From the Venerable Master (October 2024)
My Brethren,
I will start by saying Hi, and hope that I find everyone in good health. Our September stated Meeting had a good attendance. The meal was good and everyone had a good time.
The Cigar Lounge is progressing nicely, Sheet Rock is up. Taping and Texturing is done. The walls have been painted. Tee Bar is installed. Were getting there. Our Fall Reunion is fast approaching us. October 4th and 5th and October 18th and 19th. Hope to see many Brother's there.
In this Month's Rite word I would like to quote an article on the All--Seeing Eye. It's an article from a book called Masonry Defined.
The All--Seeing Eye. An important symbol of the Supreme Being, borrowed by the Freemasons from the nations of antiquity. Both the Hebrews and Egyptians appear to have derived its use from that natural inclination of figurative minds to select an organ as the symbol of the function which it is intended peculiarly to discharge. Thus, the foot was often adopted as the symbol of swiftness, the arm of strength, and the hand of fidelity. On the same principle, the open eye was selected as the symbol of watchfulness, and the eye of God as the symbol of divine watchfulness and care of the universe. The use of the symbol in this sense is repeatedly to be found in the Hebrew writers. Thus, the Psalmist says "The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry," which explains a subsequent passage, in which it is said: "Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep."
"Then Moses said to the Lord, O Lord, dost thou sleep or not? The Lord said unto Moses, I never sleep: but take a cup and fill it with water. Then Moses took a cup and filled it with water, as the Lord commanded him. Then the Lord cast into the heart of Moses the breadth of slumber; so he slept, and the cup fell from his hand, and the water which was therein was spilled. Then Moses awoke from his sleep. Then said God to Moses, I declare by my power, and by my glory, that if I were to withdraw my providence from the heavens and the earth, for no longer a space of time than thou hast slept, they would at once fall to ruin and confusion, like as the cup fell from thy hand."
On the same principle, the Egyptians represented Osiris, their chief deity, by the symbol of an open eye, and placed this hieroglyphic of him in all their temples. His symbolic name, on the monuments, was represented by the eye accompanying a throne, to which was sometimes added an abbreviated figure of the god, and sometimes what has been called a hatchet, but which, I consider, may as correctly be supposed to be a representation of a square.
The All--Seeing Eye may then be considered as a symbol of God manifested in his omnipresence---his guardian and preserving character---to which Solomon alludes in the Book of Proverbs, when he says: "The eyes of Jehovah are in every place, beholding {or, as it might be more faithfully translated, watching} the evil and the good." It is a symbol of the Omni-present Deity.
May you always have love to Share, Health to Spare, and Friends who care. May you be blessed.
San Jose Lodge of Perfection Art Pasquinelli, 32° KCCH 2024 Venerable Master
From the Wise Master
(October 2024)
Greetings Friends, Masons, Countrymen, your attention for a brief moment.
As we move into fall, we again see the world changing around us. Leaves starting to turn, days getting shorter, Holidays looming and this year we have elections again for who will lead our Great Country.
Just this last month, near the 21st, we had the Fall Equinox where for about a day, the amount of daylight is the same as the amount of darkness. After that the nights start to win the perineal battle of light. The word Equinox origin is derived from the Latin equi (meaning 'equal') and nox (meaning 'night'). Interestingly, we often see the work Lux in Masonic circles, which means ‘light’.
Kicking off the holiday season, Halloween is upon us. This is a moment we use to dress up and become someone else for a night. I sometimes thing about how in Masonry we do the same thing at times, dress up in the various uniforms of the various bodies we attend, we do so to become more of who we are, or have become.
Also, as we move into Fall, Masonry starts up with a number of annual activates with elections & installations as well as holiday dinners. In the Rite we have our upcoming Fall Reunion where again this time we will perform all 14 degrees of the Lodge of Perfection. This is a step up from past years and our opportunity to continue to make our Valley more meaningful though communication, participation and comradery. Come to the re- union and sideline if you are on a cast and witness our Valley in action.
So, as we all prepare for the fall and winter, I trust everyone is in good health and continues to spend time with families, participate in our craft and be upstanding in our communities. Make sure you are registered to vote so you are ready for next month. I am sure everyone knows this is a big one and many of us feel that the future of our society is at stake. As in our society and in our craft, we must always be moving forward. If we aren’t we are sliding backwards. Erosion is a sneaky thing over time, you end up with something that used to work and no longer does. As in any forest, best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago the second best is today. I think about this and try to contribute to my family, my lodge and my country. It is a work in progress and on my best days, I try to keep my gratitude higher than my expectation.
San Jose Chapter of Rose Croix Mark Burger, 32° KCCH 2024 Wise Master
From the Commander of Kadosh (October 2024)
The 27th degree, Knight of the Sun, or Prince Adept, was originally the 28th degree. When the ritual was eventually revised, the two degrees were not only switched in order, but this degree, now the 27th, was significantly shortened. For this second detail, every Scottish Rite mason should be grateful. If Pike had a reputation for being long-winded and wordy, he earned it with this degree. Its original form consumes 219 pages of text! As detailed as the degree re- mains in its greatly shortened modern form, many times more that what is portrayed is still left to an addendum in the current monitor.
