G
Gary
Guest
Darn squirrels...
removed12612
Guest
They are everywhere....... talk about conspiracy and world domination or take over.....Darn squirrels...
(had to get in all the key search words for the Anti's..... )
BukeyeJackson
ViMH Advisory Board
I've heard you can throw in a few fake snakes and owls...Darn squirrels...
Ashlar2006
Masonic Mafia
It's not that I will not touch a thread such as this (I did post some) , but as I said before , someone will post the very thing I am thinking and I do not want to post just to be posting , muddying the waters so to speak . Take the back and forth between Winter and Patrick , I agreed mostly with Winter's thoughts and did not want to jump in and derail their conversation .
On a side note , my Emulation Ritual is in the mail .
G
Gary
Guest
My comment wasn't directed at you Bro. Ashlar. It was a generalization.
So, you ponied up the loot to have the Emulation Ritual shipped from across the pond?
Ashlar2006
Masonic Mafia
Oh I did not take it as aimed at me , just relating as to why I was staying mum .
It (the ritual) was added in on another brother's order of lodge regalia , so I do not have to pay shipping .
It (the ritual) was added in on another brother's order of lodge regalia , so I do not have to pay shipping .
After reading through this post, I question my Lodge Brethren as to what version of ritual we used and this was the response I got.
Without deeply researching the subject, I believe our currently approved ritual is an adaption of Thomas Webb's generic Masonic ritual. Our current format was adopted at the April 1, 1959 Grand Lodge Session. Since then it has undergone a few minor revisions, mostly due to errors that occurred in the various printings.
Prior to 1959 the ritual was a combination of symbols and letters which were difficult to read without help from a knowledgeable Brother. For instanced the symbol for "mason" was a circle with a dot in it. However there was another symbol that was a block letter "O' with a dot in it. The 1959 revision converted all the ritual over to letters and numbers and consisted of a two-part mnemonic. Book one was the ritual printed out as the first letter of a word with a number under it; ie. a/3/ Book two was a vocabulary of the words in alphabetic order ie. a-1 "a"; a-2 "an"; a-3 "and", etc. In order to learn the ritual, a Brother had to translate it word for word, one letter at a time. With the "restriction" of not writing out the ritual this was along, pain-staking process, but when you learned a part it stayed with you.
At the Grand Lodge session in 1990 a motion was approved "to investigate the translation and re-codification of the ritual." This meant a committee was set up look into translating the ritual into English. We never actually voted to do the translation, but before the next Grand Lodge meeting in 1991 a translated ritual was printed and distributed. Since it was hurried out, it was full of mistakes and errors, and had to be reprinted twice in the next three years to correct them. I believe the only reason the original printing was hurried out was that if it ever came up to vote at Grand Lodge to translate the ritual,it would have failed. Printing it beforehand made such a vote a moot point.
IN 2003 the fifth edition was printed and is currently the only approved ritual in Connecticut. The cover is the same color blue as the other editions, but is a soft cover. Incidentally, there are two Lodges in Connecticut that do not use this ritual. Hiram No. 1 in New Haven was chartered by the GRand Lodge of Massachusetts and uses their own version of the English Oxnard Ritual. Washington Lodge No. 70 in Windsor was originally chartered as a military lodge in New York and has it's charter from the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania. When it was moved to Connecticut the next number in line was 70 so they became that number. I'm not sure of the linage of their ritual, but it is different. If you every have a chance to visit either of these Lodges you will see the difference.
It's my personal belief that all this change was for the worst.When the ritual was in code it was hard to learn,but as I said, the effort to do so, resulted in better memory retention. Now that it is in English, the Brothers tend to put of learning their parts, and in a lot of cases, fall back on reading their parts. This is not so true in Federal #17.
I will be getting a copy of the revised version this coming Monday, but will also be looking to buy the Emulation version to for comparisons.
Without deeply researching the subject, I believe our currently approved ritual is an adaption of Thomas Webb's generic Masonic ritual. Our current format was adopted at the April 1, 1959 Grand Lodge Session. Since then it has undergone a few minor revisions, mostly due to errors that occurred in the various printings.
