Rescue The Occult of Personality!

The Kaminsky family is in an "all hands on board" crisis mode and they need your help! Greg Kaminsky's wonderful Occult of Personality website was hacked last night and is out of commission. The hosting company said that denial of service messages came from thousands of IP addresses that kept changing and were specifically  targeting Greg's website. It sounds like a major conspiracy theory script from a bad movie and it would be amusing if they didn't rely on Greg's site to generate half of their family's monthly budget! As of now, the hosting company has dropped Greg's website and he needs to find a new hosting company that specializes in handling malicious attacks. They are welcoming any suggestions you might have there.

For now, they need to deal with the reality of the site being gone. While Greg is going to rebuild it, that will take time and money. Better security costs more! And some of Greg's subscribers are jumping ship which is totally understandable. After all, would you be paying a monthly fee if you could not even get to the website?

Who knew that posting interviews with esoteric authors is such a dangerous business?! The Kaminsky's certainly didn't think so! Cerntainly not Olga Kaminsky who listens to the podcasts while Greg edits them,  notes that inevitably the message is about the human race awakening, spirituality playing a bigger role in our lives, and different ways of following a spiritual path.

Olga goes on to say, "I would like to ask for your help in covering the website rebuilding costs for Greg. Better security means higher monthly costs and apparently each time there is an attack like this there is a one-time fee to deal with it. There is also a lost time and subscriber cost that makes me nervous. Did I mention this is how we pay our bills? Every little bit you can give will help us get over this unfortunate event, help Greg bring his site back, and put food on the table. Food is good! Thank you for your help!"

The Hedge Mason wants to ask you all to support the Occult of Personality. Greg Kaminsky and his site is a valuable asset to those who are interested in Esoteric subjects including Hermeticism and Esoteric Freemasonry. He needs your help! Please do not let him down! Bro. Greg needs your help!

Click Here to help The Occult of Personality get back up and running

A Revisionist's Art of Memory

Well, it's time to do a little experiment. Over the years, I read a lot about the Art of Memory and it's relationship to both Hermetics in general and Freemasonry in particular. The recent acquisition of a gift copy of Dame Frances Yates' book, "The Art of Memory," dredged the topic out from where it was buried, somewhere in my brainstem.

I have a big confession to make. I am one of those lazy Freemasons who never really mastered the classical art of memory. In my misspent youth, I never really needed it. I was blessed with the ability to memorize a fair bit of material using the crude method of repetition. I usually got away with 15 to 20 repetitions to memorize a reasonable number of pages, and so it was simply not worth the investment of time. I memorized the prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in a sitting and can still recall a fair bit of it some 40 years later. I was also able to slog my way through a couple of languages using the same crude methodology. So, although I read the classic works on memorization and even the more recent additions such as Harry Lorayne's "The Memory Book," I never really attempted to master the technique. 

Well, it's 2012, and I am fast approaching 60. I have a whole cartload of new things I wish to commit to memory and I have come to the realization that the brain is balking. It still works, but it is slower to store all those new bits and pieces and I have to put more time and sweat equity into the project than I recall it taking a decade or two ago. 

So, I thought, this might make an interesting experiment. Let me dust off the old books, take a fresh look at both the theory and the techniques, and see what a new generation is bringing to the table. In fact, why not use this as the basis for a couple of blog entries? And so an idea was born for the first Hedge Mason experiment. As experiments go, it is a fairly unscientific one. In fact, it is totally unscientific. I have never been impressed by statistics, so they were out the window from the get -go. However, it seemed perfectly reasonable as a sort of survey to read Frances Yates' "Art of Memory" as a foundation of my study, throw in a few recent updates in publication, and I am going to take a brief on-line course on memory which is supposed to be based upon classical and hermetic traditions. 

According to classical tradition, the Art of memory was born as an act of divine retribution. According to the account, the Poet Simonides of Ceos gave an ode in honor of his host, Scopas of Thessaly, which included a passage in honor of Castor and Pollux. As Yates recounts the story, when the performance was complete, "Scopas meanly told the poet that he would only pay him half the sum agreed upon for the panegyric and that he must obtain the balance from the twin gods to whom he had devoted half the poem. A little later, a message was brought in to Simonides that two young men were waiting outside who wished to see him. He rose from the banquet and went out but could find no one. During his absence the roof of the banqueting hall fell in, crushing Scopas and all the guests to death beneath the ruins; the corpses were so mangled that the relatives who came to take them away for burial were unable to identify them. But Simonides remembered the places at which they had been sitting at the table and was therefore able to indicate to the relatives which were their dead. The invisible callers, Castor and Pollux, had handsomely paid for their share in the panegyric by drawing Simonides away from the banquet just before the crash. And this experience suggested to the poet the principles of the art of memory of which he is said to have been the inventor. Noting that it was through his memory of the places at which the guests had been sitting that he had been able to identify the bodies, he realized that orderly arrangement is essential for good memory."(Yates. The Art of Memory. 1999. pp. 1-2)

