Arcana Lodge #187
Ancient Free & Accepted Masons

Summer is here! I think? Well we started a set of summer degrees. By the time you read this our new brother Robert Johnson will be thru the Fellow Craft degree. The Master Mason Degree for brother Johnson is scheduled for Saturday, July 22^nd, 2000 with the first section starting at 4:30 PM. We will break for dinner about 6:00 PM and continue with the second section at 7:00. Come on down to Lodge for the degree and dinner and to welcome our newest brother Master Mason. We have also scheduled a set of Fall Degrees, so get those petitions in.

Time is going by fast, but I would like to finish some more projects at the lodge. I would like to clean up the third floor and basement. If all the organizations would come out and put a few hours in on Saturday, August 19^th we all could see what we could send to the trash. We all have collected a lot of paraphernalia over the years from the various groups, many of which have closed or consolidated. So please all show up and let’s see what we can do. If you have a ship-vac, or broom and shovel bring them along too.

I would like to thank a brother Master Mason who has taken a lot of his time to help keep this fraternity alive. All of his events pay off, and he keeps a lot of you informed of what is going on in the Lodge. He lets you know some bad jokes and makes you laugh. From what I’m told he makes a pretty good cup of coffee too (something I would not know because I gave up drinking coffee eight years ago.) So, I want to thank you holding this informal meeting on every-other Wednesday at 9:30 AM on the second floor. Thank you bother Henry Maday for all the fine work you do. Keep up the good work!

Please remember we are meeting throughout the summer on the second and forth Monday’s of the month, with a dinner served an hour before the meeting on the forth Monday. Hope to see you at Lodge.

Fraternally yours,
Dave Sibben, Master

Here we are at the midpoint of Y6K! Yes, that’s right, Y6K, the year AL 6000. But wait, everyone knows that the year is 2000, or Y2K, so what are the Masons talking about with this Y6K stuff, and what does that ‘AL’ in front of the year stand for? If the Masons call this year Y6K instead of Y2K, are there other groups of people that think this year is something different?

The primary reason for different calendar systems is that throughout history people have referenced their calendar to mark an era that’s important to their culture and/or religion. Another reason for different systems is because different methods for tracking the date and year were being used. The calendar systems of pre-industrial societies were often based on the repetitive cycles found in nature such as the phases of the moon, the solstices, and the movement of the stars. Other changes came about as we gained knowledge, and thus improved our accuracy of keeping time.

Our present system of timekeeping, the Gregorian calendar, provides us with the year that has a fixed number of days with a well-defined system for adding a single day on leap years. This present system is so accurate that it will take thousands of years before it falls out of sync with our sun’s solar year by so much as a single day. Previous systems had to add extra days to months or even add whole months to the year in an attempt to keep sync with the sun. Even the Julian system, which was imitated by Julius Cesar, was inaccurate to the point that after a few centuries it fell out of sync with the solar year by 10 days. Because of this error, in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII decreed that the day after October 4^th would be October 15^th to correct for this discrepancy (and if your community did not receive notice of this order in a timely fashion you were to drop 10 days from the month of October in 1853, or which ever year you received his decree). The Pope then corrected the problem with the Julian system, in which a year was equal to 365.25 days so that every forth year was a leap year, by determining that century years would not be leap years unless they were devisable by 400. Therefore, 1600 and 2000 were leap years, 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not leap years. His decree for reform was marked by renaming the calendar system in his honor.

The Gregorian calendar system really only specifies the chronology or how many days are in a year so that we keep in sync with the Earths rotation about the sun. It’s the designation of ‘Al’ and ‘AD’ in the calendar system that identifies the date the system references as being its first year. Year 1 of the ‘AD’ calendar system that’s in common use today is the year Christ was born. AD is an abbreviation for ‘Anno Domini’, which is Latin for ‘in the year of our Lord’. AD which is sometimes referred to as the Christian era is now used almost exclusively throughout the Western world for civil chronology, was first used in 525 by the Christian monk Dionysius Exiguus, who fixed the birth of Christ in the year of Rome 753. It is generally agreed that this date should have been fixed some years earlier (many believe 4 BC is more accurate.) Scriptural chronology is extremely uncertain because scriptural writers used various local chronologies at different times, and contemporaneous writers used different systems.

Traditionally the Masonic calendar was dated from the creation of the universe, Anno Mundi, or AM as the Irish Bishop James Ussher computed it in the Seventeenth century to be 4004 BC, before Christ. The AM system was replaced in Masonic documents by the AL system which has it’s first year at 4000 BC. ‘AL’ is an abbreviation for Anno Lucis, which is Latin for ‘in the year of light’.

Today every country on the face of the Earth, even those who resent the use of the Birth of Christ as the systems chronological benchmark, concede to the practicality of using one common, absolute system for precisely keeping track of time and dates for civil purposes. Without this agreement, international flights, schedules and communications would be totally unmanageable.

For example, the Jewish community has adopted the AD system for civil purposes, but refers to it as CE or Common Era. They also refer to BC as BCE for Before Common Era. The Jewish calendar is the official calendar of the state of Israel and is used as a religious calendar by Jewish people throughout the world. It has the starting point of Hebrew chronology as the year 3761 BC (BCE) as the date for creation of the world as described in the Old Testament. Other systems in use for special purposes are Anno Inventionis or the “Year of Discovery,” or the building of the 2^nd temple, AD + 530. Anno Benefacio is the “Year of Blessing” of Abraham by Melchizedek, AD + 1913. AI and AB are both used by Royal Arch – Capitular Masons. Royal & Secret Masters – Cryptic Masons use Anno Depositionis, the “Year of Deposit” or the completion of Solomon’s Temple, AD + 1000. The Knights Templar – Chivalric use Anno Ordinis, the “Year of Order Foundation,” AD –1118. Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite use Anno Mundi as computed by the Jewish Calendar, AD + 3760 (with an extra year added after September.)

This year AL Y6K, AD Y2K, is also the Year of the Metal Dragon, Year 58 of the Atomic Era, Year 225 of American Independence, the 4^th year of the 695^th Olympiad, Ethiopian Year 1992, Buddhist Year 2543, the 49^th year of H.M. Elizabeth II - Queen of Canada, Kouki 2660 (Japan), Norad Daycode 00195, and for you Star Trek fans this entry was made into the editors log at Stardate -305110.51.