The Cornerstone Society

FMT Article Autumn 2008

The Cornerstone Society confirms details of its 2008 Conference, “Quest for the Lost Word”, which will be held at Freemasons’ Hall, London on Saturday 29^th November, with registration starting at 12.45 pm.  The Speakers will be Prof. John Grange, “With the Centre”, Prof. Thierry Zarcone (CNRS, Paris), “Muslim Fascination with Freemasonry: Historic and Ritualistic Perspectives”, Dr Henrik Bogdan (Gothenburg University) “The Quest for the Lost Word”, Tom Bergroth (Grand Marshall of the Swedish Order) “The Swedish Rite” and Miss Pauline Chakmakjian (University of Wales, Lampeter), "Japanese Spirituality and Esoteric Freemasonry".  Tickets are £16.50 per person for the Conference only (with light refreshments).  For those who wish to dine, there will be dinner afterwards at the New Connaught Rooms at a cost of £29 per person excluding wine (total cost £45.50).  Application forms and full details can be found on our website www.cornerstonesociety.com - bookings can also be made securely on-line.  For further information, email secretary@cornerstonesociety.com or write to Mark St John Qualter, Secretary, The Cornerstone Society, 13 Victoria Road, Lytham St Annes, Lancashire FY8 1LE, enclosing a SAE.  Cheques made payable please to “The Cornerstone Society”.

Check out this video: The Compasses and the Cross

Check out this video: The Compasses and the Cross

The Gate Way to Health

I spent Saturday directing a model for photos for a new range books called The gate way to health. Have a look in my pictures for more. 

Check out this event: THE MASONIC MAGICIAN

Hosted By: Martin Faulks
When: 16 Sep 2008, 19:00
Where Toye Kenning & Spencer
19-21 Great Queen Street
London, London and South East|66 WC2B5BE
United Kingdom
Description:
Martin Faulks

Click Here To View Event

What Do You Know about Ritual?

..TR> ..TR> ..TR> ..TABLE> What Do You Know about Ritual? [Y82719] by: Revd Neville Barker Cryer Publisher: Lewis Masonic ISBN: 9780853182719

A Step on the Path
Category: Travel and Places

I just got awarded my Yellow Belt in To Shin Do. Its wonderful to have received this honor. This represents a proficiency using the Earth element approach. Something that I still feel a need to improve. Although the whole journey has helped me learn this. Getting up every day and training for 7 hours has taken a solid determination as has keeping positive thought all I have discovered about myself.

When I get back to England I plan to change my approach to many things.

Kings Island

Well I just visited Kings Island with the amazing griffins!

I love american amusment parks. I love the signs that say "no smoking or eating on this ride". As if your going to take a packed lunch on a roller coaster and then finnish with a cigar!

A Humbling Experience
Category: Travel and Places

I came to America to train with martial arts legend Stephen Hayes to find enlightenment. I was expecting to learn the mystical teaching of the ninja and to go home empowered. Enlightenment however comes in many forms and not all of them very easy to go through.

Those of you who know me well with know that I am a very experienced martial artist and that I have Black belts in multiple styles and am both a Regonal fencing champion and a four times UK National Martial Arts Association champion (Kuk Sool Won). So I came to America thinking a I had a very firm base to build on.

I was wrong.

In a recent session with Master Hayes I found myself completely unable to do anything. Every action I made defeated me. Compared to the art he is teaching here my previous combat methods seem childish. For more details on this interchange are going to have to buy my book when it comes out :)

To be honest its quite of nasty fall. I have a tendency to boast and build my past successes up. Its a hard dent to the pride when you cant live up to your own hype!

The interesting thing I learning in that in Ninjitsu through the Five elements of Earth Water Fire Wind and Void you learn alot about yourself. How you cope under pressure in the dojo tends to be very much how you deal with stressful situations in life.

More on this later.

Independence Day

Yes I'm here for a great big celebration of America kicking our Ass! I have been invited by the Griffin family who I think may infact be the most pleasant and spiritual family in America, to join them today for this mysterious event!

For those of you who are not American ....

In the United States, Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. Congress approved the wording of the Declaration on July 4 and then sent it to the printer. Whether John Hancock, as the elected President of the Second Continental Congress, or anyone else signed the document that day is unknown, because that document has been lost — presumably destroyed in the printing process. Hancock's name and that of a witness do appear on the typeset broadside that was published within a few days. On August 2 in the following month, an engrossed document in script form was signed by Hancock and other delegates.

Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, picnics, baseball games, and various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States, but is often also viewed as simply a summer festival, apart from its patriotic overtones.

Ninjitsu means the art of enduring. Something I am really having to to do here in Dayton Ohio. Im training 7 hours a day and my body is not recovering. Every day I wake up more tired. However I have waited many year to come here to study so I have to fight through. Its strange being away from everyone that normally supports you. You have to find something inside that normally is not needed.

First thoughts on America
Category: Travel and Places

I have arrived in Dayton Ohio. Im here to train with Ninja masters Stephen K Hayes so am in the dojo 8 hours a day but . . .

Here are my thoughts on America so far

The people are more friendly than in England. Far more helpfull and seem very happy.

Everything costs alot less.

There Shops are as big as our shopping malls.

The people dream of great things and are full of hope.

They dont get sarcasm.

Every drive pick up trucks but never seem to have anything in the back of them.

Sleep is not sacred here. People seem to be happy to wake each other up.

The Televistion is terrible. I mean really terrible. I find it very educational. Every time im near it i go a read a book instead.

Taco bell rules.

In summary. Almost everything you buy rent or stay in you will get a better value for money. Im typing this from the business room in my hotel. The hotel has two swimming pools and a gym. All free to use for guests. In the uk you would have to be in a very good hotel for this come as part of the package.

If so all you have to do is come to the Woods End Pub at Bramerton Near Norwich on Friday the 13^th of June!

I have just signed a contract with Ian Allan Publishing to produce a title about Ninjitsu. I don’t mean Tai Jitsu or self defence. I mean Ninjitsu the whole art including the philosophy, stealth art, weapons and the mystical spiritual techniques of the Ninja.  To do this I will have to travel across the globe to find the best masters. Its going to be a great challenge and a great adventure. Check my blog for regular progress reports.

I have just opened the new lewis masonic ebay shop. It full of clearance titles, bargains and author signed copies.

We even have a few whole sale listings including one for 10 copies of Turning the Hiram Key which is presently at 99p!

Click Here  http://stores.ebay.co.uk/lewismasonic

 P R E S S   R E L E A S E

   CANONBURY MASONIC RESEARCH CENTRE

                       SPRING-SUMMER DIARY DATES 2008

The Canonbury Masonic Research Centre is delighted to announce their celebrated list of speakers for the new Spring/Summer 2008 lecture programme.

Wednesday 21^st MAY : In Search of a Global Understanding of Religious Experience. PAUL BADHAM, Professor of Theology & Religious Studies ,

Director: Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre, University of Wales, Lampeter.  PAUL BADHAM studied Theology at Oxford, following this with a “Part Three” at Cambridge on “Christian Theology in the Modern World”, and a Ph.D. at Birmingham on “the Concept of the Soul” while working as Anglican Curate. He has been on the staff of the University of Wales Lampeter since 1973, from 1991 as Professor of Theology and Religious Studies in 1991. Since 2002 he has been Director of the Alister Hardy Religious Experience  Research Centre, which is based at Lampeter. He is also a Senior Research Fellow of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at Oxford University, and a Patron of Dignity in Dying. His publications include Christian Beliefs about Life after Death 1976; Immortality or Extinction? 1982 (with Linda Badham); Death and Immortality in the Religions of the World 1987; A John Hick Reader  1991; The Christian Understanding  of God and Christ in relation to Pure-land Buddhism 1994; Facing Death 1996; The Contemporary Challenge of Modernist  Theology 1998; and Religious Experience in Contemporary CHINA 2008. Paul is deeply interested in Religious and Near-death experiences in which he has supervised many dissertations. His most recent research project, in association with Professor Xinzhong Yao and other colleagues, was a comparative study of religious experience in BRITAIN and CHINA. The project has now expanded into a study of religious experience across traditions and cultures with participating scholars around the world.  

**For more than forty years the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre has gathered extensive data on religious experience in Britain, while statistical surveys also show that despite secularisation between a third and a half of us have experienced a “power or presence different from everyday life” But is this Universal or is it the product of life in a Christian or post-Christian culture?  To test this we launched our global study. We began with CHINA because this has the most different tradition. Chinese philosophy has been sceptical of spiritual realities for millennia, and whether Confucianism is a religion is hotly debated. On top of these historic puzzlements CHINA has been officially atheist since 1949 and during the “cultural revolution” of the 1960’s an attempt was made to eliminate religion.   The results of our four-year study of these questions exceeded all our expectations and in my talk I will describe what we found. The success of the CHINA project has led scholars elsewhere to adapt our Chinese questionnaire for their countries, and from preliminary findings it seems that religious experience is indeed a universal phenomenon even though its expression is shaped by national cultures and traditions.

