Catholics and Masonry

Accidently stumbled upon one of the most thoughtful blog articles I've seen about Catholics and Freemasonry as regards interpretation of Canon Law, written by Brother Christian Ratliff in Maine. Brother Ratliff is also a developer of material for Maine's "Masonic College" education program.

Check his Dispatches From Mainesite out.

Everything I Needed To Know In Life I Learned On The Train

Indiana Railway Museum, Greensburg, IN, 1975.
LtoR: Me, Mike Winkler, Alan Barnett, Tom Knowles and Bill Jenkins
Last Sunday I was returning from the Midwest Conference on Masonic Education in Evansville. Those of us who live in Indiana know that Evansville is in the unfortunate position of being in the big toe of Indiana's boot, as far southwest as you can get. And if you live in Indianapolis, you also know there's no way to get to Evansville and back - at least no way that is logical. You either drive 9/10s of the way to Louisville in the southeast, then double back all the way across the state on I-65. Or you hotfoot it west to Terre Haute and then take a thoroughly unpleasant drive south for another two hours on a state highway that is totally unsuited for the job. Either way, you are going 40 miles out of your way if there was a shining ribbon of concrete going straight between Indy and Evansville. This dream is known as I-69, and as its number implies, its supporters have been screwed frontwards and backwards for decades, waiting for it to be built.

I decided on the trip home on Sunday to take the straightest route, which adds nearly two hours to the voyage on Indiana's scenic back roads. My real excuse was to drive through the towns of French Lick and West Baden, two legendary, side-by-side resort towns from Indiana's early 120th century days.

My grandmother used to come by train all the way from Louisville back in the 1920s to gamble at the resorts and "take the waters." She vividly remembered the goons (cops, private security, or guards of the Chicago mobsters who flocked there, she was never really certain) pacing back and forth on the upper balcony at West Baden Springs, brandishing their Thompson machine guns to make sure patrons didn't get out of hand. I am no stranger to French Lick, because my first trip there was in 1977. And this is where this story is really headed.

My step-brother and I both had a long-standing love affair with trains. We used to ride the city bus to downtown Indianapolis as boys and spend the day at Union Station watching the trains pass through the city. We explored every nook and cranny of the nearly abandoned building. We knew all of the bums who lived in its secret hiding places. We snuck underground into the subterranean mail-handling caverns. We rode the baggage elevators. We explored the long abandoned offices and vaults. We climbed on the roof, and even snuck into the building one night to ascend all the way to the attic level, where we walked on narrow beams across the five-story high stained glass ceiling. We made friends with tower operators and spend Friday nights tape recording passing trains and taking turns working the big switch handles, routing trains up and down the line. On occasion, we'd even manage to talk our way into cab rides in the locomotives of trains back and forth to Lafayette.  Life was better then - I was there, I remember. Union Station didn't belong to the railroad, it belonged to us. At the age of 13, this was the coolest private fort a kid could have. Then we found something better.

One day in 1973 in the old passenger car storage area known as the Capitol Avenue Coach Yards (where the RCA Dome stands now), we stumbled across a group of 8 or 10 folks in their 20s and 30s restoring a 1950's era Pennsylvania Railroad observation car, Samuel Rea, named after the Pennsy's president from 1913 to 1925. It wasn't immaculate, but it was beautiful. And in one evening, I was hooked on the whole package - trains, restoration, being treated almost like a grown up, and having not just one, but a whole fleet of private railroad cars I could pretend were mine.

The cars actually belonged to the Indiana Railway Museum, which was being moved from Westport to Greensburg, Indiana. There, we operated a tourist train from Greensburg to the wide spot in the road 5 miles up the line called Sandusky, and back again. The bane of our existence and our pride and joy was our steam locomotive, #11, a Baldwin oil-fired 0-4-0 saddle tank switch engine. Every Friday night our routine was to gather in Samuel Rea over dinner, drink beer, and make big plans for the future. We had almost no money, but what we did have was a dedicated core group of endlessly inventive members who found ways to achieve the impossible every weekend and keep the train running.

My step-brother Mike Winkler, Bill Jenkins, Tom and Marti Knowles and their daughter Debbie, Tom and Pam Slater and their kids, Jay Williams, Coleman Sachs, Bill Doran, Ralph Baker - and too many names I can no longer remember - we all spent every weekend for four years working on our private railroad empire. And our fearless leader through it all was the Museum president, Alan Barnett. Alan's father was the Mayor in Greensburg, and apart from the courthouse's "world famous" (appearing in Ripley's Believe It Or Not) Tower Tree - a tree that sprouted from the courthouse's clock tower, we were the only tourist attraction in town. As a result, when we needed favors from the town, we usually got them. In the earliest days, we'd all sleep sprawled out across Alan's living room Friday and Saturday nights, so we could all slam out of bed before dawn to feed and water the engine, stoke the fire, and assess the latest boiler leaks.

Working on the railroad taught me how to run a business, how to weld, how to deal with the public, how to understand basic accounting, how to drive a stick-shift, how to drive a train, and how to drink and cuss like a railroad worker. It taught me personal responsibility and teamwork. It even motivated me to teach myself art and design concepts. But it also taught me about motivating people in a completely volunteer organization. All before I turned 16. Just like me, Alan had first started on the train at 13, and was elected an officer at 16 (he had been vice-president, while I was made a Board member ten years later). Nobody'd ever treated me like an adult before. And I don't exaggerate when I say it completely changed my life.

In fact, my first beer and cigar were both enjoyed at 13 while sitting on the open-end observation platform of Nickel Plate RR No. 3, the presidential car Quickstep. It was the 1970s, and a very different time and place.

So what does any of this have to do with Freemasonry, you ask? As I said at the top of this story, I drove through French Lick to see the train and the museum, but mostly to see my old friend Alan Barnett. The train cars of my youth are now almost all rusting hulks, with a few exceptions, replaced by other equipment in better repair that has remained in regular service. They haven't aged well. But Alan doesn't look any different to me than he did almost 30 years ago. We had a chance to give each other the quick thumbnail sketches of our lives since we saw each other last. He has been bedeviled by some health problems. The new French Lick casino was big news. The West Baden Springs Hotel is reopening soon, and they want to run train service between the two hotels. And I told Alan about my strange new life of late, and gave him copies of my books.

