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BACK NEXT Spring 2001 Issue 16 Letter from the Editor News Briefing News and Views On The Level The Masonic City The Heart of the Matter Struggle for Survival Step Off With the Left Wheel Preceptor or Coach? Is It All Daydreaming? Ghosts, Manacles and the Noose The Masonic Halfpenny Occupation, Terror and Revival Sanctifying with Grace Fourth Degree of the Antients Research Lift-Off Letters to the Editor Review: The Order of the Allied Masonic Degrees Review: A Reference Book for Freemasons Review: The Rungs of the Ladder Review: Symbols of Freemasonry Jubilation Why Do We Exclude the Ladies? Copyright 1997-2008 Grand Lodge Publications Ltd Designed and Maintained by: Cyberpoint Limited

FREEMASONRY TODAY Spring 2001 - Issue 16 - Index John Jackson - Editor's Comment What a sad story we publish this issue (page 6) about the Essex police. Local masons had offered to provide four defribillators – life-saving heart machines – at a cost of £10,000 for their emergency response vehicles. But the local Bill would have none of it. They said the gift could not be accepted "in the current public and parliamentary concern about freemasonry." There is constant talk about the "perception" of freemasonry. Here is a classic example of why that perception exists – wimpish, limp-wristed police chiefs making sure such "concern" continues to hang like a shadow over law abiding and community-conscious masons ... News Briefing Councils Back Away from Registration of Employees on Legal Advice — Essex Police Reject Offer of Life-Saving Machines in "Perception" Row — New Pro & Assistant Grand Master Invested — Summonses by e-mail — Ministry of Defence Ruling Was Against Freedom of Expression Says Leading Lawyer — NHS Crisis Will Place Further Demands on the New Masonic Samaritan Fund News and Views Friendly Society Project Launched Through Supreme Grand Chapter Funding — Full of Eastern Promise for Youngsters — Strong Man Lodge Continues to Grow its Family Throughout Essex and London — Big Boost to Leicester Cathedral Funds — No Enigma for this Bletchley Ceremony — And That on the Right Was Named... — Derbyshire Find the Target Before a Capacity Crowd in Pride Park Presentation — Surrey Mark Celebrate Millennium with Impressive Musical Festival Evening — New Chapter Consecrated for Middlesex — Master Proposes to Girl Friend During Portugese Ladies Night — Cornwall Lodge Notches up its Double Century in the True and Faithful Style — French Comedy Given an Airing at London's Old Sessions House — Guide Dogs Make Life Easier for Blind and Deaf On The Level More Consecrations — Fifty Not Out — Organists Honoured — The King and I — Jersey Garden Gift — Devon Consecration — Cornerstone Society Conference — Book on VC and GC Masons To Be Published — Freemasons’ Hall Exhibitions — Library Scheme — Anglo-Canada Reunion — Broken Column Brooch Offer — Clay Pigeon Shoot — We’re in the Library — Rugby Hospice Benefits — A Night to Remember — Welcome in Portugal — Radio Hams Form Second Lodge — Canada Shows the Way The Masonic City Washington DC can fairly be described as the world’s foremost "Masonic City." Its centre was laid out according to a plan drawn up by the French Freemason Pierre L’Enfant. Today, the main Government area is filled with buildings that should delight any freemason seeing them for the first time. There is a veritable forest of columns ... The Heart of the Matter The only immediate treatment for cardiac arrest is defibrillation. Last year The Grand Charity made a £115,000 grant to St John Ambulance to purchase Automated External Defibrillators (AED) for each of its 46 county divisions in England and the Channel Islands. This is laudable, although such action has raised the question of safety and first aid in masonic centres nationwide. Heart attacks can strike at any age, but there are many masons who fall in the "at most risk" category when one takes age and the pressures and excesses of business, private and masonic life ... Struggle for Survival Freemasonry has, off and on, been accused of conspiracies and plots against governments as well as being anti-Christ and hostile to the church. In Finland, freemasonry has travelled through similar difficulties. The first freemasons’ lodge began operations in Finland at the end of the 1750s. It was already presented with a powerful critique directed at the ideologies and operation of freemasonry by the diocesan synod meeting held in Porvoo in 1769 ... Step Off With the Left Wheel You can't do the work of a lodge officer involved in ritual from a wheelchair, can you? Wrong! Jeremy Miller was Provincial Grand Director of Ceremonies in the Province of Cambridgeshire when he was paralysed from mid-chest down by a virus disease. John Scott was six months into his year as Master of Old Leysian Lodge No. 4520 when he was forced by spinal stenosis to take to a wheelchair for all distances of more than a few yards. There are some who are disabled who might baulk at taking on official duties in lodge, and even some able-bodies members who might not feel that disabled brethren are "up to the task" ... Preceptor or Coach? What is a preceptor? Does he need to know the ritual? Lodges tend to select their best ritualist when it comes to the election of a new preceptor. My experience in sport and freemasonry tells me that this is not the best way forward. At some time or another we have all suffered from the brilliant mathematician who could not teach maths. The ability to do something well has little or no relevance to the ability to help others reach the same standard. It could even be argued that the person who has the greatest difficulty in learning and retaining ritual ... Is It All Daydreaming? There