Technorati Tags: Freemason, Freemasonry, Masonic, Masonic Regalia

As if we needed more proof that Freemasonry has suddenly become cool, the latest Second Life craze, according to Wired magazine, is the proud wearing of Masonic regalia fezzes by the avatars of female Second Lifers!

Check out the article here.

Technorati Tags: Freemason, Freemasonry, Masonic, Masonic Regalia

We Freemasons are fond of noting that a number of United States presidents were members of our Order.  Some are even depicted in portraits wearing full Masonic regalia.  Here’s what the various pieces of Masonic regalia tell us about the wearer’s Masonic career.

This is a fascinating image of Brother George Washington as it is believed to be the last portrait made of him for which he sat as the model.  That is, this is the last depiction of him from life.  In this image we see him wearing the white mason’s apron which has its origins in stone laying, or “operative”, masonry, a blue sash and past master’s jewel indicating that he had been the master of his lodge.

Here we see Brother Teddy Roosevelt in the Masonic Regalia of a presiding master of a lodge.  Notice how the jewel is different from that worn by Washington.  Brother Roosevelt’s jewel represents a stone mason’s square, which is the symbol of the master of a lodge.  Notice he is also wearing a white apron (with another square emblem) as all Freemasons do while attending a lodge meeting.  As befits his station, he is entitled to be “covered” in the lodge; that is, he can wear a hat.  Often the hat or “tyle” is a top hat, or sometimes the colonial tri-cornered hat, but here it appears to be an ordinary fedora.  The master of the lodge is the only person entitled to be covered during a Masonic meeting, unless the grand master of the state is in attendance, in which case only the grand master may be covered.

Speaking of grand masters, here is Brother Harry Truman in his grand master’s Masonic regalia.  The grand master’s office is statewide and sovereign.  Since there is no national grand lodge, there no higher Masonic authority in each state than that state’s grand master.  Here he is a wearing a grand master’s jewel (these jewels vary from state to state) and a grand master’s apron.  We know that this is a grand lodge apron, as opposed to a local lodge apron, because it is trimmed in purple instead of blue.

Finally, here is Brother Gerald Ford in his Shriner fez.  Technically, the Shriner fez is not Masonic regalia, because the Shriners are an independent fraternity with their own regalia.  However, the “Shrine” was founded by Freemasons and one must be a Freemason to join.

The Square and Compasses of Freemasonry

When Freemasons see the square and compasses, the traditional emblem of Freemasonry, they usually think of what these architectural drafting tools represent: A person acting on the square (as in “that was a square deal”) and circumscribing their actions within the circle of proper conduct. The square and compasses symbol, however, may not always be what it seems.

In the mid nineteenth century a “fraternal” organization, the Order of United American Mechanics (the OUAM), formed in response to the wave of immigration that the United States was experiencing. This society was strongly anti-immigration and, one could say, downright bigoted. Remember reading about those “Irish need not apply” signs? That was these guys.

The Emblem of the Order of United American Mechanics

The OUAO took the familiar Masonic square and compasses and added the also familiar arm and hammer mark to form their emblem. As this group’s goals were in such profound opposition to Freemasonry’s teachings of universal brotherhood, Freemasons were, not surprisingly, incensed. In fact, lawsuits were inititated to stop the OUAM from stealing the emblem, but were not succesful.

Why would an obscure, and defunct, group of nineteenth century bigots be relevant to contemporary Freemasonry? As a collector of old Masonic regalia, I come across a surprising amount of OUAM items on Ebay under the search term “Masonic”. When I do, I feel obliged to email the usually oblivious seller to inform them that the item is certainly *not* Masonic. So when you are looking for great old Masonic regalia on Ebay, be sure to examine the pictures closely. If there is an arm and hammer in the emblem, keep on scrolling.

Technorati Tags: Freemason, Masonic, Masonic Regalia

If you’re like me and enjoy looking around old graveyards, you’ve probably noticed that many of the older gravestones have intriguing symbols carved on them.  Often, the symbol is the familiar Square and Compasses of Masonic regalia indicating that the person buried there was a Freemason. 

Less familiar, however, are the symbols of other fraternal orders that flourished around the turn of the twentieth century, the golden age of American fraternalism, but are not as well known today, such as the Oddfellows

and Woodmen of the World.

For a more exaustive look at old gravestones, check out this page about gravestone symbolism.  It includes not only familiar and obscure Masonic and other fraternal gravestone symbolism, but also other antiquated symbols whose meanings are no longer common knowledge.

Technorati Tags: Freemasonry, Masonic, Masonic Regalia, Masonic Symbolism

It is widely known that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a Freemason, having been initiated into the “Zur Wohltätigkeit” (”Beneficence”) Lodge of Vienna in 1784. What is not as well known is that Brother Mozart wrote music specifically for Masonic ceremonies. These pieces are seldom heard, even in a non-masonic context.

