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Expect an interesting conversation with a person who will eventually become an old and dear friend.

I am deeply sorry to hear this is literally true, even in a clandestine lodge. I pray for our step brothers that they drank this bitter brew when expecting the rich wine of actual Masonry. Regular jurisdictions forbid hazing so if any regular lodge has done this, even a decade ago, they need...

In Scottish Rite it's standard to go through a small set of mandatory degrees then to travel the state seeing the rest of the degrees in random order to have all of the lines on your SR "passport" signed. It works great in the SR so I figure it will likely work well in the YR if that strategy...

With orders under a couple of decades old they are common. Consider that Texas forbids membership in the most popular motorcycle riding and charity fundraising order but allows the second most popular one. For older orders it's pretty much the sole domain of the Imperial Shrine to butt heads...

Getting a ritual book should only happen after being raised and make sure you learn the rules for using it. I've seen everywhere from openly reading from the book during a degree through no books allowed in the building. I've seen ritual booklets for EA/FC through only outside learning type...

Power and authority are NOT the same thing. Power is what you can get away with. Authority is what the rules say you can do. Sometimes authority grows when a leader exceeds his authority, gets away with it, and the action gets ratified by vote. It's a long term danger that happens again and...

I've seen GMs declare groups applying for concordant body status not regular, but that only applies until the GL annual communication. It has to be approved or rejected by vote of the delegates. If the delegates assembled at GL approved the (now Past) GM's edict, then I say it's the entire...

Thanks brother. There are several ideas in it that I like and several that I have never heard put forth before. I like your definitions of Science and Magic as both being about doing what works, one with understanding and one without. That seems right to me. One of my motivations is a...

For humans it's seriously deep kink, plus it carries the ownership implications of its animal applications. If there is in fact some clandestine order that does this, that would explain why no regular and recognized lodge will ever meet with them on the level. It is beyond my kenn that even a...

I remember a lot of praise for Dubai a few years ago for authorizing a lodge. As an American my reaction was more like "A lodge needs permission?" but one step at a time and that was a good step. No idea what GL has chartered any lodge there yet.

I included "or civil authorities" in my comment about trials for that reason. Illinois has a rule that the GM is required (he does not have an option) to expel any member who is convicted of a felony. I don't recall if the rule lists what class of felony. If the member has an appeal pending...

Many of us have a Forget-Me-Not pin in our collections remembering the suppression and then reemergence of the gentle craft there. Maybe you have a prayer that mentions a tree might grow again after being cut down.

Now you're talking about the hidden mysteries! Good stuff when the pieces fall together like that, isn't it?

Yep. Sorry for expanding outside of this particular discussion. I thought the topic had wandered to a wider scope.

When I read the subject line I hoped there would be a photograph of a public march wearing aprons. One of my lodges does a float and march every 4th of July. We get permission to wear our aprons.

To me that depends on whether the story posted in public is an accurate, even though one sided, reporting of the events. Cronyism and using privacy to separate "us" from "them" is one of the bad faces of classic politics in action. To me the test of any of these situations is simple - If any...

In the US before the turn of the 20th century there was a tradition that once a lodge reached 100 members it would "hive" or split to become two lodges. This is how cities came to have multiple lodges. In the US around the turn of the 20th century it was noted that larger lodges could have...

Michigan switched to a proficiency that is not memorized word for word? I take it you were expected to explain in your own words what had happened in your degree and what it meant. I figure the memorization was intended to be that but they started quoting the best ones they'd heard so it...

Toastmasters is a completely separate organization. They are a service club. We are not.

http://www.myfreemasonry.com/threads/interesting-trick.23982/#post-134320 In the General Freemasonry sub-forum brother pointwithinacircle2 wrote - "The difference between Magic and Science is Knowledge, when you do not know how something works it seems like Magic." There are assorted well...