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BACK NEXT Spring 1999 Issue 08 The Eye Newsbites I am Proud to be a Freemason When is a Man a Mason? The Image Problem The Improvement of the Mason The Secrets of Nature The Riddle of the Stones The Last Bogeyman? Canonbury Masonic Research Centre Orders of Chivalry The Mysteries Review: Masons and Sculptors Review: A Tale of Two Princes Review: SS Quattuor Coronati Stiletto Brandy, Sir? Letters to the Editor Gilbert & Sullivan Copyright 1997-2008 FREEMASONRY TODAY Designed and Maintained by: Cyberpoint Limited

FREEMASONRY TODAY Spring 1999 - Issue 08 - Index The Eye Grand Charity among first to help Colombian earthquake appeal — Edinburgh – a Masonic Secret — Scotland founds its last possible Provincial Grand Lodge — New booklets from Grand Lodge — HFAF looking at founding new lodges — A yearbook for London? — New IT system for London Department at Freemasons’ Hall — The Icelandic Freemasons’ Choir — London easy riders — MTGB Millennium Project — More Aid for Hospices and Cancer Relief — East Lancs PR Campaign in gear — Royal Arch aids Wiltshire Air Ambulance — Grand Old Man of Freemasonry Remembered — First Lady to address a Royal Arch Meeting — Anglo-Foreign Lodges Association Reunion — Wear Harmony Masonic Choir – Last Concert — Demonstration Team Tops £10,000 — Great Priories to hold conference in Scotland — New internet sites ... Newsbites Berkshire — Cheshire — Dorset — Hertfordshire — Middlesex — Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire — Northumberland — Surrey — Warwickshire — West Lancashire — Yorkshire North and East Ridings ... I am Proud to be a Freemason We belong in Masonry to a world-wide Order, crossing barriers of language and colour. At the consecration of a new lodge, or a centenary, an oration is given by a chaplain. He may be a rabbi for a Jewish lodge, or a guru for the Sikhs or Hindus, or he might be me: a Christian chaplain ... When is a Man a Mason? When he can look out over the rivers, the hills, and the far horizon with a profound sense of his own littleness in the vast scheme of things, and yet have Faith, Hope and Courage – which is the root of every virtue. When he knows that down in his heart, every man is as noble, as vile, as divine ... The Image Problem That Freemasonry is in crisis, that it is haemorrhaging members, that new young candidates are simply not coming forward in enough numbers, and remaining once initiated, to sustain things as they are beyond the next decade or so, seems to me to be the main topic of conversation in many lodges. Why this should be so is not really a mystery to those of us who are young in years. Freemasonry is deeply unfashionable. To the outside world it appears, and largely is, almost impossibly staid and fusty. The mystery is why so many of those on the inside totally fail to be aware ... The Improvement of the Mason In my previous article (Enlightenment from Ritual. FMT, Spring 1998) I quoted Emulation Ritual to state that the idea of ‘improvement’ is represented by the geometrical figure of a circle. Now I present a further consideration on this important topic. The idea of the ‘circle’ was already to be found in the ‘Rosicrucian’ manifesto known as the Fama Fraternitatis (The Fame of the Fraternity), published in Cassel in 1614: Where Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras and others hit the mark, where Enoch, Abraham, Moses and Solomon also excelled, where the greatest and most extraordinary of books, the Bible ... The Secrets of Nature and the Principles of Intellectual Truth Before the photograph below brings down accusations of triviality on me, I should point out that our sister publication in Germany recently carried an article by an economist Freemason entitled Freemasonry - Key Qualification for Living, or Profession Without a Future? The question is, amongst other things, what does Freemasonry qualify us for, and how does it do that? With all the talking that’s going on nowadays in the Craft, I’m not sure we have yet addressed the vital questions: what are we as an Order? Are we faithful to the precepts of the early Freemasons? What ... The Riddle of the Stones The still-sumptuous ruins of a Cistercian abbey, lovely in decay, snuggle contentedly in a lush valley surrounded by the majestic moorlands of Staffordshire, the seven centuries old weather-beaten red sandstone walls still keeping some of the myriad clues to a hoary riddle. Half a mile to the south, and a couple of hundred feet higher, a public house now known as The Raddle but, intriguingly, displaying a sign showing a stonemason chiselling away at a rock, watches over this valley. In the bar room of this public house, above the fireplace, a brass square ... The Last Bogeyman? The British media loves to portray Freemasonry as a sinister, secretive and unaccountable organisation. Its hostile reporting of the organisation led Freemasonry Today to wonder whether, in these politically-correct times when the rights of minorities are sacrosanct, we are the last bogeyman, the last group whom the press ... 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 ... Orders of Chivalry Many masons flock to join the so-called Masonic Orders of Chivalry, keen to give themselves honours, medals, stars, robes, sashes, baldrics, swords and, above all, extravagant titles. My wife started to become a bit sceptical when she discovered that I was not so much a school-teacher or an historian, but in fact had been created a Knight of the Pelican and Eagle and Sovereign Prince Rose Croix of H.R.D.M. She soon became aware that ... 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 ... Review: Masons and Sculptors Review: A Tale of Two Princes Review: SS Quattuor Coronati Stiletto Forty-something, dressed tidily in grey and white, sinks into her booked seat on the Edinburgh to London train. It’s heaven. No-one can ring me up – (no mobile, no intention of having a mobile). I may well have left something cooking unattended in the house but I am not there to man the fire ... Brandy, Sir? There is almost as much variety in brandy as there is in wine. After all, brandy is wine that has been distilled and aged (for varying amounts of time) in oak barrels. It is therefore not surprising that one finds brandy being made everywhere that grapes grow. However, when it comes to quality ... Letters to the Editor Square Men — Keep in Touch — Out of Touch — Wisdom of Solomon — Rosslyn — Roman Catholic Attitudes — Openness Gilbert & Sullivan Sullivan was musical, the son of a clarinettist, bandmaster and Professor of Wind Instruments at the Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall in Middlesex. After acquiring knowledge of English Church Music as a chorister in the Chapel Royal, Sullivan Jnr entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1856. Two years later he turned from a projected career as a pianist to conducting and composition while a student of the Leipzig Conservatoire. During this period, he became enamoured of the music of Schubert, returning to Leipzig in 1867 with Sir George Grove to discover ...   Issue 08, Spring 1999 © FreemasonryToday 1997-2008