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Well, It is done. I am now a Sir Knight. It was one of the most memorable degrees ever. The work was impeccable. I can’t wait to get involved with this work and helping out. I think the Order of the Temple and the Royal Arch degrees bring a deep meaning for personal development. Along with the Blue Degree I think the work is one of the most importance. The degree work and lectures are beautiful in meaning and tend to make you stop time and take a snapshot of your life and make you think in retrospect.

I often think what other knights could of went through back in 11oo’s. I am proud to be a part of the York Rite and look forward to doing more work with them. I may later do other appendant bodies but now I have my plate full with the Blue Lodge and the Templar Conclaves,Asylums.

Fraternally,
Shane Hale

Seems more and more clandestine masonic lodges are popping up and even applying for their own State license plate. It seems now days to try a brother at the door is not acceptable the true and only way is to check dues card.

I always wondered why some people would want to go against the grain and start their own branch of masonry. And then I thought to myself, With the economy being so out of whack all over the world it has to be only one reason and that reason is money..

So don’t get offended if you ever travel to a AFM lodge in South Carolina and have your dues card checked it is for the sanctity and safety to keep the ancient work of the craft in tact.

Ok, as I prepare for the last part of the York Rite I was doing some more reading on the Commandery. I noticed that the York Rite in our area being the in Southern United States does not really have a appealing membership or participation rate as the Shriners or Scottish Rite appendant bodies. Well I am looking forward to this journey for the Order of Commandery continues and finalizes.

I feel the York Rite so far up to the Cryptic Council has been a awesome experience in my quest to seek further light in masonry and in my opinion even though one of the darker appendant bodies, To me seems to be the most exciting.

Here are some pieces of information I found on the Internet about the Order of the Commandery.

The Commandery orders represent a new direction of Masonic thought and experience, in that they no longer refer to Ancient Craft Masonry, but to ideals and practices of chivalry and Christianity.

The first Commandery order, the Illustrious Order of the Red Cross, presents the story of the Jewish Prince, Zerubbabel, and his efforts to secure permission of the Persian King Darius to rebuild the second temple at Jerusalem. The next order, Knight of Malta, is a complete departure from Masonry based on the Old Testament and is the first Christian order. Here, the candidate represents a knightly warrior of the Crusades prior to his departure for the Holy Land. The last order is that of Knight Templar, the crowning glory of the York Rite system. Again, in this totally Christian order, the candidate represents a knightly postulant who desires to unite with a Commandery of Knights Templar during the era of the Crusades.

After several trials to test his faith, courage, and humility, he is rewarded by achieving his desire.

Interesting stuff wish me luck!

Fraternally,
Shane Hale

Well, I have made it to select master and it was a long journey of a day very interesting degree work. I personally was very fond of the Mark Master degree but all was very insightful and after it was over it seemed everyone who went through were left scratching their heads and contemplating on the events they saw. I am still running the work through my head over and over again. There are alot of messages in each degree alot of the Royal Arch and Cryptic council were mixed up not revealing any of the specifics it reminded me of a Star Wars saga from Star Wars to Attack of the clones in that order or mis order. I think masonry should make these degree mandatory or at least the Mark Master. Alot of good deep messages in this degree. I will agree with Burning Taper I think there is much more in the degree work and I think I kind of caught some of the messages that were trying to be relayed. Next up Order of Red Cross and Malta to complete the commandarie and York Rite.

Okay, I know some of you may not drink and this is not really Masonic oriented but I am trying to make some light of the rough waters our economy has been in.

Please note sound advice below.
If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Delta Airlines one year ago, you will have $49.00 today.
If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in AIG one year ago, you will have $33.00 today.

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Lehman Brothers one year ago, you will have $0.00 today.

But, if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the aluminum cans for recycling refund, you will have received a $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment plan is to drink heavily & recycle. It is called the 401-Keg.

**********
A recent study found that the average American walks about 900 miles a year.Another study found that Americans drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol a year.That means that, on average, Americans get about 41 miles to the gallon!

Makes you proud to be an American!

I found this article very interesting and listed the source website very intriguing to the templar history and North America

One legend has it that the Jolly Roger obtained its appellation from the French name for the red flag, the “Jolie Rouge.” And so it may be, for the flag was first used by a French order of militant monks known as the “Poor Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon” – commonly known as the Knights Templar.

