Through the Key Hole - RoseCroix.org.au

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IT LOOKS LIKE STONEHENGE—
AN UNUSUAL LODGE
By V.W. Bro. Ted Morris
It is hard to believe that I am attending lodge. Overhead, two flocks
of Canada geese gabble and jockey into massive migratory V’s.
Two stragglers ( obviously late comers) pump hard and honk
ahead as they try to catch up. They are sharing the sky with a couple
of light aircraft out for a Saturday spin and the gulls soaring in
ascending circles. Our lodge does indeed extend as high to the
heavens, But our feet are firmly planted on the hard dry ground,
and assistant tylers on ATV’s, like the seagulls circle the site.
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freedom of his fraternity, for sometimes it did not suit the master’s
interests to add to the number of masons qualified to act on their
own account. Unwin’s Guilds records that masters often took
apprentices without registering them, and neglected to present
them for the freedom when they came out of their time, an irregularity
which must have added to the semi-skilled and cheaper
labour, as was exactly the case in parts of Scotland in the 17th
and 18th centuries
The meeting is a quarry lodge.
Ride is an exploration. The quarry isn’t hidden, but it isn’t evident
either. We missed it twice. When the road breaks out of the bush,
the bleakness of the pit stands out. Trees and topsoil have been
scraped aside to bare the limestone. Stone markers rim the edge of
the hole, perhaps directing us to the descending road, perhaps for
the heavy trucks that use it all the other days of the week. The
markers are more like sentinels than pillars. The road into the pit is
rubble shoved into place and hugging the blasted rock face. That
same rubble, smoothed out, creates the lodge “room”.
The altar is an 800 pound irregular slab of limestone. It sits on
skinned logs salvaged from the overburden. The kneeling pad also
sits on rough timber. Officers’ chairs are squared chunks of limestone,
mercifully padded with cushions. There is no need for a
door, but two logs stand upright to approximate a portal, and the
tyler and inner guard knock with carpenter’s hammers, a refined
form of gavel.
My wife, who had just dropped us off, she explained “ It looks like
Stonehenge”, which I suppose could start another theory about the
megaliths in Salisbury. ( Were the Druids really ancient Masons
conducting a quarry degree?)
Quarrying didn’t stop while the lodge was being set up the day before.
Members and quarry workers used construction gear and
farm equipment to push, stack and hoist.