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BACK NEXT Summer 2002 Issue 21 Letter from the Editor News Briefing Freemasonry in the Community News and Views On The Level International News Julian Rees Families and Freemasonry Alvin Langdon Coburn: Artist - Photographer Polished Cornerstones More Extensively Serviceable The Mysterious Templar Carvings of Chinon Castle Heart and Mind Degrees of Significance Canterbury's Masonic Heritage Brother Lightfoote's Journal Letters to the Editor Review: The Queen's Conjurer Review: The Invisible College Review: Polished Cornerstones Review: James, the Brother of Jesus Canon Richard Tydeman Copyright 1997-2008 Grand Lodge Publications Ltd Designed and Maintained by: Cyberpoint Limited

FREEMASONRY TODAY Summer 2002 - Issue 21 - Index Michael Baigent - Letter from the Editor It is no masonic secret: our Freemasonry in the Community, "Week of Action", has been a resounding success. All involved – and so many gave up so much of their time planning and running the fifteen hundred or more events – deserve our congratulations and our gratitude. They have helped thousands of men, women and children; they have changed, for the better, the public perception of Freemasonry; and they have allowed many Freemasons to have great fun in the process. Charitable work is so much better with a smile or a laugh since it’s not just the money which helps the needy – it’s knowing that others care ... News Briefing New Provincial Grand Master for Oxfordshire On Monday, 8th April 2002, Alan John Englefield was installed as Grand Superintendent for the Provincial Chapter of Oxfordshire in the twenty-first century surroundings of the Redman-Brown Temple at the Oxford Centre – complete with fibre optics and video link – and in the afternoon in the splendour of the Victorian setting of the Oxford Town Hall as Provincial Grand Master for the Provincial Grand Lodge of Oxfordshire ... Progress of Formation of London Grand Lodge Freemasonry in the Community Week of Action Begins with St Paul's Cathedral Service — Photographic Exhibition at Freemasons' Hall — East Lancashire — Devonshire — Suffolk — Yorkshire West Riding — Dorset — Bristol — Hertfordshire — Durham — London — Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire ... News and Views Service at London Synagogue — Unique Bristol Ritual Demonstration — King George VI - Masonic Photograph Discovered On The Level Canonbury Masonic Research Centre — Centre for Research into Freemasonry, Sheffield University — The Cornerstone Society ... International News Out of Darkness into Light: Freemasonry in Gdansk and Kaliningrad — 200 Years Since Freemasonry was Established in Portugal — Masonic Community Days in Illinois — Hong Kong Masons Help Non-Masonic Charities — North Carolina's Masonic Home for Children ... Julian Rees - And Hold Me Lest I Fall I must be watching too much television. In issue 19 I criticised television programmes such as Big Brother, The Weakest Link and Survivor and now, again on television, I have witnessed the perfect antidote to all this ritual humiliation. In April ITN’s Trevor MacDonald hosted a Survivor-type programme in which Protestants and Catholics from Northern Ireland were placed together in close proximity on the Isle of Man in an endurance test, physical endurance, endurance of cultural difference, endurance of reciprocal prejudice and mutual distrust. ... Families and Freemasonry Essex Freemasons provided a magnificent spectacle on Saturday 29th June with their twin "Fun Day" and Evening Concert in the grounds and gardens of Ingatestone Hall, the home of the non-masonic, but accommodating, Lord Petre, descendant of an eighteenth century masonic Grand Master. It was the hub event for Essex and it surpassed all expectations both in the enjoyment it provided and the large sums it raised ... Alvin Langdon Coburn: Artist - Photographer “Searching for beauty to photograph opens our eyes to a new world of beauty; this is perhaps one of its most valuable gifts to us, it makes us increasingly mindful of an ever-richer and more glorious beauty in men and things, and in the panorama of the universe. Yet, behind the ever-changing beauty of the material world, there abides, immutable and serene, an Eternal Beauty which is its Cause, and the guarantee of its perfection ..." Polished Cornerstones If, “Freemasonry is a system of becoming… something better than you are now1”, then how much