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must be obtained from the copyright holder directly by contacting The
Philalethes, Nelson King, FPS, Editor, 2 Knockbolt Crescent, Agincourt
Ontario Canada, M1S 2P6. Tel: 416-293-8071 Fax: 416-293-8634 or
nking@freemasonry.org or nking@onramp.ca




From the
Editor's Quarries

ANNUAL MEETING: The Annual
Meeting, workshop, and feast of the
Philalethes Society was held in the Hotel
Washington on February 19, with a su-
perb multi-media) presentation on
Brother Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by
Brother John M. Hoersma of Canada.
Further details of this will be given later
when the lecture and some of the pictures
will be published.

MANUSCRIPTS NEEDED: We have
dug almost through our backlog of arti-
cles. We need manuscripts which will
contribute to a better knowledge and
understanding of Freemasonry. Histori-
cal articles are especially welcome, with
sharp black and white photographs or
line drawings if possible. Color slides are
needed for the covers. Contributors
should always DOUBLE SPACE and
leave at least a one-inch MARGIN on all
sides. Give name, complete address, and
telephone number so I can better com-
municate with you if necessary. Indicate
whether you are a member or Fellow of
the Philalethes Society. I will publish ar-
ticles by others (even by non- Masons),
but if you are a Philalethes member,
indicate it. Otherwise I cannot print
MPS or FPS after your name.

All articles are subject to editing
throughout, including title.

RUSSIAN FREEMASONRY: Appar-
ently Freemasonry is returning to Rus-
sia, according to a note in the Fraternal
Review of the Southern California Re-
search lodge, which I quote in part:

". . . the following in a letter from Nat
Granstein, L'Assistant Grand Master of
the Grande Loge National Francaise, is
the correct information:

"'Harmonie Lodge No. 698 was con-
secrated January 1 4, 1 992 at our grand
Lodge building in Neuilly. Brother
George Dergachev was installed as Wor-
shipful Master. Brother Alexandre
Rimsky-Korsakov is the Senior Warden
.... "'This month (September, 1992)
between September 4th and September
8th, we transferred Harmonie Lodge to
Moscow and whilst there we initiated 14
candidates from that city where it is now
permanently housed. Two candidates
from irregular lodges were regularized
by us in the regular manner. There is a
tremendous demand from persons desir-
ing to enter Freemasonry but we are
proceeding slowly to ensure that we ac-
cept only those who are worthy and not
those wanting to use the Craft for their
own purposes."'

Thus Freemasonry is being reborn for
the first time since the Communist Rev-
olution.

WALTER F. MEIR LODGE OF RE-
SEARCH: Chartered in 1936, this is the
third-oldest lodge of research in the
United States. It has available many in-
dividual papers presented over the years.
A catalog is available by sending a large,
self- addressed US stamped envelope to:
Bob J. Jensen, Junior Warden, 23312 -
94th Place West, Edmonds, WA 98020.
Tel. (206) 546-3780.

"Trials and Tribulations ...."

In an article entitled "Trials and Trib-
ulations of Traditionalism" in your De-
cember, 1992 issue, Bro. Howard R. Stu-
art refers to a paper of mine, but it would
seem that he did not read it as carefully
as he should have done before comment-
ing on it.

He wrote that I suggested standing at a
modern building site and imagining that
its builders grew and grew until they took
over our fraternity. I did nothing of the
kind, nor would I dream of doing so as
very obviously it could not be true.

Further, he invites me to return to my
favorite Gothic cathedral and ask myself
if I believe that stonemasons who specu-
lated upon the spiritual nature of things
were never there.

Let us be perfectly clear about this and
not invest them with an aura of sanctity
that certainly never existed. Freema-
sonry does not need an artificial patina
nor to be bolstered up with fantasies.
Medieval stonemasons were ordinary
uneducated workmen who could neither
read nor write, who were concerned
solely with laying one stone on top of
another and, if they were fortunate,
drawing their wages at the end of the
week. Unfortunately, wages were often
sadly in arrears. There is no evidence
that they ever moralised on their work-
ing tools nor that they had any concep-
tion whatsoever of the magnificent gran-
deur of the building on which they were
working. What a pity! !
Cyril N. Batham, MPS
1 7 Romeland
Waltham Abbey
Essex EN9 lQZ
England

"Freemasonry and the
Development of the West"

. . . As an addendum to Brother
Roblee' s article . . . the seal of the Grand
Lodge of Montana and the insignia of
the Montana Highway Patrol are both
inscribed with the numbers 3- 7-77. The
Montana vigilantes described by
Brother Roblee would leave a formal
warrant nailed to a cabin door or fence
post of a pursued robber/murderer when
they could not find their prey. Each war-
rant closed with the numbers 3-7-77,
which was the code identification for the
members of the vigilantes.

