Installed in the East

Last night, I was installed as Worshipful Master of Samuel Crocker Lawrence Lodge in Medford, MA. Two weeks ago, I attended a Lodge of Qualification, and took the Chair Degree. This degree is very old: there are records of it being performed going back to the 1730s. It stands in a grey area in Freemasonry in that Blue Lodge Freemasonry comprises three degrees, and this is not one of the three, and yet it is required for anyone who would be Worshipful Master of a Masonic Lodge. William Preston, in his Order of Harodim (his idealized versions of the Blue Lodge degree), offers five degrees: Entered Apprentice, Fellow of the Craft, Master Mason, Past Master, and Holy Royal Arch. In its earliest days, the Holy Royal Arch degree had as a prerequisite that the candidate be an Installed Master (either a sitting Worshipful Master or a Past Master). As the appeal of the Holy Royal Arch spread, lodges were installing Worshipful Masters merely as a bureaucratic measure before Exalting them in the Royal Arch degree. Some lodges in the 18th century were reprimanded for installing six or more Worshipful Masters in a night.

To mitigate this, a Virtual Past Master degree was designed as a substitute for the Chair degree, and this solution is the way the contemporary York Rite handles the requirement in the Royal Arch degree. While I have been elected to Cambridge Royal Arch Chapter in Cambridge, MA, I have yet to take any degrees, so I say this without any direct knowledge, but I have been told there is some overlap between the Chair degree and the Virtual Past Master degree. I made a conscious decision not to take the Virtual Past Master degree until after I had taken the Chair degree. Readers of this blog know that I am extremely active in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, both in the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction and the Southern Jurisdiction in the United States. I actually joined Freemasonry intending to be a Scottish Rite Freemason. When I first learned of the York Rite, I was disinclined to join due to the Christian requirement in the Knights Templar order. (To be honest, there are many Jews who have become Knights Templar. The obligation requires a Sir Knight to lift a sword in the defense of Christianity. I know many brothers who regard the Order of the Temple degree as the single most beautiful and inspiring and impressive degree in all of Freemasonry. That being said, and with all due love and respect to my Templar brothers, I am disinclined to become a Templar for many reasons I would be happy to expound in a future post should my readers desire for me to do so).

I later learned that the degrees of the Royal Arch Chapter are pretty much essential to Freemasonry, and, previous to having taken them, I would regard the Royal Arch degree as the repository of knowledge essential to becoming a fully-informed Freemason. Albert Pike understood this, and created his own version of this degree, spread out in the 13th and 14th degrees of the Scottish Rite, the Royal Arch of Solomon and Perfect Elu degrees. Having attended these degrees, I understand that they tell a Royal Arch story, but probably not the same, nor in the same depth as the Royal Arch Chapter does.

In the USA, due to a truce between the Scottish Rite and the York Rite, we regard the three degrees of Blue Lodge Freemasonry as the whole Masonic curriculum, with the higher degrees regarded as Concordant rather than central. I am of the opinion that the Blue Lodge is merely the first book of Freemasonry, with the Chapter degrees (or their equivalents in the Lodge of Perfection in the Scottish Rite, or the Lodge of St. Andreas in the Swedish Rite, or other analogues in other rites of Freemasonry) being the second book, the Council degrees (or their equivalents in the other rites of Freemasonry) being the third book, and some version of the Chivalric degrees being the fourth book. The Scottish Rite adds a fifth book with the Consistory degrees in the Southern Jurisdiction, but since the other rites do not, I will not comment on how central they are to Freemasonry as a whole, regardless of how clearly essential they are to the Scottish Rite.

So I have taken the Chair degree, and in February, I will take the Mark Master degree, and start my York Rite journey, taking the Virtual Past Master degree as an Installed Master. Long story short, I avoided the York Rite originally because I thought erroneously that I was ineligible, and then waited until I was an Installed Master as not to spoil the Chair degree by learning too much about it in the Virtual Past Master degree.

Last night was very special. The District Deputy Grand Master attended, and I had an installing suite of officers consisting of good friends and mentors to me in my Masonic career. Many cherished friends and brothers attended, some of whom were at my Raising. I catered the dinner, and stayed around to clean up the lodge room afterwards. My friends at Amicable Lodge offered me a new pair of gloves and an inscribed gavel with my name, the name of the lodge, and the Square and Compasses on it.

I have made a two year commitment to be Worshipful Master at Samuel Crocker Lawrence Lodge (assuming my brothers re-elect me). I understand that being Worshipful Master is not about having people call me "Worshipful", or parading around in a top hat. As much as the Chair degree and the Installation are impressive rituals designed to impress upon the incoming Master the seriousness of his office (and provide esoteric knowledge designed to aid him in his tasks), the job of Worshipful Master really begins the first time the cell phone rings and there is a crisis on the other end of the phone.

