The Tao of Masonry

Recycling? Wait, that was a typo. I meant Bicycling.

Like our ancient brethren, I’ve been working six days a week for quite a while, and the little bit of free time I’ve had has been devoted to household chores, family time, and exercising. Those of you who follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and more recently on Google Plus know that I try to get several bicycle rides in every week, ranging from 5 to 25 miles. When my family finally dragged me away for a week’s vacation at Cape Cod (Massachusetts), I brought my SUV-bike: a 1995 GT Outpost non-suspension mountain bike that I outfitted with kevlar-lined, puncture resistant street tires. I love my road bike, but I hate fixing flats.

The Cape has some fantastic bike paths, built upon old railroad lines. Unfortunately, once you’ve gone from one end to the other, the scenery gets a bit dull. Despite the traffic (Cape Cod is a popular vacation spot in the northeastern US), I wanted to take some detours to make the rides more interesting. With no actual goal in mind, I decided to cycle to the handful of lodges in the area of the Cape near where we were staying.

The first on the list was Pilgrim Lodge in Harwich. No, there’s no lodge number; apparently back in the old days Massachusetts had a Grand Lodge of Ancients and a Grand Lodge of Moderns, and when the two merged, everybody agreed to drop the numbers so as to avoid the “Older is better” game that we Masons love to play. You can’t see it from this side, but the first floor of the building is rented by a liquor store. I only mention it because lodges in many parts of the US are so dry that they don’t even allow people in the liquor industry to be members.

The next day I went to Mt. Horeb lodge in Dennis. As you can see, this is a full-service lodge, having an OES chapter and a Shrine hangout. Nothing was happening on the morning that I was there.

Okay, I didn’t actually bike the 100 mile round trip up to Provincetown to see King Hiram’s Lodge. We just happened to be there as part of a family outing. I do recommend that you look at the pictures of this old, historic lodge.

This is St. Martin’s lodge in Chatham. I made a special trip to get here, simply because I figured this to be the easternmost lodge in Massachusetts. The name is interesting; we  often see lodges named after St. John (one or the other), so I often wonder how a lodge ends up being named after one of the more obscure saints.

The final lodge I managed to visit that week was Universal Lodge in Orleans. Located near Nauset Beach, this lodge had the coolest marker out in front.

  Sharp-eyed readers will spot that this isn’t a lodge. I just posted it because Massachusetts has got to be the only place where you will find a traffic rotary (sometimes called a roundabout) on a bike path. Unlike the other traffic circles in this state, at least there weren’t three dozen cyclists blocking the way and blaring their horns. But it was a pretty busy place every time I passed by.

I’m not a hard-core cyclist; each lodge was within 15 miles of Dennisport, so each day I cycled about 30 miles over the course of a few hours. I ended up having gone about 130 miles, and I got to see some of the sights that I might have otherwise missed in just taking a jaunt in the car — especially with all the vacation traffic. Plus, I got some healthy exercise, and felt less guilty about eating the vacation junk food that I don’t normally eat at home. A quick online search finds that there are a few dozen motorcycle clubs for Freemasons. Does anyone know about one for bicyclists?

I became interesting in Freemasonry over ten years ago as a result of my fascination with conspiracy theories – and the theorists. I had spent several years web surfing from website to website, trying to untangle the threads in order to find some elements of truth, and failing that, settling for elements of verisimilitude. Over the course of several years I found that thread after thread ended up entangled with or somehow involving the Freemasons. Eventually I began to frequent web boards where I could read the messages that Freemasons sent to each other. Learning that there was nothing mysterious about them, I began to respect the Masons that I met online, and we soon inspired to join the local lodge, where I discovered that Freemasons (or just Masons, as we call ourselves) are mostly just normal guys interested in hanging out with like-minded people.

Mostly, that is.

Over the last ten years I’ve moved from novice initiate to the Master of the lodge – for which I had to undergo another secret ceremony during which I was imbued with the secrets of the Oriental Chair. Along the way I was appointed to several committees on our Grand Lodge – the governing body at the state level in the US – and was even appointed to a term as a minor Grand Lodge officer. During this time, I made a point to dismiss the twisted ideas of the conspiracists, who we often denigrated as the “Antis.” I’m now embarrassed to admit that I actually taunted them for their beliefs at times. However, I’m also willing to admit that the scales (or should I say, the hoodwink) has fallen from my eyes. In a perverse twist on the state toward which Masons avowedly strive, I can now say that I have been enlightened. I have discovered proof that there actually is a Masonic/Illuminati conspiracy, whose purpose is to pass messages from faction to faction via the mass media. However, unlike the hundreds, nay, thousands of conspiracy theorists who continue to post ridiculous theories on their websites and forums, I actually am a Freemason, and therefore, I actually have information to which they do not — nor ever will — understand.

For years I have read claims that there are branches of the Freemasons that are in league with the Zionists and the reformed (or more likely, never disbanded) Illuminati. I, myself, used to find such claims too outlandish, too ridiculous to believe, but I now see that this is how the Freemasons managed to keep their efforts concealed: they were hiding in plain sight the entire time. The methods that they use to pass messages is encoded in the icons of pop culture, and the messages themselves are passed along symbolically. This keeps the uninitiated from suspecting, let alone interpreting the signals being passed from group to group.