But to hear one performed as part of the actual Masonic ceremony for which it was intended is, for the general public, almost unheard of. This is why it is so exciting to announce that the highly regarded, fifty voice SATB Chorus, Portsmouth Pro Musica, will perform Mozart’s Officer Installation Anthem during the officer installation ceremony of St. John’s Lodge, #1, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in December.

This is a very rare (almost unprecedented) opportunity to hear the piece as Mozart intended, that is, as part of the ceremony to install Masonic officers, in their full Masonic regalia, into their respective chairs of office. The pageantry and music will be truly fascinating to Masons and non-masons alike.

The details:

The Installation of St. John’s Lodge, #1, Masonic Officers, December, 6th, at 2:00 pm EST, Masonic Temple, 351 Middle Street, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This free event is semi-public, meaning that reservations will be required. Please contact alan_ammann@hotmail.com for reservations.

Technorati Tags: Freemason, Freemasonry, Masonic, Masonic Regalia, Mozart

In the fall of 1632, two great minds of Western civilization, Jan Vermeer, the painter, and Antoine Van Leeuwenhoek, the father of microbiology, were born in the Dutch city of Delft. Because the men, as exact contemporaries and prominent local intellectuals, almost certainly knew one another (Van Leeuwenhoek was in fact the executor of Vermeer’s estate when he died) there has been speculation for years that Van Leeuwenhoek was the model for two of Vermeer’s paintings, The Geographer

and The Astronomer.

Unfortunately, there is no written documentation for this claim; until now the idea has rested on the fact that the men probably knew one another, Van Leeuwenhoek was a man of science, and the model bears a strong resemblance to the older, slightly more jowely, Van Leeuwenhoek depicted in a known portrait of him by another painter, Jan Verkolje.

Van Leeuwenhoek

The idea of Van Leeuwenhoek as the model for these paintings, however, raises some interesting questions. First, what were these paintings for? They are not, in the strict sense, portraits because they are not about the sitter (note how the faces are either mostly or entirely in profile), but rather, somewhat abstractly, about the idea of science as embodied by the disciplines of astronomy and geography. As such the paintings are essentially genre pieces.

And this raises another question: Why would the wealthy and prominent Van Leeuwenhoek be willing to serve a model for a pair of genre paintings depicting two sciences, astronomy and geography, for which he was not primarily known? If he were to commision Vermeer to render him in paint and undergo the tedium of sitting for a painting (indeed two paintings!) why wouldn’t he have chosen the traditional portrait as he did for the Verkolje painting? Or for that matter, why didn’t he pose with the scientific instrument that made him famous, the microscope?

If this is Van Leeuwenhoek in the paintings, perhaps the answer is as simple as this: He posed thus because Vermeer was his friend and he found the project interesting. But again, if he was intrigued by genre paintings celebrating science, why not include the visually charismatic microscopes that he himself made by hand? No, the choice of the Geographer and Astronomer, and the accompanying apparatus for each, is quite deliberate and suggests that something else is going on.

May I suggest, quite speculatively, I admit, that these questions, as well as the issue of the model’s identity, may be illuminated by reference to the unmistakable Masonic symbolism in the paintings.

The most significant and obvious of the Masonic symbols imbedded in the paintings are the square and compasses found in the Geographer. The square and compasses (the word compass is always pluralized in Masonic literature) have for centuries formed the basic symbol of Freemasonry:

Vermeer has placed the compasses in the model’s right hand (just as Verkolje did in his Leeuwenhoek portrait, it should be noted). The square Vermeer has placed slyly, but quite deliberately, on the small table in the right foreground. Notice how the points of the compasses point directly at it. In fact, the two implements fall roughly along a primary, and very traditional, compositional line that extends from the windowsill at the middle of the left edge to the lower right corner. This placement is simply not accidental.

The next bit of Masonic symbolism becomes clear when the paintings are viewed together as companion pieces: The paintings contain the globes terrestrial and celestial, which are familiar to all Freemasons as the pommels that adorn the tops of the pillars found in all Masonic lodges.

Masonic Pillars With Celestial and Terrestial Globes

Again, the placement of these objects is quite sly, but unmistakable as the paintings are clearly companion pieces as is evidenced by the fact that scenes depicted take place in the same study, with the same model wearing the same scholarly regalia.

Lastly, it should be noted that the Geographer and Astronomer will be familiar to Freemasons as traditional practitioners of the liberal art of Geometry.

But how, one may ask, could Masonic symbolism possibly find its way into Vermeer paintings when the first Masonic lodges didn’t appear in the Netherlands until some forty years later? And what does Freemasonry have to do with Van Leeuwenhoek? As it turns out, the connection Van Leeuwenhoek and Freemasonry is quite simple and derives from his membership in the British Royal Society.

