Slick silk symbols for sale

This silk wall hanging was listed for sale by Dominic Winter in Gloucestershire. It dates from around 1870 and the catalogue description reads:

A printed silk wall hanging, circa 1870s, 
depicting Adam & Eve, a beehive, a scythe, an hourglass, and various other Masonic symbols, colour blocked in green, yellow, pink, and mauve, on a blue and white ground, lined with pale blue silk, and with hand-stitched pink border, some light staining and minor edge-fraying, 81 x 68.5cm (24 x 27ins) 

It had an estimate of £70-100.

Brevity lodge covered by Daily Telegraph

From the Daily Telegraph...

Masons are cutting their meetings short to accomodate busy commuters - but the handshakes and the noose remain centre stage

File photo: The traditionally lengthy meetings, whose initiation rituals are at the heart of Masonic societies, are being replaced with more quick fire affairs to cater for busy executives Photo: Alamy

For centuries outsiders have been fascinated by their mysterious combination of arcane symbols, practices and props, amid the allure of a powerful cabal.

But Masonic gatherings are now being overhauled to drag them into the modern world.

The traditionally lengthy meetings, whose initiation rituals are at the heart of Masonic societies, are being replaced with more quick fire affairs to cater for busy executives.

Masonic illustration  Photo: Alamy

A new lodge has opened in southern England for professionals and office workers whose punishing working hours prohibit them from attending the more long-winded meetings of the brotherhood.

The Lodge of Brevity dispenses with much of the bureaucratic elements which traditionally open Masonic meetings – such as reading the minutes of previous meetings and noting apologies for absence - in order to get straight to the heart of the matter; the reciting of key phrases, the rolled-up trouser legs and the handshakes.

“All we’re trying to do is attract a few new members. We’re not trying to take over the world.”

Member of Provincial Grand Lodge of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight

The idea is to allow Masonic meetings to begin later in the evening, enabling commuters to arrive in time for the start of the rituals.

David Foot, communications officer for the Provincial Grand Lodge of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, told The Telegraph: “We can no longer afford to have meetings which last for hours. It’s simply off-putting for would-be members who have all sorts of competing pressures, such as work and family demands.

“In today’s world it’s impossible for busy people to leave work in time to get to a lodge meeting that starts at 5 or 6pm, so the Lodge of Brevity meetings will start at around 7.30pm. They will also be shorter, which means they won’t eat into precious family time so much.

“By dispensing with mundane business such as the reading of the minutes – which usually takes an hour and can all be done beforehand on-line – we can get on with the substance of meetings and still get home at a decent time.”

By the substance of things Mr Foot of course means the ritual that accompanies all lodge affairs, such as swearing oaths of allegiance to the Crown and the law on a sacred text and the initiation of new members.

"Members are just as likely to be dustmen and office workers as doctors, civil servants and bank managers.”

David Foot, Hampshire mason

The initiation ceremony involves the existing members staging a short allegorical play in which significant phrases are uttered to symbolise the journey of the new member from a childlike state of innocence, through to living a full and worthy life to preparing for death.

At one point a noose is placed around the neck of the applicant, to symbolise the cutting of the umbilical cord.

As the novice passes through each stage, a special handshake, known as ‘the Grip’ – which cannot be repeated or demonstrated outside of lodge meetings - takes place between members.

The brotherhood hopes the new fast-track meetings adopted by the Lodge of Brevity, based in Chandler’s Ford, near Eastleigh, Southampton, will also help attract new members and stem the long-term decline in new blood being initiated into lodges.

Masonic symbol on door of Lodge in Langport, Somerset  Photo: Alamy

The United Grand Lodge of England – which draws together the country’s lodges , has lost as many as 100,000 members over the past 20 years – about a third of its membership – from its post-war peak, when men who had experienced the camaraderie of life in uniform looked for organisations to continue that in peacetime.

The secretive rituals of the Masons, and the public suspicion that they are secret society exerting a hidden influence on society, have long inspired works of fiction from the Marquis de Sade’s Juliette to The Da Vinci Code.

But modern-day Masons insists their affairs are much more benign and mainly involve charitable work carried out amid a clubbable atmosphere – the organisation donates £30 million a year to charity.

Indeed Mr Foot points out that new lodges, far from being the preserve of captains of industry, financial moguls or high court judges and civil servants, are organised around more mundane lines. They include a rugby lodge, a yachting lodge and a motor sport lodge called ‘Chequered Flag’, which was recently consecrated in Southampton and has over 230 ‘brethren’, or members.

