I get a lot of questions about the requirement to express a belief in a Supreme Being for a Candidate for Freemasonry.

I am not in any shape or form what you would call a religious person. I can’t remember the last time I walked into a house of worship. But I also can’t remember ever having a doubt about the fact that God not only exists but still performs miracles. I can count no less that 30 instances where my life has been impacted directly by events and circumstances that are impossible to comprehend without the existence of a Supreme Being. Many times this involved me living when I should, by all the laws of nature, have died.

All of these events have had a cumulative impact on my belief systems, but none more dramatically than the following incident which happened long before I married my wife of forty years.

It was late in November and I was logging a lot of hours in my single engine Piper Arrow before the weather really got bad. One evening, I arrived at the home of a gal I was dating...

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Beginning May 12th, 2010, the Phoenix Valley will host the Fifth Southwest Regional Scottish Rite Reunion which will make Scottish Rite history. Since it’s founding in 1801 the Supreme Council for the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in North America has conferred the 4th through the 32nd Degrees leaving the Craft Lodges to confer the first three Degrees of the York Rite; everywhere, that is, except for a handful of Lodges in New Orleans where the first Lodge of Perfection was established in 1764.

Now for the first time ever, a Scottish Rite Reunion will exemplify all 32 Degrees of the Rite. For those who have never experienced the first three Degrees of Scottish Rite, this will be a once in a lifetime experience.

How different are these Degrees from those a candidate goes through in the Blue Lodge? Well, let’s just say it’s not for the feint hearted. The preparation room in the First Degree of Scottish Rite is styled “The Chamber of Reflection” and I still have a vivid memory...

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When Dan Brown selected Washington D.C. for the locale of The Lost Symbol, he picked a place rich in history and controversy. While our readers are surely no strangers to the silly conspiracy theories surrounding the design of the Capital City, Mr. Brown sidestepped these easy targets and, in doing so, provided the reader with a far richer experience for their literary visit to the District of Columbia. The result is a tome that provides a fruitful platform for those interested in Masonic sightseeing and to re-experience the city for the first time, even for locals or those who have already made repeated visits to DC.

The House of the Temple



“The colossal edifice, located at 1733 Sixteenth Street NW in Washington D.C., was a replica of a pre-Christian temple – the temple of King Mausolus, the original mausoleum… a place to be taken after death. Outside the main entrance, two seventeen-ton sphinxes guarded the bronze doors.1”

...

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When asked about Freemasonry and what it does, perhaps the most popular answer is that Freemasonry makes good men better, but how does it accomplish that goal?

The fact that every Masonic meeting opens and closes with prayer has often led to unfounded allegations that Freemasonry is a religion. It isn’t of course, Freemasonry is open to good men of all religions, but it does say a lot about the type of men who are attracted to our Fraternity. The first step in improving the nature of any group of men is a belief in the inherent goodness that lies within them. In Freemasonry that common belief is that we are a Brotherhood of men under the fatherhood of God.

Prayer really works and I can prove it: In Freemasonry you are taught the importance of looking to God for his blessings in everything you do. This is very important because it frames the character of a Freemason. You may lie to yourself and others but no rational thinking man can lie to his creator. If we are to implore God’s...

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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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