Fred Milliken,Freemason Information,The Beehive

A Case For Decentralizing American Mainstream Tribal Freemasonry

 

Fred Milliken,Freemason Information,The BeehiveFreemasonry in the United States is at a crossroads and now is the time to do some soul searching and make some tough decisions.  The question that needs to be asked is, are Freemasons going to continue to allow the erosion of the power of the local Lodge?  Are they going to halt the spread of invasive, centralized Grand Lodge rule over every aspect of Freemason’s lives?

The plain fact is, ALL FREEMASONRY IS LOCAL. That was not a contested notion in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The power of decision making rested in the local Lodge and Grand Lodge was more of a facilitator and adviser. It was once the job of Grand Lodge to organize its territory and attend to the ceremonial functions of grandeur and pomp leaving the “running of the business” to each individual chartered Lodge. Oh, there were broad guidelines including in some jurisdictions Landmarks to go by. But in reality the Grand Master used to function much as the present day King or Queen of England does.

That has all gone by the board. We have a new era of Grand Lodge dominance with strict top down rule. Right about now the reader will butt in with the thought that Freemasonry is not a democracy. Well, yes and no. The Worshipful Master of the local Lodge has and has always had unlimited power to rule and govern his Lodge.  He can rule it as a democracy or he can rule it by Master’s edict. He has by-laws, rules and regulations of Grand Lodge and the Landmarks to abide by. In generations past Grand Lodge requirements were of a general nature leaving broad room for local interpretation and application.  Not so today. Grand Lodge rule is very specific and detail orientated.  While the Lodge Master has always been granted absolute power within the guidelines enumerated, the Grand Master has never traditionally been granted such power.

It is only since the 20th century that Grand Lodges and Grand Masters have usurped power and decision making from local Lodges. There are two plausible reasons that we might surmise for the Grand Lodge power grab.

  1. The failure of local Lodges to address the problem of declining membership
  2. The over commitment to buildings, charities and other Grand Lodge promises that could no longer be affordably sustained in the light of a drastic decrease in money coming in.

Where there is a vacuum, someone, something will rush in to fill it. But we need to ask ourselves as Masons is this the best course of action? Is this the best way of governing ourselves or are we actually stifling creativity and strangling development?

Glenn Beck offers some observations in his new book Broke that are applicable. While they are made in the atmosphere of the civil, political world, they can offer Freemasonry some insight.

“The world of innovation and the world that is our federal government are on two separate bullet trains headed in opposite directions. Technology is getting smaller, faster, and is doing more with less; the federal government is getting bigger, slower, and doing less with more.  The new trend in business is decentralization; the trend in government is exactly the opposite.”

“Over the last century the government has taken control of virtually everything it could get its hands on, from education to energy, from finance to health care.  It’s hard to understate the enormity of what has happened, but consider this: The number of federal regulators has more than tripled over the last fifty years to keep up with the government’s growth.”

“And yet, for all the talk about innovation and technology, most of government’s policy prescriptions remain surprisingly clunky and outmoded.  When they want to ‘fix’ the auto industry, they appoint a czar.  When they want to tackle environmental issues, they appoint a czar. Health care?  Green jobs?  Bank bailouts?  Czar, czar, czar.”

“It’s ironic, but to cut through the bureaucracy and get things done, politicians like to create another level of bureaucracy.”

“That, of course, is the opposite of how successful companies operate.  The tendency in business is toward shifting away from centralized technology and a top down management style and replacing it with a looser, flattened, decentralized management.  Out with the old mainframe computer, in with the iPad; out with middle managers in corporate headquarters, in with franchise owners or branch managers who have real authority.”

“The reason this trend is happening is simple: It works.  Just look around at the companies that are doing well.  I can guarantee you that very few of them have a centralized bureaucracy with workers paid to punch the clock instead of innovate, create and make informed decisions.”

