I quote from todays Daily Express - We cannot tell a lie. George Washington, America's first president was a Scottish Freemason. It was never a secret that Washington was an enthusiastic member of the craft, but now his Scots connection has emerged. Washington was in Fredericksburg Lodge number 4 in Virginia which got its charter from the Grand Lodge of Scotland in Edinburgh in 1758. The lodge was started by West of Scotland freemasons who dominated the tobacco industry there until the American Revolution in 1776.
Travis Walker, historian of the Frederick Lodge said : "He petitioned the lodge for membership around the age of 20 and he was searching for things he had not previously been exposed to. In no other organisation could individuals meet on the level with individuals who may have been considerably higher in social rank. It laid the groundwork for the intellectual thought that went into the American revolution, much of which was born here at Fredericksburg. Most early members were from Scotland . The earliest recorded meeting was in 1752. Within the next two or three years it appears that local lodges had tied in to a fashion, to go back to the old world and get legitimate charters. The first was Kilwinning Cross Lodge at Port Royal which went to the Grand Lodge of Scotland and got a charter in 1755. By 1758 the brethern in Frederick decided that it would be expedient to do so as well. George Washington was a Scottish freemason in that the majority of individuals that he was meeting with and who conferred the degrees on him were Scots.
Washington later belonged to Alexandria Lodge 22, and was named the lodge's Charter Master in 1788. Records of him presiding over the lodge were lost in a fire at Alexandria's City Hall. Mark Tabard, curator of the George Washington National Memorial said: "A young man like Washington could join a lodge in rural Virginia and have a conduit to a cosmopolitan organisation whose headquarters were in Edinburgh.
* The Mason's Word is on BBC Radio Scotland on December 3rd.
The bees and booze? I recently read an interesting article about connections betwen these industrious creatures and the freemasons and have a bit to add. Bees live in a hive in a collective group, each bee having a role or job to play within the organisation, from simple workers to the Queen herself. Sometimes, when the bees have had a favourable period in terms of pollen collecting and therefore honey making, a curious decision will be made. A proportion of the collective hive will suddenly decide to swarm, abandoning their home and honey wealth in order to create a colony. To a certain extent to us as humans, this would seem an unbelievable decision - apparently foresaking one's life work and home in search of an unknown and yet to be discovered destiny. Yet, if we compare this swarming with the way the freemasonic lodges expanded their operation from the 1750's onwards, into America, and also the other colonies of our Queen, India in the 1800's for example, then we can see how a cellular like structure of lodges has dominated the majority of the so called civilised Western world of today. The Scotch whisky trade marketing of the early 1900's can also be used as an illustration of a freemasonary export, Buchanan's Black and White and Johnnie Walker with the slogan - always on the square.
Turning briefly to bees farmed by humans for their honey, we can see how the human hand will interfere with the natural order of the hive - for example he may remove some of the drones, or males bees, from the colony - in order to maximise honey production for his or herself - almost in a God like role.
It is at this stage that I would like to expand upon and perhaps slightly correct some of the article provided by Y in his article published at BtB. (I have sent three e mails but have received no response and wonder if there are perhaps watchers in the system) Whilst I would accept much of what is written, I do in fact have quabbles with the following statements -
"where the male drone's job is to just fly off and mate with Queens from other colonies, otherwise they laze around the hive and luxuriate, being looked after by the female workers who do all the essential tasks".
This is in fact unfortunately factually incorrect. The very stature and lethargic lifestyle of the drone ensures that he does not have the means to travel to a distant hive in search of another Queen. In fact, the drone may only make it out the hive for the hottest part of the day, and then only to laze in the baking heat for a couple of hours. Furthermore, the Queen will select only one of the 400 or so males to be her lover; the rest being eventually murdered en masse by the workers; and such propagate furture generations of bees. In effect, the entire colony will have the one bloodline, similar to a community of rats, where every member of the clan is blood related to the two founding members. It would also be prudent to perhaps point out that althought the worker bees are female, they are in fact infertile and any which do somehow manage to become "laying workers" will only produce male offspring. Curiously, we can see another example of this type of natural quirk in the cannabis plant, normally a plant which is either male or female. In certain circumstances (thought to be brought on by environmental stress) the plant will become hemaphrodite and self pollinate - in these circumstances any plant produced from the forthcoming seed will be female. (Hence we see adverts for guaranteed female seeds - guaranteed hemaphrodite tendencies would be a better description).
"Their Queen is only tolerated so long as she lays the eggs for the next generation and doesn't try to leave"
This is a statement which initially seems nonsensical because it somehow assumes that the Queen is firstly unwanted, and secondly desperate to escape. This may be true, or it may n0t - we have no way of actually knowing for certain because we are unable to communicate with bees on their level. We might imagine that the Queen is desperate to leave, given her working conditions which are severe in terms of constant laying, and it might well be the case. What we do know for a fact though is that there is a unseen force which contains and drives the community and thus ensures it's survival - by working as a collective and sacrificing the rights of the individual to that of a collective cause, again in a similar manner to freemasonary
I have no gripe with the extra terrestrial theories offered in the rest of the article, what concerns me is who is doing the farming and harvest day. It may be that maybe only the highest ranking freemason knows the answer to that.
cheers
Waiting for the farmer?
