Archiv für Juli 2016

‘The Gilded Age of Fraternalism’: Brotherhood and Modernism in 1920s America

The growth of the American obsession with fraternalism has been the subject of several historical treatises all seeking to understand what drew men and women into the lodge. The 1920s however, are a period that is often overlooked and neglected. Fraternalism continued to be a powerful national influence during this decade, and across the country orders received a surge of new recruits in the years following the First World War. Although their lodges had plenty of applicants, many fraternal leaders were concerned about the state of their institution in this post-war era. This article aims to analyse the evolution in the fraternal market that took place in the 1920s by examining the rapidly modernizing society of the Jazz Age and discussing the changing priorities of America’s men and women.

Report of the Doctoral Students Study Day on Freemasonry and Fraternalism, UCL Institute of Archaeology, London

This report gives an overview of the fourth annual International Doctoral Students Study Day on the theme of ‘Freemasonry and Fraternalism’. Those presenting papers represent a cross-section of the doctoral experience, from those just beginning the doctoral journey to those having recently completed it. The range of material discussed demonstrates the richness and vitality of the subject: Nazi-occupied Guernsey; freemasonry under the British Raj; Italian freemasonry in Ottoman lands; music and ritual in freemasonry; the masonic tradition of the seven liberal arts.

Looking to the East: Freemasonry and British Orientalism

Throughout the eighteenth century, the expansion of the Empire brought the British into closer contact with the Eastern world. The conquest of land went hand in hand with the conquest of knowledge. The East, including India, was systematically explored and revealed to Britain in the form of oriental tales, exploration accounts and scientific investigations. This phenomenon came to be known as ‘orientalism’. For freemasonry, the East had always been the symbolical direction from which light and truth were to rise. The British foothold in India and more so the constitution of the first Indian lodges, starting in 1730, came as an opportunity to explore the potential filiation of freemasonry with the early Indian civilizations. The East was thus more present than ever in the masonic collective imaginary. Where did freemasonry’s interest in Eastern cultures stem from? To what extent can it be said that freemasonry contributed to opening up the East? This article aims to explore the participation of British freemasonry to the orientalist movement of the late eighteenth century.

The Power of the Past: Inventing Traditions in Early Amsterdam Freemasonry

The Hobsbawm-Ranger framework of invented traditions is a suitable perspective from which to examine masonic traditions. Examples from early Dutch lodges show how they strove to gain primacy by anchoring their origins as far back in the past as reasona…

CD recording of Karel-Lodewikj Hanssens (1865) Aux Mânes d’un Frére qui fut Roi. Maconnieke rouwcantate voor Leopold 1. Performed by Metropolis Orkest & Koor dir. Jaak Gregoor. GBF Music, Dendermonde. Belgium (2015). €12.40. info@ gbfmusic.com

Quelle: https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/JRFF/article/view/27564

RAVENHILL-JOHNSON, A., The Art and Ideology of the Trade Union Emblem, 18501925 (London: Anthem Press, 2013), 235 pp., Illustrated. £60, Hbk, ISBN-13: 978-0857285300, Pbk, ISBN-10: 0857285300.

Quelle: https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/JRFF/article/view/27636

MERO, John C., Under the Influence a Case Study of the Elks, MADD, and DUI Policy (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2015), 152 pp., $60.00 (£39.95) Hbk, ISBN-10: 0761865594, $59.99 (£39.95); eBook, ISBN-13: 978-0761865599.

Quelle: https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/JRFF/article/view/27538

BOGDAN, Henrik, and an A.M. Snoek (eds), Handbook of Freemasonry (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), 669 pp., 207, 170 Hbk, ISBN-13: 978-9004218338

Quelle: https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/JRFF/article/view/27213

PARKS, Gregory S., and Stefan M. Bradley (eds), Alpha Phi Alpha: A Legacy of Greatness, the Demands of Transcendence (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), xvi + 394 pp., $39.95, Hbk, ISBN: 9780813134215.

Quelle: https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/JRFF/article/view/24954

ZIOLKOWSKI, Theodore, The Lure of the Arcane: The Literature of Cult and Conspiracy (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 230 pp., £26 (US $39.95), Pbk, ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-0958-0.

Quelle: https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/JRFF/article/view/24666