Prior to 1959 the ritual was a combination of symbols and letters which were difficult to read without help from a knowledgeable Brother. For instanced the symbol for "mason" was a circle with a dot in it. However there was another symbol that was a block letter "O' with a dot in it. The 1959 revision converted all the ritual over to letters and numbers and consisted of a two-part mnemonic. Book one was the ritual printed out as the first letter of a word with a number under it; ie. a/3/ Book two was a vocabulary of the words in alphabetic order ie. a-1 "a"; a-2 "an"; a-3 "and", etc. In order to learn the ritual, a Brother had to translate it word for word, one letter at a time. With the "restriction" of not writing out the ritual this was along, pain-staking process, but when you learned a part it stayed with you.
At the Grand Lodge session in 1990 a motion was approved "to investigate the translation and re-codification of the ritual." This meant a committee was set up look into translating the ritual into English. We never actually voted to do the translation, but before the next Grand Lodge meeting in 1991 a translated ritual was printed and distributed. Since it was hurried out, it was full of mistakes and errors, and had to be reprinted twice in the next three years to correct them. I believe the only reason the original printing was hurried out was that if it ever came up to vote at Grand Lodge to translate the ritual,it would have failed. Printing it beforehand made such a vote a moot point.
IN 2003 the fifth edition was printed and is currently the only approved ritual in Connecticut. The cover is the same color blue as the other editions, but is a soft cover. Incidentally, there are two Lodges in Connecticut that do not use this ritual. Hiram No. 1 in New Haven was chartered by the GRand Lodge of Massachusetts and uses their own version of the English Oxnard Ritual. Washington Lodge No. 70 in Windsor was originally chartered as a military lodge in New York and has it's charter from the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania. When it was moved to Connecticut the next number in line was 70 so they became that number. I'm not sure of the linage of their ritual, but it is different. If you every have a chance to visit either of these Lodges you will see the difference.
It's my personal belief that all this change was for the worst.When the ritual was in code it was hard to learn,but as I said, the effort to do so, resulted in better memory retention. Now that it is in English, the Brothers tend to put of learning their parts, and in a lot of cases, fall back on reading their parts. This is not so true in Federal #17.
I will be getting a copy of the revised version this coming Monday, but will also be looking to buy the Emulation version to for comparisons.
G
Gary
Guest
Kind of separates the wheat from the chaff now doesn't it.
Bob Franks
Past District Deputy Grand Lecturer
I wholeheartedly agree that the coded rituals rely more on memory.
We have two parts to our ritual: The Official Standard of the Work ["OSW"] which is coded with initial letters and a number for each positively identifying the word (a few sensitive words are indicated only by nondescriptive symbols), and the North Carolina Lodge Manual, by Charles Bahnson ["the Bahnson"] which is plain language. Some parts of each are in the OSW, some in the Bahnson.
It has taken me much longer to learn the parts that are in the Bahnson, because I don't exercise my memory when I am reading it!
woo-woo! Post #900
S&F
Congrats on the '900' benchmark, i finally broke 200
BukeyeJackson
ViMH Advisory Board
The "plain English" is the hardest part for me to learn. The Monitorial section is such and that took me exponentially longer than the coded section of the MM Lecture.
I can pretty much read ciphered stuff now. Most of it at least. But just knowing the Lecture for proficiency isn't enough as I think having access to the whole degree will have more info to learn from. I'm getting my Lodges version of the book, don't know if its ciphered or not. I seen both.
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Gary
Guest
Yup. That would be the correct term.
CoachN
Builder Builder
That's part of the 1st step of the last seven within the middle 15
removed12612
Guest
Bill O'Reilly does a good job at helping expand ones vocabulary..... as do some fine Brothers on here....but I do wish to make a caution regarding using vernacular in ways that would make one appear above the level one is accustom too.....or in when addressing a group. You just may have a command of the language but over talking others can be a down side.... knowing when to use the ten dollar words is a fine art....
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Gary
Guest
What chu talkin' bout Willis? I use big words all of time. While I see your point and agree, it's through expanding our vocabulary that we can help to improve our rhetoric.
If I see a word I don't know, I look it up. Others use of ten dollar words is beneficial to me. It forces me to improve myself. After all, not all of us are knuckle dragging truckies...
And there it is..lol, but I have to admit I was an engine guy too.After all, not all of us are knuckle dragging truckies...
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Gary
Guest
Well you earned the seal of approval from me then! Me and Fireman jab at each other all of the time.