“Technology is decentralizing power and giving individuals more choices and freedom at lower costs and higher quality.  The internet itself is about as decentralized a system as could ever be created (although some are even trying to centralize control of that). You can pick the applications you want on your cell phone, do your banking online, buy virtually any product on the planet, and get news from a whole host of sources, some as small as an individual, some as large as a Fortune 500 corporation.  And that’s exactly the point: Decentralization helps create more freedom.”

“We are in the midst of a revolution in decision making and control and the reason is simple: Decentralization improves performance, generates new innovations, and empowers individuals by encouraging them to take on greater responsibility in return for greater potential rewards.”

So which model should American Mainstream Freemasonry emulate? There is today a large Masonic presence on the Internet.  Is there a need for a Masonic Internet Czar with centralized control to rule and govern Internet Freemasonry?

Where we are today is one step below a feudal Masonic system.  In Middle Age England (and elsewhere) Earls and Barons ruled all powerful little fiefdoms much like Grand Lodges in Mainstream Masonry have in every state. The only difference is that in the feudal system money and homage and support had to be passed onto the King.  We have no National Grand Master in the United States. That makes our American Masonic System tribal, a bunch of smaller kingdoms, inside the larger territory we know as the United States, answerable to no one.

If you look at Afghanistan today you see a tribal system of government. The President is a mere figurehead, all power being rested in warring tribes. Some African nations have the same model. Before the white man came to America Native American tribes ruled the land. Tribal governance is perhaps the worst way to organize and rule a territory. The levels of dissimilarity grow in a tribal territory and often there are clashes and jealousies. Mexico is on its way to becoming a tribal territory as warring drug cartels assume power the government used to posses.

Tribes develop their own particular styles and ways of doing things that are often quite different from other tribes in their area. This tends to blur any concept of nationality, leaving residents not citizens of a country but rather members of just a tribe.

The antidote to tribalism is not outlawing tribes and replacing them with an all powerful, centralized government, but rather diffusing any institution of total control, restoring localism with a federated national consensus.

That describes where we are at today in American Freemasonry. A host of tyrannical Masonic fiefdoms have been empowered, allowing each jurisdiction to make up whatever rules it desires, often times rules and regulations that destroy the real meaning of Freemasonry. Not only is there no American Masonic identity, neither does the tradition of ALL FREEMASONRY IS LOCAL exist anymore. Local Lodges have been stripped of all of their power.

All the recent cases of tyrannical Masonic abuse by Grand Lodges are directly proportional to the amount of centralized power they have grabbed. There is nothing in the history and traditions of American Freemasonry that permits lifting of a Lodge’s charter without reason or recourse, expulsion without a Masonic trial, all Masonic trials held at Grand Lodge, refusal to allow private Masonic websites in the jurisdiction, automatic expulsion for legal Masonic discourse via E-Mail, not allowing sponsorship of DeMolay & Rainbow or for them to meet in a Masonic Lodge and the list could go on and on.

Beck tells us this:

“Professor Lino Graglia of the University of Texas Law School once explained that keeping power decentralized and at a local level ‘controls tyranny’ and produces greater diversity and respect for individual preferences. ‘It can be shown arithmetically,’ Graglia wrote, ‘that as an issue is decided by larger units, involving more people, the likelihood increases that fewer people will obtain their preference and more will be disappointed.’”

The choices before us are really narrowed to three.

  1. The status quo – which most will choose
  2. A National Grand Lodge
  3. Decentralization

Choices one and two will only prolong the agony and are or would be the major cause of disillusionment within the Craft.

Hidden Wisdom – Not So Hidden Anymore.

If Manly P. Hall’s Secret Teachings had a companion book, I think that Richard Smoley and Jay Kinney’s Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions would be it.

