WB David S. Blew Masonic engineering, optical illusions and other - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Masonic engineering, optical illusions and other interesting facts September 13, 2017

• Mt. Moriah Lodge #28, F&AM

by

WB David S. Blew

 The connection is explored in many books

 Freemasonry also

played a role in the underground railroad which provided a pathway to freedom for slaves

 We will probably never know for sure, but there have

been items discovered that give us a hint

 Originally published in 1840 by James Orchard

Halliwell (who was not a mason)

 Various claims by scholars as to when original

document was written

 Middle of the 15th century  1427 to 1445  1390  Some say even 926

 Everything points to the fact that the Craft was

flourishing in Ireland in the sixteenth century.

 It is impossible, however, to be dogmatic about the

point, whether or not it possessed any esoteric ceremonies.

 With most of us that will be a matter of faith rather

than evidence.

 Yet if we may trust the testimony of a certain old relic

• f antiquity, some measure of symbolism was

associated on occasion with the implements of masonry, as is shown by what is usually known as the…

 In November 1830, in the city of Limerick, an

architectural engineer by the name of James Pain made a fascinating discovery.

 He had been contracted for the sum of £3,000 by the

New Limerick Navigation Company to replace the ancient Baal’s Bridge (originally built in 1340) that linked the Englishtown on King’s Island to the Irishtown area on the mainland.

Limerick, Ireland

 During the excavation work on the original four-arch

bridge, his workmen discovered, under the foundation stone, an old brass plate much eaten away.

 This plate was in the shape of a stone mason’s square

and engraved on both sides.

 Measures approx 1.7 inches on each side, and 5.875 on

hypotenuse

 Dated 1507  Inscription

 Side 1 - I will strive to live with love and care  Side 2 – Upon the level by the square

 An ordinary person would have possibly treated this

item as a curiosity, a souvenir of a job well done, but James Pain recognized it as something more.

 In fact, he recognized those very words. Those words

had become an integral part of his life, a personal code to live by.

 Pain was a freemason and the implement he was

looking at was not a stonemason’s square, but a Freemason’s square.

 It was dug out of the eastern corner of the foundation

• f the northern land pier.

 The position in which the square was found indicates

that one of our Masonic customs, still in vogue, was practiced in Ireland 325 years before the repair work (500+ years ago from today).

 Pain had just discovered one of the oldest Masonic

relics in the world

 Physical evidence that freemasonry existed in Ireland

as far back as the Middle Ages.

 He was just one in a long line of engineer freemasons

that stretches from ancient times to the present day.

 Lawrence Bell  Walter Chrysler  Andre Citroen  William Dow  Henry Ford  Alfred Fuller  Charles C. Hilton  Sir Thomas Lipton  Fredrick Maytag  Ransom E. Olds

 James Watt – improved the Newcomen steam engine. The

Watt Steam Engine started the Industrial Revolution

 Richard J. Gatling – built the “Gatling Gun”  Joseph Guillotin – inventor of the guillotine  George Pullman – built first railroad sleeping car  David Sarnoff – father of television  John Fitch – inventor of the steamboat  Richard Hoe – inventor of the rotary press  Simon Lake – built 1st submarine successful in open water

 French-born astronomer, scientist, natural

philosopher and priest

 Credited with the invention of the

planetarium

 Took original steam engine design a step

further though the addition of a safety valve

 Influenced by Sir Isaac Newton, whom he

was an assistant to, the Oxford-educated Desaguliers chose to settle in England

 Desaguliers was also an extremely prominent Freemason

and a major force both in collating the early history of the society and in attracting noblemen to the world’s first known Grand Lodge — the Premier Grand Lodge of England.

 Mystery shrouds his connection with Freemasonry up to

1719, but in that year he was elected the third Grand Master, and after serving in this post he subsequently held various prestigious positions within the Fraternity — in his adopted home as well as in Europe.

 Desaguliers, who appears to have invested far more time in

science and Freemasonry than he did in the Church of England, has been called the “Father of Modern speculative Freemasonry.”

 Benjamin Franklin, the great statesman, scientist,

political theorist and philosopher, is without doubt one of the most important inventors and public figures in American history.

 The creator of the Franklin stove, bifocal glasses

and the glass harmonica also believed in generously donating his genius and never patented his work.

 He was a true Renaissance man, and possibly his

greatest gift to civilization was the lightning rod, which led to a greater understanding of the nature

• f electricity.