Once I have read the books I will offer my views on them, and once I have taken the course, I will provide my reactions. Then, I will revisit the topic in about a month to see how I have progressed with my selected "tests" of effective memorization. I have a few big tasks coming up. I need to gain at least a minimum amount of fluency in another language - enough to facilitate very basic conversations and provide some ease in reading short texts. That is certainly not a giant task, but it can be time consuming. For the rest, I want to memorize a number of texts, amounting to a total of perhaps 80 pages. They are in a couple of languages, both of which I speak. 

I have purchased several books and have begun reading, and am scheduled for the course. If, in the meantime, anyone wishes to make suggestions concerning reading materials, I am happy to entertain them, although I make no promises in advance, as funds for this are limited.

Stay tuned! It should be interesting, and may serve as an introduction to further discussion of the traditional arts and sciences associated of old with Freemasonry.

Research Lodge of The Moderns

The Modern Lodge of Research

Almost a year ago the Lodge of Research "The Moderns" had raised its columns to work under the auspices of the Circle of Studies of the French Rite of Montaleau Roëttiers. This was uncommon in that it was a lodge under the protection of a Research Center, although it was regularly raised by Master Masons, regularly initiated. However, independence at that time was a priority for those involved.

These days, the sponsorship has changed for the Research Lodge of “The Moderns,” who works on deepening the knowledge and heritage of "The Moderns" in Freemasonry, and thus they have regularized their situation under the protection of the Mixed Grand Lodge of the Equatorial Andes and look forward to continuing their work under new sponsorship.

Announcements of their publications will be presented here as time goes on. We wish Olga, Joaquim, Victor and our other brothers and sisters involved with this effort every success in the coming months and years.

A Modest Proposal for a Modern Freemasonry

Where does the Esoteric, Hermetic or even serious Philosophical approach to Freemasonry stand today? We see Mainstream masons nodding off into their chicken soup, back woods past masters engaging in public hissy fits across the web condemning books which even dare to hint that freemasonry might be more than an empty bag of metaphors, and the GLE hired a PR firm to poll the public as to the meaning of Freemasonry, only to develop from those results a white paper saying that the King is dead, long live the Old Boys social club.

Although Masonic blogs for a while sprouted periodic dialogs in which the authors detailed their personal epiphanies concerning the best way to save the craft from imminent doom, ie itself, these have mostly quieted down. I assume the silence is due either to pressure or  apathy. Either way, they only serve to highlight an apparently inevitable decline in enthusiasm experienced by the bloggers themselves, as they watched the continuing dip in numbers when nobody embraced their solutions. Some continue to rail, others have monetized their blogs and moved on.

Apparently, young men are not interested in cold soup at expensive clubs that do not have a wine list and don't allow them to bring their girlfriends, wives, or boyfriends. So, what is a potential source of new membership for Freemasonry, and who will bring them in?

There exists a group of young people actually interested in initiations and becoming a part of a fraternal organization to spend an evening practicing and discussing ritual and the history of such societies. They are called esotericists and hermeticists, and there are more of them out there than there have been for nearly a hundred years. The problem in winning them is several fold.

What I wish to suggest is that mainstream Freemasonry in North America needs to realize is that soon they will have real competition for these profanes, that is if the grand lodges don't bow out of the race before it begins. Why? Because there is an increasing interest, however small, in liberal, mixed, esoteric, hermetic, and yes, even ethnic Freemasonry.

Several trends are converging, and I will touch briefly on both. Gradually, small groups of ethnic Freemasonry have been growing as a result of the changing ethnic makeup of the US.  The young esotericists are one trend, the ethnic mason another.

Liberal and Mixed Freemasonry has had a "mixed" history in the US. There are a small number of long standing, or slumbering institutions that have become as exciting as any mainstream Grand Lodge system, and there have been the dramatic implosions of small groups wracked by internal politics, not to mention the fantasy driven Pseudo-Scientific Neo-Harmonic revivals, mostly never more than a series of websites proclaiming non-existent lodges world-wide. However, while mainstream lodges have laughed these off, assuming they proved their positions unassailable, a generation of people have grown up who have immersed themselves in esotericism, hermeticism and ritual studies and for whom, while a Masonic experience is desired, the offerings of mainstream masonry represent a pale reflection of what they know they should expect of the craft.  And they don't give a hoot about claims of regularity or the myth of 1717.  The few very reserved efforts at accommodating serious students that the mainstream has deigned to offer will not suffice.

