Reddit mentions of The Mason's Words: The History and Evolution of the American Masonic Ritual

The Mason's Words: The History and Evolution of the American Masonic Ritual is a good look at how things have evolved in the United States.

I seem to recall you being in the US somewhere. If so: https://www.amazon.com/Masons-Words-History-Evolution-American/dp/061585382X/

It's not that long of a read, and it can pretty easily be broken down.

The Mason's Words: The History and Evolution of the American Masonic Ritual by Robert G. Davis is an excellent history. I really recommend not reading until after you're a Master Mason. A major part of the Degree experience is not knowing exactly what's going to happen next.

> So different US jurisdictions wear aprons differently to identify what degree a mason is?

Yes. There's probably a very interesting historical point to be made on how variations in American Masonry were introduced into it by the arguments and antagonisms over Who Had Pure Webb Work...

...but...

I prefer to think we introduced the variations just to upset confound the English ;)

EDIT: Link, spelling, formatting.

>better off than the degree mill lodges that can't keep members.

California has declined from 82,318 members in 2002 to 52,096 members in 2015. Overall US masonry has fallen to 25% of its 1959 membership numbers. Where are these degree mills supposedly inflating masonry? I only see decade after decade of losses.

>>Only 20% of all masons have the talent and interest to serve in the officers line.

>Citation needed.

The Masons Words, by Robert Davis states that only 5% of membership will eventually become ritualists, but I've seen others quoting papers from The Masonic Renewal Committee of North America and more commonly saying 20%.

>If you're properly vetting your candidates during the prospect and applicant phases

How the hell do you vet for that? Short of requiring a battery of psychological and aptitude tests (which would be an illegal addition to the application form and so illegal under every grand lodge in the US), how can you select men for their ability to do the memory work necessary to be ritualists?

And why? Lodges of only bookworms already exist. They're called Research Lodges. Why would you want to exclude men of other abilities? Cooking good meals, playing the piano, woodworking, and many other skills are also important parts of a lodge. A lodge of only ritualists is still only part of a lodge.

You have multiple misstatements of the Masonic Renewal Committee of North America's recommendations, which is what CA seems to be following this year. If this is your first exposure to the ideas, don't worry, you'll be hearing them again and again.

In particular I can't believe this stupid combination of ideas from Grand Lodge CA:

>considering progressive lines that start only at the Senior Deacon or the Junior Warden's stations;

>maintaining progressive lines that don't advance annually, but instead, every two or more years.

"Hey guys! Remember how much difficulty we had finding men willing to join the officers line from Junior Steward to WM because it was a seven year commitment? Well we've now cut the progressive line to just the Senior Deacon, but now it takes twice as long in every position so it now takes eight years! See what we did there?"

>split its membership into new lodges. That sounds like a complete nightmare.

Well, given how these new UD lodges aren't recruiting any new members but only going around poaching members from existing healthy lodges and spreading membership even thinner, it'd sure be nice to see someone add people back to the community instead of just resorting an ever dwindling number of members into an apparently increasing number of lodges. But yes, the theory is healthy lodges are supposed to divide and spawn new lodges regularly like bee hives based on Dunbar's Number. It does work in England. But England only has 358,214 members compared to the USA's 1,898,130 so based on numbers the US model is the more successful. The counter argument is large urban cities like San Francisco had 10x as many lodges in the past as they do today. The counter-counter argument is smaller lodges tend to be a cult of personality, so after the split the lodge that doesn't get the favored leadership doesn't last long. Its worth investigating chartering new tiny lodges under this model (or "boutique lodges" as some people disparage them) and see how the experiment works, but I wouldn't go telling the existing established lodges they have to change as well.

>The number of prospects we have to entertain is no where near what you recommend.

I count as prospects ever time we answer the phone and respond to an email. You're counting the number of guys you actually entertain at dinner. Different steps in the process. I'm not sure we're actually that far off from each other in desired results.

Robert Davis' The Mason's Words.