Are all Masons in on this? Of course not, and this is what makes most of the Antis seem so ridiculous. Not even the CIA can keep secrets; certainly the bunch of semi-retired engineers, office clerks, and web designers who make up most Freemason lodges could not do any better. No, only a small handful of illuminated ones are in on the secrets being passed on, and it is now my understanding that they are in government, finance, and more importantly, the mass media. Why the media? Because it is through pop music that these illuminated Freemasons are using symbols and allegory to pass secret messages along to the far-flung reaches of their empire.

I’m sure it goes without saying that it was in the early days of rock and roll that these Illuminated Freemasons realized the power of the media. Early experiments with the British “invasion” bands, such as the Beatles, were rife with hidden messages, and even the occasional researcher can easily turn up dozens of such references. Unfortunately, many of the messages became muddied during the late 1970s with the advent of disco. That was when the Freemasons decided to broadcast those messages through a very small number of channels, and in the late 1980s, it became obvious that they had hand-picked an unknown pop singer named Madonna Louise Ciccone.

Urged to keep her first name as an ironic jibe to their enemies in the Church, Madonna’s career skyrocketed as other media moguls were given their marching orders. Indeed, the most blatant message broadcast was her 1989 video “Express Yourself.” Revisiting that video, it’s now difficult to believe that we completely missed the message, deflected, as it were, by the outrageous costumes and stage antics of the ironically nick-named Material Girl. But hindsight is always 20/20, and it’s important to note that the real message was that Madonna, herself, was to be the messenger, and that those people “in the know” should take note. Indeed, her stage antics were interspersed with a riff on German filmaker Fritz Lang’s silent film “Metropolis,” which is a very obvious sign that the Illuminated Freemasons were in the planning stages of their New World Order.

Pop icons, however, exist at the whim of the public, and eventually Madonna would have to be retired. This was effected in 2003 when she symbolically passed the torch to upcoming singer Britney Spears. Now, I know that some conspiracy researchers take issue with this, but it’s quite obvious when one examines the facts. As you can see by the picture of them on stage at the MTV Music Video Awards, Madonna was dressed in black, symbolizing her death (i.e., retirement), while Britney is dressed in (“Like a Virgin”) virginal white. Even her name gives away the plan: Britney refers, of course, to Britain, the home of modern Freemasonry. Spears are, of course, are shafts tipped with metal or stone barbs. It’s interesting to note that in Masonic lodges, there are several minor officers that carry items called “staffs” or “wands”, but those staffs are always topped by emblems of pointed metal, making those tools essentially identical to spears. Furthermore, the officers carrying those staffs have an express purpose within the secret lodge rituals: to carry messages from one higher-ranking officer to another.  Clearly, Britney Spears was hand-picked in order to make it clear that she was the new messenger from the higher ranking Illuminated Freemasons in Britain..

However, the case of Britney Spears points up how the conspiracy theorists often get things wrong. Generally, they seem to think that the Freemasons have unlimited, almost God-like control over all circumstances; however, it’s obvious that those who picked Ms. Spears made a mistake. A former Disney child actor (And don’t forget that Walt Disney, himself, was a high-ranking Illuminated Freemason) one would have thought that Britney Spears should have been able to handle the sudden leap into the public eye, but it seems that her private life suddenly went into a downward spiral. There’s no need to recount the reports of drug and alcohol abuse; they were simply the human failings of a very human person who was unable to handle the huge responsibility thrust upon her. Because the inability to handle celebrity is almost legend in the film and music industries, it’s impossible to know how many other messengers there may have been — or have been lost — over the decades.

Before the messages themselves could be reliably transmitted, it would be imperative to find another messenger — one that would be believable for those on the receiving end. Fortunately, the Illuminated Freemasonic cabal anticipated the need for this and had already begun grooming the next messenger: Stefani Germanotta.

While it almost goes without saying that Lady Gaga became the next messenger, it’s worth noting that she was aware of the fact that she was being groomed for the position. I haven’t figured out if the constant barrage of Illuminati symbolism in her music and videos is a “hidden in plain sight” ruse, or if she is deliberately throwing the messages in our collective faces as a display of power. Either way, there is no question that Gaga has been carefully groomed to deliver the symbolic messages for the foreseeable future. For example, her early videos were rife with Gaga making odd hand signals, easily recognizable to any initiated Freemason. However, what could not possibly be a coincidence is her making liberal use of “All Seeing Eye” symbology, ranging from wearing of dark glasses, to covering one eye, to (most importantly) the “V” sign framing one eye in various scenes. Signs regarding “The eye of Horus” or “The All Seeing Eye” are recognizable to even non-Masons; such posing goes beyond the obvious and well into the blatant. Gaga is not doing this by accident, and it is my opinion that she is intentionally signalling that not only is she the new messenger, but that she’s aware of being the messenger, and intends to carry out that office in any manner possible. Whether this is to put some level of confidence back into those on the receiving end (who had presumably been left hanging since the dark days of Britney Spears), or to signal that plans have been moved into a higher gear, or possibly, a more public arena remains to be seen.

