I want to start out this months newsletter by thanking everyone who helped make the Third annual Ides of March Spaghetti Dinner a huge success. This year we served over 250 people, and raised almost $3,000 for repairing and renovating our 40-Year old Lodge building. I’d especially like to thank the ladies of the Eastern Star and Jobs daughters, and our brothers in the Commandery, Council, and DeMolay for helping make this event one of the best ever.
Arcana Lodge has scheduled a new set of degrees starting with the Entered Apprentice Degree on Monday, May 15th. We have one candidate, but there’s room for several more. Please turn your petitions in at one of the stated meetings in April.
Last year Arcana Lodge raised over $500 for the University of Minnesota Cancer Hospital by hosting a Free Prime Rib Dinner. This year we hope to exceed that number at our Free Prime Rib Dinner on Monday, May 22nd, 2000, at 6:30 PM. Please make your reservations early and remember to make your check of $25 or more payable to “Minnesota Masonic Cancer Center Fund, Inc.”
Arcana Chapter #38 Eastern Star has invited us to attend their open installation on April 4th, at 7:30 PM. Anita Florest is the Worthy Matron-elect and Brother Jerry Asplund the Worth Patron-elect. They also encourage us to join them for their Spring Salad Luncheon on Saturday, April 29th, 2000, from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM. The cost of the luncheon is $5.00. Brothers, let’s not forget to help and support this fine organization who’ve done so much to make life at Arcana a truly enjoyable experience.
Brothers, this is your newsletter so please contact me if you have anything you’d like to share with the membership. I’d especially appreciate articles that shed further light on Masonry or Masonic history.
Respectfully submitted,
Doug Roswold PM, Secretary
US Currency and Masonry |
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By coincidence, I received one of the new Golden Dollars on the same day that I read the enclosed Short Talk Bulletin about alleged Masonic symbolism on US currency. I remember in grammar school learning about Sacagawea, the woman depicted on the obverse side of new coin. She was the Shoshone guide for the famous Lewis and Clark expedition. Certainly no one could misinterpret the symbolism on this coin as being Masonic in nature. The closest thing to a Masonic connection that I could find was that one of Sacagawea’s employers Captain Meriwether Lewis was a member of Door to Virtue Lodge, Number 44 (now Doric Lodge) of Albemarle, VA. Captain William Clark would later join St. Louis Lodge Number 111.
Sacagawea’s story is truly remarkable. Having crossed her path numerous times while traveling with my parents on vacations to the West Coast emphasized my early appreciation of this remarkable individual. It didn’t matter if we traveled by car or train, at several points in our journey we crossed or paralleled the Lewis and Clark Trail, and at every instance there was a tribute to Sacagawea.
As a child of ten or eleven Sacagawea was taken from her Shoshone tribe by a Hidatsa tribe raiding party. She was later sold into slavery, then given away (actually lost in a bet) to a French-Canadian fur trader who took her as a common-law wife. Officially her husband Toussaint Charbonneau was hired by Captains Lewis and Clark as a guide. It was not so much for his own skills, but for those of Sacagawea even though at the time she was only about 15 years old and six months pregnant. She proved to be more valuable to the expedition than either Lewis or Clark had ever imagined. Their journey through some of the most rugged country in North America was aided by her knowledge of the topography of the land. She knew how to find edible plants and roots the European-American explorers were unaware of. Unwittingly to the explorers, Sacagawea and her infant son were like a human white flag that identified their party as being something other than a military invasion force. The Native American tribes they met along the way responded with curiosity rather than aggression because no war party was ever accompanied by a woman and infant. This curiosity allowed them to establish communication, mostly through Sacagawea as an interpreter, which thus allowed them to trade for much needed horses.
It’s not surprising that after their trip ended, the adventurers who had been hand picked by President Thomas Jefferson, felt a lifelong debt to Sacagawea. In fact, Clark wrote to Charbonneau that Sacagawea deserved a greater reward than what the expedition gave her. Clark’s sense of indebtedness to Sacagawea is reflected by his accepting responsibility for educating Sacagawea’s son a few years latter, and after her death at the age of 25 years, for her daughter as well.
By: S. Brent Morris, P.M.
Historians must be cautious about many well-known "facts." George Washington chopped down a cherry tree when a boy and confessed the deed to his father. Abner Doubleday invented the game of baseball. Freemasons inserted some of their emblems (chief among them the eye in the pyramid) into the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States. These historical "facts" are widely popular, commonly accepted, and equally false.
