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BACK NEXT Issue 53 Letter from the Editor Grand Secretary's Column Grand Lodge News Grand Lodge Speeches Grand Chapter Speeches Grand Chapter Convocation Grand Chapter News News and Views On The Level Masonic Education International News Freemasonry's Dream The Beautiful Game Honourable to the Builder Singapore and Freemasonry An Argonaut - A Journeyman Hermes 'The Philosopher' Celebrating Wives and Friends A Frog in a Beer Mug Review: Researching British Freemasonry Review: The Portfolio of Villard De Honnecourt Review: Nightfighter Navigator Review: Belief and Brotherhood Letters to the Editor Library & Museum of Freemasonry Grand Lodge: Board of General Purposes Grand Charity Masonic Samaritan Fund RMBI RMTGB Revealing Our Craft Copyright 1997-2010 Grand Lodge Publications Ltd Designed and Maintained by: Cyberpoint

FREEMASONRY TODAY Masonic Conferences The Origins of Freemasonry ‘There is no one fixed origin for Freemasonry.’ Professor Andrew Prescott, University of Wales, Lampeter, certainly gained delegates’ attention. ‘There are no unchanging landmarks in Freemasonry. Like all historical phenomena, it has no origin.’ The eleventh international conference of the Canonbury Masonic Research Centre (CMRC), organised by Matthew Scanlan, was held in the elegant surroundings of the Canonbury Academy in Islington; its subject concerned masonic origins. This is a sensitive topic for many Freemasons. It is useful ... European Grand Master's Conference A few years ago British Telecom mounted a massive advertising campaign using the slogan “It’s good to talk”. That slogan encapsulates the reasons for holding the major meeting of European Grand Masters in London last November. For the first time ever, senior representatives of the forty-four regular Grand Lodges in Europe came together to talk. The Pro Grand Master invited me to chair the formal sessions to enable him to be free to make the opening address and take part in the comments and discussions. I am not an expert in international Masonic relations and the ... Visions of Utopia The first weekend of November saw the Canonbury Masonic Research Centre (CMRC) host its ninth international conference, an event that drew speakers and delegates from across Europe and North America. One of the original aims of the CMRC was to address the lack of scholarly research being conducted into Freemasonry in the UK and elsewhere, a focus that remains at the heart of the Centre’s mission. The dire need for such scholarly research was recognised as long ago as 1969 by the Oxford historian, John Morris Roberts, who made ... International Conference on the History of Freemasonry In 1969 the leading Oxford historian, John Morris Roberts, published an essay in The English Historical Review in which he highlighted how Englishspeaking historians had largely ignored the world’s largest fraternal association: ‘In the country which gave Freemasonry to the world’ he wrote, the subject had attracted ‘hardly any interest from the professional historian’. The result of this neglect, he lamented had been essentially twofold. First, ignorance of this important social and cultural phenomenon had resulted in an impoverishment of English historians’ ... A Life Study of Freemasonry From 25 to 27 May 2007, the Grand Lodge of Scotland in Edinburgh will stage the first major academic conference to be held on Freemasonry in the British Isles. Hosting more than seventy speakers, the conference is being organised in cooperation with specialist centres from the University of Sheffield, the University of Bordeaux, the CNRS/Sorbonne, Paris, and the Free University of Brussels. And one of the conference’s five key-note speakers will be Dr. Jan Snoek, a specialist in religion and rituals based at the University of Heidelberg; it therefore seemed ... Knowledge of the Heart The north-London based Canonbury Masonic Research Centre was established to encourage scholarship on the symbolic expression of the sacred, and matters related to Freemasonry. This year’s conference concerned Gnosticism, a term that derives from the Greek word gnosis - meaning knowledge, although not the sort that could be acquired through intellectual study. Gnosis referred to an intuitive or mystical form of knowledge ... The Rays of Heaven Speakers at Cornerstone Society conferences have always probed into the deeper aspects of Freemasonry and sought to encourage Freemasons to actively ask themselves what the rituals mean at their most profound levels. But the conference this summer - opened by Chairman George Francis - was a little bit different; speakers were blunt, they directly challenged us with questions about the purpose of Freemasonry. There seemed to be a sense abroad that the laissez faire attitude is no longer working and that the pace of change needs to be stepped up ... Masonic Renaissance in Italy Italian Freemasonry had an involvement in politics from the very first, from the time when Garibaldi, a Freemason, achieved Italian unification in 1861, and the Grand Orient of Italy has maintained that principle. But in recent years an unfortunate reputation for secrecy and manipulation has erupted, in particular as a result of the P2 scandal. The principles of the Grand Orient were not viewed favourably by all Freemasons, with the result that ... Seeking the Light: Freemasonry and Initiatic Traditions The first weekend in November saw the Canonbury Masonic Research Centre hold its seventh international conference – an event that drew speakers and delegates from as far afield as Finland, Italy, Poland, Romania and the United States. The North London based centre was established in 1999 to help facilitate scholarship on matters relating to Freemasonry, and the theme of this year’s conference, ‘Seeking the Light: Freemasonry and initiatic traditions’, focused on the heart of the matter – on Freemasonry’s role as an initiatory society ... The Heart of Freemasonry The Cornerstone Society was formed to encourage and help masons to learn of the meaning and deep inner spirituality of our masonic ritual. As Freemasons, we are heirs to a complex and rich heritage which both carries and communicates a wisdom which is ageless. Often we need to be guided towards the philosophy and spirituality which this