“The Grand Communication” interview with Dr. Nathan Schick

Dr. Nathan Schick was brought to my attention by Jaime Paul Lamb at Tria Prima Press. Br. Schick and I discuss his new book “The Grand Communication”,  what led him to become a Freemason, and how the REAL secret of The Craft is “Gumbo.” 

Nathan Schick is a faculty member in the School of History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. He has been a Freemason and active member of Glendale Lodge #23 since 2017, where he currently serves as Senior Warden. He is a master ritualist and master lecturer under the Grand Lodge of Arizona. He has been avidly homebrewing beer, cider, and wine for over a decade.

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Transcript

Welcome to The Mystic Tie, a podcast for Freemasons.  You can find us online at mystic tie. com. That's M Y S T I C T Y E. com. 

Email me feedback, guest suggestions, and any other questions at Troy at mystic tie. com.  My name is Troy Spreeuw, and I am your host. 

Today, our guest is Nathan Schick.  Brother Nathan Schick is a faculty member in the School of History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. He has been a Freemason and active member of Glendale Lodge No. 23 since 2017, where he currently serves as a Senior Warden.  He is a Master Ritualist and a Master Lecturer under the Grand Lodge of Arizona.

Thank you  He has been avidly homebrewing beer, cider, and wine for over a decade.  He's the author of a new book on Freemasonry, The Grand Communication.  And we welcome him as our guest now. 

Brother Nathan Chick, how are you doing this evening? Thanks for joining me.   Thanks. Yeah, I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me. You came to my attention through my friend Jamie Paul Lamb, and through his publishing imprint, Tria Prima Press, he and his partners. You've published a book recently.

Can you give us a synopsis, give us the title of the synopsis of the book, and I'm going to link it in the show notes. Sure. Yeah, my book is The Grand Communication, Freemasonry's Alchemical Quest for Divine Communion. And it's the third book in Tria Prima's catalog right now. And I talk a little bit about the connection to early Freemasonry as it develops its degrees, its three degree system in the Blue Lodge.

And it's connection to things like the development of alchemical knowledge and the hermetic sciences attached to the Royal society as it develops. And I take a broad sweeping look at history and some of its connections that bring speculative Freemasonry to become the largest fraternity in modern Western history.

That's excellent. How did you become interested in in such research?  Yeah, I I became interested in hermetic sciences and some of the history of hermeticism fairly early on in partly in my academic career, but also just in my personal research and reading. I, in my academic career I teach religious studies and I teach specifically. 

The lower level introductory classes, but also the upper division classes that are on Islamic studies and Islamic civilization, some of those  courses, and I became interested in some of the ways that. Things got translated from Arabic and the kind of information network of Arabic language documents and texts into Europe at the end of the dark ages, the kicked off the Renaissance, the rebirth and it was part of that sort of transition.

And as I looked at that in my academic career and knew a little bit about that, did some research. on it and I would talk about it in some of my courses. There was, some interest there naturally, even before I became a Freemason. And I then, as I got some different questions in some of my courses, I teach All sorts of different classes that are the introductory classes.

So I teach some fun classes like religion and pop culture. And in that one, it's a sophomore level course. And these are younger students, 18, 19 year olds, and a lot of them, as we discussed some of the things from pop culture, They were often interested in the Harry Potter series was one of their really popular, influential series of books and franchise.

And so they knew all about the different Harry Potter histories and stories. And I would ask them about the first book and the nature of being changed from the philosopher's stone to the sorcerer's stone for from, to an American audience. And they knew all sorts of the background about that, but when I asked them about the history about the philosopher's stone in alchemy and the hermetic history, they didn't know anything about it.

And so that would always got me wound up in my lectures about how they knew all of these things from pop culture, but the history of it and the notion of what is the philosopher's stone, what does it do? Why were people interested in it at a certain point in history, that part they didn't know much about.

And so as my own academic kind of research interests and some of the lectures I gave in my university classes but also the way that they intertwined with my Masonic career, my sort of joining of the Masonic lodges And taking my degrees and then, in my lodge having the opportunity people, asking me to give some educations, I'd ask some different questions.

People would say we want to hear what you think about that. Give us a little presentation and education, and then we'll have a discussion about some of the symbols in the Blue Lodge rituals or some of the history of the development of Freemasonry. So some of the topics that we discuss both in.

