Pillars of the Portico

Greetings to all, Masonic or otherwise!

It’s Bro. Daniel here from Bristol in England, and this is officially my first public Masonic article. When I heard that the guys at The Sanctum Sanctorum wanted me to write an article or two for them, I was incredibly pleased. It is truly an honour to give my perspective of Masonry to my Worldwide Brethren. Therefore, to lay the foundations, I thought that it would be best to outline what my perspective is.

First of all, as a minor disclaimer at the time of writing, I am an Entered Apprentice and I currently await my Fellow Craft degree during the fourth week of April (2009). Also, I am not authorised to speak on behalf of my lodge, my provincial lodge, my grand lodge or for any other Masonic organisation. Therefore, anything I do say is my own opinion at this particular point in time and space. I’ll also be writing in proper (albeit informal) English, rather than that bizarre American-English you guys have in the USA

Now that the boring but necessary formalities are out of the way, let’s get to business and settle down to the level. My biography which follows this article will tell you a bit about me in terms of my initiation and the kind of things I do, but in this article I should say a little bit about how I came to Masonry….

I was at Further Education College (which is apparently roughly the same as Community Colleges in the USA – essentially two years vocational-based schooling, at just below University level), when I first heard anything about Freemasonry. To be honest, it was typically my friends talking about “Conspiracy Theories” and how “The Freemasons are part of the Evil Illuminati who will take over the world”, but I was very doubtful and did a bit of my own research on the inter-web… I found that the Masons were actually people to look up to. The Freemasons are group of spiritually-inclined Men who are trustworthy, charitable and are simply good people.

After college I went to University to do an undergraduate degree within the broad field of Computer Science at Oxford Brookes University. I hadn’t really specifically thought any more about Masonry, but my interest in spiritual matters did increase. I delved into Paganism and also Buddhism, and became a lot more spiritually-orientated than in my youth. I learnt Tarot cards (and of course came across the writings of A.E. Waite), and also joined the Oxford Pagan Circle where I was lucky to meet Mogg Morgan owner of Mandrake and founder of the Oxford Golden Dawn Occult Society. So as you can tell, I was being sub-consciously exposed to some of the things which have spun-off of “Fringe-Masonry” or have been somehow attached to the more arcane authors of Freemasonry.

Unfortunately some nasty things happened in my personal life. But then something nice: I met my (now) Fiancée! She is Christian, and I found myself going to Church with her. I started to move away from the Pagan and Buddhist practices and started to do some Christian practices instead. I was baptised and confirmed in late 2007 in Oxford into the Worldwide Anglican Communion (which is the Church of England, and in the USA it’s the ECUSA). I have never found myself a “typical” Christian, and have always enjoyed reading the deuterocanon/apocrypha and the Gnostic gospels, and I don’t think I’ll ever let go of that mystical/esoteric side. Anyway, I’ve digressed…

I found myself looking at the symbols on the side of Oxford University Buildings and on various Churches around Oxford. Once again, did a search on the inter-web… “huh!?, stonemasons…. those Masons again?”. So I started looking into Freemasonry again… found that it fitted very well with my beliefs about Society. I then enquired into joining the Oxford Freemasons, I was very close to applying to be initiated into Round Table Lodge of Oxford 9509 when I found out that I was accepted onto a Masters degree at the University of Bristol. So I decided to postpone my application to Freemasonry, and I moved to Bristol.

When I moved in to my flat in Bristol (May 2008), I found that I was only “up the road” from the Freemasons Hall in Bristol. So, I thought, “yes, it’s time”. I got in touch with the Provincial Grand Lodge of Bristol’s Secretary, who informed me of the province having a University Lodge… “how perfect is this”, I thought, “a lodge which is attached to my new university”. I got in contact with Saint Vincent Lodge 1404, and then found myself having meetings with the secretary and then submitting my application for membership. I was proposed in lodge, balloted for successfully, and then got the call about the initiation date.

It turns out that I would be initiated on Saint Vincent Day (22^nd January 2009), in Saint Vincent Lodge… as part of a “double first”. I was actually quite pleased to be one of two being initiated that night, it meant that I wasn’t alone in my speculation of “what was going to happen”.

Interestingly, what I found out from my enquiries of the Bristol Province is that Bristol is truly unique amongst all of the provinces in England. We have a reasonably different ritual, which comes from the pre-Union (of Antients and Moderns) era, potentially deriving primarily from Ireland but potentially also Scotland and France. This was quite different from the Freemasonry that was being talked about in London and York in the 1700s. Every Bristol Mason I have spoken to so far is very proud to be a Bristol Mason, and my perspective of Masonry in any future articles I write will be of my own opinion as a Bristol Mason… and not just as a British Mason, or a European Mason or any other kind of Mason.

So that’s it for now. My plan for the next article is to explain my experience of Masonic Education since my initiation, and my thoughts and feelings about my journey towards the light. So until then…

Ad Lucem!

Bro. Daniel Lewis

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Bro. Daniel Lewis is an English Mason, currently progressing through the Bristol Craft Degrees. Not only is he lucky to be part of the most peculiar form of Masonry in England, but he was very lucky to be initiated into St Vincent Lodge on St Vincent Day in 2009! He’s also an amateur winemaker, and St Vincent happens to be the Patron Saint of Vintners.

He is currently (2008-2009) undertaking an MSc in Machine Learning and Data Mining at the University of Bristol and his undergraduate degree was a Bsc(Hons) in Intelligent Systems and Software Engineering at Oxford Brookes University. But he also does the odd bit of technical writing and event organisation under his Vanir Systems business… in fact, he feels very pleased to have written for IBM developerWorks a couple of times.

Note that this article was written when Daniel was an Entered Apprentice, but was published on the TSS Blog once he became a Fellow Craft.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 8:50 AM and is filed under Bristol Freemasonry, British Freemasonry, Freemasonry, St. Vincent, St. Vincent Lodge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.