Coming this August, the Masonic Restoration Foundation is holding its first National Symposium on Traditional Observance Lodges, and much much more.

The focus of this two day event will be Masonic Restoration with a primary focus on identifying a set of best practices that can be regionalized and implemented in those lodges seeking to increase the fulfillment of its members.

This is a “must attend” event if you have ever considered starting a Traditional Observance Lodge in your local area.

The 2 full day schedule includes:

• Working Talk Points Breakfast on leadership and assessing strengths and weaknesses.
• Lodge Formation – How to in YOUR region.
• How to best work with your Grand Lodge
• Regalia Presentation from the leading regalia manufacturers.
• Live vendor trade show with music, art, books, and software.
• A Tyled Meeting followed by a Festive Board Agape.

Day Two:

• Leadership Psychology from a top national speaker
• Break-outs to discuss best practices, obstacles, and implementation
• A special presentation on Alchemy by Br. Timothy Hogan
• And an afternoon discussion on the practical guide to implementing the full TO system.
• Followed, of course, by an event ending networking and cigar Lounge with a on site whiskey master.

The event has tremendous promise and a terrific energy about it and from the descriptions on the events site, its sure to motivate and educate even the passive participant into a passionate Traditional Observation Lodge champion.

Space is limited to 120 participants. If the TO lodge process has been on your radar, this event is not to be missed.

You can register for the event on their website: MRF Symposium.

Curious about Masonic Restoration?  Listen to the Masonic Central Podcast on the topic.

The song bring out the clowns starts to ring in my head when ever I start to think about the Shrine in a large way.  Not out of any misanthropy but because of their excellent work and commitment to the happiness and well being of so many children.

To say the name of the Shrine International and instantly the image of charity, children’s hospitals, and Red Fez’s comes to mind, but behind those iconic images is an organizational powerhouse that, some suggest, drives the future of the Masonic fraternity.

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Joining Masonic Central this week is Imperial Sir Jeff Sowder who is Imperial Outer Guard for Shriners International to talk about all things big and small as it relates to the Shrine.  Of particular interest:

• The History of the Shrine – How it formed, why it formed, and how its original formation has evolved.
• The Present Day Shrine International – The Hospitals, Conventions, the 1.8 million a day in Charity, The iconic Clowns, and some of the recent controversy.
• The Future of the Hot Sands – Growth, Diversity, and Its lineage to the ancient fraternity.

So many questions have swirled about the connections of the Shrine and the blue lodge that its time to put them to task and ask them of the Shrine themselves, and Imperial Sir Jeff Sowder has graciously stepped up to explore these topics and more about the “world’s greatest philanthropy.”

You can join the live Masonic Central program on Blog Talk Radio Sunday May 2nd, at 6pm PST/9pm EST and join our live interactive chat room to send us your questions and talk about the program, or you can call in with your live questions to 347-677-0936 during the show.

It promises to be an interesting and entertaining evening to say the least and a great way to discover more about this charitable powerhouse of the Masonic family.

Listen to Masonic Central on Blog Talk RadFor more information on the Shrine, visit: Shrine International

To Be a Shriner Now, visit: Be A Shriner Now

What makes a lodge successful? Is it the energy behind the lodge, the people that create it? And, does that energy come at a cost? Is there a social capital that is bartered in an invisible exchange that at times reflects a huge value where at others it challenges its very existence.

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One such lodge happens to be a nexus for this very question, and has had a year to barter and trade on its own social capital building a reputation amongst its community and amongst its peers. And this development has not been free of cost. Gate City Lodge in Atlanta Georgia has had a dynamic year, from a public forum on Catholicism and Masonry to a feature article about them in the New York Times. All in all, Gate city is not unaccustomed to controversy or at least some growing pains since its founding in 1887.

Since then, Gate City has suffered war, fire, growth and decline, all of which are no strangers to lodges of this age, yet Gate City has re-awoken as a cosmopolitan styled lodge, progressive in its ideas (even if they do not see themselves as such) and yet still as traditional as the day they fought to become the 4th lodges in the already crowded Georgian capital.