Our classroom, but also in our lodge room started to intertwine a little bit and people asked me if I had a written treatment and I took my different presentations, wove them together, and that became the text for the grant communication. And so that's how it came together.

And. Jamie and a few other brothers from some of the different lodges around Arizona had me come to do those presentations at their lodges as well. And from there we started discussing how it could make that bring it to life as a publication. And so that's how it was formulated. 

That's great. And, what a story you're giving the lodge presentations like I guess nobody else has put this book together. I'll just put this book together. That's great. One of the things and I should make it clear to the listener, I haven't read the book yet. And my apologies for that.

I did listen to your two presentations on Sapere Aude David Chichinatze and his group great work. I've been on there. To present my own presentation a number of years ago. But one of the, one of the things that sort of struck me about the talks you were giving is that like for the longest time, Freemasons talk about, there's really two camps of Freemasons.

Freemasonry sprung out of out of actual masons guilds, like 16th, 17th century, and that's as far back as it goes. And then other masons are like no, this goes back into antiquity. And we have a relationship with at least Ptolemaic Egypt, if not back further, And it seems like there's been a number of publications that have come out in the last little while that are like philosophically.

And if you include alchemy and hermetic philosophy maybe there is some connection to late antiquity. Can you talk a bit about that?  Sure. Yeah. The one presentation that I did for Sapara Day was the one that talks about the. The figure of Hiram Abiff and where that comes from biblically as well as Masonically sort of the intertwine of that and the overlay or the notion that the Greco Roman God Hermes is an overlay for this character, this figure and the nature of why that might be.

And that idea is not my own. It's not something I came up with Per se, it's something that you find in Pike, you find it in Mackie, you find in some of these early kind of authorities that become somewhat consensus or that a lot of people look to that are describing the nature of this.

And so when you look at that kind of notion of like how the connection between hermeticism is interwoven with Blue Lodge Freemasonry, that's the connection that goes back to antiquity. There's clearly though, we have evidence, historical evidence, we can look to the old charges back to the 1400s, 1500s,  and then into the 1600s, they really get rolling of these earliest documents, documentary evidence that has some kind of connection to what we still do to this day.

And it's from the operative period. And so that's where, when people say we come from the operative stonemasons guilds, maybe that's as far back as it goes. When we look at the evidence of some ritual and that kind of stuff, that's as far back as we can go maybe historically. But when we look at some of the description by. 

Pike and Mackey and the like of this notion of Hermes and Hermeticism being interwoven maybe subtly into what becomes speculative Freemasonry.  Something that they're not building with stone, it's gentry, it's aristocracy, it's men of all different classes of society joining and calling themselves masons in this kind of way.

They're pointing to some of the ritual Symbols and the nature of the ritual, the model of it as being something connected all the way back to antiquity, all the way back to the Egyptian Greco Roman period, where there is a blending in Greek, specifically Koine Greek during the Ptolemaic period, where the Greeks take over Egypt and start to see these kind of commonalities between their forms of the divine.

And that specific one with Thoth, Hermes, and Mercurius of the Roman or Latin we see sort of some symbols that are very unique. They imply something about communication between two realms or two worlds. And that particular god form and the symbols around that god form when looked at in light of the symbols utilized in the Blue Lodge in Freemasonry, as well as some of the symbols used in some of the so called Hoth degrees or high degrees that exist thereafter that get created a little bit later, we see some influence, some definite cross pollination.

There's some good reason that Pike and Mackie and some of these other scholars are saying there's some people who are hermeticists, they know about the hermetic arts, they know about the hermetic sciences of alchemy, of the, some of the practices,  the alchemical practices, And they're utilizing the Freemasonic lodges to subtly communicate because they don't have necessarily their own organizations and to build networks in which they can communicate in this kind of subtle way.

So I try to use the book to illustrate what's a complex story, but in a way that's approachable and shows maybe the nature of that and why it was so important and why people are interested in the hermetic sciences in this renaissance period, what they're trying to accomplish, what their political agenda is during this time, this riff. 

Between societies there's division between different people of different political opinions, different confession the 30 years war rages on in the immediate sort of time period. And the English civil wars break out. So part of the quest for the philosopher's stone is. Is a quest to find a kind of medicine that will heal society.