Hidden Wisdom, Western Mystery TraditionEvery bit as dense as Hall’s Secret Teachings but much more down to earth and embedded in the “real” rather than the idealized reality – which is saying a lot. For most who take the journey of exploring the esoteric side of life, its can very fast become a confused mess of who’s who and what group is doing what. And, while Hall’s book looked at the big picture ideas of the Traditions, Smoley and Kinney’s gets to the heart of the matter, like a topographical map leading the curious reader through the forest of ambiguous trees of mystery traditions, esoteric groups, magical workings, and alien abductees. Literally, the book covers in some grounded aspect topics ranging from Hiram Abiff to Zoroastrianism.

Originally published in 1999, the work links many a missing connection in my own mind to things that I had only started to consider as connected and delved into areas of the Western Tradition that I had disassociated all together, including the workings of Gurdjieff or the more contemporary mix and matching of the New Age spirituality movement. Both of these are modern day examples to a Tradition that the authors trace all over the planet for the contributions of our present tense here and now.

Why do we overlay the Kabbalah with the ideas of Yogananda? And just how influential was Gnosticism to other Christian Mysticism or the Rosicrucian’s? How is the growing Neopagan movement allied to the conscious egotism of the Church of Satanism’s Anton LaVey? And it explores the disconnection between Islam and Sufism, two traditions born from the same peoples with radical differences.

What the Hidden Wisdom does not do, perhaps for good reason, is attempt broader connections between these disparate ideas as doing so would make it a commentary of opinion rather than a guide book to the esoteric traditions. Quite literally the work takes the reader step by step through the pantheon of what is considered the Western Mystery Tradition without validating or invalidating their ideas.

I think if given the opportunity, each of the chapters could themselves be evolved into books unto themselves, as the material they cover is rich and full of depth. It’s because of that depth that the Hidden Wisdom takes on the attributes of an Encyclopedia though written in the very easy to read language as that of an interesting history professor. The work is truly that intelligent and engrossing. And, if the written material isn’t enough to satisfy the curiosity, the books offers nearly 20 pages of Bibliographical reference for further inquiry.

In finishing this book my only wish about it was that I had come across it years ago when I first set foot upon this path of discovery. I would highly recommend the work to anyone just starting out or years into their discovery as it lays out the connections and origins so often glossed over in the source material of many of western traditions themselves. I can say, it will sit right besides Hall’s Secret Teachings as the go to source check in grounding the ethereal with the material origins.

You can find the book Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions – Revised Edition in booksellers and at Amazon – ISBN-13: 978-0835608442.

pope, papal logo, catholic church

Interesting views on Catholicism and Freemasonry

I stumbled across this post from John Whitehead, a Catholic Historian in Oxford, in his blog Once I Was A Clever Boy who had some interesting thoughts on Catholicism and Freemasonry. In it he said:

Whether Freemasonry is a direct threat in this country [England] or in the English speaking world to Christianity may be doubted by some, but…its essential ideas are not supportive of the Church’s vision and message. Freemasons may not actively plot over their dinners how to do the Church down, but their ideals reinforce post-Enlightenment attitudes and ideas that are not conducive to revealed Catholic Christianity.

His post was based on another by Fr, Ray Blake from St. Mary Magdalen Church in Brighton England. From Fr Ray Blake’s blog – Masonry is a mortal sin…

The basic doctrine of Masonry is that whether we are a Jew, Christian or Muslim, we are all brothers, that these differences are unimportant. Ultimately of course that means that the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the Way to Salvation is undermined and unimportant, that being Catholic or CofE or Baptist or Methodist is immaterial, all are as good as one another. Masonry is ultimately about enshrining Enlightenment values which we see in the American and French Constitutions which are so antipathetic to the Catholic Faith: I mean values like “All men are created equal”, which are now so much part of modern thinking.

This piece also asks an important question:

Who in practice is against such concepts as liberty, equality, fraternity?

To answer:

The truth is that we Catholics are, or at least we would want to qualify such sound bites, as in fact society does in practice. All men are not created equal, some have special needs others have unique abilities, some will cost society dearly, some will contribute greatly.

I wonder then, could you extrapolate and say the Church does not see all men on the level towards God, are some closer to deity than others , no matter their statement of faith? Is there a caste system of faith behind the Roman Church of who is in more Grace than the other?