The British Royal Society was founded in England in 1660 as a forum for scientific inquiry. The society grew out of the “invisible college” movement, which was an informal, international network for the sharing of scientific knowledge. Significantly, the founders of the Royal Society were to a great extent well known Freemasons such Sir Christopher Wren and Sir Robert Moray. It is no exaggeration to say that Royal Society, inasmuch as it was a natural outgrowth of the invisible college, was in essence a quasi-Masonic institution. Of course, this is not to say that the Royal Society was actually a Masonic lodge itself, or anything of the sort. But what it does mean is that Freemasonry and the Royal Society drew from the same intellectual well because they were populated by the very same influential thinkers, had the same philosophical agenda, and discussed the very same ideas using the same imagery such as the square and compasses!

This portrait of Royal Society founder Sir Christopher Wren in fact amply demonstrates the Masonic zeitgeist of the time:

Brother Wren is posing with compasses in his right hand, just as Van Leeuwenhoek did in his formal portrait, which brings us back to Van Leeuwenhoek and the identity of the Astronomer and Geographer.

Van Leeuwenhoek, it turns out, was a prominent member of the Royal Society. He published his first scientific findings with the Royal Society at the age of 41, an age not too far removed from the seeming age of the Astronomer and Geographer, and was made a member of the Society seven years later after a delegation of Royal Society members visited him in Holland to investigate the validity of his work. He was thereafter a prominent, prolific member, contributing hundreds of scientific letters to the Society over the course of the rest of his life.

Given this connection, it is perhaps not too great a stretch, to suggest that the Geographer and the Astronomer are indeed Van Leeuwenhoek, surrounded by the symbols of scientific reasoning as popularized by Freemasonry and the Royal Society, and that these paintings are a celebration of the Society, it’s goals and his membership.

Technorati Tags: Freemason, Freemasonry, Masonic, Masonic Regalia

The Grand Lodge of Massachusetts turns 275 years old this year, thereby making it the third oldest Masonic grand lodge in the world! Congratulations, Brethren of Massachusetts!

The full story here.

Get your Massachusetts Masonic Shirt here!

Can’t Let Massachusetts have all the glory? Find your state t-shirt here!

Technorati Tags: Freemason, Masonic, Masonic Regalia

Apparently Freemasonry isn’t just for our grandfathers anymore. According to the Boston Herald, Freemasonry is taking root in Boston’s alternative music scene. Punk rockers in Masonic Regalia. Who would have thought?

The full article here.

Get your own Regalia here!

Need a cool t-shirt for the show? Check out these!

When folks ask me what Freemasonry is all about, I usually answer at first by saying something about it being an ancient philosophical society dedicated to the idea of the universal Brotherhood of mankind under God, which, of course, is often met by blank stares.

But what is it that Freemasons actually do, they want to know, in those secret meetings? A fair question. I usually respond by talking about how we have a series of initiation lessons, called degrees, that use the implements of medieval stone architects such as the square and compasses metaphorically to teach life lessons.

More blank stares.

And here is where the conversation usually grinds to a halt. The problem is, I can’t tell a non-Mason specifically how we teach our moral and life lessons using these architectural implements because the exact contours of those lessons are traditionally kept private. We keep them private not because they are shocking (although our ideas of religious and social equality certainly were dangerously radical a few hundred years ago!) but because we are sensitive about “spoilers” in the same way a Hollywood director might want to conceal the big surprise ending of a movie. The degrees are more fun, and the lessons make a bigger impression, when there is some mystery involved.

After having gone down this conversational dead end a number of times, I realized that while I can’t say exactly what occurs in the degrees, I can give an extremely close approximation of the kinds of ideas expressed in them. As it turns out, some of the ideas I’m talking about are not unique to Freemasonry, but rather permeated the intellectual climate of the late fifteenth century, the period in which modern Freemasony began to take shape. This is where DaVinci comes in.

In one of the most famous images of Western culture, DaVinci’s “Vitruvian Man,” we see a human figure perfectly circumscribed within both a square and a circle. This simple but profound image was more than an artist’s observation of anatomical proportions. Rather, it was a statement that the physical body of the ideal man, the Vitruvian Man (so named after the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius who first described these proportions) literally participates in, and is symbolically representative of, the larger, divinely framed Geometry of the universe.

Further, according to this ancient tradition, the circle represents the spiritual realm and the square the physical — and Man is poised between them.

But what does this have to do with architectural implements? Here is the “a-ha” moment: What two architectural drafting tools would one need to draw the square and circle at the heart of DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man illustration? Intriguingly, the Square and the Compasses! As it happens, these are the very same implements that form the well known symbol of Freemasonry on car emblems, rings and headstones all over the world.

That is the kind of stuff we teach and talk about. And there have been no spoilers!

Technorati Tags: Freemason, Freemasonry, Masonic, Masonic Regalia