dfreybur
Premium Member
Oh ok...I'm trying to be careful the with the words...by bogus you mean not recognized yet or a lodge without history or a lodge that do not practice the principles of masonry?And before prince hall was officially recognized were they 'bogus'?sorry if I do not formulate my question the right way...
For a lodge to be valid it has to be regular. For a lodge to be recognized there are some more steps. A brother should always be a member of at least one lodge affiliated with a regular and recognized jurisdiction.
A lodge not affiliated with a grand lodge is automatically bogus. Being a affiliated with a grand lodge does always not make a lodge not bogus - There needs to be a continuous lineage from England, Scotland or Ireland. No lineage, no validity. As to Prince Hall, African 459 was chartered correctly. Claims that his lineage has not been continuous are incorrect and if a jurisdiction says that it's time to look up their lineage. The problem is there are plenty of jurisdictions that used the name Prince Hall and made up their own grand lodge without any lineage.
There are other issues of regularity. Groups that dropped belief in a supreme being or being male exist but are not regular. They chose to become clandestine for various reasons.
There are two places to start when looking up recognition and lineage. United Grand Lodge of England for most of the world and also the Conference of Grand Masters Prince Hall for the remaining states that don't have recognition yet.
http://www.ugle.org.uk/about/foreign-grand-lodges See North America tab. http://www.conferenceofgrandmasterspha.org/gjlinks.asp
Being in America your PHA jurisdiction needs to be in either. Being in California it needs to be in both. This one is the regular and recognized California PHA jurisdiction. http://www.mwphglcal.org/
If you joined a lodge not in that jurisdiction thinking you got the real thing, I suggest it's time to approach one of their affiliated lodges and request healing.
You mentioned your lodge is number 5. Here's their lodge number 5 -
St. John | 5 | 9027 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90003-3229 | 2nd & 4th Wednesday 7:30 p.m. |