It'll heal these rifts between different people of different political persuasions, different religious confessions, because it's literally a time of neighbors fighting neighbors and they are looking for anything to bring them back together. And when we look at the culture ethos of Masonic lodges of not talking about politics and religion in lodge, it gives us that opportunity  meet with one another, even with very different views of politics or religion, to build some basic levels of trust, some understanding, some bonds of fraternity, so that when we might later disagree outside of the lodge on different things, we at least have that foundation, that kind of Basic bond of understanding one another and where we come from.

That sort of notion is invested in the philosopher's stone. It's the notion that we see at that time period of what they're looking for, and maybe the way that they express it in the Masonic lodges as they develop.  I like the way that you put that. I want to talk some about Freemasonry as a scientific approach to spirituality, but before we go there, I want to back up a second and talk a bit about.

You talked a bit about the Hiramic legend, and I don't want to get too in the weeds, and I don't want other brethren from other jurisdictions pointing fingers and saying you guys shouldn't be talking about that,  but  can you just  Can you outline in in, so it many brethren may not be aware that was not the original form of the legend used in the traditional first two degrees of Masonry that at some point a third degree was added, and the legend was changed from hermetic figures into biblical figures.

And I, can you talk a little bit about that?  Yeah, it's a fascinating history. And it's important to remember that in this early period, as we see the operatives lodges, the operative stonemasons lodges converting or shifting to a speculative approach there's, it's very loose. There's no central organization.

There's no sense of, There's regular masonry yet. So the notion of what you're doing at your local lodges is very loose. There's not a standard set at that point, right? So when we look at that late period of the 1600s into the early 1700s, we can't see any evidence of anything more than two degree.  Up until about 1723 or so and then we start to see a couple of different models of third degrees in the archival evidence that we can look at, including parts of the old charges and some of those papers.

And so one of the earliest models we see is actually modeled on the biblical figure of Noah, and it's called the Noah Kite Ritual. Follow, follows a very similar model of what the third degree parameters, let's say, the way that the sequence goes down, and some of those sequences are similar to dramatic ritual.

You see all the way back in Greek dramatic ritual, so it follows some kind of standard sets.  But the notion of the central figure that's going to be illustrated in the dramatic ritual,  and the symbolism maybe attached to that figure, from the biblical into maybe something more general. There's some debate.

There's some different lodges doing different things. Some of the lodges are doing the Noah kite ritual. But within a couple of years, the Hiram legend that focuses on the temple of Solomon, the king becomes the standard and becomes dominant within a decade or so.  And there's Over time, within about two decades from it becoming the standard, there is a set of documents, the Ahiman Rezaan there's a rift between the different forms of masonry and we get the ancients and the moderns and that kind of split, but one of the things we find is, as the ancients are calling themselves an older form of ritual, they're saying We're not forking knife masons.

We we don't forget the mop and the pail. One of the things they're also claiming is our ritual is ancient. It's older, it's original, and it focuses on Noah and Noah cut.  And when we look at some of the earliest grand lodges, including the Irish and Scottish, they agree that the ancient one with Noah is the older form. 

So it begs the question of who was the ones who had the ability to make The shift in that couple of early year period to switch it from Noah to make at least the ones that had chosen the hieratic legend around the Temple of Solomon, the king to become the dominant one, the one that we today see is standardized and the one that eventually when the United Grand Lodges when they came together, chose as the one to be the standard.

And what was the reason that they wanted that one? What was the agenda? Part of the claim I'm making in the book is to say the reason that they chose that one is because they wanted to weave that hermetic  material. It fit better. It was a nice overlay to say, Hiram Abiff sounds like Hermes and there's maybe some things about the nature of him, the work that he does to help build the Temple of Solomon that is more reminiscent of Hermetic arts, including alchemy,  that was a better fit for what they were trying to subtly do.

And so for my claim in the book in part is to say that's why we see the choice of Hiram Abiff and the Solomonic the temple being the choice instead of the Noah and Noahkite ritual. You contend that the  change there, and it was a pretty, pretty broad change, but the change there was not to appeal  to to moderation or to Christianity, the dominant belief at the time, or to appease potential lapsed Jews that might want to join the craft as their patron.

Deist organization or whatever. But you contend that this was meant to couch the secret material, this hermetic material,  it less obviously in, in a more palatable kind of degree system. Is that correct? I don't know if I put that yeah. That's not meant to whitewash. You're actually hiding more stuff deeper in more.