Wednesday 18^th JUNE: Aleister Crowley: The Man Behind the Myth

GERALDINE BESKIN: Proprietor: ATLANTIS BOOKSHOP, the oldest and most famous arcane bookshop in London, of which Crowley was the most notorious customer. Publisher Neptune Press. GERALDINE BESKIN Beskin is involved with Rosicrucian Orders and was for a considerable time a member of one of the more recondite women’s masonic Orders. However, she holds a genuinely eclectic view of esoteric matters, perhaps from being the middle one of three generations of the same family who have owned the oldest and most famous arcane bookshop in London - the Atlantis Bookshop - of which Crowley was the most notorious customer ! In addition to hosting regular book launches for well-known authors, including Tobias Churton, David Rankine and Stephen Skinner, Geraldine has also successfully revived the famous Neptune Press and has staged three major exhibitions of the artist Austin Osman Spare, whose work she has collected for many years.

/2…

** Sixty years after his death, opinions about Aleister Crowley remain polarised – as can be seen from the two million internet references to him – but he was one of the most significant occultists of the twentieth century, and an objective re-appraisal of him, sorting fact from fable, is long overdue. While Crowley’s accomplishments were many, his vices were legendary and he certainly deserved more than a few of the criticisms levelled at him – but others were unfairly laid, and it would be unduly harsh and unjust to condemn him still for these. In this talk Geraldine Beskin, making full use of the letters, diaries and the major biographies of ‘The Great Beast’, aims to unravel the myths and to present the truth.

The Canonbury Masonic Research Centre (CMRC) was founded in 1998 as charitable trust to support the study and research of Freemasonry and allied traditions. Meetings are held in Canonbury Tower, which is one of London’s most intriguing landmarks, built in the 16^th century (1509-1532) by William Bolton, Prior to the Canons of St Bartholomew’s. It has been the home of many leading philosophers, writers and scholars, including Sir Francis Bacon, whose work was so influential in the development of the modern world.

All meetings start at 7.00pm through to 9.00pm, followed by light refreshment, enquiries for tickets £7 - contact Carole McGilvery on 020 7226 6256 mcgilvery@canonbury.ac.uk or download travel map and programme from www.canonbury.ac.uk

For further information please contact:

Carole McGilvery (020 7226 6256)

CMRC

Canonbry Tower

Canonbury Place

London N1 2NQ

Im trying to improve our advertizing. I would like your opinion on the following.

One of the most amazing human beings I have met in this life time is Bro Michael Halleran.

Perhaps one of the most witty humans alive brother Halleran is the only example I known of a Englishman reincarnated into an Amercian. Residing in Emporia, Kansas when all the other boys were holding spiting competitions young Halleran was reading classics of English literature.

Famous though out the world for his Brother Brother stories published in the scottish rite journal .

If you read his blog you will see why to me Michael is a modern Mark Twain. I wonder if that makes me Tezla?

http://audevidetace.blogspot.com

Well tomorrow I am off to a sales conference with Pete Waterman over a book I have requited him to write  him to write for us. Can you guess what its about?

Pete Waterman

Born in Coventry, Waterman was a teenage train spotter at Leamington Spa railway station every Saturday morning. He enjoyed this so much, he began collecting railway equipment - some of which had been stolen, for which he was convicted of receiving stolen goods. Waterman had left school illiterate, not learning to read until the age of thirty eight.[1] The judge who convicted him gave him a six months suspended sentence, subject to him travelling to Wolverhampton on a free pass and making tea for the depot staff. After his six months service, the depot foreman offered him a job as a cleaner, from which he progressed to a fireman. After closure of the depot, Waterman choose to follow a career in music, being inspired by The Beatles. To supplement his income as a DJ, Waterman became a gravedigger and then an apprentice at General Electric Company, becoming a trade union official.