Join us Sunday, April 4th, as Masonic Central welcomes the brothers of Gate City Lodge No.2 from the beautiful city of Atlanta, Georgia. We look forward to a healthy discussion of the lodges antebellum origins and is present day revival in a city known for its diversity of population and as one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in America. The Show will record live at 6pm PST/9pm EST at Masonic Central on Blog Talk Radio. If you have questions or comments for the brothers, you can dial in to the live show by calling 347-677-0936 during the program.

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In the wake of the most turbulent period of American History stories about the intersection of Freemasonry and the Civil War have been many and profound – fact and fiction have become impossibly merged until now.  In an eloquent narrative story telling,  Michael Halleran‘s new book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Freemasonry in the American Civil War separates the dime store novel and after dinner yarns from the real and verifiable stories of the American Civil War.

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The reality of the The Better Angels of Our Nature could perhaps be summed to say that when looking at the past, we strive to see it in the best light we can; reality and myth blurring together becoming one.  We remember what we want to remember.  And as this idea filters down from those who so daringly attempt to assimilate and speak about it, the line between what really happened and its retelling becomes even further blurred.  The myth of the story takes a life of its own over the reality of what happened which is lost to the memory of time.  We see it in the news, in the origins of religion, and in the annals of history – the stories of the past evolving and taking on a life of their own giving them greater depth, and consequently meaning, to the both the story tellers and their audience.  But truth is liberating when it comes to the fraternity and the Civil War and Halleran’s new work The Better Angels of Our Nature is a welcome does of reality from a sea of historical myth.

The Better Angels of Our Nature dissects the war in its many facets into a sensible approach to the myths of Freemasonry and its part in the Civil War, from the very top in correspondence of Grand Lodges, first about preserving the union and later to sovereignty of action, to the rank and file interaction of soldiers on the lines spared by a token, a word, or a gesture, and to the gewgaws made by prisoners of war while being held in some of the harshest of p.o.w. camps.  What Halleran captures in his work is not so much the acts of mercy between soldiers (of which he details many), but the agent of that mercy – Freemasonry.

Underlying the details of the book is the idea that the power of the fraternity and its ability to transcend lines acting in a way greater than that of organized religions, such that in times where even local denominations avoided helping those in desperate need, the bonds on Freemasonry, and the invisible connection between brothers, would prevail.  In one instance, Halleran details the delivery of food and  necessities to prisoners, not out of the compassion of similar religion, but out of the brotherhood in the craft all on the simple sign of a gewgaw.  But, as much as the Better Nature leans on the leverage of membership, it almost equally illustrates the aversion brothers had to leverage it for their benefit.  And for those such as Union prisoner John L. Ransom who witnessed Masonry in action noted in his diary the things to do following the war to include: “…visit all the foreign countries that prisoners told me about…wear silk under clothing, join the masons.”

The Friend to Friend Masonic Memorial monument located in the annex of the
Gettysburg National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

One of the prime examples that Halleran uses to dissect the problem of the past and illustrate the point of the layers of mis-telling is the exchange between General Armistead and Captain Bingham, to which Halleran says

“…the legend of Armistead’s dramatic Masonic death scene simply did not happen.” “There was no Masonic huddle with Doctor Bingham, ho hand-off of a Masonic bible, and no meeting with Hancock.”

General Lewis A. Armistead

All of which may come as a shock to the system to any armchair historian, but in painstaking detail, Halleran pieces together Armistead’s wounding, those closest to him, and what they said about those moments on the battlefield and the events immediately following his demise several days later.

Despite the retelling of the greatest Masonic tale of the Civil War, what Halleran does uncover are an even greater number of instances where brotherhood works to save wounded soldiers, save a family from starvation, and in one instance where the war stops for a day to bury a fallen brother in a Masonic service attended by both sides of the conflict.  The Better Angels of Our Nature illustrates the profundity of the fraternity to its practitioner of the age, leaving us with the question if the modern soldier of Masonic affiliation encountered a brother across the lines, would it have the same ability to lay down hostilities to appeal to their fraternal bonds?

