Well I have started to try and remember alot that went on in the 1st degree that night. After visiting several blogs some people said the 1st degree and lectures are out on the internet. I went to a couple and started to memorize most the best that I can and suprisingly I remembered alot. I also remembered enough to know that my obligation and alot of my lecture had some differences from what I was reading.
This brings me to another point it seems like there are differences from state to state. I have one brother from Washington State who moved to South Carolina he was stating some points of his 1st degree that was very different than what I experienced. I also has another guy who saw a square and compass calendar on my desk who was from South Florida who said he ran through all his degrees in a day due to masonry was in trouble in FLA. I am like ??? I dont agree with that form of masonry with the short cuts and cutting corners. I am glad South Carolina is old school. You don't get a book or paper you do need a coach one on one who will help you remember everything. This seems to be the best way. I respect every brother and their rituals and lectures. I guess I am seeing tons of differences in masonry that I guess amazes me.
Well on that note I am hoping to shoot for 2nd degree in January. I feel if I can get a couple of Lectures behind me I will be ready to take it on. I am learning word for word sentence for sentence the meaning of everything I went through that night and trying to get a full grasp and not just memorize it. One good saying I read on a masonicpride forum. "YOU CANNOT GET SQUARE, IF YOU CUT CORNERS". That says it all right there. Let the work begin!
Freemason Store
Work
Past to Entered Apprentice
Well Last night was a extremely awesome event! I can honestly say it will be something that I will always remember! We sat down to eat first which the meal was very well organized and put together. I was so nervous I could not eat. Me and 3 others were going through the degree together. After being passed to the 1st degree all I can say is it is really amazing how all the brothers who participate take time out of their lives to dedicate to degree work.
All of my brothers were extremely nice and helpful! 2 of my brothers Jim and Roger who signed my petition were there for support which help me feel at ease a little. One thing since I am not a very verbal person I really think this will help out in my public speaking skills as well becoming a better man all together. There are alot of morals and ideals that are to be learned with the obligation. Overall last night was a awesome event and I proud to say I am a Ancient Freemason Duly and truly accepted!
Ride the Goat
Looks like tomorrow night will be the night. One of the guys that was a part of my investigative committee called said the vote went well and that the degree work will start tomorrow. He was pretty friendly and down to earth. He stated try to be there 20 minutes early and there will be some degree work then a meal. I look forward to doing this way it sounded he said he would be reading through some masonic handbook. I am thinking the first degree will be tomorrow. Any which way I am ready and looking forward to doing this. I am excited on becoming a Freemason and even my wife is happy for me. So the journey begins!!
Studying my history and Knight Templars
While studying my Hale history I found out the Hales who come from Eastern Tennessee which my father was born and raised in Johnson City. It seems I have traced my history to a group called Melungeons.
After talking with my dad I realized. There was confusion between our Irish/Scottish and Cherokee heritage and it seems that the Melungeons have cleared this up.
How am I connected to the Melungeons?
http://www.melungeons.com/articles/melungeondnaproject.htm#Hale
Could the Melungeons be connected to the renegade Templar group that left La Rochelle? Who knows but the reading was very interesting.
Knight Templars are really amazing read and Ive been reading everything from LaRochelle to Sinclair and Roslyn Chapel. Defintilely some masonic symbolism and the apprentice pillar.
I also found out along the way that I was connected to Nathan Hale who was the first spy who dies for our country and was said to have founded the CIA.
The reading is good while I wait for a answer from the investigative committee.
The Mysterious Melungeons
A distinct ethnic group known as the Melungeons lived in sizable communities primarily on the upper ridges of the eastern Tennessee counties, including Hancock, Hawkins, and Rhea, in Ashe, Yancey, Surry, and Alleghany Counties in Western North Carolina, and in what are now Wise, Scott, Lee, and Dickenson Counties in southwestern Virginia.
In the 1750's, the first great waves of English and Scottish-Irish settlers entered the area, they found the best land already occupied by the Melungeons, who spoke a broken form of Elizabethan (i.e., 16th century) English and carrying English surnames as well. However, it is notable that English-speaking Indians did not understand much of their language. The non-fluent English spoken was such as could have been acquired through contact with such pioneering English settlements as that at Roanoke Island. These mysterious, apparent European people were largely blue eyed, dark-skinned, reddish-brown complexion people supposed to be of Moorish descent, who were neither Indian nor Negro, but had fine European features. The Melungeons claimed Portuguese ("Portyghee") or sometimes Spanish or Turkish. The Melungeons staunchly denied either an English or Indian heritage.
Columbus may have been the first to encounter Melungeons during his fourth voyage to the "New World." On July 31, 1502, he recorded having encountered a galley-type ship larger than his own, which was similar to galleys present in the Mediterranean at the same and earlier time periods. His son, Ferdinand, recorded that the ship was manned by forty men and women, and carried a cargo of tools, metal implements, and forges. The people wore cotton "mantelets," sleeveless shirts with an intricate design on them. In 1504, also during the fourth voyage, Columbus made a further extraordinary find. In a native settlement, he came across an iron pot and the stern post of a European ship, too heavy and distant to be that of the wrecked Santa Maria. All who saw it thought it could only have come from the Canaries, proof that at least one ship had made it across the Atlantic before Columbus.