All this talk stemmed from an older piece Good Catholics Should Not be Masons, written in 2009, in the Catholic Online from an article written by Fr Ashley Beck who is assistant priest of Beckenham in south London, which reiterated something most Masons already knew:

The Catholic Church teaches that Freemasonry and Christianity are incompatible. The Holy See in 1983 reiterated the traditional position that Catholics who are Freemasons are in a state of grave sin and may not receive the sacraments – the Declaration on Masonic Associations was signed by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and makes it clear that local bishops cannot dispense from its provisions.

In this piece, the author gets to the heart of the matter and states:

The overriding problem is that in spite of what Freemasons claim, their way of life is a religion, with all of religion’s hallmarks. You can no more be a Freemason and a Christian than you can be a Muslim and a Christian. Catholics are committed to inter-faith dialogue and mutual respect, but this requires Freemasons to be honest about what they are. For Catholics, thinking about the reasons for the gulf between us can deepen our understanding of the Christian faith.

This rhetoric comes up every few years, and American Masonry quickly disassociates itself with the claim that its “different” than European Masonry and that the Church is OK with membership in both organizations.

Clearly, its not.

I wonder what, if anything, would come from the Vatican on the matter. We do have the 1983 Declaration, but is that valuable now 28 years on? and, I wonder to what degree American Masons pay heed to it, choosing their own free will and Liberty over doctrine? I feel for those brothers, to know that the agent of their faith sees them as in a state of grave sin. To be in a Grave Sin means that the individual still “sin[s] willfully after having the knowledge of the truth, [such that] there is now left no sacrifice for sins.” Essentially, it becomes a premeditated act of offense.

You can find a (long) list of Grave Sins at the website What is a Mortal Sin, of which I counted 48 – from Lust to Despair in Hope. All of which stems from Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Clearly, these various points raise a number of questions and points, to which I would refer the reader to an article, The Catholic Church and Freemasonry, published last year in which Rev Mr. John J. McManus, JD, JCL – a Church Deacon and attorney, spoke at Gate City Lodge and delved into these topics there and in person.  In that presentation, and in the piece, he enumerates 11 positions on why the church and Freemasonry are incompatible which had a significant outcome which lead to the 1983 fundamental conclusion which said:

“Even though Masonic organizations may not in particular cases plot against the faith, it would be still wrong to join them because their basic principles are irreconcilable with those of the Catholic faith.”

Given the tone of the Church, many in the Protestant arena have agreed with the same conclusion.

All of this brings us to some interesting and unanswered questions:

  1. Is a declaration of being a Faith necessary for a dialog between Masons and the Church?
  2. Does it take some proclamation of Faith to necessitate inclusion in an interfaith discussion in a free state?
  3. What greater degree of honesty is the Vatican looking for, or will Masonry forever be incompatible the same way as it see’s Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, or any other non Catholic faith?
  4. Does masonry have the stamina or will to drive the conversation, or is it secure in its own practice without need of any recognition?
  5. What is at the center of the Church’s disdain for Masonry such that as it will sit with other faiths and recognize their values but squirms and frets at the inclusion of Freemasonry because it believes in the idea of equality of man? Isn’t that the purpose of interfaith dialogues, recognizing the universality of faiths role to mankind?
  6. Should Masonry align itself with the Church doctrine and strip away its Universal tenets and bring itself more into measure with those of the Catholic Church so as to bring the two organizations together so as to have these dialogs?
  7. Does it even matter to Masonry that its tenets intersect the doctrine of the Church?

Atlantis Old and New

platoWhat if Plato’s account of Atlantis was a metaphor for a much greater distribution and spread of the Mediterranean peoples? From Popular Archeology:

Plato’s writings about an ancient advanced civilization may not be altogether fantasy. New scientific research is raising some tantalizing new considerations. Was there indeed a great founding culture and people that gave rise to the well-known civilizations that ringed and navigated the Mediterranean and laid foundations for the emergence of European societies?