"Freemasonry," he said, "You're a Mason? Me too. I must've joined my lodge in Greensburg almost 40 years ago."

All those years ago, this man I admired, who was the town sheriff, the president of the Museum, and a man who taught me so much about responsibility, common sense, mechanics, public relations and lots more about life and honor - he had been a Freemason all along.

Indiana Chooses new "Illuminati" License Plate

This entry ought to drive David Icke and his paranoid cronies right up the wall.

Indiana's Bureau of Motor Vehicles announced yesterday they were choosing that eeeevil Illuminati torch to be emblazoned on our license plates. Icke believes that the Masonic/Illuminati torch of enlightenment - as seen on the Indiana flag, the city's downtown monuments, and even that symbol of Masonic perfidy, New York's "Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World" - is a symbol of Masonic influence over America.

With me boys.
Charge your cannons.
To world domination.
Vivat, vivat, vivat. vivat.
FIRE!
Good fire.

Masonic story on NPR's Weekend Edition

NPR's Weekend Edition reporter Rachel Martin did a story this morning about Freemasons in Washington DC, particularly about the brethren of Naval Lodge No. 4 and the increasing interest of young men in the fraternity. It is fair, mostly accurate, and a refreshing relief from the "Dying Masons Open Aging Temples To Show They Have No Secrets" stories that typically appear in the press.

The story is loaded with great quotes from Naval Lodge's Master, Wbro. Alan Patterson, but I think the true gem comes from my friend Wbro. Mark Tabbert, Director of Collections at the George Washinton Masonic National Memorial, author of American Freemasons:

(Tabbert) says the current renewed interest in Freemasonry has brought in men who take a more serious approach to the ritual than older generations did, and who want to tighten initiation standards and raise dues. But he says the fraternity must watch out for men who sign up because of misguided theories linking Freemasonry to "divine secrets."

"Once you get through the romanticism of a quest that doesn't exist, or foolishness about the Knights Templar or the Arc of the Covenant or the Holy Grail, you find out that there actually is a quest," Tabbert says. "And the quest is the inner journey, the self improvement, to be useful in society and improve yourself."

Templar Code For Dummies Due 7/2/07

Amazon has the new cover up for Templar Code For Dummies.

Projected publishing date is July 2nd.

Happy, happy, joy, joy!

The Dangerous Book For Boys: Making Good Boys Better Ones?

This has nothing to do with Freemasonry. But then again, maybe it does. The Dangerous Book For Boys harkens back to an earlier time, before we had raised a nation of wimps, crybabies, bedwetters and Ritalin-sated video game obsessives. It was a day when boys played with bows and arrows, slingshots and pointed sticks, and climbed really tall, dangerous trees to build rickety forts with No Girlz Alloud. And along the way they learned to get along without getting their parents to sue each other or have the state pass anti-bullying laws or prosecute 4th graders for "hate crimes." With 30% of U.S.children living in single-parent households (overwhelmingly Mom with no Dad), here's a book to help a good boy become a better one.

This book was a smash hit in the U.K. in its first incarnation. The new U.S. edition has been updated and Americanized, but I admired this book as soon as I read the introduction:

In this age of video games and cell phones, there must still be a place for knots, tree houses, and stories of incredible courage. The one thing that we always say about childhood is that we seemed to have more time back then. This book will help you recapture those Sunday after- noons and long summers—because they’re still long if you know how to look at them.

Boyhood is all about curiosity, and men and boys can enjoy stories of Scott of the Antarctic and Joe Simpson in Touching the Void as much as they can raid a shed for the bits to make an electromagnet, or grow a crystal, build a go-cart, and learn how to find north in the dark. You’ll find famous battles in these pages, insects and dinosaurs—as well as essential Shakespeare quotes, how to cut flint heads for a bow and arrow, and instructions on making the best paper airplane in the world.

How do latitude and longitude work? How do you make secret ink, or send the cipher that Julius Caesar used with his generals? You’ll find the answers inside. It was written by two men who would have given away the cat to get this book when they were young. It wasn’t a particularly nice cat. Why did we write it now? Because these things are important still and we wished we knew them better. There are few things as satisfying as tying a decent bowline knot when someone needs a loop, or simply knowing what happened at Gettysburg and the Alamo. The tales must be told and retold, or the memories slowly die.

The stories of courage can be read as simple adventures—or perhaps as inspiration, examples of extraordinary acts by ordinary people. Since we wrote them, it’s been a great deal harder to hop about and curse when one of us stubs a toe. If you read Douglas Bader’s chapter, you’ll see why. They’re not just cracking stories, they’re part of a culture, a part we really don’t want to see vanish.

Is it old-fashioned? Well, that depends. Men and boys today are the same as they always were, and interested in the same things. They may conquer different worlds when they grow up, but they’ll still want these stories for themselves and for their sons. We hope in years to come that this will be a book to dig out of the attic and give to a couple of kids staring at a pile of wood and wondering what to do with it.

When you’re a man, you realize that everything changes, but when you’re a boy, you know different. The camp you make today will be there forever. You want to learn coin tricks and how to play poker because you never know when the skills will come in handy. You want to be self-sufficient and find your way by the stars. Perhaps for those who come after us, you want to reach them. Well, why not? Why not?

The book is a cross between Boy's Life, the Boy Scout Manual, and a G-rated Steal This Book. But what I really like is the philosophy behind it. For all of modern society's cynical sneering and social engineering, boys need to be allowed to be boys, and single moms can't fill every need. Moms can't teach boys about chivalry and how to be both strong and honorable. And video games can't teach boys about true heroism or cunning or or leadership or problem solving. There's a reason this book is the #2 book on Amazon this weekend.

"The tales must be told and retold, or the memories slowly die." Truer words were never spoken. And maybe, just maybe, society is at long last reawakening to some of the virtues of being a man that it's spent four decades casting on the ash pile. And maybe, just maybe, this post really is about Freemasonry after all.

Midwest Conference on Masonic Education 2007

I had a wonderful couple of days at the 2007 Midwest Conference on Masonic Education in Evansville, Indiana this weekend. Grand Masters, Past Grand Masters, education officers and others interested in Masonic education throughout the region gathered for this annual program to discuss the nuts and bolts of programs used in their jurisdictions.