The combination of numbers referred
to three separate events of Montana Ma-
sonic History. The first of the events
wherein the number three evolved re-
lated to the first meeting of Masons in
Montana on September 23, 1862, when
three brethren with an exploratory party,
then camped on Mullan Pass in the
Rocky Mountains, went through the rit-
ual of opening and closing a lodge. They
were Nathaniel P. Langford, David
Charlton, and George Gere, all mem-
bers of Minnesota Masonic lodges.

The second event refers to the seven
men who came together to plan the Ma-
sonic funeral for William H. Bell, or to
the seven Masons who formed the Vigi-
lance Committee at Virginia City, Mon-
tana December 22, 1863, to combat the
lawlessness in the gold camp. The vigi-
lante oath and by-laws were drawn up at
this first session.

The third notable event was the first
Masonic funeral, which revealed the sur-
prising number of Masons in the Grass-
hopper Creek gold camp, at Bannack.
Langford conducted the services and the
seventy-six Masons deposited the ever-
green in the grave of their departed
brother, William H. Bell, the seventy-
seventh Mason at the funeral, the day
after his death on November 12, 1862.

Another legend goes that the numbers
were advice that the person being
warned had three hours, seven minutes,
and seventy-seven seconds to get out of
town. Still another version identifies the
numbers as the dimensions of a grave
three feet wide, seven feet long, and sev-
enty-seven inches deep.

No matter what the truth was, the re-
sult was effective in either hanging or
driving the outlaws out of town. The
story goes that the secret 3-7-77 greeting
was used between Masons because they
did not want to use the passwords of the
Order. The greeting goes: "Are you a
vigilante? " When the response was
"three," the challenger would say
"seven," answered with "seventy-
seven. "

Kirk Ferguson, MPS

6658 Cumberland Court Riverside,

California 92506

"Our Masonic Penalties"

My rebuttal to the comments made by
Bro. Worley with reference my article,
"Our Masonic Penalties":

In my thirty years as a member of the
Craft, along with twenty of involvement
in Masonic Research, I have heard many
weird and wonderful statements made as
to the meaning of our "Masonic Penal-
ties," and I must say that the meaning
given by Bro. Worley takes the cake. Isn't
it about time that our penalties "mean
what they say--and say what they
mean ? "

Why is it necessary for a candidate to
have degrees from at least six of the most
prestigious universities in the world be-
fore he can understand the so-called true
meaning of our penalties? And what is
all this " gobbledygook" about Free-
masonry' s being made of metaphors and
symbols which allow multiple interpreta-
tion? Once again, it's about time that we
start "saying what we mean and mean-
ing what we say. "

[The penalties] were not handed down
from on high, nor were they included in
our ritual by the Grand Lodge of En-
gland. They were made up and added to
by different members of our order over
a period of many years, about thirty + to
be exact. There was no meeting held in
Grand Lodge to get the approval of the
members. Every time someone made up
a new ritual, he included a newer version
of the penalties. That is how they were
included. It was not through the wisdom
of our forefathers as claimed by Bro.
Worley.

Our Masonic ritual has been an ongo-
ing thing for 300 and more years. Are
our brethren of the 1 600s and 1 700s not
as good Masons because there was no
penalty in their ritual? . . . what about
the changes made to the American Rit-
ual by the Baltimore Convention of
1843? Are they any better or worse Ma-
sons than those of the rest of the world
because of these changes? Of course not.

It is about time that we all come down
from our cloud and start to realize that
what was good 300 years ago is not nec-
essarily good today. It was not unusual
for someone to get life in prison for steal-
ing a loaf of bread at the time that our
ritual started including penalties in the
Ob. The reasons for these hard penalties
was to impress upon the candidate the
seriousness of the Ob. As people today
do not get life in prision for stealing a loaf
of bread, it is not necessary to have these
penalties included in the Ob.