This story begins with a pre-Semitic people of the Stone Age Levant (about 8000 B.C.E). Thriving in the northwest region of the fertile crescent, they have learned to farm. Life is good and their numbers increase. The land can no longer sustain them all. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus was the first to make this assertion, claiming that famine in lost early times drove the King of Anatolia to split the people: half to remain and half to go out and find new territory. Coming as no great surprise, modern scientists have identified several waves of human migration that spread from the Near East into Europe after the last Ice Age, before written history began.

One extraordinary group carried their traditions and their chromosomes (DNA make-up) into what was then the Mediterranean frontier. Were they the Atlantis superheroes of science fiction? Most likely not; however, the archaeological evidence suggests that they were more intellectually and artistically advanced than anyone around them during the same time period.

From Plato’s Timaeus:

For it is related in our records how once upon a time your State stayed the course of a mighty host, which, starting from a distant point in the Atlantic ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe, and Asia to boot. For the ocean there was at that time navigable; for in front of the mouth which you Greeks call, as you say, ‘the pillars of Heracles,’ there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together; and it was possible for the travelers of that time to cross from it to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean. For all that we have here, lying within the mouth of which we speak, is evidently a haven having a narrow entrance; but that yonder is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of kings, of great and marvelous power, which held sway over all the island, and over many other islands also and parts of the continent.

The story of Atlantis is a much explored aspect of Alternative Historians, but, an interesting comparison would be Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis, which some interesting parallels to Freemasonry and the much later founding of the United States.

Whether Plato was writing about the spread of the Mediterranean peoples, an erupting volcano, or an alien space ship that ascended to the heavens, some scholarship suggests that the true story of Atlantis rests with the remains off the south-eastern coast of Cyprus and flooded in a deluge in about 9000 B.C.E. where it now lies 1500 meters below sea level, 80 kilometers off the shoreline.

The Silver Screen Saint of Freemasonry Nicolas Cage

If Masonry had a patron saint in Hollywood, Nicolas Cage would be the guy.

I’ll admit, there are a lot of actors who in the past fit the bill including the stalwarts like John Wayne, Audie Murphy, Ernest Borgnine, Clark Gable, or Roy Rogers.  Some amongst that list have been more vocal and out front about their affiliation, which is, in the end a personal choice.

No, I say patron saint to Masonry because Cage seems to have a track record of making movies in and around the subject matter that circles that of Freemasonry without any open connection to his affiliation with the fraternity.

Think of it as a parallel line of thought, or of art imitating life.

I don’t think the making of these films is to suggest that Cage or his producers are doing it intentionally.  Hollywood films, as you’ve seen in the end of film credits, involve a lot of people with a degree of diversity from film to film.  The common denominator in this scheme is types of roles played by Nicolas Cage himself.

Is he doing it intentionally or is there some cosmic push that’s at work directing Cage towards these roles?

This is just a quick list of films that, I think, could be argued as being pro-Masonic or at least positive towards Masonic tradition.

  • National Treasure 2004
  • The Wicker Man 2006
  • National Treasure: Book of Secrets 2007
  • Knowing 2009
  • The Sorcerer’s Apprentice 2010
  • Season of the Witch 2011

Now these are just a few of the 60+ films he’s stared since his silver screen debut in 1980, but in these six films, you can get a sense of a recurring theme.

National TreasureNational Treasure, released in 2004, we find Cage playing amateur historian and treasure hunter Benjamin Gates who after deciphering a secret code on the back of the U.S. constitution, stumbles on to the lost treasure of the Knights Templars, protected in modern times by the Freemasons, who we meet in agent Sandusky as played by Harvey Keitel.