Terry Tilton, PGM of Minnesota and 2nd VP of PSOC kicked off Friday evening with a presentation on the Philalethes Society, joined by PSOC president Bob Tomlinson, PGM of Kansas.

Saturday was the nuts and bolts day of business for the group, but several GLs presented educational programs their states were using, developing or continuing. And a presentation was made explaining the background and goals of High Twelve International.

Mark Tabbert, myself and Chad Simpson.
Mark and I are not dwarves. Chad is just tall.

I was honored to be asked to participate in the afternoon session, moderated by brother Chad Simpson, Asst. Grand Secretary of Ohio. Because so-called Traditional Observance and European Concept lodges are gaining in popularity across the country, Chad brought a group of us together who are involved in these lodges to explain and demystify them, as well as to debunk some of the misconceptions around them.

The others on the panel were:

- Dennis Chornenky of Academia Lodge No. 847 in California, spoke about Traditional Observance lodges and the Masonic Restoration Foundation (MRF). he also gave a brief explanation of California's Masonic Formation Certification program.

_ Robert Tomlinson, PGM of Kansas and Master of Inner Quest Lodge No.456 spoke about their strict interpretation of the T.O. concept.

- I explained the differences between Traditional Observance and European Concept lodges, and our desire at Lodge Vitruvian No. 767 in Indianapolis to create our own model of a formal lodge, with a greater concentration on the festive board and Masonic education, as opposed to the stricter T.O. formats and ceremonies.

- Joesphe (Joey) Skyles of Kansas gave an outstanding presentation on generational trends and why the WWII generation, the Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y and the Millennials believe, say and do what they do.

- Mark Tabbert, Director of Collections for the George Washington Masonic National Memorial Museum in Alexandria, Virginia finished up the session with an historical overview that magically seemed to wrap up all of our presentations, even if we didn't all collaborate ahead of time.

There have been situations across the country when Grand Masters have been unnerved, put off or downright spooked by the notion of TO/EC lodges, claiming them to be elitist, exclusive or otherwise discriminatory to the American customs of Freemasonry (Terry Tilton used the word "antithetical," which I disagree with). Those who have attended them know this is far from the truth. But what is clear is that an admittedly small - but growing - population within the fraternity is looking for a more formal lodge and educational lodge experience, a more convivial festive board, slower degree advancement, realistic dues, greater involvement of EAs and FCs. These lodges are smaller - intentionally so - but stress regular involvement instead of passive card carrying members who never show up.

What I find interesting is that the Allied Masonic Degree chapters are patterned on just this kind of model. And the AMD is the fastest growing appendant body in the US. AMD is filling a need with its small chapter size and concentration on education, participation and the feast.

Neither AMD nor TO/EC lodges are some magic bullet to "fix" Freemasonry. They are probably not the future of American Freemasonry. But they represent the 21st century inklings of what Masonry has done historically since its modern beginnings in 1717. Masonry has changed like clockwork every 25-30 years to suit the needs and desires of the society in which it resides, and the men who join it - until 1970, when it stopped. Because Masonry froze in its post-WWII model and failed to make changes 30 years later, we now sit here suffering from six decades of hardening of the arteries. That's no one's fault - the WWII generation has kept this fraternity alive and running when the Vietnam-era men refused to join. We owe them our gratitude and respect. But we have to make twice as many changes today as evolution would have naturally done before.

These lodges are satisfying a growing niche that NEEDS to be satisfied, of men who are completely turned off by the 1950s model lodge of meeting for a bologna sandwich, opening, reading the minutes, paying the bills and going home by 8:00. These smaller lodges treat the whole evening as lodge night and their members want their evening to be special. Freemasonry is supposed to be anything but ordinary, but the last five decades have concentrated on membership and the grinding out of the work to keep numbers up. The new men knocking on our lodge doors know more about us than most of our members do, and they are seeking the legendary lodges of our illustrious forefathers. If what we give them is a flat, dull experience and lodges that do not serve the needs of their active members, they won't be back. And they'll be the worst anti-Masonic salesmen ever created – not on mythical anti-religious grounds, but by warning off other men because Freemasonry wasted their time, their money and their enthusiasm.

As far as my experience is concerned, the biggest success of TO and EC lodges has not been a stream of enthusiastic members flooding into them. The biggest success has been visitors or just interested bystanders who have read about them taking the ideas from these lodges and making positive changes in their home lodges. These brethren are simply doing what every generation of Masons have done until the 1970s - they are remaking Masonry to suit their needs and desires.

* * *

Sunday was dedicated to reports from the various Grand Lodges about the specifics of their education programs in the past year, and their plans for the next year. Indiana has not participated in this conference for almost 15 years, and did not officially participate in this one. Our Grand Secretary Max Carpenter PGM was in attendance, and the conference was in Evansville because of the decades of individual participation by Wbro. Ike Hoshauer. Ike was a big promoter of High Twelve, and the group's secretary for ten years. I hope Indiana's future Grand masters see a need for a real education program for Indiana Masons - for new members, existing ones and for officers. This annual conference is an outstanding way for GLs to share what works and what doesn't. While it's not really designed for flocks of masons to attend, it is essentially to educate the educators, and that is a noble mission. The last Midwest Conference held in Indianapolis was in 1967, and that is a shame. Dwight Smith, PGM addressed the group. In his talk, he asked a flurry of questions we still have not answered 40 years later:

Why have Masons lost interest in Masonry? The way to find out is for a Mason who used to be disinterested to ask a Mason who still has no interest.

What else can we learn if we have the courage to ask the questions?

Whether newly raised Masons were solicited, directly or indirectly, to petition for the degrees.

Why the disinterested Mason became disinterested.

What the Brother expected and hoped to find in Masonry; whether he found it.

Whether the Brother has been disappointed or disillusioned in his Masonic experience, and if so, in what manner.

Whether the officers of the lodge "got through" to him when the degrees were conferred.

Whether his intelligence was insulted by the manner in which the ritualistic work was presented.

Whether the degrees of Symbolic Freemasonry impress him as challenging, or meaningless, or somewhere in between.

If the jurisdiction in which he was made a Mason has a so-called Intender Plan or Counselor Plan, was it able to contribute to his enlightenment as a candidate? How did it actually operate (not on paper, but in actual practice)? Or did it operate at all?

Whether the officers and Brethren conferred the degrees upon him and then showed no further interest in him except at dues paying time.

