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BACK NEXT Summer 2008 Issue 45 Letter from the Editor Grand Lodge News News and Views On The Level International News Beyond the Craft Perambulating the Lodge Masonic Dining and Celebration Interview: The Grand Chancellor The Orator Walking the Way of Saint James Abd el-Kader: Algerian Nationalist and Freemason Province of Cambridgeshire Library & Museum Brother Lightfoote's Journal Review: Committed to the Flames Review: The Mythology of Secret Societies Review: The Dawn of Astrology Letters to the Editor Internet Library & Museum of Freemasonry Grand Lodge Quarterly Communication Convocation of Supreme Grand Chapter RMBI Masonic Samaritan Fund Grand Charity RMTGB Canon Richard Tydeman: Looking unto the Rock Copyright 1997-2008 Grand Lodge Publications Ltd Designed and Maintained by: Cyberpoint Limited

FREEMASONRY TODAY Philosophy A Freemason's Journey to The East The new candidate for initiation, once he is permitted to enter the door into the Lodge Room, is immediately introduced to what appears to be a very strange world; a world parallel to the one he has left outside the door. First he is asked to confirm that he is free, and then he sets out on a long journey to the east. He begins this by stepping off with his left foot. Why? The left foot, freedom, and the east; the symbolism seems like some eccentric addition ... All You Need Is Love Is it not a tragedy that the English language is so bereft of words for love? The ancient Greeks fared far better as, in addition to eros, they talked of agape, caritas and philia. The last three of these correspond closely to the three Grand Principles of Freemasonry. Brotherly love – agape – is that unconditional and non-judgemental love that sees all humans as equal in the eyes of God and it reflects the love of God for all his children, irrespective of their faith. Caritas, or charity, is the caring and compassionate love that drives us to relieve suffering while philia represents that desire for association, for friendship and companionship, but particularly for an affiliation with truth ... The Origins of Temples The concept of the temple is a particularly familiar one to Freemasons because of the legendary associations of masonry with the Temple of Solomon. Less familiar is how the very notion of temples, or sacred places of worship in general, originated. The answer emerges if we look at examples of temples from three ancient cultural periods, namely ancient Egypt, Minoan Crete, and the pre-Columbian Americas ... The Inner Voice of Freemasonry In the huge headquarters of the United Nations in New York, there is a small room arranged by its former Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjöld. This small room, which has only eleven chairs, is called the room of silence. In the center there is a polished dark stone illuminated by a single shaft of light, and on the wall facing the entrance, an abstract painting in soft colours. That is all. The idea was to create a sanctuary for men and women to meditate, to seek some form of inner peace, where there was nothing to divide them, nothing ... Freemasonry and Natural Religion This article is an attempt to discuss how Freemasonry in the English tradition gradually tended away from the Christianity of the operative masons to the ‘natural religion’ of the Enlightenment from the 14th century onwards. I will consider this by analysing the changes of the First Charge of a Freemason concerning God and religion in the light of their historical and philosophical contexts in three steps. First, I will examine the Christian characteristics ... Was Jesus a Mason? Was Jesus a Mason? What an absurd question, some may think. But don’t blame me! The question was put to me, some time before I entered Freemasonry, by an old Yorkshire Brother. He clearly found the question significant. I recall smiling and then, with a twinkle, uttering something like, “In the eyes of some masons, it might well be so.” Knowing that past attempts to trace the Craft to remote antiquity have fallen well outside the realm of historical evidence ... The Creation and The Great Architect of the Universe Can the Great Architect of the Universe create the world and take part in human vicissitudes? To answer this question, we must first of all look at the theological doctrines of the creation, which, in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, are of two types: the creation according to the Old Testament, and the Trinitarian creation, based on the Gospels. The Old Testament creation is interpreted theologically as creatio ex nihilo, or creation from nothing. Saying that God ‘created’ the world means that God is distinct from the world that He himself wanted. Thus the world created by Him ... I am Proud to be a Freemason We belong in Masonry to a world-wide Order, crossing barriers of language and colour. At the consecration of a new lodge, or a centenary, an oration is given by a chaplain. He may be a rabbi for a Jewish lodge, or a guru for the Sikhs or Hindus, or he might be me: a Christian chaplain ... When is a Man a Mason? When he can look out over the rivers, the hills, and the far horizon with a profound sense of his own littleness in the vast scheme of things, and yet have Faith, Hope and Courage – which is the root of every virtue. When he knows that down in his heart, every man is as noble, as vile, as divine ... The Improvement of the Mason In my previous article (Enlightenment from Ritual. FMT, Spring 1998) I quoted Emulation Ritual to state that the idea of ‘improvement’ is represented by the geometrical figure of a circle. Now I present a further consideration on this important topic. The idea of the ‘circle’ was already to be found in the ‘Rosicrucian’ manifesto known as the Fama Fraternitatis (The Fame of the Fraternity), published in Cassel in 1614: Where Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras and others hit the mark, where Enoch, Abraham, Moses and Solomon also excelled, where the greatest and most extraordinary of books, the Bible ... The Mysteries The Mysteries existed for a simple reason: to satisfy the desire of those who wished to know the truth of who we are, what happens at death and what Divinity is. Certain Mysteries achieved widespread fame: those of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis for example (dating from at least the 6th century BC), and those of Isis and Osiris (from perhaps thousands of years earlier). Then there were the Mysteries of Mithras, of Dionysus, Bacchus, Orpheus, the Great Mother and many others. And as evidence slowly emerges, even the Great Pyramid is being seen as a place of ... Medieval Monks, Masons and Mystical Architecture Following the great passions of the Crusades came the explosion of the construction of religious edifices throughout Europe. The religious links between the Universal Architect who is God and the architects who imagined and created these churches and cathedrals are extremely ancient. Every stone, every arch, every soaring spire, was designed to remind man of the striving to rise beyond the earthly, and it is this synthesis of allegory and stone, this material representation of elevated religious feeling which makes the architecture truly mystical and its creators mystics ... On The Pentagram Now mostly recognised through the mythology of witchcraft movies, graffiti and gutter-press Satanist exposés, the pentagram has almost everywhere become disembodied from its roots in geometry - everywhere, that is, except in Freemasonry. There we see it on the doorstep to London’s Freemasons’ Hall, for example, and we see its radiant stellar properties in the Royal Arch Degree ritual. Fully developed only in the 19th century, the ritual is in part based on the Platonic system wherein five solid geometrical bodies embody the principles on which ...   Philosophy © Grand Lodge Publications Ltd 1997-2008