Page 27 - ASHLAR - April - June 2019

N A L G
I O
G E RAND LODGE
The Ashlar R Vol. XV Issue I
flesh. It is the realization of our fundamental experimentally achieved. Moreover, treating
unity and identity with ultimate of ultimates. It is Initiation-science purely from a historical
the experience to which in our Third Degree the standpoint, it could be shown that this was
Mason is told to lift his eyes in expectation of always the fundamental religious and
realizing it, and which is likened to the glory of a philosophic arcanum of every Initiation-
star whose rising brings peace and salvation, system that has existed, one, that under pain
and is still more elaborately dramatized in the of dire penalties for its disclosure, was always
finding of the Lost Word and the great vision rigorously withheld from the uninitiated world
attained at the restoration to light in the end of with whose less matured religious outlook it
the charge after raising. was bound to clash. Whence it comes that,
If this, then, be the purpose and goal of following this wise practice, Masonry leaves
Initiation, the fundamental hypothesis and every man to follow his own religion, in the
philosophic secret of Masonry is the solemn certain knowledge that every religion,
fact that God and the human soul are in however crude or imperfect, leads ultimately
essence a unity, not a duality, and the sole to the one center and is a preparation for what
intention of our Initiatory-system is, by can he realized in its fullness only by initiation.
instruction and discipline, to bring about in each True realization in masonry happens when
of us the conscious realization of that unity. one realizes that the body is not the self but a
Is not such hypothesis of necessity a secret? frail carrier of the soul, and it weighs only 21
For if it is to become realized in personal grams!
experience, it is an experience which must he
prepared for in secret, be realized in secret, and
remain secret, incomprehensible, and
incommunicable to everyone save those in the
silence of whose breast it becomes

BROTHERS, WE REMEMBER - Poem

Every year we think of those who fell for us to Relief.
live. Let not their sacrifice go unmarked; remember
We know not names or faces, only what they every year
had to give. That these brave men enabled us to have
They all laid down their lives for us, strangers what we hold dear.
from the past May they all be with the Mighty High, there in
Their sacrifices changed the world and will Heaven above.
forever last. They showed the real Truth of living life with
Brotherly Love.
Many would be brothers from a host of different
parts
Strangers to each other, but fraternal in their
hearts.
They fought for what was righteous, their
absolute belief
Then gave their lives for us to live, the ultimate

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