Whether he ever had an unfortunate experience in the "inquisition" so often conducted when a Mason seeks to visit another lodge.

Whether he is bored by our ritualistic work, or by the meetings of his lodge in general, and why.

Does he feel that Freemasonry has become anachronistic; i.e., something that does not belong to the times in which we live?

Has he ever been called upon to do anything for his lodge - anything that was really challenging, that is?

Would he enjoy performing a service for his lodge? - What can his lodge do to regain his interest?

What does he think about the quality of Masonic membet~ship, particularly in his own lodge?

What does he think of the quality of leadership in his lodge? - Does he feel comfortable when attending a meeting of his lodge?

Does he have anything in common with the membership? - Does his lodge provide a source of fellowship that is satisfying?

In his mind, what kind of image does Freemasonry have?

What is the image of Freemasonry in the circle of his acquaintance?

If the public image of Freemasonry in his circle of acquaintance is good, why is it good" If poor, why is it poor?

What does Freemasonry mean to him? If it should cease to be of any force in his community and nation. would he miss it?

Is he proud to be a Mason?

The time is long past for us to have answers to these questions and more. Maybe by the time it's in Indianapolis again, we will have some.

Congrats to Andrew Jackson, Grand Commander!

I had to blast out of Indianapolis Friday evening just as Sir Knight Andrew R. Jackson was installed as Grand Commander of the Grand Commandery of Knights Templar of Indiana. Andy is also the Worshipful Master of the Dwight L. Smith Lodge of Research U.D.

Congratulations, Andy!

Vrijmetselarij Voor Dummies

The mail today brought the news that Freemasons For Dummies will soon be available translated into Dutch. I know not a thing about the Dutch language, apart from it looking like German with more j's and e's and o's and not so many umlauts. I also do not know if it is a straight translation of the U.S. edition, or if the Dutch publisher brought in a Mason from the Netherlands to make changes to reflect the very different Masonic structure there.

Let's just say it will be a surprise.

It will be to me.

Lodge Vitruvian April 24th Meeting & Festive Board

In the Name of the Grand Architect of the Universe
Under the Constitution of the M.W. Grand Lodge of Indiana, F. & A. M.
M. W. Bro. James M. Barkdull, GRAND MASTER

Second Quarterly Stated Communication for 2007
of
LODGE VITRUVIAN No. 767
Free and Accepted Masons
Under Dispensation 8 August 2001 - Chartered 21 May 2002
Constituted 17 August 2002
W. Bro. Phillip A. Garver, MASTER


All Master Masons to attend the Stated Communication of Lodge Vitruvian No. 767, F. & A. M., holden in the Hall of Broad Ripple Lodge No. 643 F. & A. M., located at 1716 Broad Ripple Avenue, Indianapolis, Indiana, opening on Tuesday, April 24, 2007, at 7:00 p.m. precisely.

Visitors are always welcome at Lodge Vitruvian. In order to keep the restaurant informed of our numbers for the evening, please endeavor to notify the Secretary that you will be in attendance.

Tuxedo, Regalia and White Gloves for Members, Tuxedo or Business Attire for Visitors.

Our speaker for the evening will be WBro. Mark Haworth, Master of Broad Ripple Lodge No. 643, who will present his recent paper on "The Transition from Noachide to Hiramic Legend in Ancient Freemasonry".

The Festive Board

Festive Board to follow the meeting at the Capri Restaurant
2602 Ruth Drive, Indianapolis, Indiana
(Keystone Avenue between 71st and 75th Streets)

Each attendee will be responsible to the Lodge for the cost of his meal. The cost for the Festive Board is $20 per person, exclusive of alcoholic beverages, payable to the Secretary. Gratuity will be paid by the Lodge.

Brethren wishing to imbibe are responsible for the price of their drinks. Please drink responsibly.

Upcoming Events

Saturday, June 9, 2007 (tentative date)
Schofield House Pilgrimage, Madison, Indiana
Called Meeting for the Conferral of the Entered Apprentice Degree
More information as it is available

Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Stated Meeting
Opening at 7:00 PM, Festive Board to follow
Masonic speaker to be announced

Pentacles, Wiccans and Masonry

A question that pops up from time to time on Masonic forums and in lodge has to do with the requirement of a petitioner to believe in a "supreme being" and whether Wicca qualifies as such a belief. Undoubtedly, part of the trepidation by some Masons to accept Wicca as a religion has to do with seeing inverted pentacles drawn on floors by hooded devil-worshippers in too many old Night Gallery reruns. Curiously, these same brethren generally have no problem with the inverted pentacle of the Order of the Eastern Star.

Nevertheless, Wiccans are NOT Satanic or devil worshippers. Perhaps some calm may be brought to the discussion by the news today that the Veteran's Administration has agreed to allow the Wiccan pentacle on the gravestones of fallen soldiers. The pentacle joins the list of 38 accepted religious symbols approved for headstones.

The pentacle, pentalpha or five pointed star, in truth, had no connotations of "good" or "evil" until the defrocked French abbé Eliphas Levi gave it such distinctions in the late 1800s. The pentagram first appeared more than 5,000 years ago, in Mesopotamian writings and drawings. The Babylonians used it as an astrological diagram to represent the five known planets, —Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, with Venus at the top point of the star as the Queen of Heaven. The Pythagorean Greeks used an inverted pentacle's five points to represent the Classical elements of fire, water, air, earth and idea – (or more properly, Hieron, a word meaning “divine thing.”). Modern day Wiccans and Neopagans similarly use the symbol in this a similar manner, to represent the four earthbound elements air, earth, fire, water and the “spirit.” Depending on the variety of Wicca, the symbol may appear with the point up or down.

Five has been a sacred number is a variety of religions, and the pentacle has long been a handy shorthand for those many meanings. Humans have five fingers or toes on each limb. We have five senses. Early Christians used the pentacle to describe a very wide range of concepts. Over time they have been used by Christians to describe, from the five senses and to the five wounds of Christ on the cross. Catholics have used it to describe symbolize the five “virtues of Mary” (Annunciation, Nativity, Resurrection, Ascension and the Assumption). In the 14th 14th-century Arthurian tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, it appears on Sir Gawain’s shield to delineate the five virtues of knighthood: fellowship, purity, frankness, courtesy and compassion. And Islam has its five pillars of faith.