This, combined with the general lack of welcome that greet the non-European aspirants who knock at the lodge door, has created a perhaps small but serious class of potential masons who are looking elsewhere, and when they do not find what they are looking for, they are prepared to build their own solutions. Added to these numbers are of course, the women. There are serious Liberal obediences willing to support those who are capable and prepared to do the work. It is reasonable to assume that in addition to the current and the new obediences on the North American scene, there will be more to follow. Add to this growing and real academic research which is pushing back against the myths of the past upon whose sands the Grand Lodge system was fabricated; myths which have become articles of faith but which are empty, such as territorial exclusivity and the claims that masonry began in London in 1717. The first always was an empty claim and the latter has since been proven false by solid scholarship backed up with original source materials. What's more, small is the new big.


As a supporter of Liberal Freemasonry, I will fly in the face of what most might think is in my own self interest, and suggest a solution that might allow Mainstream masonry to regain the upper hand. I know of course, it is probably too radical for even the most liberal leaning of the Grand Lodges to consider, and that perhaps is part of why I feel free to offer the advice.  Forget the "European Style" Lodges (which are European in name only) or the Traditional Observance Lodges (which offer a lot of structure and very little excitement), and get radical.

The radical plan is quite simple. Allow lodges, new and old to experiment with any historically documented rite they wish, in the language(s) of their choice. If old lodges won't agree, allow the interested parties to easily create new lodges that will. Then those really bohemian Grand Lodges can allow women in.

I guarantee that if this is done, and those lodges are allowed to engage in an open study of either esotericism, hermeticism, or a serious and academic study of philosophy and symbolism, that the numbers will turn around. Of course, it won't be your grandfather's Freemasonry anymore. It will be your Great Great Great Grandparents' Freemasonry. And it will thrive.



In the meantime, the rest of us will continue to work on gaining ground, and we don't have to worry about the electric bills you guys have.

End the Travel Ban on Cuba

People-to-people travel has been one of the few successful elements of our current policy towards Cuba.  Now, that could all change.

Many of about 140 existing people-to-people travel licenses are languishing in the bureaucratic depths of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, pending renewal.  And we know of only three that have been renewed. In 2010-2011 we worked tirelessly to re-instate this category of travel and to we will not stand by quietly and watch it shrivel and disappear.

Tell the Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Cuba Desk of the Sate Department to comply with regulations that President Obama authorized in 2011-and to retain the original intent of the people-to-people licenses without bureaucratic excuses and tangles!

The original application for a people-to-people license consisted of six pages in which you had to provide a sample itinerary and explanation about how trip activities would promote true interactions with the Cuban people.  But as of May 2012, OFAC has tightened up the application process, making it  even more tedious, and averaging about one hundred pages in length.

Why the change? In short, Florida Senator Marco Rubio continued to block the confirmation of Roberta Jacobson as the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs until the administration addressed his concerns with the people-to-people program. His unfounded complaints? That illegitimate organizations are receiving licenses and primarily meet with government-employed Cubans and that this is purely a way for tourists to get to Cuba who are "curious about Cuba and, at worst, sympathize with the Cuban regime."


Don't allow one member of Congress to take away our right to travel. Email OFAC and the Office of Cuban Affairs at the State Department to tell them to enable President Obama's people-to-people program.

After being confirmed, Roberta Jacobson testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere and defended Obama's current Cuba policy ,"The administration's travel, remittance and people-to-people policies are helping Cubans by providing alternative sources of information, taking advantage of emerging opportunities for self-employment and private property, and strengthening independent civil society." Her testimony proves that the White House still supports and promotes its policy of engaging with Cuba, and therefore, OFAC should be carrying out its mandate of processing licenses.

As Ellen Creager from the Detroit Free Press wrote earlier this week, "Whether you are pro-Cuba travel or anti-Cuba travel, this whole thing should concern you a lot. There is something sinister to me about preventing citizens from traveling, then allowing them to do so, then throwing giant roadblocks to prevent them from going after all."