heritage preserves and we soon find that we have made our first steps on a journey towards the discovery of ... Freemasonry and Religion: Many Faiths, One Brotherhood The Canonbury Masonic Research Centre held its sixth international conference which drew speakers from the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Italy, Sweden, Hungary and Bulgaria. John Hamill, Director of Communications of the United Grand Lodge of England, began with a paper entitled ‘Freemasonry and Religion — the English view’ ... In the Middle Chamber Without individual initiation, Freemasonry is nothing. Each candidate for the mysteries of Freemasonry needs to be taken on that journey which the rituals provide in order that he might finally stand on the frontier where this world links with the next: a frontier brilliantly symbolized by the illustration of Jacob’s Ladder which stands at the heart of the tracing board displayed whenever any Lodge is first opened. The Cornerstone Society exists to provide some insights by which masons might continue their journey towards a deeper understanding of our ritual ... Freemasonry in Music and Literature During the first weekend in November the Canonbury Masonic Research Centre held its fifth international conference which drew speakers and delegates from the UK, Germany, Holland, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and the USA. Delegates heard twelve presentations on the theme of ‘Freemasonry in Music and Literature’, and were treated to a series of highly enjoyable musical recitals. The proceedings commenced with a paper by Andrew Pink, who is based at the Music Department of Goldsmith’s College, London University ... 275 Years of Freemasonry Celebrated in France How do you get more than 130,000 Freemasons, men and women, belonging to more than ten different rival jurisdictions, each passionate about the claims of his or her own masonic system, to act together in concord and brotherly love? French Freemasonry found the answer to this question in June this year, when over a thousand Freemasons gathered together in Lyon to celebrate 275 years of Freemasonry in France, and at the same time to assert that the values, culture and aims of Freemasonry united them more strongly ... Freemasonry - Beyond the Craft What has been the effect of Freemasonry on society? Why have men joined Freemasonry? What sort of men have joined? Have their masonic beliefs been translated into action? The social impact of Freemasonry is very hard to quantify. This is one of the reasons that masonic historians have, in the main, spent their time on biography or research into masonic origins; the sociology and anthropology has generally been avoided. In line with its aim to bring together masonic and non-masonic academic scholarship, the Canonbury Masonic Research Centre ... That Bright Morning Star The atmosphere in the Grand Temple was electric from the outset; those masons who had assembled on a bright summer morning carried with them a palpable desire to increase their masonic knowledge with information and insight. Yet, even that vast and impressive space seemed barely sufficient to contain the enthusiasm of the audience. Since its formation in 1999, The Cornerstone Society for Master Masons has established itself as the major masonic organisation in England dedicated to the renewal and revitalisation of the Craft. It was founded ... The Visual Arts and Freemasonry In 1982 my study was bombed", Professor José Antonio Ferrer Benimeli, an urbane Spanish scholar, suddenly had everybody’s attention; he paused as a memory shadow slipped quickly across him, "and I lost fifteen years of work". Masonic research in Spain, even after the death of Franco, still had its dangers. Professor Ferrer Benimeli, President of CEHMI (Centre for Historical Studies of Spanish Freemasonry) and Professor of Modern History at Zaragoza University, is the author of countless books on Spanish masonic history and he has had his problems ... The Cornerstone Conference On Saturday, 13 May 2001, No.10 Temple at Freemasons' Hall, London, hosted the second conference of The Cornerstone Society. The Society was founded in 1999 for the benefit of all Master Masons with the encouragement of the then Assistant Grand Master, Lord Northampton. The Society aimed at encouraging an understanding of the meaning and purpose of Freemasonry. Following a highly successful first conference in May 2000, the theme of this year's event was "That Mysterious Veil". The conference was opened by Lord Northampton, the new Pro Grand Master ... Having an Impact on History The Canonbury Masonic Research Centre (CMRC) held its second international conference in November entitled The Social Impact of Freemasonry on the Modern Western World. The two-day event proved a resounding success despite travel chaos caused by stormy weather and rail disruption. Delegates travelled from many countries to the venue, the historic wood panelled rooms of Canonbury’s 16th century tower, once the home of ... The Cornerstone Society More or less throughout the history of western civilisation there has been a general body of thought known as ‘the Mysteries’. In the ancient world, says W. Kirk MacNulty: ...the mysteries were a recognised public institution… based on a view of the world which is quite different from our contemporary scientific materialism. While our ‘universe’ is limited by physical phenomena, that of the ancient world contained, in addition, vast non-material realms which were not available to ordinary perception but were still considered to be part of the universe. Although the existence ... ... Those Who Might Otherwise Have Remained at a Perpetual Distance It was the first of our three Grand Principles, Brotherly Love, which conciliates true friendship between men who would otherwise find little in common, that immediately appealed to me as a very new initiate. Quite early in my masonic career I experienced an exceptional example of this. Casual contacts between Winchester and the German City of Giessen must have begun during the fifties or early sixties before developing into a more formal arrangement. However, my first visit only took place in 1973 when, as Mayor of Winchester, I had the pleasure of presenting ...   Conferences © Grand Lodge Publications Ltd 1997-2010