The pentacle has occasionally appeared in the symbolism of Freemasonry in a couple of references. It’s most prominent appearance today is as the symbol of the Order of the Eastern Star. The Order of the Eastern Star is, part of the Masonic family of related groups known as the appendant bodies. It was created in the 1850s by Freemason Rob Morris and his wife as a group that allowed both men and women to mix in a lodge-like setting. Men who are Masons may join, as well as women who are married or otherwise related to a Masons. Morris was, an inveterate lover of Masonic ritual, and so he created a ritual ceremony that was initiatory like as in Freemasonry, but was dissimilar enough that so he couldn’t be accused by Grand Lodges of making women into Masons.

He based his ritual on biblical sources. The degree ceremonies of the Order of the Eastern Star tell stories about five heroines of the Bible: Adah, Jephthah’s daughter from the Book of Judges; Ruth, the daughter-in-law of Naomi; Esther, the brave Hebrew wife of Xerxes; Martha, Lazarus’ sister, from the Gospel of John; and Electa, the “elect lady” mentioned in II John.

The pentacle as it is used in the Order of the Eastern Star represents the Star of Bethlehem, and the points of the star refer to the biblical heroines. Chapter rooms are traditionally laid out with a large floor cloth or carpet representing the pentagram and its star points. At the center of the symbol stands an altar with an open Bible open upon it.

Apart from its use in the Order of the Eastern Star, the pentacle – right-side- up or inverted – does not officially appear in Masonic ritual or symbolism – at least not in the U.S. But that hasn't always been the case. Some “tracing boards” appeared in the early 1800s that contained five-pointed stars with a “G” in the center as a symbol of both God and of the knowledge of geometry. Other researchers have suggested that it may have represented a portion of the Master Mason degree ritual, the “Five Points of Fellowship.” But it was not a common symbol and has not survived in widespread use in this country.

However, many other countries frequently place a five-pointed star in the East of the lodge instead of the 'G' we commonly use to depict the presence of God. Some also combine it with the letter G. Proving the longstanding problem with making generalizations about Masonic symbolism: the answer usually is that "it's jurisdictional."

For more on Wicca, see the extensive www.religioustolerance.org website.

Solomon's Builders' Reviews

Many thanks to those who have recently reviewed Solomon's Builders: Freemasons, Founding fathers and the Secrets of Washington DC. In particular, thanks to Brother John Ratcliff's kind remarks on his website.

My appreciation also goes out to Brother Ken Davis' always thought-provoking Prosporo's Books site. Ken is our newest Master Mason at Lodge Vitruvian No. 767, and is an author and college professor as well.

Thanks also to Stephen Dafoe for a sneak peak at his review from the upcoming Issue No. 7 of Masonic Magazine (click below to enlarge).

Brown's "Solomon Key" Title Still Alive

In January 2006, back when Dan Brown was being sued by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh the first time, Brown's publisher, Doubleday said The Da Vinci Code sequel would not be called The Solomon Key. "No title, no content, no publication date, no nothing," Doubleday's Alison Rich said.

Interestingly, Dan Brown has just updated his DNS entries for solomonkey.com and solomonkey.net though 2016. Whether that means he's nine years away from publishing, we'll just have to see...

Congratulations To AASR-Indy's Spring Class

Congratulations to the 2007 Spring Class of the Scottish Rite Valley of Indianapolis. I only had a brief chance to stop by Saturday, but the dining hall seemed to be packed, so it appears there was an outstanding turnout.

Europe Blames Charlton Heston For VT Killings

Well, it took just one day, but the European press is already weighing in on the Virginia Tech killings. And apparently Charlton Heston is to blame, according to Der Spiegel. Forgive a brief straying from Freemasonry here, but I am curious:

So, was Charleton Heston to blame for the killing of 18 at the school in Erfurt in 2002?
Or the shootings at Emsdetten last year?
Or Freising in 2002?
Or the Dutch shooting spree of a 17 year old in Veghel in 1999?
Or the headmaster shot by a 17 year old student in the Hague in 2004?
Or the Montreal Massacre of 1989? Or another one in Montreal last September?
Or the killer of 16 kindergarten children in Dunblane, Scotland in 1996?
Or the unspeakable deaths of 334 people at a school in Beslan, Russia in 2004?

Spare us the European sanctimony over violence and murder. There's plenty of bloody hands all around the world. Madmen can appear at any time, anywhere. And Germans should know that more than anyone.

The average kid in the 1940s - or for that matter, the 1840s - had far easier access to guns than children do today. (When I was at the University of Southern California, there were still rules on the books from the 1800s that firearms had to remain holstered while attending class.) Yet how many gun-toting kids can you find a record of attacking their school prior to the 1990s? And with all the hand wringing about "machine guns easier to get than a drivers license," Cho Seung-Hui used a .22 pistol and a 9mm pistol, not a machine gun.

It is the coarsening of the culture, the raising of children by television and daycare, single parent families or parents too wrapped up in pursuing their careers to notice their kids are slipping into darkness. And the ceaseless violence that fills 225 digital channels, all day, all night. It is the repeated watching of Hostel, Saw, Texas Chainsaw Massacres, and their hundreds of shootings, choppings, beheadings, impalings, dismemberings and slow-motion bloodletting – all trying to out-gross the last ones – that have made three generations of kids increasingly insensate to real-life horror. Like the music companies that rake in the cash from insulting, coarse, rude, lewd and crude "artists," likewise to blame are the movie studios that crank out "grindhouse" pictures (that make less money every year), with every more carnage.

And anyone who argues otherwise is intellectually dishonest.

April Is The Cruelist Month

Why April?
What causes the madness?

• Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated April 4, 1968
• The seige of the Branch Davidians in Waco and the Oklahoma City Bombing - April 19th
• Columbine (and Adolf Hitler's Birthday) - April 20th
• And, lest our European critics feel compelled to start hurling "kill-crazy American" insults, 18 killed on April 26, 2002 by a gunman at a school in Erfurt, Germany.

And now, Virginia Tech, and 33 dead.

Here are some of the innocents. There were more killed by April's latest madman, Cho Seung-Hui, and untold hundreds more whose lives have been torn apart in the blink of a news cycle with the deaths of their children.