For further information, please contact the good people at:

Latin America Working Group
424 C Street NE, Washington, DC 20002  
Phone: (202) 546-7010  
Email: lawg@lawg.org

Freemasonry and the Intellectual

A recent blog post by my friend and brother, Victor Guerra, set me thinking. His comments often do, but the vagaries of language and the cultural divides of the North Atlantic sometimes leave me wanting the correct avenue of thought to respond in a way worthy of an audience.  This most recent observation of his set me on a trajectory that I believe merits exploration.

Where is the intellectual in North American Freemasonry? The answer, at least upon first glance, is "apparently absent." We have no great thinkers. Mainstream masonry has in the last half century at least, for lack of a better description, and I do not wish to offend my brethren in the so-called 'regular' camp, fostered a "confederacy of dunces." Anti-intellectualism is as strong and as strident in North American Freemasonry as it has become of late in our society as a whole.  The great American author and thinker, Isaac Asimov remarked, "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

Well, as Asimov clearly intended it to be understood, it is not.

There are many changes that mainstream North American Freemasonry needs to make if it is to survive the next two decades. I have read on a dozen blogs, some of whose authors have apparently been silenced by their 'regular' obediences, a litany of things that might be done to save the fraternity. Almost none of them have addressed directly the issue of engaging and cultivating the intellectual as a natural facet of the Craft. That comes as no surprise to me. In North America, Freemasonry has replaced Franklin with "Freemasons for Dummies," and while I admire the work that Brother Hodapp does to make an understanding of Freemasonry accessible to the average reader, I am certain he would be the first to assert that he does not count himself among the ranks of the intellectual thinkers of our age. While I am a captive of my own cerebral endeavors, I do not consider myself an intellectual, nor even close to those thinkers capable of providing astute observations and commentary on our fraternity and perhaps more importantly, on our society as a whole from the unique perspectives that Freemasonry ought to offer us.

That does not mean such thinkers do not exist. They do; simply not in North American Freemasonry. North American Freemasonry has difficulty confronting its own history, preferring to hide in the pseudo-historical views of 19th century Masonic authors. It certainly has not reached beyond that to provide us with minds who can offer insight into the profound issues of society writ large.  Let me clarify, I am not speaking of scholarship, but of intellectual speculation. There is a difference. The latter implies, in my opinion, the former. It is not however, the same thing.

Radu Balanescu, a Grand Master of the Grand National Lodge of Romania, summed up what intellectuals do, why they are important, and what awaits any group that fails to generate them among its members, when he noted that "an elite intellectual, a thinker, is a person who restores to humanity its essence. This is the motive for the gigantic impact thinkers have had in the history of the world. This is the reason why collectivities deprived of great thinkers decay relatively quickly, pervert themselves and are eliminated toward the edge of human history."

North American Freemasonry is not currently producing anybody of the stature of  Jacques-Geoges Plumet, or Alain Bauer. We have no Guglielmi,  Kessel,  Jacques Miterrand, or Fred Zeller. Nor have we any Alain -Jacques Lacot,  whose work Victor Guerra most recently highlighted on his blog, http://www.victorguerra.net/.

These observations are not intended to belittle anyone, nor their obediences. Noting a flaw is the first step in empowering an individual or group to grow. Freemasonry in North America needs to begin developing didactic intellectuals if it is going to survive and grow. If that doesn't happen within "regular" freemasonry, we will have to look elsewhere for that leadership and example.

Gracias a Victor Guerra. 

New Masonic Titles

Yes, I know these are not in English. The problem is all of the good books, especially the new ones, are in a language other than English. Our goal over the next number of years is to make North Americans aware of the rich trove of books in other languages, notably French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Beyond that, will come the effort to identify a select number of the best and see what can be done to make that information available to an English speaking audience. Here are two worthy of note. More notices will follow.


Two new Masonic titles will be released in November.

Atanor in its Square and Compass collection is planning to launch two new Masonic titles this coming November. These two works are by Freemasons, two  Masters, one of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite and one of the French Rite.

José Luis Cobos offers "Master Manual. The third of the four steps" and Ignacio Merino "Words Union. Tour and evolution of Freemasonry." Both are members of the GLSE. The essential and updated "Manual for the Master's Degree" takes a practical and philosophical point of view . This book is the third of four steps of every Mason in his endless search for the Truth. Providing a tour of historical sources and outlining the evolution of Freemasonry from its operative beginnings as cathedral  builders through its current speculative and philosophical dimension, it begins by analyzing the historical causes and political circumstances that led to the great crossroads of modernity in the seventeenth century and reaches through centuries, bringing us to the constitution of the current United Nations.

Thanks to John Slifko.