Development of Masonic Ritual Redux

I have signed up to teach a condensed version of my "Development of Masonic Ritual" class at the Scottish Rite Auditorium in Portland. The class will be two hours rather than the original three and cover slightly less detail. The audience is also expected to be larger making the kind of dialog we had last September impossible. However, the opportunity to reach out to so many Brethren who may not want to attend a long Saturday class is very exciting. Hopefully, I will be able to throw out some parts of the class and inject a bit about the development of the Scottish Rite Degree system, since this is being held in their auditorium. There is also a hook in the class to try and bring some of those men into the Maine Masonic College system.

In other news, the Maine Masonic College has kindly invited me to repeat my class again this Autumn. I am expanding the material by quite a bit, causing the class to grow from three to six hours. The new material will be the result of my research into the development of Masonic Ritual in Maine. There are two documents which I plan to share with people at the class. The first is my synopsis of the Grand Lodge Proceedings and lodge histories titled, "Events in Maine Ritual History." I have learned a great deal while working on this project with some of the most exciting decades still before me (1890s). The document provides extracts from my sources along with bibliographical references. The second, more exciting document, is a transcription of the Maine Ritual from 1874, before it was standardized in writing by Grand Lodge. The differences between our current ritual and the ritual at that time are very interesting. For example, today after the Master says, "The proper officers will attend to the preparation of the candidate." there is a dialog between the Master and Junior Deacon. In 1874 no such dialog existed with the officers simply exiting the room. This is but one of the many differences in the ritual.

Hopefully, the new material and the two documents will make the class sufficiently new that previous attendees will considering participating again in the class. When the dates have been firmed up, I will announce them here.