The eye in the pyramid (emblazoned on the dollar bill, no less) is often cited as "evidence" that sinister conspiracies abound which will impose a "New World Order" on an unsuspecting populace. Depending on whom you hear it from, the Masons are planning the takeover themselves, or are working in concert with European bankers, or are leading (or perhaps being led by) the Illuminati (whoever they are). The notion of a worldwide Masonic conspiracy would be laughable, if it weren't being repeated with such earnest gullibility by conspiracists like Pat Robertson.
Sadly, Masons are sometimes counted among the gullible who repeat the tall of the eye in the pyramid, often with a touch of pride. They may be guilty of nothing worse than innocently puffing the importance of their fraternity (as well as themselves), but they're guilty nonetheless. The time has come to state the truth plainly and simply!
The Great Seal of the United States is not a Masonic emblem, nor does it contain hidden Masonic symbols.
The details are there for anyone to check, who's willing to rely on historical fact, rather than hysterical fiction.
Benjamin Franklin was the only Mason on the first design committee, and his suggestions had no Masonic content.
None of the final designers of the seal were Masons.
The interpretation of the eye on the Seal is subtly different from the interpretation used by Masons.
The eye in the pyramid is not nor has it ever been a Masonic symbol.
THE FIRST COMMITTEE
On Independence Day, 1776 a committee was created to design a seal for the new American nation. The committee's members were Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams, with Pierre Du Simitiere as artist and consultant. Of the four men involved, only Benjamin Franklin was a Mason, and he contributed nothing of a Masonic nature to the committee's proposed design for a seal.
Du Simitiere, the committee's consultant and a non-Mason, contributed several major design features that made their way into the ultimate design of the seal: `the shield, E Pluribus Unum, MDCCLXXVI, and the Eye of Providence in a triangle." The Eye of Providence on the seal thus can be traced, not to the Masons, but to a non-Mason consultant to the committee.
"The single eye was a well-established artistic convention for an 'omniscient Ubiquitous Deity' in the metallic art of the Renaissance. Du Simitiere, who suggested using the symbol, collected art books and was familiar with the artistic and ornamental devices used in Renaissance art." This was the same cultural iconography that eventually led Masons to add the All-Seeing Eye to their symbols.
THE SECOND AND THIRD COMMITTEES
Congress declined the first committee’s suggestions as well as those of its 1780 committee. Francis Hopkinson, consultant to the second committee, had several ideas that eventually made it into the seal: "white and red stripes within a blue background for the shield, a radiant constellation of thirteen stars, and an olive branch." Hopkinson's greatest contribution to the current seal came from his layout of a 1778 50-dollar colonial note in which he used an unfinished pyramid in the design. The third and last seal committee of 1782 produced a design that finally satisfied Congress. Charles Thomson, Secretary of Congress, and William Barton, artist and consultant, borrowed from earlier designs and sketched what at length became the United States Seal.
The misinterpretation of the seal as a Masonic emblem may have been first introduced a century later in 1884. Harvard Professor Eliot Norton wrote that the reverse was `practically incapable of effective treatment; it can hardly, (however artistically treated by the designer), look otherwise than as a dull emblem of a Masonic fraternity."
INTERPRETING THE SYMBOL
The "Remarks and Explanations" of Thomas and Barton are the only explanation of the symbols' meaning. Despite what anti-Masons may believe, there's no reason to doubt the interpretation accepted by the Congress.
The Pyramid signified Strength and Duration: The Eye over it & the Motto allude to the many signal interpositions of providence in favor of the American cause.
The only possibly Masonic design element among the very many on the seal is the Eye of Providence, and the interpretation of it by the designers is different from that used by Masons. The eye on the seal represents an active intervention of God in the affairs of men, while the Masonic symbol stands for a passive awareness by God of the activities of men.
The first "official" use and definition of the All-Seeing Eye as a Masonic symbol seems to have come in 1797 with The Freemasons Monitor of Thomas Smith Webb -14 years after Congress adopted the design for the Seal. Here's how Webb explains the Symbol.
"And although our thoughts, words and actions, may be hidden from the eyes of man yet that All-Seeing Eye, whom the Sun Moon and Stars obey, and under whose watchful care even comets perform their stupendous revolutions, pervades the inmost recesses of the human heart, and will reward us according to our merits."
THE EYE IN THE PYRAMID
Besides the subtly different interpretations of the symbol, it is notable that Webb did not describe the eye as being in a triangle. Jeremy Ladd Cross published The True Masonic Chart or Hieroglyphic Monitor in 1819, essentially an illustrated version of Webb's Monitor. In this first "official" depiction of Webb's symbol, Cross had illustrator Amos Doolittle depict the eye surrounded by a semicircular glory.
