Climbing THE Ladder - From Master Mason to Chair: MASONIC PATHWAY VOLUME THREE

Climbing the Ladder - book descriptionYou were raised a Master Mason and thought you had arrived. Then you watched an Installation, saw the officers invested one by one, and understood that you had only finished the beginning.This is the map of the second journey: from the foot of the ladder to the evening you are elected Master Elect.It takes each office in turn - Steward, Inner Guard, the two Deacons, the two Wardens - and answers the same questions about each. What is it actually for? What will it ask of you? What does it teach that the next office assumes you already know? And how should you prepare for it, given that the Craft expects you to learn the work of your next office during the year you hold your present one?It is honest about the things nobody says out loud. That no collar is owed to you, and all but two are the Master's to give. That the Deacons' years are the apprenticeship for the Chair and the gravest work to miss. That a man who loses a year to illness or family or work arrives in the East carrying a gap, through no fault of his own, and that the Lodge will carry the work but cannot carry what he says to himself about it. And that the offices off the ladder - the Almoner, the Charity Steward - are not lesser but different, and hold as much of the Craft's heart as any chair.Written for the Master Mason who wants the Chair to be a fulfilment rather than an ordeal, and for the Master and Director of Ceremonies whose choices decide which it will be.No ritual appears in these pages, and nothing that happens in a Lodge room is described.Written by a serving Freemason under the United Grand Lodge of England.Volume Three of The Masonic Pathway. Mastering Masonic Ritual is the companion volume for the learning itself; Surviving the Chair takes up the year that follows.An independent work. Not published, endorsed or authorised by the United Grand Lodge of England or any other Masonic body.