However, this is yet another case of how the initiated conspiracy theorists get things wrong. For instance, one popular conspiracy theorist writes often on his interpretations of pop music, and frequently expresses the opinion that the artists are conveying the message that they are caught in a prison and forced to do the bidding of their Illuminated Freemason overlords. Nothing could be further from the reality, which is that most of the pop cultural icons are, indeed, pleased to have been enriched financially, and have taken full advantage of the perks offered to them. This probably offers up a clue as to why Gaga herself throws so much symbolism into her videos: she’s flaunting her wealth and power.

The question arises that if Gaga is so blatant, how could there be any certainty that she is the messenger of a secret cabal? However, the chain that links Gaga to previous messengers is simply undeniable.

• While the backstory varies somewhat, the publicly given acknowledgement of Stefani Germanotta’s stage name is that a music producer friend of hers remarked that she reminded him of the old Queen song “Radio Gaga,” and a typo or a bad autocorrect changed that title to Lady Gaga. She liked the name, and took it as a stage moniker.
• Gaga (as she is now called) has posed with Masonic backdrops.
• Gaga’s latest music single is entitled “Born This Way,” the title being a nod to her having been groomed for several years for this office. The backbeat to this song is somewhat reminiscent of a major single from a previous messenger, Madonna. If you listen closely, you can hear echoes of the 1989 tune “Express Yourself.”
• The video to “Express Yourself” had a number of references to German Filmmaker Fritz Lang’s 1927 film “Metropolis.”
• Gaga’s actual last name is Germanotta
• Madonna, herself, retired from the office and moved to Britain (!) where she became known for studying the Kaballah, which itself is closely linked with the other esoteric studies associated with the Freemasons and the Illuminati, and shows signs of a Zionist tie-in.
• Part of the lyrics in “Born This Way” are “Don’t be a drag, just be a queen,” a reference to the band which gave Gaga her stage name.
• The band Queen (a reference to Britain, the home of Illuminated Freemasonry) wrote the song “Radio Gaga” in 1985, at least a year before Stefani/Gaga was born. “Radio Gaga” contains not just references, but actual clips of the original movie “Metropolis.”
• The front man for Queen had the stage name of Freddie Mercury.

And in Roman mythology, who was Mercury? None other than the messenger of the gods.

Could anyone possibly need more proof than this?

Edit: After this was published, TechSource (a computer & technical news blog) wrote that Gaga’s computer operating system of choice is a laptop running Ubuntu Linux. What’s the message behind this announcement?

We Masons love the idea of learning our ritual and ceremonies in a word-perfect fashion. Well, Past Masters love that idea, especially if it means that some newbie officer should be doing the learning while the Past Master does the  complaining  coaching from the sidelines.

Some jurisdictions in the US have a “mouth to ear” tradition, in which the ritual is taught by a proven instructor to one person, or a small group. Other states have printed copies of the rituals and ceremonies that are passed out to (or sometimes, purchased by)  a member. Some states have such monitors written in plain English, while others might use a shorthand or some other kind of code in order to disguise the words – as if you couldn’t already get them from some website, or purchased in book form.

Connecticut is one of those states that has a ritual monitor in plain English; that is, if you can call the sometimes tortured grammatical constructions and archaic words and phrases “plain.” They have had this plain English version for at least ten years before I became a Masons, which was almost another ten years ago. The English version grew out of an older version that used two books: one being encoded (really, just using abbreviations), and the other a key; that version had been used for quite some time.

Recently, some people have been suggesting that we might want to go back to using the abbreviated word code. I have found that the people suggesting this are either old-timers who learned that way in the first place, or young, new guys who are geeky about Masonry. The old-timers claim that people will learn ritual better, since they will have to work harder, and the young-timers are usually the kind of geeks who would, given the opportunity, have been taking a Klingon class.

I used to pooh-pooh the idea because I learned ritual using the plain English books, and I think I have done rather well, at least, if you don’t count the fact that I often find myself substituting some of the archaic words with synonyms that roll more readily off the tongue. But the way that I learn these passages isn’t necessarily the best way for everybody, so I concede that the coded books might have some merit.

That’s why I found it interesting to see an article on Lifehacker this past week, which revisited a study in which  schoolchildren were given copies of material to learn; some were given good copies, while others were given copies in hard-to-read fonts. Researchers discovered that the children who had to work harder to read the material had the best retention.

From the BBC News Article:

Researchers found that, on average, those given the harder-to-read fonts actually recalled 14% more.

They believe that presenting information in a way that is hard to digest means a person has to concentrate more, and this leads to “deeper processing” and then “better retrieval” afterwards.

It is an example of the positive effects of what scientists call “disfluency”.

“Disfluency is just a subjective feeling of difficulty associated with any mental task,” explained psychology Prof Daniel Oppenheimer, one of the co-authors of the study.

“So if something is hard to see or hear, it feels disfluent… We’d found that disfluency led people to think harder about things.

[...]

Students given the harder-to-read materials scored higher in their classroom assessments than those in the control group. This was the case across a range of subjects – from English, to Physics to History.

