"UPROXX" Style Masonry

by Midnight Freemason Contributor

WB. Robert H. Johnson

In the tradition of social media articles that appear in our news feeds, those sensational pieces with tag lines like “10 things you didn't know George Lucas said about Harrison Ford”, send our fingers racing to tap the story and read something mind blowing. I thought it was time to give the Midnight Freemasons one of these articles. Below you'll find three things that will blow your mind about Freemasonry and the legends attached to the craft. And for you scholars out there, I’ll even give you references ;) Get ready…

1. According to the Talmud and the sources listed below, upon the completion of the temple, King Solomon ordered all the craftsman killed so they would not be able to build another temple to any false God or build anything else in their lives with more splendor than what they had just completed. Hiram was not in fact killed, but called to Heaven, like Enoch. 

Reference : Jewish Encyclopedia - Art  - Freemasonry; New Age Magazine Vol 22-23 : Supreme Council, 33; Ancient and Accepted Scottish rite of Freemasonry, Southern jurisdiction, U.S. A., 1915

2. The North in the lodge is a place of darkness, but not because of the light being unable to reach it. During the early inspection of the temple, Hiram is inspecting the North Gate construction, he is in a state of carelessness due to some personal matters. In his folly, he dislodges a stone and the stone falls. The stone strikes a worker named Cavelum who is kin to King Solomon. Cavelum is killed. Hiram, fraught with grief orders the North Gate sealed up and to be a place of mourning and grief. Now ask yourself these two questions; 1. Is a place of grief and sadness also a place of "darkness"? And 2, If Hiram had not walled up the North Gate, would he have survived his encounter? Does this mean that in a round about way, Hiram was his own assassin due to his carelessness?

References : Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, Albert G. Mackey,

 Rev. Hawkins and Hughan

3. The Queen of Sheba and Hiram Abiff's forbidden love. According to some lore, Hiram Abiff is killed not by ruffians, but by hired assassins hired by none other than King Solomon. In this story and there a few different versions. When The Queen of Sheba comes to visit Solomon for whatever reason, take your pick, she demands to meet the architect of the temple. When she finally meets Hiram Abiff, they fall in love at sight and King Solomon can see this is very apparent. In order to “fix the situation", King Solomon hires three Fellowcrafts to "take care" of Hiram Abiff. One night while Hiram and the Queen are trying to steal away, he is attacked. He throws his jewel into a pit and tries to escape but not before meeting his untimely end.

References : Solomon and Sheba. Faye Levine. Richard Marek Publishers, New York, 1980; Colliers Encyclopedia; Encyclopedia Americana; Great People of the Bible and How They Lived. Reader’s Digest Assoc., Inc. Pleasantville, NY, 1979; Deceptions and Myths of the Bible; International standard Bible Encyclopedia; The Geography of the Bible. Denis Ably. Harper and Rowe, New York 1974; King Solomon. Fredric Thinne. East and West Library, New York, 1947; The Secret Societies of All Ages and Countries. Charles William Heckthorn; The First Book of Kings. J. Robinson. Cambridge at the University Press 1972 ; Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version; The story of the Queen of Sheba is recorded in the Old Testament in I Kings 10:1-13; a similar version also appears in II Chronicles 9:1-12. Other references to the Queen of Sheba are: Psalms lxxii, 15, and in the New Testament, Matthew 12:42 and Luke 11:31; The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelek: the Kebra Nagast. Budge, Sir Ernest A. Wallis, translator. Oxford University Press, London, 1932; Solomon and Solomonic Literature. Conway, Moncure Daniel. Haskell House, NY, 1973, pp.59-65 ; All of the Women of the Bible. Dean, Edith. Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1955; The Lore of the Old Testament. Gaer, Joseph. Little-Brown, Boston, 1951, pp. 242-44; Legends of the Bible. Ginzberg, Louis. Simon and Schuster, NY, 1956, pp. 560-64

All info is pulled from the source Old Legends of Hiram Abiff - A short Talk Bulletin and is compiled here for the reader. 

~RHJ

Bro. Robert Johnson, 32° is the Managing Editor of the Midnight Freemasons blog. He is a Freemason out of the First North-East District of Illinois. He is the Master of Waukegan Lodge No. 78 and Education officer for the 1st N.E. District of Illinois. He is also a member of the York Rite bodies Royal Arch, Cryptic Council, Knights Templar, AMD, The Illinois Lodge of Research and a member of the Scottish Rite Valley of Chicago as well as a charter member of the Society of King Solomon, a charity organization run by the Grand Lodge of Illinois. Brother Johnson currently produces and hosts weekly Podcasts (internet radio programs) Whence Came You? & Masonic Radio Theatre which focus on topics relating to Freemasonry. In addition, he produces video shorts focusing on driving interest in the Fraternity and writes original Masonic papers from time to time. He is also a cohost of The Masonic Roundtable, a Masonic talk show. He is a husband and father of three. He works full time in the safety industry and is also a photographer on the side as well as an avid home brewer. He is currently working on a book of Masonic essays.