Early English explorers had encountered the Melungeons in the Carolinas as early as the mid-1600's. One Melungeon mining community was reported in the southern Alleghenies in 1654. English explorer James Needham related how on a journey into the Tennessee Valley in 1673 he and his party encountered:
"A white people which have long beards and whiskers and weares clothing, and on some of ye other rivers lives a hairy people. Not many yeares since he Tomahittans sent twenty men laden with beavor to ye white people: they killed tenn of them and put ye other tenn in irons, two of which tenn escaped and one of them came with one of my men to my plantation. As ye will understand after a small time of rest one of my men returns with his horse, ye Appomatock Indian and twelve Tomahittans, eight men and foure women. One of these eight is hee which hath been a prisoner of ye white people .. ye prisoner relates that ye white people have a bell which is six foot over which they ring morning and evening and att that time a great number of people congregate together and talkes he knowes not what." (Samuel C. Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country (Johnson City TN: The Watauga Press, 1928), 28-29.
Reportedly there was also a tradition that the congregation of Melungeon people would also bow in the direction of the bell. These scant early observations of the Melungeons provide important clues to their origin. These facts suggest a Roman Catholic-Latin origin.
The leading theory regarding the genesis of the Melungeon people, who had established widespread, well organized settlements before recognized Western European colonization of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, is that they are descendants of Mediterranean seamen who reached the Americas long before Columbus.
Some proponents of this theory claim that the Mediterranean seamen were Carthaginian or Phoenicians who may have discovered the New World some 2,000 years before the birth of Christ. The problem with this theory is that is highly unlikely that the surviving population could have maintained - for no less than 3,500 years - a separate existence, both culturally and genetically from the Native Americans. In that period of time, the Carthaginians would most likely have been either absorbed totally into, or destroyed by, the already sizable Native American tribes. It would also not explain their persistent claim to be "Portyghee," in addition to "Moors" and "Turks."
However, it would be possible for Mediterranean maritime colonists to fend off absorption for a period as short as 300 years, especially if those "Phoenician" Marines were actually part of the renegade Knights Templar fleet that had escaped from La Rochelle in 1307. The Knights Templar were particularly well equipped to organize and defend successful farming settlements in the New World, such as those that had surrounded their confiscated Preceptories in Europe. The reported religious customs of first Melungeons discovered by Europeans in the 1600's squares with their having come from a Roman-Catholic heritage, such as that of the Templar monks. Likewise the reported custom of Melungeon men having had long beards points in the direction of Templar descent. The discovery of second-century Hebrew Bar Kokhba coins around a known Melungeon settlement in Kentucky similarly supports the theory that Knights Templar, not Carthaginian or Phoenicians seamen, were the direct ancestors of the Melungeon people. Finally, the Melungeon's assertion that they were "Portyghee," "Moors," and "Turks" is striking evidence in support of a Templar identity. Many Templars were, in fact, in the later years of the Order of Eastern descent. Moreover, an assertion of Portuguese descent would be regarded as safer than admitting Templar origins, for in Portugal the Knights Templar had been reorganized as the Knights of Christ and not subjected to the same fate as their brethren in France.
Modern genetic studies have shown an undeniable link between the Melungeon people and the Mediterranean. A 1990 reanalysis of blood samples taken in 1969 from 177 Melungeon descendants concluded that the "results are consistent with the Melungeon tradition that they are Portuguese." (James L. Guthrie, "Melungeons: Comparisons of Gene Distribution to Those of Worldwide Populations," Tennessee Anthropologist 15/1 (Spring 1990). Among those populations showing no significant differences from the Melungeons were population groups in the Galician area of Spain and Portugal, the Canary Islands, Italy, North Africa, Malta, Turkey, and Cyprus. It is a telling coincidence that the majority of these locals were Knights Templar strongholds.
The great waves of English and Scotch-Irish settlers in the 1750's, ushered in a new era of discrimination against the Melungeons. Newly arriving immigrants, finding that the Melungeons were for the most part already occupying vast areas of the best farm land set about to usurp the Melungeons' land for themselves. At first the new immigrants used sheer intimidation and occasional violence. Soon they adopted more effective methods. The racial classification law was soon changed in Tennessee and North Carolina to include in the Censuses of 1790's a new classification "free persons of color" in addition to the four existing categories (White, Indian, Negro, or Mulatto) and used it to strip the Melungeons of the lands, their right to be represented in court, their right to vote, and their right to a public education. Designation as "FPC," "FC," or "mulatto" by a census taker legally disenfranchised the person; nothing could thereafter change the census takers decision, even protesting that they were of Portuguese descent.
Not all Melungeons accepted their fates quietly. The Civil War presented an opportunity for vengeance. Many Melungeon men formed bands of what came to be known as "Melungeon Marauders," and spread terror throughout East Tennessee, and to a lesser extent, Southwest Virginia. A more common coping mechanism was to avoid census takers, thereby rendering large portions of the Melungeon population officially nonexistent, while others retreated to the least desirable pinnacles of the forbidding mountain ranges of the Appalachians. Many others chose migration westward, mostly to Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and California. Others chose to migrate to Maryland and Ohio. The migrants largely tried to leave their Melungeon heritage behind them as they entered new territories free from the prejudices that drove them from their Appalachian bottomlands.