The lead author of the study Connor Diemand-Yauman told the BBC that psychology is revealing all sorts of “counter-intuitive” results in the field of education.

“Everyday psychologists are showing that seemingly insignificant factors can have big effects on how we process and retain information.”

[...]

It’s an interesting idea, and while I’ll concede that there may be some benefit to the idea that learning ritual in code is inherently better, I think that there are too many variables for this to be definitive.  Again, from the article:

“What really matters most when reading is mindfulness… it’s not printing things badly that’s needed, but more thoughtful reading”.

[...]

“Obviously, if you can’t read it at all, you can’t learn it. At some point you may get so annoyed that you give up without trying! Different people probably have different thresholds.

And in my opinion, that is what holds so many members back; they simply get annoyed at trying to read something that they just don’t understand. Will presenting it in code make the archaic usages any more attractive?

First of all, I’m excited that Charles Tirrell of Masonic Renaissance has found the time and inclination to get back into blogging.  Charles was my counterpart District Grand Lecturer in the New Haven part of the state, then moved on to be an Associate Grand Marshall, and I now see that in April he will be the District Deputy in that area. I extend my heartfelt congratulations, and I know that he’ll do an excellent job.

I like Charles; he’s young and progressive minded, and he’s the kind of person I have in mind whenever I hear the (sadly clichéed) expression “The future of Masonry.”  Charles has consistently pushed for our Grand Lodge to adopt new technologies in order to reach — and be relevant to — the newer members of our fraternity. He’s bright, and well-spoken, and modest about his achievements.

And he prefers Apple computer products.

Apparently, I have so little going on in my own life right now that I have taken to ribbing friends about their choice of technology, much in the way many people poke fun at one’s favorite sports team, choice of automobile, or taste in literature. This ribbing is further driven by the fact that for the last year, my office and home networks have been plagued by more computer problems than I’ve ever seen; obviously I’m envious of anyone who is actually happy with their computer, and confess to some distrust at anyone who doesn’t have some anger, annoyance, or irritation with their gadgets.

To his credit, Charles has refused to take the troll bait; although for that matter, I don’t particularly think about Apple products except when I hear from him or a few other similarly inclined friends.

Until yesterday, that is.

Some of you may remember that last year I wrote a post that made light of the similarities between Freemasonry and the GNU/Linux community. I should have remembered that satire is based in reality.

Yesterday, while reading Lifehacker, I ran across a couple of articles about how Apple is introducing a new way to get software, entitled respectively, Why the Mac App Store Sucks, and Why You Might Really Like the Mac App Store In The Long Run. And suddenly, the pictures jumped out at me. Why?

Here’s the logo for the Mac App Store:

Umm… does this look familiar to you?

For reference, here’s a couple of random images from a Google image search.

A Past Master's symbol from some areas of the world.

An older, lesser known version

I mean, of all the possible combinations that the graphic artists could come up with, they riff on the Square and Compasses?

Coincidence? I think not.

Although I’ve long explored the twisted logic of the conspiracy theorists, I don’t have any background with regard to the twisted logic of Apple users. I believe, however, that this bears looking into.

You know how you’re just derping along, reading a book, watching a movie, or driving down the street, when suddenly you notice something that makes you wonder if there’s any underlying meaning behind it?

Conspiracy theorists have a lot to worry about, what with Lady Gaga using the pop media to send Illuminati signals, and with 33 miners being brought from darkness to light, and all that. Now they have to worry about the link between Freemasons and GNU/Linux.

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Toon Credit: http://xkcd.com
A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

Am I the only blogger who isn’t writing a book?

I noticed a blip in my blog stats the other day. For me, this is significant, because now that I can barely make one or two posts a month, I’m surprised when I get a traffic spike. In this case, I found I was getting hits from the Scottish Rite Journal, specifically from the book review column of the May/June 2010 online version.

Back in July of 2008, Bro. Jim Tresner, the SRJ book reviewer, was arm-twisted persuaded to take a look at some blogs written by Masons. I remember having been a bit put off by his initial attitude about Masons and blogging:

I must admit that I have not been a fan of the Internet phenomenon known as “blogs” (from web logs). For one thing, irrational as I know this is, I simply think the word itself is ugly. It does not “ring with a joyful tune upon the ear.” In fact, it sounds distinctly disrespectful. In addition, I have never been enough of a small-d-democrat to be interested in what the uninformed had to say on any topic. I grudgingly admit that everyone is entitled to have an opinion, but I am less willing to grant they have a right to publicly inflict it on others. One only needs watch the talking heads of celebrity experts on any cable news channel or listen to “talk radio” to see what I mean.

I admittedly responded out of irritation:

Recently, a columnist in a local newspaper wrote almost exactly the same thing as Bro. Tresner, adding that she had no desire to read about the dull aspects of other people’s lives, such as, e.g., what they had for breakfast, or to see pictures of their kids, or to hear about their shopping trips. It’s the height of irony that she, herself, has a regular weekly column in which she writes about exactly those topics. It’s fascinating to think that people who get paid for writing their opinions so often have such a low opinion of those who simply give theirs away.