The Wicker Man, a remake of the film of the same nameThe Wickerman, Wicker man from 1973, has Cage playing Edward Malus, an American policeman who goes on the search for his missing daughter, when he inadvertently finds himself in the middle of an English Wiccan/Pagan Society to become the  Burning Wickerman himself at the end.  The link to Masonry, though less obvious in the film,  is that modern Wiccan/Paganism was founded by Freemason Gerald Gardner who popularized its reemergence in the 1950’s.

National Treasure 2 saw the return of Benjamin Gates on the trail of the Book of Secrets, which included mentions of the Scottish Rite’s Albert Pike, and the founding fathers.  The pre-release advertising of the film leaned heavily on the Masonic connections of its predecessor, while this film itself focused on another “fraternity” the Knights of the Golden Circle.  This films success has been successful enough to the talk of a National Treasure 3 in the future.

In Knowing, Cage played Professor Jonathan “John” Koestler, Astrophysicists by day and numerologist (read here gematria, the Hebrew system of words and phrases assigned by their numerical value as seen in the study of Kabbalah) by night that discovers the secret coming end times by decoding the written number sequences found in a 50 year old school time capsule.

Though less overt, the film plays up his ability to read the prophecy and down his ability to its inevitability.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice from 2010, while a remake of the animated Disney film of the same name, held true to this same series where Cage played Balthazar Blake, a sorcerer trained by Merlin who’s magic is more akin to Alchemy and the power of the mind, a theme prevalent in many Rosicrucian circles and similar to the idea of the Kybalion, that everything is mental – the power of the mind.  A strong theme in the film links the ideas of magick to modern physics and the science behind energy.

In the new film Season of the Witch, Cage plays Behman, a long standing (Templar?) Knight of the crusades who grows weary of the holy Catholic Church’s work in slaughtering innocent people, only to be pulled in to one last mission to save an innocent girl possessed by the spirit of a powerful demon.  How to slay the demon and its ilk is a Latin reading of the “Wisdom of King Solomon”, a powerful spell that destroys witches and demons.

Again, this is only 10% of his on screen time, but its not terribly hard to see a pattern here of Knights Templars, Freemasons, Magick/Alchemy/Kabbalah, and King Solomon each of which are keys components to the study of Freemasonry.

Without a doubt, one could argue that just as much of his work is about quirky guys doing quirky things – from stealing cars in Gone in Sixty Seconds to stealing Diapers in Raising Arizona.

But none of his filmography follows the same pattern of the six films listed above, and even fewer actors in Hollywood have the same resume of cinema choices that parallel such a recurring theme, unless their character is reprising a role in a sequel.  Harrison Ford comes to mind in the Indiana Jones franchise, but here again he is playing a reprisal of a character, not a different character with a recurring thematic undercurrent.

So how does all of this make Nicolas Cage the Silver Screen Saint of Freemasonry?  Simply by continuing to play roles in films where he champions the ideas of the fraternity, even the more esoteric ideas, and by keeping it in a positive light.

Will every viewer of these films see the connection?  Probably not, but for those with eyes to see, with so many loose connections its hard to miss the underlying current.  The other possibility is that Cage has simply been typecast as the ‘guy’ who plays these roles so successfully at the box office that he has become the go to man for the everyman cinema esoteric.

Who knows, based on his resume, maybe we’ll see Cage in the role of Robert Langdon in the film adaptation of The Lost Symbol as its rumored that Tom Hanks may have scheduling conflicts.

In the meantime, pop some popcorn and spend a few evenings watching Cage in these movies and see if you don’t see some connection deeper than a square and compass on a ring or on the bumper of a car as with most Masonic mentions in movies.  You might just see him as a patron saint of Masonry too.

The Gift of Irish Freemasonry from WEOFM

The latest video in the 2011 Worldwide Exemplification of Freemasonry is up at the weofm.org website, which is titled The Gift of Irish Freemasonry.

The video is presented by the Right Worshipful Brother Bob Bashford, PM, Past Grand Master Standard Bearer, Provincial Grand Librarian, and Editor of the Irish Lodge of Research, under the Grand Lodge of Ireland.