Our brethren of 1813 realized this
~when, at the formation of the United
Grand Lodge of England, a "non-phys-
ical penalty" was included in the Ob.
And this non-physical penalty was made
up not by just one person, but by a group
appointed by the Grand Master to stan-
dardize the ritual. These brethren, in
their wisdom, realized that we had to
have a penalty which could be inflicted if
necessary; in other words, a penalty that
would "mean what we say--and say
what we mean. " If one would read this
non-physical penalty very carefully, one
would see that the penalty does just that.

The Non-Physical Penalty

These several points I solemnly swear
to observe, without evasion, equivoca-
tion, or mental reservation of any kind,
under no less a penalty, on the violation
of any of them, than that of being
branded as a willfully perjured individ-
ual void of all moral worth, and totally
unfit to be received into this or any other
worthy and warranted lodge, or the soci-
ety of men who prize honour and virtue
above the external advantages of rank
and fortune. So H.M.G., and keep me
steadfast in this my great and So. Ob. of
an E.A.Fm.... "

During that part of the ritual where the
secrets are explained to the candidate,
after he has been shown the "sign" for
that degree, he is informed that "It is
called the P.S. and alludes to the P. asso-
ciated with the Ob. in ancient times,
which was that of having your . . . etc. "
He now understands how to make the
sign, the meaning of the sign, and its
origin.

It's about time we do away with some
of the school-boy nonsense with refer-
ence to the penalty, and start "saying
what we mean--and meaning what we
say. "

John Salmon, MPS
4557 McFaul Road
Sardis, B.C. Canada
V2R 2P1




Strain at a Gnat and
Swallow a Camel

These are my thoughts on solutions to
our problems as a fraternity:

Although at this stage I am but a Mas-
ter Mason and do not choose to join the
"higher" degrees, the Scottish Rite
Freemasons have done remarkable work
for Masonic education, with the Mu-
seum of National Heritage in Lexington,
Massachusetts, where I have benefitted
from their excellent library. That library
is a classic example of what I mean when
I use the term "investing in ourselves."

First of all, we often do not invest in
ourselves .

During this time of depleting member-
ship, for example, we are investing in
other worthy causes such as the drug
problem in the United States. There are
probably a few Grand Lodges that con-
tribute to motherhood, baseball and
apple pie. My point is this: What have
any of these issues got to do with more
immediate problems such as increasing
membership within the Fraternity by
providing productive benefits? These in-
clude finding employment for Freema-
sons out of work, providing a living wage
to full-time Masonic editors, improving
educational feedback, and electing and
employing full time speakers for Blue
Lodge meetings to improve interest in
general learning.

Second, on the subject of Prince Hall
Freemasonry, there is probably no Free-
mason alive that knows less about Prince
Hall Freemasonry than I. But I do be-
lieve this: all arguments opposing black
men are moot. The black race has under-
gone despicable unfairness in the past
and I, for one, hold out my hand in
friendship.

Third, on the subject of declining mem-
bership of our fraternity, we are pres-
continued on page 38
The Philalethes, ApJil 1993
ently a ship on a collision course. In my
opinion, membership will continue to
decline until we invest in ourselves to
improve the benefits of fellowship and
demonstrate the benefits of being a Free-
mason. As with any ship on a collision
course, it is less significant how we avoid
the collision than to avoid the problem of
investment and fellowship.

Fourth and last, regarding The
Philalefhes, I think we should focus on
learning more from each other. Articles
are often published without feedback.
Without such feedback, our accuracy
and our learning is dead. On this subject,
Bro. Haffner offered a productive exam-
ple regarding the constitutional opposi-
tion to Prince Hall because of the faulty
1723 Constitution argument. If we in-
vested in a full-time editor, who could
afford to spend more time commenting
on our research, "seekers of truth"
would be more successful in their objec-
tives. Bro. Batham and Bro. Haffner
have both illuminated examples of such
feedback in the past. My point is that we
need to invest in a full time editor to
implement such a learning environment.
I am indifferent to where the funds come
from to accomplish this goal . . ., al-
though I have a few thoughts that cannot
be printed . . . it is almost a battle to
obtain feedback we need to prevent the
blind leading the blind.
David Crockett, MPS
Box 331
Stoddard, NH 03464

Editor's Note: Let's have more letters. We all
learn from a discussion of ideas.