And later, I complained:

I am, however, just a little disappointed to see that some people – and Bro. Tresner is by no means alone – still regard “Masonic blogging” as an inferior medium. I’m all the more mystified because Bro. Tresner, himself, has his own section – “Tresner’s Talks” – on The Sanctum Sanctorum, one of the latest blog/web forums to have been set up in the last year. More interestingly, I’ve seen several discussions in the Sanctum Sanctorum forum decrying certain forms of “internet Masonry.”

A web forum for Masons in which some of the participants have issues with Masons on the internet? Really?

I suspect that the big problem is that Masonry – or, more correctly, Masons – on the internet is still a new concept for the Fraternity, and most of the brothers, many of whom remember a life before television, have not adopted the working tools of the internet. That’s to be expected, of course; new technology that brings about cultural change is often viewed with concern until a large population manages to figure out what to do with it.

Yeah, a couple of years ago I used to get upset about people who dissed bloggers as not being serious writers. Of course, what I’ve since learned is that 3/4 of bloggers can barely string a few sentences together before reposting a Youtube clip. Fortunately, many of those bloggers have moved over to Facebook to play Vampire Mafia Farming Wars.

Anyway, a visit to the SRJ page showed that Bro. Tresner was not reviewing my blog (again); rather, he was reviewing (as he usually does) books. But what I found interesting is that the books had been written by fellow bloggers. So, in addition to the book from Greg Stewart I mentioned last week, here are a few more for you to pick up for your summer reading list.

Bro. Michael A. Halleran, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Freemasonry in the American Civil War
Bro. Halleran blogs as Aude Vide Taci, which is now hosted at Freemason Information.

Bro. Timothy Hogan, 32°, KCCH, The 32 Secret Paths of Solomon: A New Examination of the Qabbalah in Freemasonry
Bro. Hogan can also be found at Freemason Information, as well as at the web forum The Sanctum Sanctorum.

And as if Bro. Hogan weren’t busy enough…

Bros. Loran Frazier, W.B. Robert Herd, Timothy W. Hogan, 32° KCCH, Cliff Porter, 32°, KCCH, Greg Starr, 32°, “Frater Vel” , plus Jason Augustus Newcomb, and Brian Pivik, The New Hermetics Equinox Journal, volume four.
Bro. Porter is also pretty well known around teh intertubez.

Also reviewed in this article:
Bro. S. Brent Morris, Ph.D., 33°, Grand Cross, A Radical in the East, 2nd edition.
Bro. Morris, author of Freemasons for Dummies A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Freemasonry, isn’t a blogger, but he drops in on us frequently.

And because he obviously has a lot of free time on his hands, Bro. Morris again teamed up with one of his cohorts:

Bros. Arturo de Hoyos, 33°, Grand Cross and S. Brent Morris, Ph.D. 33°, Grand Cross, Committed to the Flames: This History and Rituals of a Secret Masonic Rite.

I’m very pleased that Bros. Morris and de Hoyos, members of a secret cabal within our own order, have finally decided to come clean about the secret teaching of our early brethren; their book validates my own theory that operative Freemasons traveled England and parts of Western Europe, using our rituals as teaching aids to pass along the knowledge of how to destroy the zombies that occasionally terrorized the rural villages.While Morris & deHoyos don’t explicitly state this, the title of the book and the comments that Bro. Morris himself wrote at the end of the book review point to a loosening up of the heretofore tight lid on the information.

At any rate, with this latest crop of books now available, there’s plenty of Masonic reading for everyone during the summer months when most lodges take a break.

Although I haven’t had much time to write lately, it seems that another of our esteemed brethren has been hard at it. Masonic Traveler, a collection of essays and thoughts about Freemasonry by Greg Stewart, has just been released, and it looks to be an excellent read.

Masons familiar with the internet probably remember Greg from various web forums. More recently, however, he would be found on Freemason Information, a blog aggregate on which he frequently posts essays and commentary, and on Masonic Central, the well known podcast that he runs with co-host Dean Kennedy.

Greg has always had an esoteric bent, and I expect that his book will reflect his own personal journey. I’m sure that it will make an excellent addition to your already overcrowded Masonic library.

The Grand Lodge Annual Communication was Monday of this week. In Connecticut, they generally follow a pattern: a disjointed opening (because we all know that Grand Lodge officers can’t do ritual), three hours of introductions, another hour of Masonicare presentations, and then an hour break for lunch (after which there seem to be a lot of empty seats). After lunch, we have a few items of business, some remarks from the outgoing Grand Master, a few rounds of applause, and then a disjointed closing. Although I complain about them all the time, I generally try to make time to participate. Connecticut is a fairly small state, so it’s not that much of an inconvenience, unlike some other states which require an 8 hour drive. However, as it happens, several people at work are out this week, so I probably won’t get out of the office early enough to make the session, or even the installation of the new officers later on.

Not that anybody will miss me, of course, seeing that after today, I will have been stripped of my position as the District Grand Lecturer.
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No, it wasn’t because of my latest April Fool’s prank. It’s simply that they have decided to eliminate the position entirely.

I’m still so not the drama, remember ?

My travels over the last three years have given me a few things to think about with regard to the ritual and ceremonies of the lodges in and around my district.

