<$BlogRSDUrl$>

Wednesday, January 11, 2006




MEDITATION IN THE LODGE

The Masons are just a service organization--a brotherhood of fraternal comaraderie out to do good--not a religion. Right? Not necessarily at the Thomas Smith Webb Chapter of Research, No. 1798 where meditation is on the agenda for learning the meaning of the cabletow used in the first degree Masonic ritual:

And now the exercise. Meditation is a long lost art in this time of speed and stress. It is not a weird New Age practice, nor do you have to dress in saffron robes and shave your head in order to participate. It is merely a way for gaining new insights into old questions, or finding a new way to look at a familiar object. There are many ways to gain insight into the teachings of Freemasonry, and alongside the ritual and the books and the conversations and the debates, there are older techniques which have been used with equal success.

I therefore challenge you, as an experiment, to find a quiet, darkened place, light a candle, burn some incense if you have any - earth's natural stress-remover! - and close your eyes, breathing deeply for a few moments. Either take a length of cord in your hands or imagine one, and just meditate on the symbol of the cabletow for five minutes. Believe me, the experience improves with practice. To quote from a seventeenth century European ritual: "Other meanings will be revealed if you
[sic] heart knows how to desire them."


The "heart" doctrine again. As the paper on Martinism from the ASE conference that I blogged about yesterday indicated, Freemasonry in France was the "new faith to replace the one they had abandoned" when Catholicism was rejected during the French Revolution.



This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?





Weblog Commenting by HaloScan.com

<< # St. Blog's Parish ? >>