The rather stunning length of this degree is, in some ways, ironic. Many examples are given to emphasize the handful of lessons contained in this degree, one of which concerns the value of symbols themselves. Several ancient takes on above/below symbolism are presented along with a number of versions of left/right/center symbolism. A great deal is rightly acknowledged as coming from Kabbalah. An additional amount is attributed to Hermeticism.
The above and below imagery is well known from the Hermetic maxim ‘as above, so below.” The left/right/center symbolism is most recognizable from the three pillars of Kabbalah. In essence, both types address how two parts relate to each other. However, the type of relationship depicted by each symbolic arrangement is different. Above and below are similar to each other. As it is above, so it is below. The relationship between the two parts concerns how and how much they are the same. Below reflects above. Earth reflects heaven. Mankind reflects God.
The left/right/center symbolism concerns two sides which are different. They don’t reflect but oppose each other, and interact for one reason or another. The relationships between left and right are generally of two varieties. In one case, the two sides limit each other. In the other case, they complement each other. Opposites like fire and water, symbolic judgment and mercy, are the first type, they counteract each other. Without the temperance each gives to the other, either one might be destructive. Pairs like wisdom and understanding, on the other hand, interact with each other. One doesn’t mitigate the effects of the other. They are interdependent, each providing what the other needs and doesn’t have. Wisdom needs to be understood and understanding needs wisdom to comprehend. The center column is not a third influence, but reflects a perfected relationship between the two sides which is harmonious and balanced.
Masons apply this understanding to their relationships. As mentors and role models, we are to lead by example. As laborers together we strive to complement each other.
Until Next,
San Jose Council of Kadosh Peter Cardilla, 32° 2024 Commander of Kadosh
From the Master of Kadosh (October 2024)
We have scheduled the Fall Consistory BBQ on Saturday October 12th (the second Saturday in October) from 11:30 until about 2:00 or so, downstairs just outside of the Lounge. The one last April was almost rained out; we hope to have much better weather for this one. Please contact me if you intend on coming so we can plan accordingly. My cellphone number is: 408-421- 9381.
This last July 21st (the day after the 55th anniversary of the first manned moon landing), we had our Consistory Field Trip to the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos. One of our brothers who attended, Illustrious Daniel Doornbos, 33°, wrote a nice report on our trip, but due to various deadlines, we did not have a chance to include it until now:
"Thank your for arranging the recent Consistory trip to the Hiller Aviation Museum. They have a number of aircraft on display that I never knew existed. And a few I would not dare to ride in. Besides aircraft, the museum has a section dealing with aviation careers for today’s students. Hiller also has multiple kinds of flight simulators that correspond to actual aircraft, rather than a video game. After spending a few hours at the museum, we enjoyed lunch at an excellent Lousiana-style restaurant a few blocks away. This event was a success. Too bad only a few Scottish Rite brothers and wives attended.
~ Ill. Daniel Doornbos, 33°
A great time was had by all. Thank you Illustrious Doornbos for your report.
When I started putting my articles together, I thought that I would shy-away from the usual histories. Being October, however, I decided a while back to print this particular “Ghost Story” now, one which still haunts Freemasonry to this day. The subject is the “Taxil Hoax” (of which I believe all Freemasons should be aware), and is given a brief yet quite excellent treatment in the book “Freemasonry for Dummies”, by Christopher Hodapp, PM, 33°, KT, © 2005 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., ISBN-13: 1978-0- 7645-9796-1). The following is directly from Chapter 18, pages 297 through 299 of the 2005 printing of the book; chapter and page numbers may be different in later printings. If you don’t have this book yet, get it: it’s good!
<excerpt>
Leo Taxil and the Great Hoax!
Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès was born in Marseilles, France, in 1854, and [having changed his name] at a very young age, he fell in love with the life of being a con artist. At the wise old age of 25, Taxil decided to capitalize on the wave of anti-Catholic sentiment in France at the time, and began writing a series of satires, pamphlets, and pornographic stories against the Church. In 1881, he joined a Masonic lodge. After his first degree, he was quickly expelled for his repeated run-ins with the law and other publishing outrages. Taxil needed to find a new and better source of income and fun. Peeved over being chucked from the lodge, Leo conceived a masterful hoax, and this time took aim at both Catholics and Freemasons.
In 1885, he trotted off to a Catholic church and confessed his sins to the local priest. He even threw in a completely fictitious confession to a murder, as a joke to test the confidentiality of the confessional. Next, as a newly minted and “outraged” Catholic, he began writing a series of fictitious exposés of the secret rituals of the Freemasons. Never mind that he had only experienced the first degree. What he didn’t know, he made up. In short order, he published The Three-Point Brothers, The Anti-Christ and the Origin of Masonry, The Cult of the Great Architect, and The Masonic Assassins.