 Franklin was active as a Freemason from at least as early as

1731, when he was initiated into St. John’s Lodge in Philadelphia.

 Appointed Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of

Pennsylvania in 1934, he was heavily involved in Masonic work his entire life, and edited and reprinted Scotland’s

• Rev. James Anderson’s Constitutions of the Free-Masons in

the same year as his high appointment.

 This was the first Masonic book in America and effectively

linked the “Antient” (sic) and the “Modern” world.

 Franklin, known as the “First American,” was instrumental

in the creation of modern America and, in doing so, brought the secrets of Freemasonry to a new nation. Or at least to its chosen few.

 The celebrated French inventors the Montgolfier Brothers

— arguably the earliest important names in the history of aviation — performed the first manned ascent of a hot air balloon in 1783.

 Based on experiments with bags made of paper and fabric

and a naked flame, their paper-lined silk balloon was lifted 6,562 feet in the air.

 In the same year they successfully transported first animals

(a sheep, a rooster and a duck) and then later human passengers, the first one being Jacque-Étienne himself.

 Less is known about the brothers’ lives as Freemasons, but

like Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier — who made the first untethered manned flight in a Montgolfier balloon — they were active members of the Fraternity.

 James “Jim” Bowie, legendary frontiersman, pioneer, battle

hero and reputed joint designer of the Bowie knife (with a little help from his brother, Rezin), is something of a folk hero in American cultural history.

 Bowie’s fame was born of violent circumstances. Having

been shot and stabbed in the famous brawl known as the Sandbar Fight, Bowie killed the sheriff of Rapides Parish, Norris Wright, with an unusually long knife.

 It is said that this became the basis for the design of the

now-famous hunting knife. While many different manufacturers have produced their own versions of the blade, Bowie can lay claim to being the original inspiration for the design.

 Among his many other roles — including a slave trader

and land speculator — Bowie was an esteemed member of L’Humble Chaumiere Lodge No. 19 at Opelousas, Louisiana.

 Yet just as his life appeared to be at its most settled and

comfortable, his wife and children were killed in a cholera outbreak.

 He then fought and died alongside fellow national

icons Davy Crockett and William Travis at the Battle of the Alamo in 1836.

 It is widely held that Alexander Graham Bell was the inventor of the

• telephone. However, it is also claimed that inventor, revolutionary

thinker and unconfirmed Freemason Antonio Meucci had devised the principles of the telephone when Bell was still an infant, and had a working model by 1859 — long before Bell and others.

 Unfortunately for the Italian, due to technical omissions relating to

vocal sounds in his patent — which was filed five years before Bell’s — he never gained the credit for his work; until recently, that is.

 In 2002, the US Congress officially recognized Meucci’s work in the

development of the telephone.

 The rumors of Meucci’s involvement with the Freemasons appear to be

largely down to his close friendship with the great military hero Giuseppe Garibaldi, the unifier of Italy.

 Garibaldi was an active Mason and arrived in New York around the

same time as Meucci. The two shared ideas, and it seems likely that Freemasonry played some part in this exchange.

 American industrialist and inventor is best known

for popularizing the revolver that eventually led to the Colt Single Action Army, otherwise known as the Colt .45.

 He applied for his first patent at the age of 18, and

his dream of perfecting the ‘impossible gun’ never faded.

 An engaging and pioneering character in the world

• f munitions and other fields, Colt once made a

living as “the celebrated Dr. Coult,” lecturing on chemistry and performing demonstrations of the effects of N2O on audience members.

 Like his manufacturing rival Daniel Leavitt — who

patented the first revolver after his own — and another great firearms exponent, Richard Gatling, Colt was also an active Freemason.

 Colt’s name will forever be associated with the

gun, and interestingly his products were of great use to fellow Masons Benito Juárez, Simon Bolivar, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Sam Houston in their various violent revolutionary activities.

 Sir Sandford Fleming was a Scottish-born Canadian inventor and

engineer.

 Perhaps best known as the man who, in 1851, designed the first

Canadian postage stamp, Fleming is also often credited with the invention of standard time zones.

 Amongst his many achievements, Fleming was chief engineer of the

cross-continental Canadian Pacific Railway.

 Knighted by Queen Victoria in 1897, Fleming was also a Freemason.

Freemasonry helped Fleming in no small way, providing him with links to many influential members across the international fraternity.