Yeah. And so there's a couple of beliefs and the structure and the secret teachings from antiquity. Is that what you're suggesting?  Yeah that's my claim is that when you look at specifically. The lineages, early Freemasonry and the old charges is looking at lineage.

They're describing what's the earliest stuff that we come from, how far back can we trace? And it's very choppy and messy. They're writing in English. They're not writing in Latin. So that indicates these are not schooled men, even though they're lettered, they can write, but they're not writing in Latin.

So the old charges and the earliest one, the Regis comes from before the printing press. Invention, right? So you know, they're very interested in tracing a lineage as far back as they can go. And there's claims about Noah and the flood, and then what happens after the flood. And in those old charges, the description is about, there's these two.

pillars that have ancient knowledge from before the flood and they're built in two different ways. One is they're basically to with withstand inundation in case there's a flood and conflagration in case there's a fire. So if God destroys the world by flooding, the one will survive.

If one is, if the God destroys the world by burning, the other will survive. That's the notion that's given to us in the earliest of the old charges. And so you see this sort of notion of these two pillars, and in the immediate aftermath is described Hermes is the one who gave these distributed these to the world, right?

You get this sort of description. And that's how masonry comes into this knowledge that goes back even to before Noah or to Noah and before the flood. And you get that in the old charges, this kind of description of the importance of these two pillars. If you're trying to make the switch from Noah to something else  that you can maybe weave with the notion of Hermes.

One of the interesting things biblically is the Temple of Solomon the King, which likewise has two pillars described, and has a builder known as Hiram Abbi, not Abiff, but Hiram Abbi, who's a builder who is able to move between these two realms, these two worlds. He's lives in Tyre, but he's also Jewish.

He's so he's able to Go between two worlds in which God might be used in two different names, right? So the notion of using again, same thing with we might think of Hermes as the God form that moves between different realms, move between different worlds and communicates as the communicator between these different realms or worlds.

And that symbolism goes back all the way to antiquity of the notion of how do two realms that might be fighting.  find a spot in which they can communicate and make basic kind of trade, economic trade. And so we get the Herms from the ancient world, these kind of statues that are markers of the crossroads in which people come together, different militias and different tribes might meet there and choose how they're going to trade.

They're different materials that they need. And that's where we get the words like merchant, merchandise, mercantile, that are the roots from mercurius from mercury, right? And, so when thinking about the people who are writing early speculative third degree, as they're composing it and choosing among these various rituals that have been developed, the notion of the Temple of Solomon is a good one to maybe weave together.

It's got two pillars, it's got a way that you can maybe subtly weave in the notion of Hermes and Hermeticism and it's got some other symbols that maybe can be Adapted or adopted to reference alchemical processes and  hermetic sciences without it being too overt being too in your face for people who might not have that same kind of interest.

Makes the fraternity a really interesting kind of entree potentially for people who are interested in the hermetic sciences, but also for people of all different  parts of society that might not necessarily be interested in those things directly. So we get this kind of development of the craft degrees, the blue lodge degrees, and then maybe some of the higher degrees, the whole degrees are written in very specific ways for some people interested in those paths specifically.

It's It's almost a joke  within the craft about us taking obligations with no innovation.  And it's interesting how we've kept so tightly to these rather innovative rituals from  two or 300 years ago, that we all hold so closely now and try and keep word perfect.  No, it's fascinating.

I I'm definitely going to get a copy and have a look. I think this sort of historical research is important. I know read P. D. Newman's Alchemically Stoned and Angels in Vermilion, and I know some of the characters he references in in the early foundations of the craft. I know you talk a little bit about and also Dee and Kelly in your book.

Can you give a little bit more broad strokes about those characters and some references to other work by other Tria Prima authors? It's great that you guys are all on the same imprint. You guys are publishing material that's alluding to very similar stuff.

So  can you talk a little bit about that?  Yeah, so I think, as I started studying about Freemasonry's history specifically, I already knew a little bit about hermeticism, some hermetic symbols. Then I took the degrees and saw some of those symbols pop out to me and asked, some brothers who, experienced brothers know a lot about different things.

And they would point me in directions to say, I don't necessarily know, but maybe here's some different avenues to check out. And in my research looking, historically, who's the first person that we can say they weren't a stone builder. but they're doing the degrees like we do today.