The Templars, were pious men. They gave up all their worldly possessions when they entered the Order, only carrying money on special occasions when they traveled alone, turning over whatever money that remained upon reaching their destination. They were ferocious warriors; pitching themselves into the midst of their enemies, astride charging warhorses, against incredible odds. Contemporaries had this to say of Templars:

The Templars are most excellent soldiers. They wear white mantles with a red cross, and when they go to war a standard of two colors called balzaus is borne before them. They go in silence. Their first attack is the most terrible. In going, they are the first. In returning, the last. They await the orders of their Master. When they think fit to make war and the trumpet has sounded, they sing in chorus the Psalm of David, “Not unto us, O Lord” kneeling on the blood and necks of the enemy, unless they have forced the troops of the enemy to retire altogether, or utterly broken them to pieces. Should any of them for any reason turn his back to the enemy, or come forth alive [from a defeat], or bear arms against the Christians, he is severely punished; the white mantle with the red cross, which is the sign of his knighthood, is taken away with ignominy, he is cast from the society of brethren, and eats his food on the floor without a napkin for the space of one year. If the dogs molest him, he does not dare to drive them away. But at the end of the year, if the Master and brethren think his penance to have been sufficient, they restore him the belt of his former knighthood. These Templars live under a strict religious rule, obeying humbly, having no private property, eating sparingly, dressing meanly, and dwelling in tents.1

“The warriors are gentler than lambs and fiercer than lions, wedding the mildness of the monk with the valor of the knight, so that it is difficult to decide which to call them: men to adorn the Temple of Solomon with weapons instead of gems, with shields instead of crowns of gold, with saddles and bridles instead of candelabra: eager for victory — not fame; for battle not for pomp; who abhor wasteful speech, unnecessary action, unmeasured laughter, gossip and chatter, as they despise all vain things: who, in spite of their being many, live in one house according to one rule, with one soul and one heart.” — St. Bernard of Clairvaux

“in turn lions of war and lambs at the hearth; rough knights on the battlefield, pious monks in the chapel; formidable to the enemies of Christ, gentleness itself towards His friends.” -Jacques de Vitry
Being men of principle; their rules of conduct were strict. They were willing to die for their beliefs, and so were feared on the battlefield and respected in life. Such was their reputation, that in battle, there were instances where the enemy would turn and run at the very sight of Templars entering the field. Their Rule of Order stated that breaking rank was worthy of losing ones habit. They neither asked nor gave quarter; the were expected to fight until death stayed their sword arm. Retreat from an enemy would not be countenanced unless the odds were greater than three to one against them and they were forbidden to ransom themselves if captured. They fought like men possessed, either prevailing in their cause, or suffering death under the banner of Gol’gotha – the place of the skull – where their Christ died.
Templars were not to succumb to the temptation of thinking that they killed in a spirit of hate and fury, nor that they seized booty in a spirit of greed. For the Templars did not hate men, but men’s wrongdoing.

They were dedicated to the protection of travelers and pilgrims of all religions, though they themselves were Christians, in fact many Templars were of Palestinian birth, spoke perfect Arabic, and were familiar with every religious sect, cult, and magical doctrine, including that of the Islamic Assassins. The Grand Master Philip of Nablus (1167 A.D.) was a Syrian.2 They were great statesmen, politically adept economic traders, and they were allied with the great sailor-fraternity that had created a worldwide trading empire in Phoenician times. They became immensely powerful – had the largest fleet and the most successful banking system in Europe. But they could not sustain their grip on the Holy Land. Their losses3 were too great, and they were eventually driven off the Levant by Saladin, their Moslem adversary, in 1291. They continued to fight for their cause in the only manner they could – on the high seas.

The best known Templar pirate ship was the Falcon, “the greatest that had been built at that time.”4 She was in the harbor when the fortress of Acre fell “and rescued many ‘ladies and damsels and great treasure and many important people’4 by evacuating them to ‘Atlit.”
After the orderly navel evacuation of ‘Atlit, the Templars retreated to their Mediterranean island bases on Cyprus, Rhodes and Sicily. Until their dissolution, they, together with the Order of St. John, continued as the foremost maritime powers in the Mediterranean, continuing to effectively wage war on Moslem shipping.

The Templars were still very powerful but in the eyes of European monarchs and the Church, the Templars raison d’tre had ceased with the loss of the Holy Lands. Jealousy and covetousness reigned. Phillip IV, who was deeply in dept to the Order, had seen their treasures stored in Paris, and designed to make it his own.

On Friday morning October 13th 1307 – and the reason for which Friday the 13th has become known as an unlucky day – King Phillip IV together with Avignonese Pope Clement V, ruthlessly suppressed the Order throughout Europe, with false accusations, arrests, torture and executions. (Timeline) Though they were offered communted sentences and comfortable lives if they would renounce their Order and plead guilty to the charges, for some mysterious reason, they preferred to remain true to their principles5 and received their punishment.

A large number of Templars escaped that day to an uncertain future, and found refuge abroad. On the eve of the arrests, the entire Templar fleet mysteriously vanished from the port of La Rochelle carrying with it a vast fortune, the fate of which remains a mystery down to this day.