Secret Brotherhood of Freemasons  Photo: History Channel

Mr Foot said: “A new member could be sitting down to dinner with a vicar on one side and a plumber on the other. Members are just as likely to be dustmen and office workers as doctors, civil servants and bank managers.”

The Masons have launched a membership recruitment drive ahead of the organisations’ 300th anniversary in 2017.

Early lodges were formed as a “non-sectarian, socially egalitarian forum in which men of integrity could fraternise, while avoiding the vexed issues of religion and politics”.

Frequently meeting in coffee houses they adopted the working tools of the stonemason – the square, compass and apron – as their symbols, to denote the building of an upright life.

Close up of a plate glass window showing masonic symbols in a Freemasons Lodge  Photo: Alamy

In some countries however, masons did become shadowy groups of men operating within the establishment in opposition to democratic forces.

In Italy the P2 – or Propaganda Due - lodge drew together senior intelligence and military officers, industrialists and right wing politicians, including Silvio Berlusconi, as a ‘state within a state’, with the intention of keeping the left from power. P2 was also active in Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina, in support of the countries’ military dictatorships.

British masons are at pains to emphasise they have no such subversive ambitions.

“All we’re trying to do is attract a few new members,” said a member of one of the new Hampshire lodges. “We’re not trying to take over the world.”

Tatler Tory's Freemason cronies

From the Daily Mail...

The ‘Tatler Tory’ scandal took a new turn last night after it emerged that Mark Clarke and his cronies are Freemasons.

They are members of the Phoenix Lodge, based in Wandsworth, South London, where Clarke lives – and meet there to hatch political plots.

One of Clarke’s fellow Phoenix Freemasons is lawyer and Conservative councillor Andy Peterkin. Mr Peterkin formerly worked for Clifford Chance, the London law firm chosen by Tory chairman Lord Feldman to conduct an independent inquiry into the Clarke scandal, and now works for Farrar and Co, the Queen’s lawyers.

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One of Clarke’s fellow Phoenix Freemasons is lawyer and Conservative councillor Andy Peterkin (left)

When the bullying claims against Clarke surfaced, Mr Peterkin leapt to his defence on Facebook saying: ‘Mark Clarke is one of my best mates. Feel free to unfriend me if that offends you.’ He has since deleted it.

Mr Peterkin told The Mail on Sunday. ‘I have given Mark a shoulder to cry on but I am not giving him legal or any other advice. I am sick and tired of seeing him kicked to death in public.’

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Other Phoenix Freemasons include Clarke’s henchman Andre Walker. Walker helped Clarke bully Elliott Johnson, before the activist took his own life. He also tried to trap one of Clarke’s female Tory foes into being caught on camera snorting cocaine.

Ukip general secretary Matthew Richardson, another close friend of Clarke’s, is a former Worshipful Master of Phoenix Lodge.

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Mark Clarke ( left ) pictured with Grant Shapps. Mr Shapps recently resigned following the emergence of the scandal

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Tory party activist Elliott Johnson (centre) was bullied by Mark Clarke. He took his own life, aged 21

As an Oxford student, Mr Richardson set up an online forum where people could post gossip anonymously– until it was shut down amid legal threats.

Clarke ally Greg Smith, an aide to Cabinet Minister Greg Hands, is also a former Phoenix Worshipful Master. It was at Smith’s summer wedding that Clarke caused outrage by holding hands with Ms Brummitt in church. A guest bawled out Clarke, saying he should be at home with his wife and children.

Fellow Phoenix Freemason Donal Blaney runs the Thatcherite Conservative Way Forward, where Mr Johnson worked. He was one of Clarke’s closest friends – until he disowned him as a ‘narcissistic sociopath’ after a recent fall-out.

Renowned for its secret handshakes and bizarre rituals, Freemasonry has long been suspected of having members in high places in the judiciary and the police, although in recent years the organisation has tried to shrug off its reputation for conspiracies and the dark arts. Freemasons are traditionally obliged to swear an oath, blindfolded, bare-chested, with a noose around their neck and a dagger placed to their heart, and to never reveal the hidden mysteries of the organisation.

Masonic rules say members – of which there are around 250,000 in England and Wales – must keep each others’ lawful secrets, which has led to fears that it fosters corrupt cliques.

But Freemasons’ leaders say alleged historic links with political and criminal conspiracies are a myth and in 2012 launched an exercise promising greater openness. Prince Edward is Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England.

 

COMMENT: At last, a Tory stands up to bully 

By Simon Walters 

If he were alive today, Elliott Johnson would be proud of his friend and fellow passionate Conservative Patrick Sullivan.

As with Elliott, Mark Clarke bullied and abused him in a bar out of spite.