There's a couple of military generals and things like that a little earlier, but really the first person who's we can see who really does something like we do is Elias Ashmole. And Elias Ashmole is maybe the person who's a really good hinge. between the two guys you mentioned John Dee and John Theophilus Desaguliers because he stands right in between them.

He's the connector between the two and he's our first person we can say he was definitely a speculative Mason, like we are today, but he's an antiquarian. He keeps fantastic records. So that's partly why he's got a good record. We can go back and look and say, ah, here's what he thought.

Here's what he was doing. He takes the degrees. He does the apprentice and the fellow craft degree. He does them, he's a Royalist and he does them at the end, the last phase of what we might think of as the second English civil war. And he takes the degrees with someone who is a parliamentarian.

who disagrees with him politically. And he records it that he takes the degrees, civil war ends, but he's seen the end of, he's seen how society gets, comes down to it. There's bloody rifts between neighbors, between family members. It's a moment where society really looks like it maybe could come to an end.

There's a real feeling and view of that for people who are living through the civil wars. At that time, right? He's an antiquarian. And so his view is we need to find some way to preserve all the best stuff from antiquity in case the world really does come to an end. In case we rip our society apart and leave it in ruins, in case there is inundation or conflagration, in case we burn it to the ground.

The antediluvian pillars, you got to leave messages for a message in a bottle or a message in a pillar in this case. Exactly. So when we look at well, what's the first museum in the sense of a modern museum in the modern world? One of the ones I learned about fairly early on is the Ashmolean.

It's Elias Ashmole's collection at Oxford University. It's the real first museum of a modern sense that we look at. When did those events happen? What was the timeline and the chronology and he bought his the core of it. He bought was known. It was the trade scan collection, John trade scans collection, but it was known commonly as the arc.

And the reason it was called the art was because  if all of the world was to come to end, but you still had this collection, you could reconstruct ancient world knowledge, just from the objects, the material objects in this collection. That was the notion. And Ashmole obtained it and then built on it.

He grew it, as he collected more and more things. So he was very interested in this notion of the end of society and how to rebuild or maintain some bonds of trust, especially in the aftermath of that kind of depth of division in society. So Ashmole, was one of the people I was very interested in his biography and those kinds of things.

Ashmole has this experience. So he publishes several different works, but he publishes this alchemical collection and he publishes it with a printing press. So it's the first big form wide mass publication of alchemical treatises that he has curated. He's specifically chosen the ones that he thinks are authentic alchemical texts, and he publishes them as the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum.  What's interesting about that is his personal collection, his personal manuscript form in which he writes in it about an experience he has in which he says there is a deathbed kind of experience with his mentor who he says gives him the real secrets of alchemy and it transforms him in a way that is deep and meaningful to him.

He sees it as akin to being ordained as a priest outside of like confessions of different belief of churches and things. It's something beyond that. It's deeper, it's unseen or metaphysical in some way. So he believes whatever it was real, was a real experience of this alchemical kind of finding of the stone. 

And as he develops his alchemical views, he goes assembling, he, he collects things, he's actually practicing alchemy. And when we look at what was the material, what's, what was it that transformed him so deeply and made him think he had this real experience. The lineage, the person we can see him connected to is John D's son, Arthur D.

He publishes one of Arthur D's works. He writes letters with Arthur D. Arthur D went with his dad, John D to the Holy Roman Empire seat in Prague. And it's there that we get some of the really interesting stories about the angelic communication between John Dee and Edward Kelly. We get this interesting view of the court of the Holy Roman Empire.

Rudolph the second who is very interested in alchemy is patronizing alchemists from all over the world is paying for their labs that are quite to maintain. And he's collecting Stuff from all over the world that is in the age of exploration. This is the empire that has just come home from the new worlds with all these new objects.

And there's a real question of what is real? What is found in the Bible? What is the stuff that we don't know? Know about these new worlds and they're bringing home, animals and plants and artifacts from peoples from other places. And so there's this real feel of, there's a new world out there that we need to communicate with and understand something more about.

And so it's into that world that John Dee and Edward Kelly enter. And when I visited Prague and Vienna and looked into some of the cabinets of curiosity that are the precursors for these early the museums, these kind of collections. These are meant as these the studiolos and the cabinets are meant for you, To go through kind of an experience, you go into them and you're transformed by the very being in the space.