The All-Seeing Eye thus appears to be a rather recent addition to Masonic symbolism. It is not found in any of the Gothic Constitutions, written from about 1390 to 1730. The eye - sometimes in a triangle, sometimes in clouds, but nearly always surrounded by a glory-was a popular Masonic decorative device in the latter half of the 18th century. Its use as a design element seems to have been an artistic representation of the omniscience of God, rather than some generally accepted Masonic symbol.
Its meaning in all cases, however, was that commonly given it by society at large-a reminder of the constant presence of God. For example, in 1614 the frontispiece of "The History of the World" by Walter Raleigh showed an eye in a cloud labeled "Providentia" overlooking a globe. It has not been suggested that Raleigh's History is a Masonic document despite the use of the All-Seeing Eye.
The Eye of Providence was part of the common cultural iconography of the 17th and 18th Centuries. When placed in a triangle, the eye went beyond a general representation of God to a strongly Trinitarian statement. It was during this period that Masonic ritual and symbolism evolved; and it is not surprising that many symbols common to and understood by the general society made their way into Masonic ceremonies. Masons may have preferred the triangle because of the frequent use of the number 3 in their ceremonies: three degrees, three original grand masters, three principal officers, and so on. Eventually the All-Seeing Eye came to be used officially by Masons as a symbol for God, but this happened towards the end of the eighteenth century, after congress had adopted the seal.
A pyramid, whether incomplete or finished, however, has never been a Masonic symbol. It has no generally accepted symbolic meaning, except perhaps permanence or mystery. The combining of the Eye of Providence overlooking an unfinished pyramid is a uniquely American, not Masonic, icon, and must be interpreted as its designers intended. It has no Masonic context.
CONCLUSION
It' s hard to know what leads some to see Masonic conspiracies behind world events, but once that hypothesis is accepted, any jot and title can be misinterpreted as "evidence." The Great Seal of the United States is a classic example of such a misinterpretation, and some Masons are as guilty of the exaggeration as many anti-Masons.
The Great Seal and Masonic symbolism grew out of the same cultural milieu. While the All-Seeing Eye had been popularized in Masonic designs of the late eighteenth century, it did not achieve any sort of official recognition until Webb's 1797 Monitor. Whatever status the symbol may have had during the design of the Great Seal, it was not adopted or approved or endorsed by any Grand Lodge. The seal's Eye of Providence and the Mason's All-Seeing Eye each express Divine Omnipotence, but they are parallel uses of a shared icon, not a single symbol.
NOTES
1. Robert Hieronimus, America's Secret Destiny (Rochester, Vt.: Destiny Books. 1989), p. 48.
2. Patterson and Douglas in Hieronimus. p. 48.
3. Hieronimus, p. 81.
4. Hieronimus, p. 51.
5. Hieronimus. p. 57.
6. C. Thomas and W. Barton in Hieronimus p. 54.
7. Thomas Smith Webb, The Freemasons Monitor or Illustrations of Masonry (Salem, Mass.: Cushing and Appleton, 1821), p. 66.
8. Jeremy Ladd Cross, The True Masonic Chart or Hieroglyphic Monitor, 3rd ed. (New Haven, Conn.: By the Author, 1824), plate 22.
REFERENCES
Cross, Jeremy Ladd. The True Masonic Chart or Hieroglyphic Monitor 3rd ed. New Haven, Conn.: By the Author, 1824.
Hieronimuus, Robert. America's Secret Destiny. Rochester. VT.: Destiny Books, 1989.
Webb, Thomas-Smith. The Freemasons Monitor or Illustrations of Masonry. Salem, Mass.: Cushing and Appleton, 1821.
As your new Lodge Secretary I’ve noticed that I still have quite a few dues cards left. This can only mean one thing, some of you have not paid your year 2000 dues (and even a few of have yet to send in your 1999 dues.)
Please check your wallet, and if your dues card does not say “Year 2000” you, not your computer, but you as a member of Arcana Lodge, are not “Y2K compliant.”
To fix this “Y2K” problem, simply send your check ($61 for Year 2000, $122 for 1999 and 2000) to:
Arcana Lodge #187 AF & AM
Office of the Secretary
P.O. Box 270181
Saint Paul, MN 55127-0181
Fraternally yours,
Douglas Roswold, PM, Arcana Lodge Secretary
Arcana Lodge
920 Lowry Ave NE
Minneapolis, MN 55418
Please RSVP by 5/18/00 on sign-up sheet at the Lodge, or leave a message at 612-789-2280
Make your check of $25 or more payable to “Minnesota Masonic Cancer Center Fund, Inc.”