After the District Lecturer position was created, there were still issues as to what the officers should do and how they should do it. Initially, it was expected that they would help the lodges to improve in their ritual skills, but there were never any definite plans as to how they were supposed to go about doing so. Not surprisingly, some Lecturers did little, for fear of over-stepping some boundary. Others tried things such as helping at rehearsals, or having Q&A sessions on lodge nights, or sponsoring practice sessions. However, without any authority to compel the officers of under-performing lodges to participate, you can imagine that the people most often seen at the practice sessions were those who needed the least amount of help. And again, not surprisingly, some people complained that ritual wasn’t getting any better.

There’s an old joke about how many psychologists it takes to change a lightbulb. The answer is none; the lightbulb has to want to change.

Back in 2005, Connecticut tried to implement some small steps to improve the ritual work. They required that all incoming Masters for 2006 be certified in the ability to open and close a lodge. I was in that first class of Masters, and it was witnessed by the District Lecturer, two District Deputies, and their Associate Grand Marshals. A few years later, the certification job was given to the District Lecturers. I’ve complained a few times that often Senior Wardens would wait until the very end of the year before calling me, meaning that October and November would see me visiting several lodges a week.

It didn’t really help, though.

One of the the point that everybody missed is that some lodges have a very strong internal culture that values good ritual work. Those lodges pass these expectations on to new members in various ways; perhaps by showcasing certain good ritual performers, or by asking new officers to start memorizing lectures as soon as possible, or by holding not just one, but a number of rehearsals for degree work. What usually happens in those cases is that new officers will take up the challenge — especially if they are praised for their good work, instead of being carped at for missing a word or two. Yes, some old-timers have told me that they developed good ritual skills because the old-timers before them were harsh task-masters, but times have changed. Nobody wants to be humiliated into not doing a bad job, they prefer to be coaxed into doing a god job.

What I have noticed is that the men from these lodges have consistently better degrees because they enjoy doing it. And they enjoy doing it because they know that their brothers have encouraged them along. More interesting is that even those who consider themselves to be “poor” performers (compared to their peers) are often much better than the average performers at other lodges.

Lodges like that do not need District Lecturers, except, perhaps, to address some of the finer points of ritual and floor work.

Another point that was missed is that the lodges that really need the most improvement tend to be full of officers who don’t believe that they need any help. Connecticut is very liberal in ritual; we have a printed monitor, but several lodges follow rituals that pre-date the Grand Lodge itself. A few others have somehow managed to create their own, but have been doing so for so long that nobody bothers trying to correct them. To accommodate such differences, the Grand Lodge has a policy, which is summed up as “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty.” So, in the absence of regulation, some lodges have managed to develop “traditions,” i.e., customs that make their work markedly different from that of other lodges.

But a large number of lodges differ simply because they are doing something not just markedly different, but remarkably wrong. When questioned, they simply claim that it’s “lodge tradition,” and expect to be given a pass. Generally, the “tradition’ was an error on the part of one member that was inadvertently passed down to succeeding officers, most of whom learned ritual not from reading the monitor, but from trying to emulate the other officers, and who ended up copying the mistakes as well as the important things.

Connecticut has always had a problem with defining the essentials from the non-essentials, but I think that the overall view of the Grand Lodge itself is to let those lodges alone that are doing good ritual, even if that ritual is not exactly what is in the book. I know that this view drives some of my brothers in other, more rigidly defined states into looking for the smelling salts, but they, themselves forget, that ritual was always fluid and changing, especially in the educational lectures, which often varied from lodge to lodge. It’s a common misconception that the ritual we hear today is the same thing that has been passed down the generations; personally, I believe that this fluidity is one of the most interesting aspects of ritual practice, and should be one of our incentives to travel to other lodges.

Anyway, it’s probably pointless to discuss this any further. As the only official duties of the District Lecturers (certifying that potential Masters can open and close a lodge) were brief, those will now be assigned to the Associate Grand Marshals; the ones in my district are eminently qualified, and they are excellent brothers, as well.

For my part, I’ve been appreciative not only for the support that most of the lodges in my district have shown me, but also for the several lodges that actually asked for my help. It gave me a great opportunity to work with some fine new officers, and hopefully I’ve been able to pass along something useful to them. I w
ish them all the best in the future.

Okay, the post title is a bit sensationalized, but we finally have proof of our theory that high-ranking Masons really have codified the methods that they have used since the Middle Ages  for killing revenants (i.e., zombies and vampires) in their secret rituals. What we have discovered is not so much a preparedness plan as a procedure manual that describes the methodology.

I’d like to say that I hacked the secret files to the Grand Lodge of Connecticut, because it sounds so dramatic, but the truth is more mundane. When I was down at the offices recently, one of the admins had left his PC on, and I noticed the passwords on a sticky note at the top of his monitor. When he stepped out for coffee, I just copied them down. Yeah, so not Kim Possible, but it worked. When I got home, I fired up my laptop and started browsing the folders. I skipped over the usual stuff on the Kennedys, the NASA/Zeta-Reticuli connection, public water flouridation, and found it hiding at the very end under Zombies.