The Three Secrets Your Grand Master Doesn’t WANT YOU To Know

by Midnight Freemason Contributor

WB Adam Thayer

How about that headline? Pretty exciting, wasn’t it? Definitely made you want to click right through, and see what those secrets might be… Of course, if you’ve been on the internet for any length of time, you recognize this as what is being called “clickbait”. It’s a headline specifically designed to get your attention and get you to view the page, so that the owner can get some of that sweet advertising revenue from your views.

Why does it work? Well, there are two main aspects in play here. First, they are promising you something exciting and interesting, and perhaps even secret. Second, the human brain is oddly wired to find enjoyment in list-formats, because it tells them roughly what to expect, and approximately how long the experience will last. It’s crazy, and psychologists are still trying to figure out exactly why it works from an evolutionary standpoint. For marketers, it doesn’t matter why it works, they just know that it does.

For most of our existence, Freemasonry has avoided the “clickbait” trap of marketing. Instead of making attractive offers to induce membership, we’ve relied on a quiet word-of-mouth campaign to let the public know what we’re about, and gathered new members who came of their own free will. If you’ll indulge me (and if not, why are you still reading this?), I’d like to try something a little different:

Become a Freemason and learn the FIVE SECRET WORDS that can CHANGE the WORLD.

If we marketed Freemasonry like that, how many new men would we have pounding down our doors? Can you picture billboards and radio ads blasting that message, reaching parts of the public that we’ve never reached before?

What quality of men would we get? Would we get the men we want, who are going to contribute to the betterment of the fraternity? Or would we get the curiosity seekers? In short, would we get the best of the best, or the worst of the worst?

Clickbait marketing works, pure and simple, but is it a good fit for Masonry? I once wrote about recruitment in terms of a shotgun and a sniper rifle, and clickbait marketing is the purest example of the shotgun approach. Do we try to attract everyone, in the hopes that we get some good diamonds among the coal? Or do we continue to be selective in who we let in, at the risk of overlooking good men and potentially going extinct due to lack of interest?

The question I keep coming back to is: Don’t we already do this with our Rites? I can’t speak for how your experience has been, but I joined both the Scottish and York Rites on the promise that I would gain a further understanding of the symbolism in our craft, in ways that I could use in my own life to improve myself. Instead, I found ritual that was performed out of a book, by men who didn’t understand what they were trying to teach, and business meetings that were more stuffy and stilted than the Blue Lodge meetings that everyone complains about. Of course, not all areas face the same issues that my region does, so if you’re in a Rite where you’re getting good education, AWESOME! I hope you can help to spread that to other regions that aren’t doing it!

To me, it illustrates the true downside of clickbait marketing: you can attract viewers (or in our case, members) with it, but you won’t necessarily keep them. Even if you have great substance to back it up, you’re going to lose a majority of what you’ve gained; anything easily gained is also easily lost.

Unfortunately, I’m seeing the trend of clickbait headlines creeping into our education as well. On some other Masonic sites out there, I’m starting to notice more and more headlines that read like they’re an article from BuzzFeed or Cracked: “Twelve Secrets Of Freemasonry That You Didn’t Know”, “Four Surprising Men Who Were Masons”, and so on. They’re sacrificing content for clicks, and it shows; it is no surprise to anybody that George Washington was a Freemason, we all are aware of that, and you can’t claim to be shocked to tell us!

(As a side note here, I’m specifically NOT naming those sites, because I still have a lot of respect for them. To the brothers who run them and are doing this: please stop, it’s degrading to all of us.)

I’ve written myself into the worst place for an author to find himself: I have provided the problem, but I don’t have the solution! As a writer, I hate not being able to neatly wrap everything up in a bow for you, but as a Freemason I’m actually pretty happy about it. Freemasonry, regardless of what people tell you, doesn’t always provide the answers, but instead gives you the tools to start finding them yourself.

Now, if you want to find out what the actual answers are, tune in next week when we present “Adam Thayer Provides The Seven Answers That YOUR GRAND LODGE Doesn’t Want You To Read!!!”

~AT

Bro. Adam Thayer is the Junior Warden of Lancaster Lodge No 54 in Lincoln (NE) and the Worshipful Master of Oliver Lodge No. 38 in Seward (NE). He’s an active member of the Scottish Rite, and Knight Master of the Lincoln Valley Knights of Saint Andrew. Adam serves on the Education Committee of the Grand Lodge of Nebraska. You can contact him at adam.thayer@gmail.com