Just as a terrorist to one is a freedom fighter to another, so it was with the Templars and their fleet. Wanted by the Pope and all the crowns of Europe, they came to be viewed, by the “comfortable folks” on the mainland, as pirates.

After being driven out of the Holy Land as well as Europe, but still formidable at sea, the refugee Templars found sanctuary in Scotland, where Templar graves bear witness to them having lived and died there in the fourteenth century. King Robert the Bruce had no interest in persecuting the Order, in spite of a papal bull ordering him to do precisely that. To the contrary, he took advantage of their fugitive status, offering them asylum in return for their help in his war for independence against King Edward II of England. Templars have been suggested as the source of mounted soldiers who assisted Robert the Bruce’s Scots Guard at the battle of Bannockburn, as the Scots did not have a mounted force.
As the Scots Guard continued through the years, two of the prominent families involved in its history were the Sinclairs and the Stuarts. Both families trace their lineage back to members of the Knights Templar, as well as to prominent figures of the New Testament. Hugues de Payns the first Grand Master of the Templars was married to a Sinclair.
There is also evidence that the Templar fleet traveled to North America in 1398 (almost 100 years before Columbus) with the Sinclairs, and settled there at least temporarily. Connections are made between the tower ruins along the eastern coast of the United States, objects discovered in the Oak Island “Money Pit”, and the Templar Order.
The Sinclairs (or Saint-Clairs) castle near Edinburgh, was situated next to Rosslyn chapel, which was constructed by the Sinclairs according to the floorplan of Solomon’s original temple. Engraved in the masonry around the chapel are maize and aloe plants, which grew only in North America.
Throughout Scotland, as well as within Rosslyn Chapel, there are carvings and tombstones dating back to the 15th, 16th, and 17th century using combinations of Templar imagery (skull and crossbones, Templar swords, Templar crosses) and Masonic symbols (compass and square).
The Stuart royal house became one of Freemasonry’s biggest supporters during their reign of Scotland and England.
Some also suggest that the rituals used in modern Freemasonry have their origins in the ancient texts discovered by the Templars in the ruins of Solomon’s Temple while excavating to build their stables. Recent archaeological digs in the area have supported this theory by finding serveral Templar artifacts buried beneath the temple. In the 1950′s, a scroll made entirely of copper was discovered in the caves near Qumran. When translated with the other “Dead Sea Scrolls“, this “Copper Scroll”, as it has become known, was identified as a treasure map listing various precious metals, religious artifacts, and writings supposedly buried beneath the temple in Jerusalem.
By the 17th and 18th centuries, the skull and crossbones was a symbol with a powerful reputation but identified with no official organization. The Templars had long since gone underground and evolved into other organizations. The symbol was usurped and came to be associated with the pirates of which we are more familiar. They changed the flag to suit their needs replacing the crossbones with swords, adding hourglasses or other symbols.
Anonymous Pilgrim V.2, tr. A. Stewart, Anonymous Pilgrims, I-VII (11th and 12th centuries), Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society 6, London, 1894 p 29-30.
A History of Secret Societies, Arkon Daraul, 1962, Citadel Press, NY
At Harim in 1164 they had sixty dead from a contingent of sixty-seven; in the space of a little over two months in 1187 they lost 290 knights at the Springs of Cresson and at Hattin; in 1237, while besieging Darbsak, the Templars of Baghras were heavily defeated by Aleppan troops, leaving them with only twenty survivors from a force of 120 knights; at La Forbie, in October 1244, they emerged with only thirty-three knights from the 300 they had contributed to the army; less than six years later, at Mansurah, the Grand Master told Joinville that 280 of his knights had been killed. It is natural to see such losses in human terms, but at the same time it should not be forgotten that each of these knights represented a large financial investment. In 1267 the cost of maintaining a knight for the defence of Acre for a year was ninety livres tournois. As a good estimate of the average annual income of the French monarcy at the time of Louis IX’s first crusade is approximately 250,000 livres tournois, this means that even if each knight killed at La Forbie represents only a year’s investment of Templar resources, the total loss was still little short of a ninth of the annual Capetian income. – Barber, Malcolm, “The New Knighthood”, p232
Ramon Muntaner, Cronica Catalana, p. 368-9, also the Chronicle of Muntaner tr Goodenough p466-9.
Principle – guiding sense of the requirements and obligations of right conduct: a man of principle.

Paraphrasing the crusade historian William of Tyre, “Accepting that ‘mistakes tend to creep into lengthy communications’ [Prov 10:19], we invite our reader to correct errors in the spirit of kindness.” – CC LXIII, p 101.

Source:http://www.skullandcrossbones.org

I SEE YOU’VE TRAVELED SOME

- Author unknown