The Gift of Irish Freemasonry from WEOFM on Vimeo.

Presentation by Bob Bashford, PM 1-8-11

The video explores the development of the Irish Masonic constitution and its role in history and its development from early Roman era builders to more modern times.

The Grand Lodge of Ireland is thought to be the second oldest Grand Lodge of Freemasonry in the world, dating to its founding in 1725 when the 1st Earl of Rosse, Richard Parsons, who was installed as Grand Master.  The Grand Lodge has jurisdiction over 13 provincial Grand Lodges and 12 outside of the territory including Grand Lodges in Bermuda, Ghana, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, and Zimbabwe.

The audio is on the low side, so you may want to turn up your speakers.

What’s your zodiac sign? No, really, what is it now?

In case you woke today feeling different, it could be because your zodiac sign has changed.

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

The ancient Babylonians based zodiac signs on the constellation the sun was “in” on the day a person was born. During the ensuing millenniums, the moon’s gravitational pull has made the Earth “wobble” around its axis, creating about a one-month bump in the stars’ alignment.

Which means…

“When [astrologers] say that the sun is in Pisces, it’s really not in Pisces,” said Parke Kunkle, a board member of the Minnesota Planetarium Society.”

Its such a big story that ABC, NBC, and CBS ran the story in their morning programs, probably because its been reported that 31% of people believe in Astrology and that it has some connection to the events in their life.

new zodiac sign Ophiuchus

Asclepius, Asklepios, Ophiuchus

In the change, is a new sign called Ophiuchus which is in the celestial equator, depicted as a man wrangling a serpent, who is thought to represent Asclepius the healer, who the hermeticists out there will recognize as the body of work in the Corpus Hermetica, from the book of Asclepius – To me this Asclepius is like the sun – “A Holy book of Hermes Trismegistus”. The work in this book explores the difference between the physical and metaphysical and their relationship to the soul and immortality.

Of the work, Yates in the work Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition says “… they were certainly not written in remotest antiquity by an all wise Egyptian priest, as the Renaissance believed, but by various unknown authors, all probably Greeks, and they contain popular Greek philosophy of the period, a mixture of Platonism and Stoicism, combined with some Jewish and probably some Persian influences.”

So, whats your sign now? The new dates are:

  • Capricorn: Jan. 20 – Feb. 16
  • Aquarius: Feb. 16 – March 11
  • Pisces: March 11- April 18
  • Aries: April 18- May 13
  • Taurus: May 13- June 21
  • Gemini: June 21- July 20
  • Cancer: July 20- Aug. 10
  • Leo: Aug. 10- Sept. 16
  • Virgo: Sept. 16- Oct. 30
  • Libra: Oct. 30- Nov. 23
  • Scorpio: Nov. 23- Nov. 29
  • Ophiuchus: Nov. 29- Dec. 17
  • Sagittarius: Dec. 17- Jan. 20

But, Ophiuchus isn’t new and has existed in the Sidreal Zodiac, used by Hindu Jyotish astrologers. Western Astrology, what those 31% of American’s believe in, follows the seasons, to which Jeff Jawer, an astrologer with Tarot.com as quoted in the CNN blog says”This story is born periodically as if someone has discovered some truth. It’s not news,” especially as the earth has been in motion for millenia.

“Astrology is geocentric. It relates life on Earth to the Earth’s environment, and seasons are the most dramatic effect, which is why we use the tropical zodiac,” said Jawer.

But this is the big news…

From NBC

From ABC

From CBS

So now, what’s your new sign?

The Worldwide Exemplification of Freemasonry

The Grand Lodge of Indiana is doing something exciting.

The excitement is coming from a project that the Grand Lodge of Indiana and the Dwight L. Smith Lodge of Research is undertaking with the distinct title of being the Worldwide Exemplification of Freemasonry!

Whats happening is a 29 week video series covering the history of Freemasonry from its earliest reaches to present day.