Halleran tells a compelling story about the fraternity and the Civil War and how The Better Angels of Our Nature have retold the stories over and over to make them more appealing and sympathetic to the ears of the audiences they were being told to, and by dissecting the facts from the years of fictionalized beliefs, the truth is much richer and comforting once the haze of time is cleared away.  Truly it was the Better Angels of the Our Nature, as a fraternity, that prevailed.

The Better Angels of Our Nature by Michael Halleran is published by Alabama University Press and is Available on Amazon.

Also, look for Michael Halleran on the Masonic Central podcast, Sunday, March 28th!

The Occult of Personality

Few places give you consistent discourse on the occult and the western mystery tradition. And even fewer present the thought leaders within that field. Masonic circles aside, few are the sources to find this type of conversation, and even fewer that produce it with the passion that c does.

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Greg is the spirit, production, and host of the Occult of Personality podcast which has an ever increasing inventory of programs centered squarely on the idea of the occult and how it intersects with those of us who are interested in its practice and wisdom.

He could perhaps be called a techno mage, but In light of the conversation, I’d like to call him brother.

Joining us this week on Masonic Central is brother Greg Kaminsky, host of the Occult of Personality Podcast to talk all things esoterica and including some of the interesting spaces between Masonry and the broader esoteric/western mystery traditions.

The show starts promptly at 6pm PST / 9pm EST on our home at Blog Talk Radio/Masonic Central where you can join in on the live chat during the program.

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Lexington, Massachusetts – Are you registered yet?

This has been posted a few times, but some changes to the schedule have been made, and your shot at early registration is coming to a close, so if your in or around the Lexington Mass area, you need to attend this symposium!

Registration deadline draws near! Register by March 24, 2010.

On April 9, 2010, the National Heritage Museum, in Lexington, Massachusetts, will hold a symposium, “New Perspectives on American Freemasonry and Fraternalism.”

The symposium seeks to present the newest research on American fraternal groups from the past through the present day. By 1900, over 250 American fraternal groups existed, numbering six million members. The study of their activities and influence in the United States, past and present, offers the potential for new interpretations of American society and culture.

Jessica Harland-Jacobs, Associate Professor of History at the University of Florida, and author of Builders of Empire: Freemasonry and British Imperialism, 1717-1927, will open the day with a key note titled “Worlds of Brothers,” Harland-Jacobs’ paper will survey and assess the scholarship on American fraternalism and Freemasonry. Drawing on examples from the 1700s, 1800s and 1900s, she will demonstrate that applying world history methodologies pays great dividends for our understanding of fraternalism as a historical phenomenon. Harland-Jacobs will conclude with some thoughts on how global perspectives can benefit contemporary American brotherhoods.

Professor Harlan Jacobs was a guest in Masonic Central in 2008.

Six scholars from the United States, Canada, and Britain will fill the day’s program:

• Ami Pflugran-Jackisch, Assistant Professor of History, University of Michigan – Flint, “Brothers of a Vow: Secret Fraternal Orders in Antebellum Virginia”
• Hannah M. Lane, Assistant Professor, Mount Allison University, “Freemasonry and Identity/ies in 19th-Century New Brunswick and Eastern Maine”
• Nicholas Bell, Curator, Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, “An Ark of the New Republic”
• David Bjelajac, Professor of Art History, George Washington University, “Freemasonry, Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and the Fraternal Ethos of American Art”
• Kristofer Allerfeldt, Exeter University, “Nationalism, Masons, Klansmen and Kansas in the 1920s”
• Adam G. Kendall, Henry W. Coil Library and Museum, “Klad in White Hoods and Aprons: American Fraternal Identities, Freemasonry, and the Ku Klux Klan in California, 1921-1928″

Adam was a guest on Masonic Central in 2008.

The symposium is funded in part by the Supreme Council, 33°, N. M. J., U.S.A. Registration is $50 ($45 for museum members) and includes morning refreshments, lunch and a closing reception.

