Even before the devastating earthquake which struck the capital of Haiti last week the country was widely recognized as the poorest in the Western world.

But, just two hundred years ago Haiti was a thriving example of success.

The country, once known as Hispaniola, began as a French colony in which hundreds of thousands of African slaves worked the sugar plantations under horrific conditions. Many of them were literally worked to death. The news of the French revolution would ignite a bloody revolution and the loss of Haiti led to Napoleon giving up a vast portion of North America in what is known as the Louisiana Purchase.

What is not so widely known, is the important part Haiti played in the liberation of South America, and the spread of the Scottish Rite in France in 1804. The key players in this Masonic history were Estienne Morin, originator of what we know today as the Morin Rite, Alexandre Francois Auguste Comte de Grasse, and Jean Baptiste Delahogue (two of the eleven...

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There’s been plenty of controversy about what has been dubbed “The Dan Brown Effect;” caused when readers are misinformed about the actual intent or history of an organization when it is placed in the fictional plot of one of Mr. Brown’s novels. But, consider the alternative. If Batman weren’t a gadget-toting millionaire and the effects of a radioactive spider didn’t give Spiderman his amazing abilities, something would be lost. Perhaps it is even worse today, where Dan Brown’s novels have to compete with the re-imagined characters of a boxing Sherlock Holmes and an Iron Man that both have the rugged good looks of Robert Downey Jr. But just as these superheroes are given amazing abilities and sex appeal, there is a natural necessity to use the artistic license that every author of fictional has, to ignite our imaginations and encourage us to turn page after page of his novels.

The Lost Symbol is no different. Mr. Brown uses a mixture of history and imagination to talk about the Masonic organization...

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A recent email I received stopped me cold.

It came from a Brother in Europe who I have known for almost a decade. He is a very knowledgeable and respected Masonic researcher and someone who will shortly become one of our mentors for the Freemason Academy. I had emailed him asking how things were going on that side of the pond. His answer was to say the least, very dramatic.

“Our Masonic Academy is a great success and takes a lot of my time. As you remember it's totally different from what you call by the same name in the USA.  There you tend to consider the "traditional" type of Masonic research as mostly related to studying the past, a post-mortem of Freemasonry as if it were a dead body.

“We are concentrating on an aspect of the Craft which has mostly been neglected. Carefully and intentionally and coyly neglected, I'm afraid. We consider Freemasonry as a living, developing, changing body endowed with a soul, with a philosophy, with a future. It's that soul, that philosophy...

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By Jack Buta P.M.

Saturday night is the absolute worst time to discover that you have nothing to read, yet there I was pawing through my collection of books at 9:30 in the evening searching for something, anything to distract me until Monday. I had been looking for about ten minutes and was into the old paperbacks that somehow never got donated to the VA hospital, when I came across my little collection of Ayn Rand Books. I selected the thickest volume and read the title, Atlas Shrugged. It had to be one of the first books I bought after arriving in this country. The copyrite was dated 1957 and the printed retail price was $1.50 for a 1000 page volume set in 6 point type.

As I began to read I realized in many ways this book could have been written today. The story begins with the conflict between a brother, the CEO of a railroad who is incapable of making decisions and his sister who is striving desperately to save it from bankruptcy. Their struggle is played out against the background of...

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This blog entry comes from lesson four of How To Retain Lodge Members. It is something we need to do a much better job of not only in our Lodges but in our personal lives as well.

In the U.S. we rarely recognize any of the people in our lodges and when we do make an award to a Brother as being Mason of the year, we actually hurt the feelings of some Brothers who had worked hard all year without any recognition.

The Lodge needs to do more recognizing, not just of one man but of all the Brothers who come to Lodge. We should not wait until the end of the year, but do it every day, every week and every month of every year. Each of the members of the Lodge chooses to give of their time and talent and we owe it to them to recognize their efforts on behalf of Freemasonry. There should...

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Part 2: Why did Dan Brown inculcate Freemasonry into The Lost Symbol?

In a letter to the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite Southern Jurisdiction, Dan Brown states that he selected Freemasonry as a central theme for his book because:

"In a world where men do battle over whose definition of God is most accurate, I cannot adequately express the deep respect and admiration I feel toward an organization in which men of differing faiths are able to ‘break bread together’ in a bond of brotherhood, friendship, and camaraderie."

Beyond the admiration from someone outside of our organization, this quote presses on one of the important keys to our Fraternity. In my opinion, Freemasonry has (to use a trite phrase) “stood the test of time” because of the open and accepting principals upon which it was founded. In fact, when taken out of context,...

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All you have to do is turn on your TV on any Sunday and listen to a young preacher out of Northeastern Houston by the name of Joel Osteen. Since taking the pulpit just ten years ago he has built up his Lakewood Church membership by over 400%. He now attracts more worshipers to his weekend services than most National Football League teams will later on Sunday afternoon. But that is not all, millions of people tune him in over 100 countries.  He has been called a simpleton, a heretic, and worse but his audience keeps growing. Why? Joel Osteen preaches one simple message that resonates today more than at any time in recent memory; he preaches that God wants people to prosper in all areas of their lives.

He outlined his beliefs in his best-seller, Your Best Life Now, which has sold over 3 million copies since it was first published and has been followed by best selling book after book since 2005. In interviews, he comes off more like a modern day Earl Nightingale or Dale Carnegie than a church minister....

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Part I: Dan Brown Introduces His Readers to Freemasonry

The attention of the Freemasons everywhere was piqued when Dan Brown announced that his next book would be about our fraternity. Masonic discussion groups lit up with theories and information on what he might be writing about and -when the book finally launched- many Masons rushed out to pick up a copy and read it as quickly as possible to assess our fictional fate. (This author picked up a copy at 4am and had finished it on his lunch hour the following day.)

True to his word, Mr. Brown penned a story about our Fraternity. The Lost Symbol, in fact, uses Masonry as a foundation for the plot and also injects characters with many traits based their view of The Craft. Every main character in the book is closely connected to Masonry:

Robert Langdon (Protagonist) has a disinterested, favorable, view of Masonry (see below) Mal’akh (Antagonist) joins Masonry in an attempt to discover The Lost Symbol Peter Solomon (friend to Robert Langdon) is a 33rd degree Scottish Rite Mason...

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Have Fun!

There is a very easy way to tell if your lodge is in trouble.

Listen to what is going on when you walk into the Lodge room.

A winning team or Lodge has a certain hum of success. People are happy with what they are doing and the conversation is upbeat. It is the same way you can tell who is winning in a football game. You do not have to see the score board just look at the sidelines. The winning team is all smiles, they are relaxed and telling jokes and the losing team is glum. Frustration is evident on their faces and in there muttered conversations. No one points fingers in a winning team but they always seem to look for someone to blame when they are losing.

If you feel that same feeling of frustration when you sit in your Lodge or attend a team meeting you know you have a problem.

I like what Erma Bombeck had to say about having fun: “Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful outburst that just comes. It’s unbridled,...

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  “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own.” . . .Henry Ford.

Having once decided to leave the committee format and go with actions teams the first thing you must decide is how you will proceed. My recommendation would be - begin with you! In Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, Lord Polonius gives the following advice to his son: “This above all: to thine ownself be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” Good advice then and good advice now. Before any other member of the team can be chosen you have to take a long hard look at what your own strengths and weaknesses are. Think of it as performing a SWOT analysis on yourself. The more time you spend looking at your own shortcomings the easier it is to understand what kind of people you need to create a balanced team. Henry Ford used to say “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping...

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