 His proposal of world time zones was supported by many powerful

masons, most notably the fourth Governor General of Canada, 9th Duke of Argyll John Campbell.

 Fleming’s engineering genius also helped to bring about the trans-

Pacific submarine telegraph cable, which some have dubbed the “Victorian Internet.”

 It can be reasonably claimed that the American innovator King

Camp Gillette changed the world when he launched the cheap, disposable safety razor to a grateful public in 1901.

 Yet the founder of the world famous Gillette brand (now a

business unit of Procter & Gamble), who was known for his business acumen and innovative marketing strategies, was also a Freemason.

 Little is known of Gillette’s personal experience within the

Fraternity, but his political ideas are well documented and must surely have been shared among other members.

 Gillette was a “Utopian Socialist,” and envisioned a single public-

• wned corporation that controlled the entire world’s industry.

He also imagined a giant US-wide city named Metropolis that would be powered exclusively by Niagara Falls.

 The Romanian inventor, engineer and aviation pioneer was one of the

earliest innovators in flight technology.

 In 1906, his self-propelled, fixed-wing aircraft – complete with landing

wheels – managed to fly 39 feet, approximately 3 feet off the ground.

 What is less well known is that the aeronautics genius was a member of

Romania’s Masonic Order, which had grown steadily more organized following the unification of its lodges in 1880.

 It has been reported that, in the wake of World War I, Vuia was part of

a small group of Freemasons who traveled to the Peace Conference in Paris to facilitate links with the Paris Ernest Renan Lodge — and in turn, between the governments of the two countries.

 As a world famous innovator and designer, Vuia’s value to Romania and

his lodge was priceless while journalists who were part of the French fraternity ensured Romania got good press at the conference.

 American engineer, scientist and developer of the first electronic analogue

computer he is perhaps best remembered as the author of the revolutionary essay “As We May Think.”

 Published in 1945, it envisaged much of the technology we take for granted

today, including personal computers, the Internet, hypertext, online encyclopedias, and speech recognition software.

 In 1939, Bush — a Worshipful Master in Massachusetts’s Richard C. Maclaurin

Lodge — was appointed president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington; as such he assumed considerable influence with the US Government in military and scientific research.

 Bush was involved in the development and proposed use of the atomic bomb,

and was the alleged head of the “Majestic 12” — the purported code name of a secret committee of scientists, leaders, and officials formed by President Harry Truman.

 Bush is rumored to have investigated UFO activity in the wake of the Roswell

incident, the supposed crash of an alien aircraft in New Mexico in 1947.

 The secrets his fellow Lodge members may have heard are almost too immense

to contemplate.

 Our eyes can be fooled  Our mind can be fooled  Examples

PARIS IN THE THE SPRING

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Find the mistakte

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE- SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

WOMAN WITHOUT HER MAN IS NOTHING

WOMAN WITHOUT HER MAN, IS NOTHING WOMAN, WITHOUT HER, MAN IS NOTHING

 Lateral thinking puzzles are strange

situations in which you are given a little information and then have to find the explanation.

 They require that the solver be able to

“think outside the box”, or think laterally.

1 + 4 = 5 2 + 5 = 12 3 + 6 = 21 8 + 11 = ?

How is it possible to cut a

traditional circular cake into eight equal size pieces using

• nly three straight cuts?

A woman is seated in a cabin and is

writing a letter.

There is a violent electrical storm

• utside and she dies as a

consequence.

How did she die?

 What is the number of the parking space containing

the car?

So why is all this important?

 These examples show that sometimes we can be

mislead by our own senses.

 Sometimes we do not think “outside the box” and we

get locked into traditional thinking.

 That can make us rigid in our thinking.

 I now present you with the working tools of a

Fellowcraft Mason, which are the Plumb, Square and Level.

 The Plumb is an instrument used by Operative Masons

to try perpendiculars, the Square to square their work, and the level to prove horizontals.

 But we as Free and Accepted Masons are taught to

make use of them for more noble and glorious purposes.

 The plumb admonishes us to walk uprightly in our

several stations before God and man;

 The square teaches us to square our actions by the

square of virtue;

 And the level reminds us that we are travelling upon

the level of time to the “undiscovered country, from whose bourne, no traveler returns.”

 You may define a symbol in a different way than

another brother.

 Which definition is better?  I would submit that both are correct.

 How would you

define plumb?

 How would you

define square?

