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Ok, Why?
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Posted by Ryan Logan
Let’s all admit it; the DeMolay Ritual does a poor job of
explaining itself.
It uses big words, confusing sentence structure, and archaic terms. (“Mirth?
What is my mirth, and what are you going to do to it? You’re not going to kick me in my mirth, are you?”)
The horrible part is that all of this complexity is tossed at brand-new
candidates with machine-gun speed. Even
years later, there are elements of the Ritual and the DeMolay program that most
of us have never heard explained.
Over the next few issues, I’m going to dedicate this space
to explaining some of the aspects of DeMolay that went completely over my head
for the first few years of my membership.
To begin:
After my initiation at Summerfest 1996, I asked my Chapter
Dad, “Why doesn’t anybody sit in the North?”
All he said at the time was that it was based somehow on King Solomon’s
Temple. This, of course, left me with
the obvious question of “yeah… so??”
Let’s try to clear this up.
DeMolay, as most of you know, equates the morning, noon, and
evening of the day with the three stages of a man’s life. But beyond DeMolay, this connection is the
oldest allegory in the history of Man, dating back even to ancient Egypt and
the Sphinx’s Riddle. “What walks on
four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs at night?” The answer, of course, is Man, who crawls as
an infant, walks upright as an adult, and goes with a cane in old age.
DeMolay borrows a further allegory from the Masonic
Lodge. The Lodge takes as its example
the building of King Solomon’s Temple, the first great structure erected for
the worship of God, and arguably the greatest application of the mason’s
craft. The Temple had three gates; in
the East, South, and West, to let in the rays of the sun. No gate was built in the North because in
the Northern Hemisphere, the sun doesn’t shine directly on the north face. (That’s why moss only grows on the north
side of trees.)
DeMolay combines these allegories of the East, South, and
West with the morning, noon, and night of life, and places our three principal
officers in these stations.
Hopefully, this sheds some light on one dark corner of
DeMolay. Next month, we’ll examine the
roles of the Councilors more in-depth.
Got questions? Send questions about Ritual and programs to sabelo2000@hotmail.com. Good questions will be answered in this
column.
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