a direct connection to those ancient mystery schools. However, it is quite clear to me that traditional and orthodox Freemasonry is a mystery school. Among its lessons is the idea, which would have been familiar in those ancient mystery schools, that man is mortal and the more enlightened should, for their own sake, meditate upon their own personal mortality while they still possess the vigor to do so.

Freemasonry does not monolithically teach that. There are those in the Craft who would root out “any form of esotericism” and maintain that Freemasonry “certainly does not deal in spirituality.” And that’s OK, Freemasonry is large enough even for those who don’t want those lessons.

For those who do, the lessons remain, though there may be a struggle to even learn them. My male-only friend and the brothers in his traditional observance lodge did, eventually, get their skulls back after their grand lodge decided it was all part and parcel with “pre-ritual education.” And so it goes.

 

 

“Memento Creatoris tui in diebus juventulis . . . “