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Dark Period
I have been waiting after the petition was placed to hear back from anyone on the investigative committee. It had been since October since I placed my petition.
I finally was contacted by someone who was a pastmaster and a part of my investigative committee he asked me some questions and wondered if I was contacted by anyone else. After talking to him I realised that display an interest in you and really want to know why you would want to become a FreeMason. After the phone call he told me they would vote on it tomorrow night and that everyone is extremely busy.
After reading Masonictips.com site which is my friend from church I realised the Divver Lodge is a younger leaning lodge and in fact one PastMaster at our church who helped sign my petition is in his 20's. It really amazes me that so many 20's 30's 40's lodge members are so active. For me work and family life consume alot of time but it seems masonry is about self improvement and taking time out of your life to look at yourself as a individual and becoming a better man to society.
::UPDATE::
I contacted one of my friends whom was raised to the 3rd degree not to long ago and basically got to sit in on his first meeting which was a vote from my investigative committee along with 3 other candidate votes from the committee findings. I know I have been bugging him quite a bit so I decided after one more email today not to bug him much anymore he merely told me they voted on it and I should be contacted by someone that made up my investigative committee. I am learning the lesson of patience.
I decided to start my own masonic blog instead of mixing the tech blog posts with the masonic posts.
Post 3 Petition process had started
After getting the petition and feeling nervous about asking. I finally got it and filled it out. It was very straight forward with the questions asked. I think it may have been voted on last Tuesday. The petition had not been signed due to my rush thinking I could get it in before the monthly meeting. I was told it would be taken care of. For now I am in the waiting mode. I have been reading anything from the Freemasonry for Dummies to some Knight Templar code and history.
Due to wife and daughter have bouts with the hospital I am glad I am not in a rush. I figure they will tell me if I have been accepted or god forbid black cubed. I have been reading alot about voting process and it seem pretty official. Now is a time of dark before the light. If I am blackcubed I will petition again. I don't know anyone to be black cubed but you never know the reasons from what I am told you do give your Social Security #. I really have nothing to be afraid of it is just the thought of being looked at and accepted not knowing what qualifications need to be met. I look forward to sharing this process with in the masonry guidelines. Let the wait Begin!!
Post 2 One good reason for joining
Front of Building bad photo of Shiner statue
Well after experiencing my first hospital visit with my daughter. We went to a Shiners hospital and all I can say is that sold me to masonry. If you have never been to a Shiners hospital I suggest go. They are so much above par when treating children medically. The stay was stressful but to see the Shiner money in action shows the wonderful outcome of what things like the pecan logs can do.
I then rushed to get my petition to my friends at church. I wanted to get it in before the next business meeting. So I rushed to find out it was not signed by the guy who gave it to me he was going to get several guys to sign it once I turned in the petition. Well needless to say the past master of the lodge I am petitioning said he would get it signed and taken care of. The next day my friend Jim from http://masonictips.com/ told me the meeting was next Tuesday so I freaked out too soon. Oh well, lol I can't wait to experience this journey the more I read the more I get excited about it. Once thing, I am not sure what the investigation committee looks for but I should be pretty straight on that. I guess it is a mystery what they check. I do know you have to give your social security # so they have everything.
I have been reading a ton of great blogs and the Freemasonry for Dummies is a great book too. I never really understood why they get so much flak. I have been trying to find a organization like the Army that has camaraderie and also helps with self improvement. I think this will definitely be a wonderful experience if given the opportunity.
Very Nice Room, maybe not for my baby!!
My wife posing in room
Demolay statue Aquarium Wall
Day 1 Masonic Beginning First Post
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Transferring to a New Blog
Masonic Blog Day 1
I have started my trek on becoming a Freemason, Thanks to my friendJim from church who helped point me to the right direction and who is author of masonictips.com. I will hopefully get my petition in to be voted on in the November business meeting. I will respectfully be blogging my journey as I go..I've been very intrigued with masonry for awhile but thought you had to be asked to join. I never knew the whole gist of things until one day a member from church was looking for a job and I came across his website and he had a very impressive blog dedicated to his experience and I suddenly started to fire questions to him. Things at that point started to open up for me. I was able to get a petition going very soon after the following Sunday at church. Just like he said in his blog a lot of the well respected men and leaders in our church were masons and it was something that I really wanted to be a part of. A couple of weeks back I was at the Shiners Hospital in Greenville Sc with my 11 week old daughter and at that point It made me want to join immediately. There is a lot of wait in becoming a mason. One thing in this day and time of information overload everyone gets in the I want it now mode and patience is becoming some what extinct. I am learning to become very patient and if I am to become a Freemason I think it will be definitely a journey of self improvement and preservation. One book I highly recommend is Freemasonry for Dummies if anyone is interested in becoming a mason. Hopefully my next blog will tell more of the actual vote and research committee.
posted by binaryburn at 10/24/2007 11:24:00 AM