Musical career

Building a record collection through rare US imports, his DJ work began to take him across the UK, entertaining bigger crowds with a blend of R and B and soul music tunes he had sourced. Given a residency with the Mecca group, he developed new initiatives including matinee discos for under 18s at Coventry’s Locarno club, which gave him a valuable insight into what music interested a younger audience.

Waterman took up a job as an A&R man, and worked in the Philadelphia scene, which included introducing the Three Degrees to the UK. He then moved to Jamaica working with Peter Tosh and Lee Perry, and producing Susan Cadogan’s reggae-crossover hit Hurts So Good.

In 1979, Waterman set up Loose Ends with Peter Collins, the first coming under the name 14-18 with a single inspired by World War I - "Good-Bye-Ee," and then hits with artists like Musical Youth and Nik Kershaw. He then set up his own company PWL (Pete Waterman Limited), in 1984, quickly signing producers Matt Aitken and Mike Stock, who produced the Whatever I Do for Hazel Dean. The trio formed the team Stock Aitken Waterman, whom became one of the most successful musical production teams of 1980s.

To date, Waterman has scored a total of twenty two UK number one singles with his various acts and he claims upwards of 500 million sales world-wide (inclusive of singles, albums, compilation inclusions, downloads, etc). Pete has also appeared in the Steps video "Tragedy".

Television presenting

Waterman co-presented The Hitman and Her with Michaela Strachan. He also presented a show on Radio City.

In more recent years, Waterman has appeared as a judge on both series of Pop Idol in the UK, and also Popstars: The Rivals, the latter leading him to become manager of the winning boy band One True Voice. Waterman said to rival judge Louis Walsh that if One True Voice failed to reach the 2002 Christmas number one in the UK, he would commit suicide. One True Voice were duly beaten to the number one spot by Girls Aloud, the programme's winning girl group, managed by Walsh. Waterman returned as judge for the second series of Pop Idol, but was constantly critical of the eventual winner, Michelle McManus, and was unashamedly unhappy when her victory was announced. Waterman has since said he will not appear on any similar programmes in future

Following his interests in railways, Waterman presented a historic self-retrospective view in Waterman on Railways for Channel Four/the Discovery Channel. Waterman also appeared in an advert by the National Blood Service in the UK, their sixth TV advert which also features Carol Smillie and Will Carling.

Outside music

In 1988 he revived the name of the London and North Western Railway Company for his rail vehicle maintenance business, based at Crewe, which is now the largest privately owned rail maintenance business in the country. He also has an interest in model railways, and is the founder of the model railway business 'Just Like the Real Thing', which specialises in O scale kits. He works closely with model-maker Malcolm Mitchell on this project. He continues to retain an interest in the company and regularly accompanies its sales stand to model railway exhibitions. Waterman has an extensive private collection of railway models and railway layouts, in O scale and larger gauges.

In addition to his passion for music and the railway, Waterman is also a huge supporter of Walsall FC. He is also a rugby league fan and is president of Rugby League Conference side Coventry Bears.

In the New Year's Honours List published 31 December 2004 he was given an OBE for his services to music. In December 2006, he became a patron of the newly formed charity, the City, Lambeth and Southwark Music Education Trust.

It been really great Since becoming master of Burlignton half of Masonic America have been in touch to say well done and congratulations!

Today a found out how they all knew. By the Power of Hodapp! Chris Hodapps Blog! Thanks Chris you a kind man.

Martin Faulks, Master-elect

Nosing about in other peoples' calendars, I see that my friend and brother Martin Faulks will be installed as Master of Burlington Lodge No. 96 in London on Tuesday, March 4th.

He is also currently the immediate Past Master of Cabbell Lodge No. 807, in Norwich.

I had the great opportunity of spending a little time with Martin and his thoroughly delightful bride Pip at the International Conference on the History of Freemasonry last year in Edinburgh. Martin is the marketing manager of Lewis Masonic, Britain's oldest publisher of Masonic books, and Pip is a writer, editor and illustrator. They live in Suffolk. And they are the only people I know who actually own a chinchilla.

Congratulations, Martin, on your year in the East.

http://freemasonsfordummies.blogspot.com/2008/03/martin-faulks-master-elect.html 

Biblioteca Massonica della Gran Loggia Regolare d'Italia

                      Masonic Library of the Regular Grand Lodge of Italy

M W Bro Fabio Venzi, Grand Master

Headquarters:                                                                                                           Grand Librarian:
Lungotevere dei Mellini 17                                                                               Yasha Beresiner