To register,

Visit the Museum’s website, www.nationalheritagemuseum.org for a printable registration form and fax to 781-861-9846, or contact Claudia Roche via e-mail at croche@monh.org or 781-861-6559, x 4142 for sending options.

Registration deadline is MARCH 24 – Event is April 9th!

Masonic Restoration

“Curious about how to bring Masonry into the Tradition it came from?”  “Whats this new Concept I’ve heard about called European Masonry?”

You may of heard these questions tossed around in some of the more secluded or private conversations at a lodge meeting.  Or, perhaps in one of the many web forum discussions that  so often ask the meaningful questions about where Masonry has come from, where it resides today, and where its headed.  And all the while in those discussions, the term Traditional Observance Lodge or European Concept seems to be mentioned as one of the strongest possible paths of preserving the past and future of the American styled Gentleman’s Craft.

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But, from a top down view, to preserve something necessitates a point of restoration, to a point of origin perhaps? And, in this modern day of busy lives, hastened schedules, and from a Masonic perspective – lackluster meetings, a point of restoration was in order.  Which brings us to the Masonic Restoration Foundation.   At its heart, the MRF has at its focus the  identifying of solutions and implementation of programs aimed at reinforcing and expanding positive trends at local, state and national levels in Freemasonry.

From its website: http://www.masonicrestoration.com

The MRF provides education and training to individuals, lodges and Grand Lodges on ways to establish quality programs, academic excellence and social relevance in their Masonic communities. As American Freemasonry faces some of the most important challenges in its history, the MRF stands to ensure a sense of purpose and identity for the Craft.

Joining us this week on Masonic Central to talk about the Masonic Restoration Foundation, Traditional Observance Lodges (TO), and the European Concept Lodge (EC) are Marc Conrad and Cliff Porter, both of whom  are active Board members of the Masonic Restoration Foundation.  What exactly is a EC lodge? Are TO lodges the wave of the future? How do I start the conversation on forming a TO lodge? Listen in and ask the questions with us as we explore the TO and EC lodge archetypes with the Board of the Masonic Restoration Foundation.

The show starts promptly at 6pm PST / 9pm EST on the home of Masonic Central on BTR where you can join in on the live chat room during the show.

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Sunday, March 21st, 2010.

Madness, mayhem, mystery, and murder, these are but a few of the terms one could use to define the book, and later film, From Hell.

“It’s Dark”…

“Hawksmoor cut stone to hold shadows; a Gothic trait, though Hawksmoor’s influences were somewhat…older.”

“The Dionysiac Artificers?”

“Unmistakably. A Secret fraternity of Dionysus cultists originating in 1,000 B.C., they worked on Solomon’s temple eventually becoming the Middle Ages traveling Masonic guilds. Their ingenious constructions merely symbolized their greater work: the Temple of civilization, chiseling human history into an edifice worthy of God, its Great Architect.”

“…What is the 4th dimension?”

-From Hell, the Graphic Novel

How often do you get the opportunity to explore Freemasonry by gas light?  its not Steampunk Masonry, but as close as you can get with the science part of the fiction.

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Written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Eddie Campbell (and Pete Mullins), the book version of From Hell is at the for of recent fictional works in print and celluloid that feature the fraternity of Freemasonry in some aspect. From Hell has transformed the benign fraternity into something malignant and nefarious. And, on its ascendancy to the cinema, the seductive spell of aristocracy and secret society takes center stage (pardon the pun) to position the fraternity at the very heart of the Jack the Ripper murders.

This week on Masonic Central, we take some time to explore the two tellings of the From Hell tale, from the Graphic Novel for-bearer to the present day annotated From Hell (Two-Disc Special Edition) DVD staring Johnney Depp and Heather Graham. As similar as the two works may seem on their covers, there is a surprising amount of difference between the two works, from the perspectives of the characters, the focus of the story, to the psychology and outcome of the leading villain (a Masonic Knight of the East), as played by Ian Holm.  Two sides of the same creative coin.