Here is a link to a PDF file right on the Grand Lodge site that describes the ancient Masonic zombie-killing techniques.
EDIT: The higher-ups at the Grand Lodge have taken down the link, but I saved a copy which I’ve uploaded to my Google Docs. You can see or download it here: Zombie Expulsion.

For those of you who are reading this on your phones and can’t open the PDF file, I’m reprinting the text below.

THE MOST WORSHIPFUL GRAND LODGE

OF ANCIENT FREE AND ACCEPTED MASONS

Applicability and Responsibility
This document is applicable to all Constituent Lodges of the Grand Lodge A.F. & A.M. of
Connecticut, and may be of some use to coordinate and appendant bodies.

Responsibility for maintaining this document rests with the Committee on Masonic
Information, and with the approval of the Grand Master.

Synopsis
The purpose of this procedure is to discern appropriate strategies for responding to a zombie infestation that might affect the officers, members, and support staff of the Grand Lodge of Connecticut, A.F. & A.M., or its related appendant Masonic bodies. Methods for permanent expulsion are discussed.

Note
A number of resources are available on the subject of revenants, and it is not the purpose of this Grand Lodge to offer scientific explanations or theories as to the origin of what are popularly known as “zombies”, nor to speculate upon the habits of those stricken with the syndrome. Rather, our intention is to concentrate on maintaining the ancient and traditional methods of eradicating zombies, should an outbreak or infestation occur.

While the media continue to treat the possibility of a zombie infestation with humor, the fact is that most organizations and local governmental agencies are quietly developing contingency plans to deal with potential outbreaks. The Grand Lodge of Connecticut encourages other Grand Lodges to use this procedure as a guideline in developing their own emergency preparedness plans.

Discussion
Throughout history there have been reported cases of attacks by revenants; creatures that were once human, and who have for unknown reasons been reanimated. While such cases are rare, it is important for Freemasons to understand the dangers and learn how to defend themselves; living persons caught mentally and physically unaware by these are generally either killed and eaten, or will fall victim to the same syndrome.

Since the disease affects 100% of the victims, often within 24 hours, it is important for Masons to be aware of the signs of a potential zombie outbreak, or indications that an area is, or is about to become infested.

Typical indications of outbreaks or infestations in an area are generally accounted for by:

- unexplained disappearances of people with whom one had been in frequent contact.
- unexplained violent deaths.
- deaths by apparent animal mauling.
- sudden news blackouts immediately following reports of unusually violent activity in rural areas.

Note that such outbreaks are frequently accompanied by:

- repeated assurances from government and authorities that zombies do not exist, or that there is no cause for alarm.
- increasingly reported sightings of random individuals that meet the typical descriptions of those in a zombified state.

Since the days when Freemasons traveled across England and Europe to build the castles and cathedrals of the Middle Ages, they have learned much about how to deal with small, localized cases. Accordingly, it is the duty of modern Freemasons to prepare for such contingencies, and to deal with them appropriately.

Investigation
Before Masons can manage instances of zombie outbreaks, they must be able to identify them. Although folklore, current literature, and media reports are very descriptive (and often wrong), there are several common elements in identifying an actual revenant.
In general, zombies can be identified by their:

- long periods of apparent inactivity.
- seemingly random attempts at movement.
- lack of physical coordination, especially when walking.
- slow, but deliberate locomotion in the direction of food (or potential victims).
- little or no apparent reaction to new stimuli (loud music, bright lights, etc).
- frequent inarticulate moaning sounds.

With the understanding that new Masons may have difficulty discerning zombies from some of the current living members of the fraternity, and with an eye to avoid repeating some of the sad, but understandable mishaps experienced in the past, it is recommended that zombie investigation committees include at least one experienced Past Master.

Preparation
Once a revenant has been identified, it is imperative that it be terminated, or in Masonic terminology, suspended or expelled from the fraternity as soon as possible, before it has the opportunity to infect other members. Despite the various methods displayed in the popular media, most of those seen are only Hollywood special effects, and are not particularly effective in the case of actual zombie infestations. While flame throwers, chainsaws, and heavy automatic weaponry look dramatic on the big screen, their suitability is ext
remely limited, their fuel and ammunition requirements are high, and the possibility of mechanical components breaking down in the middle of an expulsion makes them much more risky than traditional implements.

It is not widely known that our ancient rituals contain within them a time-proven method for the expulsion of zombies; indeed, in order to avoid panic in the cities, Freemasons have worked closely but quietly with local and national governments for centuries. The industrial revolution of the early 1700s saw a fast rise in the populations of cities, and with it, the potential for more frequent zombie outbreaks. Masonic scholars will not be surprised to learn that the addition of the Hiramic drama to the third degree ceremony shows the ingenious manner in which our early speculative brothers dispatched such infestations.

Purging
Lodges in the midst of infested areas should form the Craft into teams of three men each, with each team preferably having an experienced Past Master.

Individuals that have been positively identified as zombies should be expelled according to the customary methods. As most younger Masons have probably not been educated in the old traditions, it is imperative that senior officers provide more detailed instruction. However, the basics are outlined in the next section.