So the set and the setting, your mindset and setting become very important to these collections. And that's also true for the way Ashmole is collecting as well. So from the life of Dee and the way that he thinks he's communicating with angels and does it in a very rigorous kind of methodical system, he's,  Mathematician, he's the one that publishes the preface to Euclid's text, so it makes him very famous as a mathematician.

He's a spy, potentially, for Queen Elizabeth. Queen's eyes. The early 007. And he's using these kinds of codes, these kinds of coded messages that are he's writing without chemical symbols, but there's also some communications that are, direct. So we see from his life and some of the things that like you mentioned P.

D. Newman's Angels in Vermilion, particularly talks about that history a little bit more and maybe what, The chemical is that they're working with and give some sort of alternate ideas as well, but maybe the notion that this is DMT and maybe the early Royal Society is there looking into what exactly is it that causes you to have the ability to communicate.

with angels or other metaphysical entities, something unseen, right? Really dramatic. And so it's on that I'm playing a little bit of a rift of this notion of the grand communication that there's something there that in early Freemasonry, as you see the life of Ashmole, he really believes something transformative happened.

He looks back to John Dee and looks to the writings of Dee. And then he is he says, Later in life, he's called to a meeting of Freemasons in London. We don't necessarily know that Anderson or Desaguliers knew Ashmole directly. That's not really the case so much, but we do see a direct kind of influence on some of those early London based lodges.

that has a unique kind of flavor differently than we see lodges in York or in Edinburgh or some of the early ones that are in Ireland. So there's something unique about the way that  lineage, a particular variety of expression of lodges comes to London and then adds a third degree. Under the grand mastership of John Theophilus de Sagulier, who is a member of the Royal Society.

He's a presenter handpicked by Isaac Newton to be the Royal Society's presenter of what's called the new science. It's the Newtonian science. It's a new sort of view, objective view of science. And so you see a lineage that's important to Freemasons, but That happens in early Freemasonry that goes from the life of John Dee and his interesting kind of experiences of communicating with angels and a kind of mathematical coding of sorts to Ashmole who wants to collect and keep everything from the ancient world that's worth keeping in case the world Comes to an end, has this transformative experience, and then has an influence on some of the people who are clearly composing or at least authorizing the Hiramic legend and the use of the Temple of Solomon as the third degree as it becomes standardized in Blue Lodge Freemasonry, with the early Premier Grand Lodge, what becomes known as the moderns. 

Wow. Congratulations on the publication of your book. It, like I said it's something I'll definitely get ahold of. And if you're following in the steps of our August brother Newman and Jamie Paul Lamb, and you're on the same imprint I'm sure the work the book is worth picking up.

I'm going to put a link in the show notes so people know where they can go ahead and find a copy. Now let's shift gears a bit. I'd like to ask my guest. 

What drew you to Freemasonry?  Now, clearly you're passionate about the craft, because you're doing research to this level.  Why did you join originally? What drew you to the craft?  Yeah I was interested in, I think, Hermeticism and the history of Hermeticism  and that part  before Freemason. So that, History was of interest to me. 

And I think my view of Freemasonry when I was in my twenties and thirties was that it was really a  fraternity principally for older men. That was my impression. True or not, the lodges that I had ever seen or been around that was the impression I had. And so I didn't really think I would be a good fit for Freemasonry when I was a little bit younger.

Until I met some guys who were peers and a little older, but roughly peers who were members and active members who I knew were good guys from, from just our interactions and being friends, I knew that they were. good men, they were principled, they would do the right thing in certain situations. 

And so it made me realize that maybe I was wrong about Freemasonry's my fit for Freemasonry, or whether I was a good fit for a lodge. My first interest in Freemasonry, I always joke about this, people laugh about it, but my first viewing of Freemasonry really was in the movie From Hell, the Johnny Depp movie about Jack the Ripper.

And in that movie, Freemasons are like the bad guys, basically, like they're the villains, but I was drawn to, the cinematography of their dramatic rituals in these settings and they had, the lighting and the tuxedos and things. And I thought, wow, this is pretty dramatic ritual.