Ross Abdallah Alameddine

Christopher James Bishop

Ryan Clark

Jocelyn Couture-Nowak

Daniel Perez Cueva

Kevin Granata

Caitlin Hammaren

Jeremy Herbstritt

Emily Jane Hilscher

Jarrett Lee Lane

Matthew La Porte

Henry Lee

Liviu Librescu

G.V. Loganathan

Daniel O'Neil

Juan Ramon Ortiz

Mary Karen Read

Reema Samaha

Leslie Sherman

Maxine Turner

Parents shouldn't have to bury their children. So why can't the madmen consider suicide as their first act instead of their last?

One other thought occurred to me this afternoon, and it's usually the sort of thought that appears on anti-Masonic sites.

Why 33?

More New Castle, PA Valley Info

I see the brethren of New Castle, Pennsylvania made the paper yesterday. They are applying for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

In spite of the major loss of members, they planned for the future decades ago and their foundation has been able to make almost $3 million in upgrades and improvements in the past year or so, including air conditioning for the first time. Bravo to the brethren of New Castle for their vision. And thanks again to the New Castle Valley for their hospitality last month.

How Bob Clark Made Me A Mason

Director Bob Clark and his son Ariel were killed this past week in a tragic head-on collision with an illegal Mexican immigrant. Clark was an uneven director, who unleashed howlers like Rhinestone, Karate Dog and Porky's. But he also gave us the greatest Christmas present any of us would ever receive, 1983's A Christmas Story. (Look for him in the movie - he's Swede, the guy who walks up to the Old Man while admiring the Nehi leg lamp from across the street: "Brain power, Swede.")

But I really owe becoming a Mason to Bob Clark. In 1979, he directed one of the best Sherlock Holmes films ever made, Murder By Decree. Alice and I saw it at the UA theater in Van Nuys, California in my second year of film school, and I was impressed off the charts. I was a big fan of the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Holmes movies, but Christopher Plummer and James Mason in this film remain my favorites after almost 30 years.

The film tells the Jack the Ripper story as a Holmes mystery, but it is based on Stephen Knight's Jack The Ripper: The Final Solution, a story that was quickly exposed as being based on fabricated evidence. In it, the Ripper is associated with the Freemasons, and Holmes follows the trail into the halls of government. If this story sounds similar to the Johnny Depp film From Hell, it is indeed based on the same faulty source material. But the older film is the better telling of the tale. Sure, today it grates on me that it's largely an anti-Masonic story, but the characters, the script and the direction all make it a great thriller.

Still, I thought in my ignorance that it was a terrific tale in my youth, and promptly trotted out to the bookstore to find all I could about the Freemasons. In those days, apart from one lonely copy of Duncan's Ritual, there was nothing. Over the years, I thumbed through my increasingly tattered copy of Duncan, never knowing how to go about becoming a Mason, or even whom to ask. It would take 20 years and the death of my father-in-law before I took the step of finding a lodge. But Bob Clark, Sherlock Holmes and Murder By Decree first put the spark in my head, and I never forgot it.

Thanks Bob.

Thanks, New Castle Valley AASR

Many, many thanks to the brethren of the Scottish Rite Valley of New Castle, Pennsylvania for having me out two weeks ago to speak at their annual fish dinner. Several hundred brothers and guests were there for a terrific evening of fellowship. The food was great, and the new friendships made were even better. Their hospitality couldn't have been more generous, and I thank everyone who came out and made my first trip there so memorable.

The New Castle Scottish Rite Cathedral is a magnificent facility, and has one of the largest auditoriums in western Pennsylvania. The brethren have maintained it beautifully and responsibly, and they have much to be proud of.

The city of New Castle itself is a great example of historic preservation on a grand scale. The downtown area shows the proud and loving care of a community that has adapted well from its manufacturing origins. Every corner brings a new surprise, and it is well worth a visit. And the best part of all is that New Castle is home to, not one, but two of the premiere fireworks companies in the world: Zambelli Internationale and S.Vitale Pyrotechnic Industries, Inc. (Pyrotecnico).

Hell In A Handbasket

Bear with me on this, because it's going to ramble. And it has nothing to do with Freemasonry. It's one of those late-40s moments when you start pondering on the End Of Civilization As We Know It – proof that you're old, I guess.

Episode 1

I'm strolling through the grocery store, and at every other aisle I meet up with the same people walking ahead of me, with their backs to me. One is clearly a mom, and the sort of mom who obviously wanted to be her daughter's best friend, but got stuck with being a parent instead. Still, she's dressing young, and it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say she probably wears some of her daughter's clothes just to remain hip and young. Or young-ish.

Daughter is at most 16, if that. The girl is wearing a spaghetti-strap top that bares the industry-standard three inches of midriff all the way around, and she's got on a pair of low-riding sweat pants. The combination of the two is designed so that no one walking behind her can fail to miss the tattoo (known colloquially as a "tramp stamp") at the place where her spine and her rump are joined . Below that, in screaming hot pink that is bright enough to be spotted from low earth orbit, is the top edge of her thong underwear (known colloquially as a "whale tail") rising up from the edge of her sweat pants. And, just to make sure that every person in the place was looking at her butt, the sweat pants were adorned in 200 point type with the word "Juicy!" emblazoned across both cheeks.

In spite of the fact that the 40s are when women think it's their last chance to have children, while men think it's their last chance to date them, I'm no child molester. But catching myself reading suggestive messages on a teenaged girl's backside suddenly makes me feel like I'm the deviant here, instead of her mom clearly having no problem with her daughter's choice of outfit. Worse, there are more than a few middle schools and high schools in the area plastering their school or team name similarly across the butts of pre-adolescent girls, guaranteed to make sure all eyes stare at the swinging tail of a 12 or 13 year old girl.

Is this right?

---

Episode 2

Our lodge got tagged with graffiti last year and again a few weeks back. This time, it was right across the front of the building, so we had to repaint the stucco to get rid of it. Today, I get a message that the downtown Temple got tagged as well. This time, it's on limestone, and will undoubtedly be expensive to remove, and possibly destructive to the stone as well. So I go in search for graffiti removal specialists to call, and I hit a typically apologist article, "There's Mischief Afoot, But Also Talent Evident In Graffiti Art." No there isn't. There's no talent in spraying paint on the property of others, any more than there is artistry in breaking a window or rolling a drunk. But you wouldn't know it by reading the paper.