truer is this of a school? And if that school also has Masonic connections, then it is doubly apt. The Royal Masonic School for Girls, instituted in 1788 by the Freemason, Chevalier Bartholomew Ruspini, began on what is now the Euston Road with fifteen pupils. It moved first to St George’s Fields (1795) and then to Clapham (1852) ... More Extensively Serviceable The alarm sounded. "Boreham Airbase….yes….yes….yes….will attend." Pilot, engineer and paramedic scrambled, helicopter boarded, whirred into action, and for someone, somewhere in the County, rescue and a lifesaving journey in the Essex Air Ambulance. "Good time at school?" I asked Lee Gillam. "What! Father was a roving manager for British Road Services and my education was at thirteen different schools around the Country; at one, I was only there for an hour! But, being a new arrival, so many times, and usually being ... The Mysterious Templar Carvings of Chinon Castle On the evening of March 18th 1314, the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, was cruelly burned to death on a small island in the Seine, in Paris. Sharing his pain and death was the Templar Preceptor of Normandy, Geoffroy de Charney. It was the last brutal act in an enigmatic drama. The dramatic events had begun seven years earlier when, at dawn on 13th October 1307, the king of France ordered all the Templars ... Heart and Mind We are living now in a crucial time of choice – a time of stupendous scientific discoveries which are enlarging our vision of the universe, shattering our old concepts about the nature of reality. Yet the delicate organism of life on our planet and the survival of our species are threatened as never before by technologies driven by a need to conquer and control nature, technologies applied with an utter disregard of the perils of our interference with the complex web of relationships upon which the life of our species depends ... Degrees of Significance Of the many ‘extra-Craft’ degrees, those five controlled by the Grand Council of the Order of the Allied Masonic Degrees are probably the least known: one has to be a Mark Master and a Royal Arch Mason to be eligible and this double qualification will exclude many. There are also fewer private Allied Councils than there are lodges, or equivalent bodies, for the much larger orders of Mark and Royal Ark Mariners and even of smaller orders ... Canterbury's Masonic Heritage The Kent Masonic Library and Museum is situated in the heart of beautiful Canterbury, just a few hundred yards west of the magnificent cathedral. The building is surrounded by other custodians of the city’s legacy: the Buffs Museum to the north, the Heritage Museum and Canterbury Tales Exhibit to the south – all within easy reach along ancient alleyways ... Brother Lightfoote's Journal Saint Andrew, as I've said before, is a great favourite of mine; I named a son after him, so I did. It is recorded that he was Our Lord's first disciple, a fisherman by trade, who, when summoned, didn't simply abandon all and follow, but ran and told his brethren. By his actions, the saint demonstrated two of the traits that Lightfoote most admires in a man: he failed to do as he was told and succeeded in spreading joy, for when offered a great gift – the greatest gift of all – his first thought was to share it. I bless his name whenever there's fish on the table ... Letters to the Editor Methodists, Freemasons and Charles Wesley — Divine Existence — Keeping Our Ties Black — Labyrinths — Volume of the Sacred Law — Freemasonry and Secrecy — Masons and Clandestine Activity — Wall Plaques of Traditional History ... Review: The Queen's Conjurer Review: The Invisible College Review: Polished Cornerstones Review: James, the Brother of Jesus Canon Richard Tydeman The use of banners, standards or ensigns is of very ancient origin. Carvings and paintings on the walls of Egyptian tombs show that such things were carried in processions many thousands of years ago. The Israelites therefore, at the time of their exodus from Egyptian bondage, would have been well accustomed to the practice, and when they encamped in the wilderness of Sinai, as we read in the second chapter of the Book of Numbers, they were told: "Every man of the children of Israel shall pitch by his own standard, with the ensign of his father’s house." Thus began a custom which has existed right ...   Issue 21, Summer 2002 © Grand Lodge Publications Ltd 1997-2008