 How would you

define level?

 Nothing in the ritual prevents us from finding our own

interpretations of those symbols.

 “Uprightly” refers to our passage through life.  But the plumb may do more than admonish us  It may be the symbol by which we erect our thoughts;

for there is crooked thinking as well as crooked building.

 Masons know that buildings must stand straight up if

they are to endure

 But “straight” is not in itself an absolute term.

 Tower of Piza was

• riginally plumb and

level

 Ground and

foundation settled

• ver time

 2 buildings next to each other look plumb and level  What about a building in NY compared to a building

in LA?

 Locally each is plumb and level but when viewed from

father away it would appear that they are not

 Therefore, we can easily read into “plumb” not only the

teaching of straight thinking, but of toleration.

 What is “straight” to one may not be straight to

another.

 As geographic locations alter the perspective of what is

“straight” so our position in the world of thought may alter our ideas of what is “straight” thinking.

 Two men may have vastly different ideas of what Truth

is, yet each may be right from his own standpoint.

 A plumb which admonishes us to recognize that, to an

• bserver far off (to the Great Architect, for instance)

both thoughts may be right, even if different, is a symbol with a concealed meaning well worth study.

 Virtue is a “disposition to conform cordially to the

requirements of the moral law.”

 But what is Moral Law?

 Ideas of morality can change with time, and with

geographical location.

 Can we boil a criminal in oil? A thousand years ago

this was considered a perfectly moral act.

 Two thousand years ago, an “eye for an eye” was

considered to be moral and just.

 Can you have more than one wife? It depends on

where you live. It is not illegal in some places today.

 Time and custom have altered the conception of the

moral law for some acts and thoughts, yet certain “squares of virtue” are the same for all mankind.

 No matter our race, location, religion, or country we

call home, it is the opposite of virtuous to steal, to bear false witness, to murder, or to betray one’s country.

 But Freemasonry is not concerned with the major

crimes when she bids an initiate obey the moral law. If she supposed a man was a potential thief (or worse) she would not admit him into her ranks.

 As the operative mason each had his individual square,

so we have, each of us, our own individual square of virtue.

 But the operative masons must of necessity have had

squares which were alike in their “squareness.”

 If their squares differed, then their stones would not

be alike and the wall they made would not be plumb and level.

 Operative masons might well have been allowed some

latitude as to the size of their squares, and of the materials out of which they were made.

 Examples  But it is not thinkable that they were allowed any

latitude in the angle of their squares; all had to be ninety degrees.

 The kind of square we use as the square of virtue will

be dictated by what manner of men we are.

 There is room for an honest difference of opinion

regarding many things, and there is room for differing squares of virtue.

 “In the most friendly manner remind him of his faults”

does not mean that we are to judge our neighbor, who builds with a square of steel, because we prefer to build with a square of wood.

 But when he builds with a square which is out of true,

then it is time for us to “whisper good counsel in his ear.”

 The moral law to which Masons must conform, must

be considered to be that general body of public

• pinion, as recognized by us all.

 It is by this that we must try our squares of virtue.  If our individual tools conform to this standard, then

we may use them fearlessly, regardless of size or material.

 Like perpendiculars, all horizontals are not parallel to

each other.

 Each of us has our own “level of time.”  We share a common time in that we are all alive at the

same time, and that month, day and year are all the same for us.

 But in the larger sense, none of us travels the same

level of time.

 Do you think time passes the same for:

 Terminal cancer patient  Newlyweds  Someone stuck in a boring job  Countdown to something exciting  Countdown to something dreaded

 5 minutes  Some lives are short and swift while others are long

and slow. Such “times” are surely not the same.

 It is seen, therefore, that even such objective symbols

as the plumb, level, and square, with an explanation printed in the ritual cipher manual, are not without possibilities of individual interpretation.

 It is not so important that your interpretation be the

best, only that you make some individual interpretation, and be tolerant of other interpretations

 WHAT a man thinks is usually far less important, than

that he DOES think!

 Do your own thinking!  Be a “Fellow of the Craft” who wants his own plumb,

square, and level.

 Compare your tools with your neighbors.  Do not be content with only one set of tools in the

Master’s hands.

 Seek more light.  Ask more questions.  Be more tolerant of other viewpoints.

 “Upon the level and by the square,” Bro. Kenneth L.

Mitchell

 “Foreign Countries,” Carl H. Claudy