As with Elliott, when Mr Sullivan stood up for himself, Clarke bullied him again in another bar.

As with Elliott, cowardly Clarke used a thug who had befriended Mr Sullivan, only for the friend to betray him when he needed him.

But that is where Elliott’s story and Mr Sullivan’s story part.

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If he were alive today, Elliott Johnson would be proud of his friend and fellow passionate Conservative Patrick Sullivan (pictured)

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Mark Clarke is pictured sat next to former deputy Conservative party chairman Emma Pidding (left)

Elliott, 21, fresh out of university and new to London, was too frightened to speak out. Convinced he had been abandoned by everyone, he killed himself on a railway track in Bedfordshire.

Mr Sullivan nearly went the same way. But he didn’t.

Perhaps it was the added maturity that comes with being nearly ten years older than Elliott; perhaps it was the outrageous way that he was ambushed by Clarke on Monday. Perhaps it was his burning indignation at the wrongs done to his tormented friend.

Whatever it was, Mr Sullivan decided to stay silent no more.

Like Elliott – though unlike Clarke and his burly accomplices Andre Walker and Will Hanley – mild-mannered Mr Sullivan is some way short of six feet tall.

Which makes his action in revealing how Clarke and his Tory mobsters tried to browbeat him into retracting his claim that he had been bullied all the more courageous.

If the Tory party had shown the same bravery as Mr Sullivan in confronting bullies, perhaps Elliott would be alive today.

Michael Fallon: Let's see where the investigation takes us

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LADY ROAD TRIP: 'CRAZY CLARKE DESERVES A SAFE SEAT'

The Tory peer ennobled for backing Mark Clarke’s ‘Road Trip’ promised to help secure him a safe Parliamentary seat, it was claimed last night.

Baroness Emma Pidding told Tory activists they all ‘loved crazy’ Clarke, showering praise on his mistress and another lover at a post-Election event.

The revelation came as allies of Grant Shapps, who was forced to quit as a Government Minister for giving Clarke too much power at Tory HQ, attacked Pidding, Cabinet Minister Robert Halfon and Tory chairman Lord Feldman. ‘They are far more culpable than Grant who has been made a scapegoat,’ said one MP.

One MP said Feldman had survived because he was a friend of David Cameron’s, and Halfon had emerged unscathed as he was close to George Osborne. ‘It was Grant’s bad luck that he had no one in Downing Street who would lift a finger to defend him,’ said the MP.

Pressure mounted on Baroness Pidding last night after fresh disclosures about her close links to Clarke.

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Baroness Emma Pidding (right) told Tory activists they all ‘loved crazy’ Clarke (left), showering praise on his mistress and another lover at a post-Election event

A confidante of the peeress told this newspaper: ‘Emma told me that she told Mark on Election night that he deserved to be given a safe seat at the next Election and she would do all she could to get it for him.’

The Mail on Sunday has obtained a tape recording of a ‘Road Trip’ rally in July in London on the Hispaniola, a floating restaurant on the Thames at Westminster, attended by Pidding, Clarke and Halfon.

There Pidding said: ‘I want to pay tribute to Mark Clarke. We all thought he was a bit crazy but we love him so much.’

And she praised married Clarke’s mistress, India Brummitt, whom he flaunted on the ‘Road Trip’ that visited marginal constituencies before he Election, and another of his activist lovers, Ellie Vesey-Thompson. Pidding said: ‘Mark only looks this good because of the work that they’ve put in.’

Both lovers worked for Tory MP Claire Perry, David Cameron’s adviser on combating ‘the sexualisation of children’.

This newspaper revealed last week how a former female employee of Mr Halfon had an affair with another Tory MP, sparking an alleged blackmail bid by Clarke because he wanted Mr Halfon to support his bid to become a candidate.

In his speech on the Hispaniola, Mr Halfon praised ‘incredible’ Clarke before adding light-heartedly: ‘I also want to talk about romance...’

He referred to a woman who worked in his office who had fallen in love with a male Tory campaigner on ‘Road Trip.’ At the time Mr Halfon had just ended an affair with another woman on the project – but it was not disclosed until last month by this newspaper.

Baroness Pidding said last night she had backed Clarke to go back on the candidates’ list – but at the time was unaware of allegations against him.

‘On no occasion did she promise or even hint she would ensure him a safe seat,’ added a spokesman.

Clarke, a consultant with Unilever, denies any wrongdoing.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3347667/Tatler-Tory-s-Freemason-cronies-Mark-Clarke-goes-lodge-councillor-worked-law-firm-chosen-conduct-inquiry-bullying-scandal.html#ixzz3tdoLUjQx
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