Join us for this exciting film as lit edition of Masonic Central Sunday, March 21st at 9pm EST 6pm PST. Join us for the live call to ask your questions live on the air or to jump into the interactive chat forum on Blog Talk Radio.

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Michigan Freemasonry

Motor City Masonry has quite a tale to tell.  In the shadow of the automotive decline the memories of a Masonic hey day still stand as testament of the fraternities grandeur in the not so distant past.

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Memories tend to be short when the immediate effect of the past is spread out over decades worth of events.  But if your in Minnesota, its hard to forget the legacy of the past that reminds you of what once was and what could be again, especially in the physical being of the temple and the spiritual investiture of it.  Truly, at some point, the heavens touched the earth in the creation of the Detroit Masonic Temple and in the will expressed through Br. Roscoe Bonisteel and his endeavors to endow the state of Michigan with an enduring Masonic legacy.

Roscoe Osmond Bonisteel

Br. Bonisteel, in his day, was an advocate for civil rights, a developer of commercial properties, a philanthropist of libraries and museums, a war veteran, and a believer in the enduring quality of Freemasonry.  He was raised in 1914, served as Worshipful Master in 1920, and, following regular advancement, became the Grand Master of Michigan in 1929. Outside of his Masonic career, Br. Bonisteel was an active philanthropist contributing much to higher education, the construction of their libraries, and their book collections.  What makes this resume stand out in such relief are the enduring monuments to which he dedicated so much of his energy to.  Truly, a testament of what each of us is capable of.

Today Bonisteel is remembered through many buildings named in his honor including the Bonisteel Masonic Library.

Detroit Masonic Temple

Of equal measure, and just down the highway, is a silent jewel of American Masonry.  If ever there were a head office, the Detroit Masonic Temple could not only house it, but would have ample room to do what it does today, which is engage relevantly and intelligently with the local community.  At its height it could provision 50 Masonic bodies, included drilling halls. auditoriums with capacity of 1600, and a main theater with room for 5000+.  It was truly an American Cathedral to the Fraternity.  Today, it is where you can catch the latest rock show, watch a few rounds of roller derby, and get married, all within the confines of the city and all under the roof of one of the largest Masonic lodges in the world?

What links these two venues is the passion fueled by Br. Bonisteel and kept alive through the works of brothers like him to keep these silent treasures relevant and active in both the Masonic and public community.

Join us this Sunday on the Masonic Central pod cast as Karl Grube who is the President of the Bonisteel Masonic Library in Ann Arbor Michigan and a member of the board of trustees for the Detroit Masonic Temple Library to talk to us about Michigan Masonry, the life and legacy of the Bonisteel Library, and the jewel of the American Masonic edifice, the Detroit Masonic Temple.

The live program starts promptly at 9pm EST / 6pm PST at Masonic Central on Blog Talk Radio where you can listen live and join our interactive chat at during the program.  Remember, the show goes live promptly at the hour!

We encourage your questions and comments to the show by calling (347) 677-0936 during the program.

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Update, leave your comment on this post to enter to win a signed edition of the book Crown of Serpents!

I know, its been a few weeks since the holiday… now that the christmas trees down, the bits of wrapping paper out of the nooks and the couch, and all the returns of unwanted gifts made, its time to catch up.   With the holidays past and the cold embrace of winter upon us, what better time to catch up with a warm conversation and some reminiscence of what was the Masonic year 2009.

This week on Masonic Central, join us as we go over the highlights (and low lights) of Masonry in 2009 and look ahead at some of the trends that seem to be already charting the course of 2010.

Missed the live show?  Listen now.

Download the podcast.

The show goes live promptly at 9pm EST/6pm PST Sunday evening January 24 and the phone lines will be open for your questions and comments.  I know it will be a lively show, and I hope you can make it!

Call-in Number for the show is (347) 677-0936 – we have a new high capacity for your call-ins, so don’t be shy and call in!

Listen to the show:

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