Is this right?

---

Episode 3

There's a scene in the show 1776 when John Adams, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson present the newly written Declaration of Independence to Congress. President of the Congress John Hancock reads the document aloud, and then looks up and asks if there are any changes or amendments anyone wishes to make. There is about a five second pause, and then the entire room is on its feet shouting out their objections.

Jefferson and Adams are in the corner, and the hotheaded Adams is fuming. Finally in disgust, he looks at Jefferson and shouts, "Well, dammit man, aren't you going to speak up? After all, you wrote the damned thing!"

Jefferson, sadly, looking off into space says, "I had thought the work spoke for itself."

I'm not going to name names. For 24 years, a local ad agency we have worked with has had one particular account, and has been phenomenally successful at building and maintaining the image of this client in good times and bad. That account is going away in the next few months, not because of anything the agency did, or failed to do., but because the company decided to put the account up for review.

The body of work done for this client would fill a warehouse. And after 24 years, if they didn't know the quality of the work this long standing team could do, shame on them. "I had thought the work spoke for itself."

Now this group of no less than 30 people - and probably more - have a few weeks to find a new direction for their lives. Some are retiring, some aren't so lucky, and some are truly up a creek with little warning. In particular, a core team of 16 people who I have worked with and come to love as much as any family, are all going our separate ways. The real reason why has nothing to do with the quality of the work, but with the bottom line of the company that everyone expects to be taken public. And like so many other companies that have followed the same pattern, it is probable that it will be swallowed up by a bigger fish and disappear altogether – in part, because its image that was created by these talented people has made it attractive to the circling sharks. So it will slash its costs, expand suddenly overnight, swell up, get bought, and finally disappear into the anonymous, hungry maw of consolidation, like the dozens of other clients we have served over the years. So eventually we can have one bank, one phone company, one drug store, and one big bargain warehouse.

I know it's happening all over. I know it's a little story in a world of much bigger heartbreak. I know it's "just business." But I also know it isn't right.

*sigh*

Must...save...Enterprise!

Brother Michael Poll, Masonic author and the landlord of the Lost Word website has been hard at work making additions and improvements to his online store. I looked around the new LostWord website with interest, because a modern American Freemason cannot have enough Masonic bling, pelf, swag and stuff.

It is a regular comment around my brethren at Broad Ripple Lodge that my portrayal of a certain rough character in the 3rd degree bears an uncanny vocal cadence and resemblance to William Shatner. I, of course, don't hear it myself.

So I'm rooting around Mike's expanded website and came across the costume section. And what do I spot, but a costume for certain rough characters. Tell me that's not William Shatner.

Templar Reenactment Unit In Indianapolis

That's Sir Knight Robert Coleman, Jr. and I hamming it up at Thursday night's organizational meeting at Raper Commandery for a new Knights Templar re-enectment unit.

It's one of those things I've wanted to help put together ever since my knighting several years ago, but never had the time. It seems it was a parallel notion in Robert's head as well, as he is an active member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Things came together at a Templar battalion meeting two weeks ago when Sir Knight Jim Dillman finally said 'let's quit talking about it and do it!'

It is our goal to confer the Order of the Temple in period-correct chain maille, helmets and tunics with proper broadswords. This unit has the potential to interest a whole group of men who have not been active in the York Rite, or the KT specifically, as well as attracting a new generation of men. Robert is our armourer, and old helium hand was volunteered to be the unit historian. I am absolutely ecstatic at the amount of enthusiasm this project has generated in a very short time. Now, if I can just find a mail-maker who can make me a hauberk that will accommodate my expansive pot roast...

Bamboozled Brethren Bowing Down To Ba'al??!!

The Burning Taper is reporting a new video slamming the Masons as a bunch of Satanic "Ba'al worshippers." Of course, the whole allegation is that one word used in an appendant body ceremony is a compound word of pagan gods, and the middle syllable "bal" is conclusive proof that Masonic ceremonies are a carefully hidden sacrifice to Ba'al, an Old Testament Hebrew deity gone bad. (The name later morphed by the Phillistines into Ba'al Zebub, the Lord of the Flies, but there are a dozen variations over the centuries.) And the corn talked about in the Fellow Craft degree and in cornerstone ceremonies, well, that's because Ba'al was the God of grain. (If you look at his crown in this lifelike artist's conception at the left, his crown has grain in it. PROOF!)

Therefore, all Masons are unknowingly praying to Ba'al when they say "The Grand Architect of the Universe."

Right.

Just like we were all unknowingly worshipping Satan when we bought a box of Procter and Gamble soap powder, because "everybody knows" that the old P&G logo of a moon and stars was a Satanic symbol (and had nothing to do with the fact that the company started out in the 1800s by making candles, and created a pretty logo alluding to nighttime).

What's surprising at first glance is that the show includes footage willingly provided by Capstone productions showing the reenactment of the Capitol cornerstone ceremony, as well as onscreen interviews with Brothers Brent Morris from the AASR-SJ and Trevor McKeown the Grand Historian from the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon. The brethren do an outstanding job of calmly answering the stooopid questions posed. But the power of editing is used to juxtapose then with the deranged allegations of fundamentalist Christians with an anti-Masonic agenda, and with anti-Mason, anti-Mormon Ed "There's A Goat Of Mendes In The Streets Of Washington" Decker. Doubtless, this hit piece will help Ed sell a few more of his preposterous books.

As Freemasonry comes to greater public attention now and in the coming years, more of this pap will be trotted out. When our more intelligent spokesmen appear in these kinds of shows, the problem they all face is how their remarks will get sliced into little chunks and used as fodder for the anti-masons. There's no way to know the agenda of a producer who calls looking for someone to interview, and I promise, no one gets to see the narration script ahead of time. So, bravo to Brothers Morris and McKeown for being voices of calm in a program of hysteria.

Should you feel compelled to view this nonsense, see it here.

Other names for Ba'al include Moloch and Hadad, God of rain, thunder and agriculture (which is where this whole "god of grain" thing comes from).

Hmmm. Hadad looks not far off from Hodad and not a far stretch from... Hodapp.

Bow down before me, oh witless cravens!

