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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 Masonic Research & Education The Three Degrees The temptation to see the three degrees as separate ceremonies in themselves is almost unavoidable; yet these three stages are in reality parts of a whole. There are many correspondences between the three degrees, and these need to be examined for what they can teach us. The first degree, we are told, deals with the emergence out of darkness into light. This is the journey from unknowing to knowing; the first stage on the path to ... York Mysteries Revealed More than two million tourists visit York each year: there are the ancient encircling walls and their Bars (or gatehouses) . There is Clifford’s Tower, the Castle precinct with its museum and the nearby site where a Viking settlement once flourished. In the excavated foundations of the present Minster you can make your way not only amongst the Norman remains but the bases of the original Roman headquarters’ walls. For others there are the gardens in the grounds of what was once ... Veiled in Allegory and Illustrated by Symbols As part of the questions to the Candidate before Passing to the Second Degree, the Master asks: ‘What is Freemasonry?’ The Candidate responds: ‘A peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.’ Upon reflection, this dialogue is quite remarkable ... Freemasonry Serving Egypt Today it is a tragic irony that Freemasonry is falsely derided in much of the Muslim world as a stooge of Zionism, when some of the great names of the Islam have in fact been keen Freemasons. And foremost among these were two towering figures of nineteenth-century Islamic modernism - Jamal al-Din al Afghani and Sheikh Mohammed Abduh - both actually members of the same Egyptian lodge ... The Masonic Rebellion in Liverpool On 22 December 1823 at the Shakespeare Tavern in Williamson Square, Liverpool, a gathering of masonic rebels took place. The door to the lodge room was closed and guarded by the Grand Tyler, the masons present settled and watched as Brother Michael Alexander Gage took the chair. The lodge was opened in the third degree, and the minutes of the previous meeting were read. That last meeting on 21 July had been adjourned, but now ... Freemasonry and the Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War was really a foretaste of a much larger conflict to come, but in many respects was no less savage, as terrible atrocities were committed on both sides. As so often happens in times of violent flux the situation polarized, the moderates were pushed aside, and the extremists gained the upper hand. On 15 May 1937 Largo Caballero (a Freemason) resigned as Prime Minister, and Dr Juan Negrin (a non-mason) ... 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 ... New Science, New Spirituality On hearing that Professor Margaret Jacob’s seminal The Radical Enlightenment - Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans was now appearing in a revised second edition, Freemasonry Today sent me along to her for an exclusive tutorial. Margaret Jacob showed me into her study; its book collection would match a medium-sized town library for size: being there was, for me, to sit at the feet of the first mainstream academic ... The Paths of Heavenly Science Freemasonry teaches by means of symbols. It is not alone in this. From the earliest times teachers have sought a means of expressing the ineffable, that for which words prove too limited; symbols allow the expression of a depth of ideas beyond mere words. In all ages buildings have been constructed and guided by symbolic principles; they thus share certain similarities – an incorporation of number symbolism, underground tunnels, stairs up to the light - all are used to serve an initiatory rather than a commercial or residential function ... Trench Art Art is often born out of hardship, adversity and suffering, and this is nowhere more true than in the field of armed conflict. From the Spanish Armada to Vietnam, from the BoerWar to Bosnia, across more than two centuries and five continents, the most amazing collection of artefacts of all kinds – much of it masonic - has come into being as a result of war. Trench Art is the name given to objects - be they of metal, cloth, wood, bone, stone or any ... Murder and Masonry In the sparse, hushed courtroom, the judge prepared to pronounce sentence of death. Looking straight at the prisoner, he said; ‘We both belong to the same Brotherhood,’ (he faltered here) ‘and though that can have no influence with me, this is painful beyond words for me to have to say what I am saying, but our Brotherhood does not encourage crime, it condemns it.’ This was the culmination of a sensational trial, sensational not only ... The Pope and the Spy Towards the end of January 1731 the London government received a frenzied report from Rome. Its author was a certain Baron von Stosch, a resident in the Holy city, and a personal favourite of King George II. Stosch reported that about 10 o’clock the previous Sunday he had been returning home, when suddenly his carriage had been surrounded near Prince Ruspoli’s palace by three masked assailants brandishing muskets ... Research Lift-Off An historic event took place recently with the public launch of the University of Sheffield's Centre for Research into Freemasonry, the first such centre to be opened by a British university. Although freemasonry began in Britain, and is one of the cultural phenomena of British life that has had the biggest international impact, it has been largely neglected by professional scholars. This contrasts with the position in Europe and America, where the historical, literary and artistic heritage of freemasonry has for a long time been subject to close scholarly scrutiny, and is very much part of the academic mainstream ... Canonbury Masonic Research Centre Canonbury Masonic Research Centre was established as an educational charity on 23 October 1998 at 10.30am in Freemasons’ Hall, Great Queen Street, London. The Centre’s Trustees are the Assistant Grand Master, Lord Northampton, the Grand Secretary, James Daniel, and the author and Freemason, Michael Baigent. The Centre was founded as a result of several recent developments. The openness with which Freemasonry is entering a new millennium co-incides with an increasing interest shown in it by the academic world. In the recent past ... 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 ... The Secret of the 47th Proposition One of the origins of modern Freemasonry is so-called ‘operative masonry’. Anyone who has seen a cathedral knows what I am referring to and to whom: the master masons of freestone. Documents which have survived these original lodges reveal the one secret which is the ultimate trade secret. For example, the Regensburg Document of 1459 describes the unification of nearly all German lodges, including those of Switzerland and Alsace, and was confirmed by the Emperor Maximilian I in 1498. This document contains the instruction that “..no workman, nor master ... Rosslyn, Chapel of the Century Roslin (current spelling for the village) is an old mining centre south of Edinburgh, lying half-way between Penicuik and Lasswade. The chapel stands at the end of a small lane, where the land rises to greet the Pentland Hills. The foundation stone was laid in 1446 by William Sinclair, the third and last Prince of Orkney. The construction work continued for forty years. William Sinclair appears to have acted as the Master of Works himself ... 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 ... On Euclid Freemasonry’s concern with geometry goes back to its beginnings, setting a precedent to that academic research which in the last 100 years or so has flourished in the west as the history of Mathematics. Few who have devoted themselves to research in this field have underestimated the knowledge of previous generations - and just as each mathematician should know the history, so too should Freemasons understand something of the geometry which informs their rituals and their social existence. In times gone by, masons in search of ...   Masonic Research & Education © Grand Lodge Publications Ltd 1997-2008