Grand Lodge of Tennessee to roll out new educational program

Gomorrah, TN -- Good news for Masonic scholars and researchers in Tennessee this week, as the Grand Lodge released a list of approved topics for study and discussion.

“We want to encourage the study of all aspects of Freemasonary,” said RWB Gavin Mavity. “So, the Grand Historian, the Grand Orator, and the other Grand Lodge officers got together and wrote up a list of topic categories  that we think are important for Freemasons to learn about.”

We asked why the Grand Lodge thought that there was a need to publish a study list.

“Well, we know that there’s a lot of nonsense and such about Freemasonary, so we decided that it would be helpful to give our members some guidance so that they didn’t study the wrong sorts of things,” said RWB Mavity.

Our preview of the list included items such as:

• Anything George Washington related
• Masonic aprons in America
• Masonic ring design
• Freemasonry in the Colonial era
• Freemasonry in the Civil War era
• Albert Pike
• Famous Masons in US history
• Famous Masonic actors
• Red Skelton’s “Pledge of Allegiance”
• John Glenn: First Freemason on the Moon
• Albert Pike

When asked why the list was so short, WB Mavity responded, “Well, first of all, we don’t want to have our members study the wrong kinds of things. That’s how you end up with those egghead types, and the next thing you know we’ll have that whole Traditional Observance thing happening here.”

Brother Red Skelton's "Pledge of Allegiance" is one
of the most popular study topics in lodges.

But won’t the members get bored with such a short topic list?

“Well, whenever I’ve been to a lodge meeting and they have somebody presenting some kind of Masonic topic, it’s almost always something interesting like aprons, rings, George Washington, or Freemasonry in history, like around the Civil War,” he said. “We figured that those must be the most interesting topics to Masons, since they come up so often. No point in having the members study things that nobody’s heard about, is there?”

The list will be available this week to the lodges around the state by the end of the week.

-- Conte Calvino Gliostro

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Pike Awakens; AASR SJ Announces Plans to Clone Albert Pike for SJ Podcast

Washington, DC—A spokesman for the Southern Jurisdiction of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite announced over the weekend at a sold out charity event the plans to clone Albert Pike in order to produce a truly successful Scottish Rite podcast. The multi-million dollar project will be paid for by the Celebrate the Craft event and its success will ride solely on contributors to the campaign.

With laudable attempts such as The Life Masonic and The Tyler’s Place, which have ultimately failed to gather any continued steam after their initial launch, the Supreme Council hopes that their new show hosted by the cloned Albert Pike will provide that missing element for audio endeavors of Scottish Rite masons wheresoever dispersed.

“Look, it’s no secret the SJ has been glorifying Albert Pike and riding his coattails since he died.” Said Brother John Falafel, 32˚ and a member of the Valley of Washington Scottish Rite. “He will bring balance to the craft and provide meaningful content while at the same time providing a voice for endless plugs for his own show.”

"The process will involve a series of careful steps which the organization has been careful to lay out." Brother Falafel continued, "Everything will start with a careful exhumation of his [Pike’s] remains which have been in the House of the Temple for over seventy years. After that they will attempt to extract DNA from a tooth, assuming they can find one. The DNA samples will then be taken to a laboratory in Washington where the growing process will begin."

Daniel Waters a chief scientist who has signed on to the project pro bono said “It will be a delicate process. We will need to decelerate the growth at just the right time so that we have Pike in his prime. Too soon and he won’t have the credibility with older members, too long and we risk getting a crotchety old bastard.”

Although the just-announced project is still a year away from any CTC fundraising revenue, work on extraction will soon be under way, explained Brother Falafel: “With the crumbling walls of the House of the Temple, it should be relatively easy to pull down the edifice surrounding the remains.”

The countdown to the best Masonic podcast ever is underway and this reporter, can’t wait. The Exalted Masonic Hour of Power with Albert Pike is set to start casting on January 2017. 

--Worshipful, Dr. Chaz Nagler, Esq. 49˚

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