Individuals that have been only potentially identified as zombies should, if possible, be isolated or tracked until the Past Master, or the most experienced Master Mason available, ascertains that the creature actually is a zombie and not, for example, a District Lecturer, a Past District Deputy, or an appointed Grand Lodge officer, as such misidentifications by inexperienced Masons have been common in the past, even in the best of circumstances.

Expulsion
Masons have always defended their lodges and other nearby buildings, such as pubs and restaurants, from zombie infestations. As the revenants appear to be oblivious to pain, the safest, and most effective methods of expulsion require a team of men. Traditionally, they divided up into parties of three, each Mason carrying one of the tools as described by custom. The easiest way for the team to expel a zombie is to have each member step in for his particular station, and then to remove himself from the situation so as to allow space and time for the next team member. By the time the third member has finished, the zombie should be completely expelled.

The time-honored methods is as follows:
The first team member utilizes a rule, or better, an edged weapon, and strikes as hard as possible across the throat of the zombie. While tradition holds that swords were used in the past, such implements are difficult to acquire, let alone to have within easy reach. However, good quality machetes are common enough, and having such in one’s home or car would give little cause for questions. The team member should try for decapitation, but realizing that cutting through sinew and bone is much more difficult in real life than in the movies, the objective should be to slice across the entire throat, in order to avoid having the machete or other instrument become lodged in the neck of the zombie.

He should then step aside and allow for the next Mason to strike the zombie as hard as possible in the chest or midsection. This creates a shock to the body and causes them to slow down. Tradition indicates that cudgels may have been used (although current research suggests that such weapons were probably too short to be effective), however baseball bats, axe handles, and crowbars are probably better substitutes. Crowbars have the advantage of the curved, hooked end which would be sharp enough to tear open the body cavity.

Finally, the third member strikes the coup d’etat — a hard blow to the head with a heavy, blunt instrument. The human cranium is surprisingly durable, but if the previous blow across the neck was cut deeply enough, the head should separate from the neck. Alternately, striking from the side would have the effect of breaking or smashing the thinner bones of the skull. Circumstances will indicate which will be the better option. Appropriate tools would be setting mauls, small sledge hammers, or brass-faced dead-blow mallets.

Reporting
After the expulsion of a revenant has been successfully performed, it is important for the team to submit a report to the secretary of the lodge, who will need to include it in the monthly records submission to the Grand Lodge.

Please note that if the subject of expulsion was a member of that particular lodge, it is important to note this in the records so that he can be stricken from the rolls, and the lodge not be charged for his annual portion of the Grand Lodge dues.

A funny, yet eerie thing happens when you wander into the world of secret conspiracies; like  wandering the Cretan Labyrinth, it’s easy to lose sight of both your original starting point and your ultimate goal.

Our theory that early operative Freemasons became familiar with “revenants” (creatures that in folklore later became zombies and vampires), and codified the means of how to destroy them in certain ceremonies has been met with the expected amount of derision and skepticism. I think that many people simply fail to understand that Freemasons, being employed by the Catholic Church to work on their buildings, had a need to keep their activities on the downlow so as not to be accused of trafficking with the demonic by the less educated and more superstitious population.

We expected this when I volunteered to be the one to publish the ideas.

None of us believe that the revenants are supernatural creatures; those ideas didn’t come about until the Gothic period, when — ironically enough  – people began to be frightened by the idea of technology. No, we think that the historic records of the time will show that people were falling to an as-yet unnamed disease that caused the appearance of death, after which the victims became mindless eating machines (insert jokes about teen-aged boys here). Poor knowledge of medicine and other social factors contributed to the occasional outbreaks in the rural and wooded districts. Unfortunately, when people started moving to the cities in the early 1700s,  so did the outbreaks.

Initially, we theorized that high-level Masons were (although in league with the national and state governments) still keeping this quiet, so as not to alarm the general public, who have shown themselves to be more educated, but not really much less superstitious than they were in the Middle Ages. Naturally, this has met with a lot of skepticism from both Masons and non-Masons alike.

We expected this, too.

But what we did not expect was to be presented with an alternate theory: That the high-level Freemasons have been trying to educate the public by allowing them access to these rituals and ceremonies. Indeed, for the last several years, virtually every newspaper article, news show, or cable TV special has begun with “The once secretive Freemasons have begun to open their doors,” or “The secret mysteries of the Freemasons are being unveiled,” or “Freemasons, that once-secret society, have now begun to…”

The alternate theory, which we have found to be very compelling,  is that various Grand Lodges have been pressured by these higher-level Masons to show off a little, and to encourage non-Masons to look at our secret ceremonies, ostensibly to show that they are simply arcane rituals, but actually, so that the viewing public will understand what to do should there be a wide-spread outbreak of this unknown disease. Indeed, just the fact that we have come so far into the public eye in only a few short years suggests that the higher-level Masons may even expect that a wide-spread infection is about to happen.  Our rituals have been discussed in print by hundreds of authors, and in the last few years have been featured on the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, and several other cable TV specials. A generation ago — even ten years ago — this would have been unthinkable. Now we’re practically giddy when we think about it.

Ultimately, I expect that we’ll discover that our original conception was closer to the mark. But the idea remains: is it possible that an unknown disease — perhaps a new “superflu” is about to bring us culturally back to the Middle Ages?