A rather interesting jazz-fusion instrumental recorded 30 years ago took the optimistic title Nine to the Universe*. Well, this is Issue Nine and if we can't offer you the universe entire, we hope to offer some glimpses of it. And should anyone say that FMT is a ‘specialist’ magazine, let us recall that the masonic universe is concerned with the universe as it is, not a version of it! An early masonic catechism, in answer to the question How high is the lodge? declared that the lodge was as high as the heavens: open to the universe. That is why many lodges have stars on their ceilings. The ceilings are there to keep the rain off brethren, not to keep the universe out!
    In keeping with this theme, we have an article from Gran Maestro Giuliano Di Bernardo giving his idea of how we might understand the phrase ‘Great Architect of the Universe’. Speaking for myself, I don't agree with his conclusion. I don't think the GAOTU is a euphemism for the unknowable ‘En Sof’ of the Cabalists. I think it was a perfectly natural name chosen by Master Masons of old for the ‘Alexandrian’ Logos, the ‘Word’ or living and creative Mind immanent in the universe: the cornerstone of the Temple of Nature which men have a fatal habit of losing sight of. It is, as the alchemists said of the Philosopher’s Stone, everywhere to be found, but nowhere seen. Truly, it is the Lost Word. The Great Architect has not absconded; He’s alive and accessible, should we choose to align our lives to His principles. But that’s the useful thing about FMT. We air views so our minds can breathe more easily. That is to say, I might be wrong!
    Take Andrew Hicks’ article The Image Problem, for instance. Since it appeared in the Spring issue, we’ve had an unusually large mailbag responding to Bro Hicks’ controversial assertions. Some few were of the ‘Young whippersnapper! - what right has a man in his early 30s - unused to high masonic office - to tell us what we're getting wrong?’ type. It would be a dull world without the spirited knee-jerk response! But the vast majority saw good in parts and took issue with other parts. In responding so generously, brethren have advanced the debate and promoted a creative, thoughtful spirit into our masonic life. A representative selection of these responses dominates the Letters section of this issue.
    In a sense, FMT is what our readers make of it. Many times during the past two years, interested brethren have asked me to ‘do something’ on Women’s Freemasonry - something most of us have heard about, but about which most of us know little. Journalist and broadcaster Sanda Miller’s meeting with Eileen Grey CBE, Grand Master of the HFAF, reported by her in this issue, represents a beginning in understanding why many women are moved to participate directly in a masonic life which so many have believed to be a strictly male prerogative.
    The number Nine has a time-honoured place in mysticism as indicating the limit of created existence. After Nine (according to this scheme) comes the mystical Zero, at the centre of which, if I understand the Third Degree correctly, a Master Mason cannot err. So, since we all have, through the Craft, the opportunity to see the error of our ways, it holds that we still have a long way to go! FMT hopes to encourage all persons of goodwill to go from Nine to the Universe! Take-off has already begun.
    Tobias Churton

* Nine to the Universe. Jimi Hendrix (Reprise Records. 1979)