Promoting the Fraternity across the World
In attempting to give an outline sketch of the various degrees in Freemasonry in a book of this description, I am faced by many difficulties, not the least of which is how to write in an interesting way about degrees, which many of my readers have not taken, without giving away more than is permissible. … Read more
The Mark is a ceremony or degree [sometimes called the ‘friendly’ degree], conferrable today only to Master Masons and forms part of a hierarchical organization. In Craft Masonry it was quite a late innovation making its appearance during the mid-1700s. However we do know that Operative Masons, without any kind of ceremony, were taking marks 150 years before the Mark came into use as part of that particular ceremony.
On Saturday 22nd July in the stunning grounds of the Royal Masonic School for Girls, Rickmansworth, both Middlesex and Hertfordshire Provinces will be joining together in this Tercentenary year to run a joint Grand Family Fete from 12 noon until 4.30pm.
Today no one will deny the genius of Oscar Wilde. Yet during his own lifetime he was spurned and humiliated in spite of the success of much of his work. He was a victim of the society into which he was born. The Victorian middle-class, whose sacred institutions of morality Wilde was to infringe, simply had no patience or tolerance for him. The saddest of the tragedies that Wilde was to write could not match the events that were to unfold and Freemasonry, which did play a significant part during his time at Oxford
When I first went through the 2nd degree and heard these words from the W. Master “..you are now permitted to extend your researches into the hidden mysteries of Nature and Science” I was struck by the absurdity of it. Here I am, a medical doctor, whose very profession required the study of the hidden mysteries of Nature and Science being told I am now permitted to do so