Hopefully, you caught the Four Crowned Ones video re-published here just a few days ago. Future videos will follow a trestle board of planning and include content from some of the luminaries of the craft including:

The purpose of this ambitious undertaking is “to certify to the Craft, and other interested parties, that Freemasons meet to express friendship, morality & brotherly love, all seeking the Wisdom to contrive, Strength to support, and Beauty to adorn all great and important undertakings throughout their lives.”

You can find the complete listing and schedule on their website at http://www.weofm.org and check back often as new videos and material will be published often.

Freemason Tim Bryce.

Persistence and Determination

Have you ever wanted something so bad that you worked night and day in a Herculean effort to obtain it? No? Then you do not understand the concept of persistence and determination. You probably also feel you should be entitled to something simply because you are who you are or were present when something happened, regardless if you put forth any effort or not, a kind of winning the Lottery phenomenon. If so, I consider such an attitude as tragic as you will never value anything nor likely experience success of any kind.

In the course of my lifetime I have met with a variety of people who would like to see me just go away, be it in business, the many nonprofit organizations I have been involved in, or the various Internet discussion groups I participate in. It bugs them that I do not. Because of my dogged determination I hang in there and outlast them. This tends to drive them crazy and I must confess I get a certain amount of satisfaction from being able to outlast them and see something through to fruition. Some would call this bullheadedness or stubbornness, but this is when you go through with something even when you know you are wrong. If I am wrong, I will generally back down as I am not a proponent of cutting off your nose to spite your face. If I’m right though, I’ll hang in there through thick and thin until I see something through to completion. I will remain focused and on target.

When you talk about determination and persistence, two people come to my mind who earned notoriety through sheer will, Pete Rose and Bruce Lee. Regardless of how you feel about Rose as a person, I was in awe of him on the baseball diamond. His athleticism did not come as naturally to him as it did for others. Consequently, he worked overtime to learn his craft and succeed thereby earning the nickname “Charlie Hustle.” Bruce Lee also overcame obstacles to become one of the most influential martial artists of the 20th century. Some would suggest because both men were relatively small people they possessed a Napoleon complex and became overly aggressive to compensate for their size. I do not believe this is a valid argument as I have met many people, of all sizes, shapes and from just about every field of endeavor imaginable, who have gone on to accomplish great things, not because they were particularly talented or brilliant, but because they simply persisted with the same sort of tenacity exhibited by Rose and Lee.

I have yet to meet the person who wins at every game he participates in, that he is undefeated in virtually everything he does. I suspect if such a person existed, we would probably consider his flawless character boring. The fact is, we all suffer setbacks of some kind, be it large or small. It is only natural. To overcome such obstacles and succeed it is necessary to work harder than the next person. When it comes to success, some people are just plain lucky, but they are few and far between. For most of us though, persistence and determination are essential elements for success.

In my office, I have a framed quote from President Calvin Coolidge who said:

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

I believe in the power of the human spirit, but it must come from within not from without.

Keep the Faith!

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Tim Bryce is a writer and the Managing Director of M. Bryce & Associates (MBA) of Palm Harbor, Florida and has over 30 years of experience in the management consulting field. He can be reached at timb001@phmainstreet.com

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Copyright © 2011 by Tim Bryce. All rights reserved.

The Four Crowned Ones

Quatuor Coronati LodgeFrom the World Exemplification of Freemasonry

The Four Crowned Ones

This grand overview is presented by Dr. John S. Wade, PM and W.M. of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, No. 2076, which meets under the United Grand Lodge of England. It covers the past, present, and future of the the Lodge of the Four Crowned Ones, and its links to Masonic scholarship and academia today.

Quatuor Coronati was founded in 1884 by nine Brethren to take an evidence-based approach to the study of Masonic history and research which was to replace the imaginative scholarship of earlier authors about the history of Freemasonry. This style of research would come to be called the ‘authentic school’ of Masonic research.

The Four Crowned Ones from WEOFM on Vimeo.