Calling All Masonic Authors, Bloggers, Pundits and Scribblers

Britain's Internet Lodge No. 9659 has announced a call for Masonic papers. The Short Papers Competition 2007 is designed to encourage the writing of brief works that can be used as Masonic education in the lodge, restricted to just 500 words - about a 5 minute speech. There are several categories of awards, so read the rules and all links carefully.

Closing date is December 31st, 2007.

Rosslyn Chapel Restoration News

After 10 years under its tin roof lean-to, it looks like Rosslyn Chapel is getting a major infusion of grant money to at last get started on restoration of its interior carvings. The Scottish Lottery and the Historic Scotland fund will be providing £7 million to the chapel.

Have a look at the 360 panorama views of the chapel interior.

The biggest problem at the chapel has been a misguided restoration attempt in the 1950s that actually sealed water inside of the stone and caused more problems than it solved. For 10 years, there has been a roof erected over the tiny building to allow it to dry out. Now restoration can get under way.

This is big news for Freemasons, Knight Templar and Da Vinci Code fans who all have their own interests in the chapel. More articles here and here.

I'm headed for Scotland in May, and it will be my first time visiting the chapel. As a member of the Rosslyn Chapel Trust, I couldn't be happier about this news. I encourage anyone with an interest in supporting the chapel consider joining the trust to do your part in helping to preserve its unique heritage.

New York Times Investigation of Shrine

A major investigation into financial improprieties within the Shrine was splashed across the New York Times this morning.

Major points:
• Only 2 percent of the Shrine hospitals’ operating income comes from money raised by Shrine temples and members’ dues. (The bulk is supplied by the hospitals’ $9 billion endowment.)

• A top Shrine official told a meeting of temple treasurers that poor accounting for cash coming into the organization was “an increasingly common problem,” and that more than 30 temples had discovered fraud — like theft of money and inventory, altered bank statements, padded payrolls and fake invoices — amounting to as much as $300,000 and involving members of their “divans,” the five-member boards that govern each temple.

• In Texas alone, at least four of the state’s 13 temples have lost money to theft, embezzlement and faulty accounting over the last five years, according to several Shriners there.

• In one of the rare cases where the Shrine prosecuted wrongdoing, the Zem Zem temple in Erie, Pa., accused a former top official last year of misappropriating $1.2 million in bingo revenues. The temple settled for an undisclosed amount.

“The leaders of this organization think it is better to persecute the innocent than to prosecute the guilty,” said Clairence Ballard, a member of Cahaba Shriners in Huntsville, Ala., who found that charitable money raised through bingo was being used to cover fraternal, and perhaps personal, expenses and faced an internal inquiry.

[Richard A. Baumback] became potentate in 2003 and immediately received a personal reminder of flaws in the temple’s financial controls: The $10,000 he had raised the year before to offset expenses he expected as potentate was gone, tapped by his predecessor to cover temple deficits. “He told me that was the way the system worked,” Mr. Baumbach said.

Freemasonry's Message Goes Unseen Daily

"Freemasonry Builds Its Temples Among The Nations and In The Hearts of Men."

The audience for Jimmy Kimmel's show in LA pass under the message of Freemasonry every single night. How many look up to see it?

I drove past it twice a week when I lived in LA for 5 solid years, and I never saw it.

Finished.. for the moment

The last of the new manuscript has been sent off. Just leaves two weeks of manuscript review, but that should be simple.

It's been a long couple of months.

This is the first project Alice and I have collaborated on from start to finish, and I think we complement each others' style and strengths well. We'll know soon if anyone else agrees.

Why Freemasonry Means Freedom

Shortly before I started working on Solomon's Builders last year, I was attending a gathering of a club for younger men who were members of the fraternity. Almost everyone in the room was under thirty-five with the exception of myself and the father of one of the other men. The older man came over to me and we began to chat. He was in his late sixties or early seventies and spoke with a very thick accent. The gentleman, an emigre from Transylvania in Romania, had come to America in 1965.

Romania in those days was a puppet state of the Soviet Union. Their king had been forced to abdicate by the Soviets in 1948, and the country had been bled dry economically to pay for Stalin’s postwar debts. Between 1948 and the mid-1960s, almost two million Romanians had been arbitrarily thrown into prison for political, economic or other unspecified reasons. The Communists had the blood of at least 200,000 Romanian people on their hands, along with hundreds of thousands of incidents of torture and abuse of Romanian citizens. It was against this backdrop that this gentleman had secretly fled from his homeland as a young man and come to the United States.

Then he told me a curious thing. He had first read about the Freemasons in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and like Tolstoy’s Pierre, he wanted very much to become a Mason. But Freemasonry was outlawed at that time in Romania, just as it had been outlawed all across the Soviet bloc, Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Khomeini’s Iran and Hussein’s Iraq.

When he came to America and became a citizen, he said, the first thing he did was to petition a Masonic lodge. Because it was a symbol of freedom to him. Because Freemasonry can only exist in a free country.

The issues of liberty and equality are intertwined with the fraternity of Freemasonry as much today as they were in 1776. Men living under fascist regimes have been persecuted or even executed for the “crime” of Masonic membership. Yet, Freemasonry survives and grows wherever men are free. One need only look as far as the former Soviet republics where Communism has died to see the rebirth of their Masonic lodges. Even in Romania.

The United States is a symbol of freedom the world over, but it’s easy to forget that fact when the news is filled with stories of bomb plots, protesters and pessimistic national self-loathing. The flip side of anti-American terrorism is the unmanageable mob of immigrants beating down our doors, because the United States is still the destination for a globe filled with people who lie awake nights dreaming of liberties that Americans don’t give a second thought, or sometimes even a first.

At least not until a gentle man from, say, Romania wakes us up and reminds us.

Thanks to Plymouth-Kilwinning Lodge #149

Had a terrific time at Indiana's Plymouth-Kilwinning Lodge #149 in the northern climes of Plymouth, Indiana last night. Many thanks to Most Worshipful Grand Master James Barkdull and the brethren of his home lodge for their generous hospitality. WM Rod Back and his lodge have much to be proud of, and they are definitely part of a growing group of lodges who have vision, enthusiasm and a proper understanding of the true tenets of Freemasonry.

By the way, I covet your officer's chairs - truly one-of-a-kind masterpieces.

Many thanks also to my good friends Wbros. Nathan Brindle and Jim Dillman for their friendship and their company on the long drive.