Preparing for the East

This is my first post in four months. A lot has happened. I'm working at a software-as-a-service medical IT company that makes a diagnostic tool for clinical oncologists. The job involves computer programming, data integration, and project management. It's been fascinating thus far.

I stepped out of the officer's line at my mother lodge in order to finish my term as Senior Warden in another lodge and prepare to be installed as Worshipful Master in December. Assuming I am elected, of course, but I am the only brother eligible who is not an installed Master, and none of the installed Masters are running.

This lodge is a fascinating experiment. In the town of Medford, Massachusetts, in the 1980s, there were four Masonic lodges, a Royal Arch chapter, a Council of Royal and Select Masters, and a Commandery of Knights Templar. They met at the Armory, a large building in the center of town. Medford was originally settled in 1630, as part of Charlestown. When the British burned Charlestown down in 1775, much of what had been Charlestown was unincorporated and sparsely inhabited afterwards. Medford was not incorporated as a town until 1892. Union General Samuel Crocker Lawrence was the first mayor, in 1895. General Lawrence was later Grand Master of Masons of Massachusetts, and afterwards Sovereign Grand Commander of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction. General Lawrence was a formidable scholar. When the Grand Lodge building in Boston burned to the ground, General Lawrence donated his Masonic book collection to the Grand Lodge as the seed for the new library, which today is called the Samuel Crocker Lawrence Library, and has 70,000 volumes.

When General Lawrence was mayor, the Armory was used as an armory. General Lawrence arranged that, if the Armory stopped being an armory, it would be given to use by the Masons of Medford, and after World War I, after General Lawrence died, it was given to the Masons of Medford, and outfitted with lodge rooms. The Masons of Medford met there until the late 1980s.

The story is not altogether clear, but someone sold the building to the town of Medford at that time, for far less than its property value, and all of the Masonic groups that met there were evicted. Not long after, every group had either merged with other groups, or went dark. The oldest lodge in Medford was named Samuel Crocker Lawrence Lodge. General Lawrence's widow donated his Bible for the altar. When the building was sold, it merged with Russell Lodge, which later merged with Mystic Valley Lodge in Arlington.

A few years ago, a bunch of Medford Masons noticed that there were no lodges in Medford, and petitioned the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts to start one. The Grand Master at the time recommended that the charter of Samuel Crocker Lawrence Lodge be revived, and with his assistance, it was. The original charter was lost. It had been kept in a safe deposit box in a bank in Medford, and the Winter Hill Gang (Whitey Bulger's mob) robbed the bank and took the charter. It was never recovered. The Grand Master helped write another charter, and a team formed to create the newly revived lodge.

I got involved very late in the game, even though I live in Somerville within sight of the Medford border. A line of officers had been formed, missing a Senior Warden and a Junior Steward. I was persuaded to take the Senior Warden position of the newly revived lodge, with the understanding that I would be willing to take the Oriental Chair the following year, should I be found worthy of the honor. I stepped out of line at my mother lodge to devote all my attention to this newly revived lodge.

In most Masonic lodges, most Masons are members of that lodge and that lodge alone. At Samuel Crocker Lawrence Lodge, most of the officers is an officer at at least one other lodge or chapter or council or commandery or Scottish Rite body or Shrine divan. That makes things challenging, as our officers often have multiple commitments to juggle. We have raised one brother since we opened, and he is the only member who is a member of this lodge and this lodge alone.

It is a fascinating challenge to keep a new lodge alive, and it is taking a lot of my energies to maintain what the first new Master has generated. It's very much a reality check. I am a member of two other blue lodges, a research lodge, two bodies in one Scottish Rite Valley, a member of another Scottish Rite Valley in the Southern Jurisdiction, and I'm a candidate for degrees in a Royal Arch chapter. I'm involved with three different Masonic publications on top of it, and I'm a student in Master Craftsman II and the College of the Consistory. I've left every other office except the one at Samuel Crocker Lawrence Lodge, but I still have fingers in a lot of pies. And my other officers all have fingers in other pies.

So there's some chance this will be a rocky year (or however long it takes to hand the Oriental chair to another brother). And yet, I'm thrilled. As tough as it might become, I see so much potential coming from this enterprise. I have the power to sustain Masonic light in a town that has not had it for years. Tufts University is in Medford. Charles Tufts was the secretary of Amicable Lodge, of which I am a member. Its first president was Hosea Ballou II, a member of Amicable Lodge, and a formidable Masonic author like his namesake uncle, Hosea Ballou. There is Freemasonry in the soil in Medford, from its Masonic sons who lifted rifles in 1775 in the Battle of Menotomy, to the university builders of Tufts University, to the great General who incorporated the town of Medford, to the present day. The soil calls out for a continued Masonic presence, for further light. It is my honor and privilege, should I be voted into the chair, to exert myself to the utmost to that end.