Tennessee Masonic Manual, or Freemasonry Illustrated by Wilkins Tannehill, Past Grand Master , published 1824. This is the original equivalent of our Tennessee Craftsman which was used by Tennessee Lodges starting in 1824, and continuing until the next edition was published. It is a window into the Masonry of our forbears in the early years of Tennessee Freemasonry…

Major General Lafayette, the last living general from the American Revolution, was invited in 1824 by his Masonic Brother and President James Monroe to travel to the United States for the nation’s 50th anniversary.  The 67-year-old Lafayette accepted the invitation and brought his son Georges Washington Lafayette with him on what would be described in newspapers throughout America as “Lafayette’s Grand Tour.”

The first time that I ever got a good look at the inside of a Masonic lodge room was on the morning of my initiation. My grandfather took me into the lodge room at Carrollton (Kentucky) Lodge #134, and proceeded to inform me that everything in that room, down to the smallest item, was there for a very specific purpose…

Freemasonry has been described as being veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols. Through the centuries of time, the allegories and symbols of the Craft have been obscured and made only partially recognizable to the meanings they held in antiquity.

The Ineffable Name is the Ineffable Word, the Incommunicable Name expressed for us in the  Tetragrammaton as the symbolic word expressed in four letters which denote the name of God and  which always applies to the Hebrew word only (Mackey 1882).  

In the course of history, the Temple was destroyed, and with it the powerful rituals that  channeled and focused the plea for survival. The Jews scattered from Israel to every corner of the  earth.¹¹ But the grain, the wine, and the oil were not forgotten…