To his great amusement, Taxil became the darling of the Catholic hierarchy and was granted a private audience in Rome with Pope Leo XII. The pope declared himself to be Taxil’s biggest fan and wanted more books and more exposés of the Masons, a situation which Taxil found to be absolutely hilarious, as well as financially lucrative. He was running dry but soon created what would become a story that has long outlived him.
Taxil’s most fanciful invention was a version of Freemasonry he claimed was called Palladism or Luciferian High-Masonry. He wrote that Palladism was created and directed from Charleston, South Carolina, where it was founded by Albert Pike. According to his increasingly bizarre story, Palladism was a co-ed version of Masonry that organized sexual orgies and Satan worship among its members. Albert Pike, whom Taxil gave the title Supreme Pontiff of Universal Freemasonry, supposedly directed 23 Supreme Confederated Councils of the World by passing instructions to them through a woman named Diana Vaughan. According to Taxil, Ms. Vaughan was able to blow the whistle on Pike and his unholy band of Satan worshipers when she escaped the fiendish clutches of a Palladian lodge.
There wasn’t a speck of truth in his entire absurd and convoluted tale, apart from a real lady named Diana Vaughan who typed his manuscripts, but the public ate it up. Fortunately for Taxil, Albert Pike had died in 1891, so there wasn’t much of a chance of a slander lawsuit from across the sea. So, he could gleefully write that Pike, the Luciferian Pope, met with Lucifer every Friday at 3:00 p.m. (We’re left to wonder if this was a late-in-the-day, three-martini lunch.) Palladian lodges engaged in devil worship, ritual sex, and any other sacrileges Taxil could think of.
Meanwhile, Taxil’s popular works about nonexistent female Palladian lodges were feverishly embroidered by others. The Bishop of Grenoble asserted that these female lodges were harems for the male lodges, while Jesuit Bishop Leon Meurin wrote in his Synagogue of Satan that everything about Freemasonry was Satanic, including aprons, symbols, signs and handshakes.
On April 19, 1897, Taxil rented the auditorium of the Paris Geographic Society and filled the hall with a carefully invited guest list of free-thinkers, Catholics, and the press. In a long presentation, he dropped the bomb on them all: Everything he had written had been a carefully designed hoax, specifically intended to humiliate the Catholic Church for being so easily manipulated. The gathering erupted in competing clamors of both laughter and anger, depending on whose ox was being gored. His 33-page confession was printed in the papers the following week, and it was the talk of Paris. He had made a fat wad of cash with his books and thumbed his nose at both the Masons and the Church. He left Paris and retired to a very nice country house where he died in 1907.
More than a hundred years after his confession, Taxil’s quotes about Luciferian Masonry and his deceitful misquoting of Albert Pike’s writings still get trotted out in new anti-Masonic works. Jack Harris, J. Edward Decker, James Holly, Gary H. Kah, William Schnoebelen, Jack Chick, and even Pat Robertson (who should really know better, as his own father was a Freemason) have all published anti-Masonic books over the last several decades that use portions of Taxil’s self-confessed lies. Leo the liar is long dead, but his practical joke lives on.
San Jose Consistory Helmuth Litfin, 32° 2024 Venerable Master of Kadosh
From the Chief Knight (October 2024)
Greetings all and happy spooky season.
Our tables at the 158th Scottish Highland Gathering & Games, was a successful center for ma- sonic brethren from near and far to gather for fellowship, and a great place for people to stop and inquire more about our group, the RiteCare clinic and the Rite in general.
Please join me on congratulating Sir Knight Richard Rodriguez on his elevation to Knight of The First Order. Brother Richard Rodriguez is a 32nd Degree member of the Valley of San Jose, and has been serving alongside the Knights of Saint Andrew for the last couple years.
Our KSA chapter is gearing up for more. First, the Fall Reunion is fast approaching! In addition to some being a part of ritual teams, our KSA knights are getting ready to do our part in Sound/Lighting/Mic Table/Stage Crew and Rovers. Then we’re getting ready for the SCVMOA Grand Master’s Reception, and directly into installation season after that.
If anyone would like to get more involved with our Valley, the KSA is a great way to do it. To learn more about the KSA, join us on the 3rd Sunday of each month, at noon, down in the San Jose Scottish Rite conference room. Kilt not required
San Jose Knights of St. Andrew
Michael Lammer, 32°
2024 Chief Knight, KSA
The Knights of Saint Andrew 2024 Officers
First Knight | Bro. Chris Boyes 32º |
Chief Knight | Bro. Mike Lammer 32º |
Knight of the Watch | Bro. Alan Porjesz 32º |
Secretary | Bro. Tim Lynch 32º |
Monk Knight | Bro. Adrian Otero 32º |
Sentinel | Bro. Angelo Encarnacion 32º |
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