has been much comment about daylight lodges in Freemasonry Today recently which prompts me to offer some observations based on experience, having been a member of Golden Harvest Lodge No 9234 in South Africa for 11 years and secretary for the last eight. Golden Harvest draws its 40 members not only from the 46 lodges in the Johannesburg municipal area, but local Scottish, Irish and Grand Lodge of South Africa lodges as well. We meet on the odd months of the year at 10.30am, with a committee meeting at a local country club on the even months. Recruitment is unexpectedly difficult. Our membership has been almost static for years. Why do we have ... Ghosts, Manacles and the Noose On the edge of the City of London, near to Smithfield meat market, stands a reminder of England's grim past: the Middlesex Sessions House. From here convicted criminals were sentenced to death - there is a condemned cell in the building used as a linen cupboard - transported to Australia and much else that befell enemies of society in those days. Today it is home to 230 London lodges, 70 Chapters, 160 Lodges of Instruction and other degrees and is known as the London Masonic Centre. It even has its own website at www.london-lodges.org/clerkenwell ... The Masonic Halfpenny In their original village life, communities were to a great extent self-supporting, and the bulk of local trade was carried out by barter, the miller taking a part of the farmer's corn as his fee for grinding it, and the bootmaker receiving a sack of potatoes for his services etc. But, in the factories, labour was bought for cash, and the labourer had to buy the necessities of life with cash likewise. This great upsurge in money trade led to an embarrassing shortage of currency, particularly of smaller coins. This was aggravated by the demands for metal by the munitions industry to supply the needs of the recent war of American Independence ... Occupation, Terror and Revival On 9th May this year, Channel Islanders will celebrate the 56th anniversary of the most joyous day in their history - their liberation from five years of enemy occupation. But for members of the Craft who had remained in the Islands, while sharing the joy and relief experienced by all Channel Islanders on that day in 1945 ... Sanctifying with Grace Fifteen years ago, the NASA space shuttle Challenger exploded seventy-three seconds after take-off, with the loss of the entire crew. Two engineers from the firm of rocket manufacturers had had serious reservations about the craft taking off, believing that the fuel seals would lose their integrity in the prevailing low temperatures. One of the engineers, acting partly on instinct, tried in vain to have the flight stopped, but the management made a decision based on expediency that the flight should go ahead. The rest is, as they say, history. A perverse and ironic triumph, you might think, of reason over instinct. In his Essay on the Puppet Theatre, Heinrich von Kleist tells the story ... Fourth Degree of the Antients Organised freemasonry began with the establishment in London of the Premier Grand Lodge of England on 24 June 1717. The first evidence of the Royal Arch as a degree is to be found in an Irish publication dated 1744. It is a reference in a pamphlet entitled A Serious and Impartial Enquiry into the Cause of the present Decay in Free Masonry in the Kingdom of Ireland by Dr Fifield Dassigny (1707-1744). It refers to a Royal Arch Mason from York ... 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 ... Letters to the Editor Admitting women would Bring about our demise — Freemasons' Hall is essential to London — Brigadier Jackson and Rose Croix — Minor irritants in the lodge — Who wants to be a millionaire? — Shedding light on the Third Degree — You are never too old to become a Master — It is time to end our complacency — Let's stand by tradition — Petitions are the problem — Doubts over Noah — Ritual needs fresh look — Sons initiating fathers — Installed in the Chair at 80 — Going strong at 90 — South African VCs — "Thank you" for inquiries — Are you happy? — Cheshire's first cybermason — Dining in a cathedral Review: The Order of the Allied Masonic Degrees Review: A Reference Book for Freemasons Review: The Rungs of the Ladder Review: Symbols of Freemasonry Jubilation “Our lodge is having its jubilee – will you come as my guest? Which jubilee is it – silver, golden or diamond?” Do you notice anything odd about that conversation? Probably not; but just over a hundred years ago it would have made very little sense, for in those days “jubilee” just meant 50 years. Full stop. Freemasonry recognises 100 years and regularly issues Centenary Warrants, but it has tended to overlook 50 years which is, after all, only half a century. Man has always tended to count in tens and hundreds – presumably because ten fingers and ten toes make an easily operated computer. No doubt if we had been given 12 digits instead of 10, we should all be counting ... Why Do We Exclude the Ladies? At a recent "20 years-on" reunion of 19 professional ladies, 16 of them had married a graduate from Cambridge University. Today, many of these ladies are better qualified and earn more money, than their highly qualified husbands. Obviously, these ladies expect to participate in family activities on equal terms because it has become the accepted social norm in such families. Therefore, freemasonry is trying to buck an existing social trend. No wonder it has become rare for doctors, teachers, solicitors and other professional men to join our Lodges. Recently my son and his wife joined 'Roteract' and a local tennis club, while their teenage sons are members of ...   Issue 16, Spring 2001 © Grand Lodge Publications Ltd 1997-2008