I admit  that also showed it as older guys. It's English Freemasonry. And it's the way it's illustrated in that movie is older guys. And maybe that's partly where I got that kind of impression. When I first started talking to some of my friends who were masons who were my peers and they explained a little bit about culture of different lodges especially in my jurisdiction in Arizona and encouraged me to check out a few lodges to see If there was a lodge that had a culture that was a good fit, or that felt like it was a good fit, then to consider since I was interested in Hermeticism and interested in some of the model of the ritual not just how Freemasonry exists in the Blue Lodges, but has impacted all sorts of different, initiatory groups they encouraged me to check out some Masonic lodges that might be a good fit.

I traveled to  three or four different lodges that had quite different cultures to be honest that were in my area that were at least within commuting kind of distance fortunate because we have a couple of different lodges. I could check out different. Types of culture, different flavors.

And I found a lodge that was a good fit that is very diverse, has a lot of different men of all different ages from 18 to 90, I think, are our regular members who attend. So we've got guys from all different ages and different backgrounds and things like that. I think once I, Found the lodge that I ended up joining and saw that it wasn't really what I maybe originally expected that there was more to it that I then maybe I originally had the impression about partly was what encouraged me to take the step to apply to do the degrees.

But when I did the degrees I've noticed in different jurisdictions different lodges do this differently. The. I did my under apprentice degree and then it took me quite some time before I took my fellow craft degree some people and some lodges, it tends to be that they work through degrees rather quickly. 

I know there are a few jurisdictions that do even one day degrees and things like that. I think the candidate really misses out. An opportunity there of the growth and the development, the time period that cultivates some of those different things by, spending some time in each of the degrees.

So for me, I spent a year or so, between the different degrees cultivating my experience of the different symbols. But as I took the degrees, I was very clearly interested in some of the hermetic symbols and ask questions about them. And so how it wrapped back around to my earlier interests.

And and I think my friends knew that would happen and they knew I would become increasingly interested in some of those things and would do some presentations and maybe some research to share with Different lodges and with the public. It's been part of the thing that I'm really passionate about, like you said, and it's given me an opportunity to travel to different lodges, different jurisdictions.

And that's one of the things I really enjoy is being able to go to different places and meet people who have  interest in some of the common things, even though we might have. very different backgrounds that we've come to the craft from. And so that's, I think one of the real pleasures and something that really feeds my passion for the craft is being able to go to different places and share some of my perspectives and then hear other people's perspectives and talk about those kind of back and forth. 

Meeting people and, traveling.  And getting to hear the different perspectives I think it's good advice. Also, would you not agree that if there's somebody listening to us right now, who's even remotely interested, go and spend some time with some Freemasons, find some and visit a few lodges if they think you might be a candidate, they'll invite you out to some festive boards or some open events.

And you could see how truly diverse.  Minded and mostly harmless that we, we truly are because it, we're just regular people, and despite, what's going on allegedly in the upper degrees or in the parts of the craft that rule the world.

And we don't you will find that the more you get involved, that the more we struggle to organize a barbecue. It's just one of these things where we're just another small,  even bespoke would be the right way to say it. Fraternal organization that has a particular passion.

For certain types of  esoteric history. Anyway I think one of the things that I think has been a benefit for traveling, but also that advice of if you especially live in a larger community, a larger center that has a couple of different lodges that might differ by. Culture, finding one that you're a good fit for can make a real difference in your Masonic experience.

So if it's something that you're thinking about, or you're interested in, I think that's really good advice to find maybe one that has a  culture that you jive with, it's a, Got a good feel the vibe is right for you and spend some time with them and see if they think you're right for them. I think that makes a real difference in how healthy a lodge is, how much fun it is to attend, whether you feel like it's a chore to go to lodge or if it's something you look forward to.

For me, we we meet every week of the year, except for three, I think we met 49 weeks or something last week, but I don't think.  Our core group. We have 30 guys, 20 to 30 guys are showing up every week and don't feel like it's a chore. We enjoy being there. We enjoy each other's company.

We enjoy the culture. We have joining a group that has that kind of enjoyment. As part of it, of any organization, including the Masonic Lodge, makes a big difference. And so finding a place where you fit in and that you can add something to the environment. I have an essay I've been working on one of the upcoming things that I'm going to publish. 

I guess I'll let out the secret right now. Troy, I normally don't live out, give out secrets like this on podcasts, but I'll go ahead and say it. There's a longstanding, I guess it's a joke. It's a bit of a front. People talk about the Masonic letter G suspended in the East in a bunch of lodges, right? And everybody always jokes about how it's actually stands for  green beans as the Masonic food, right?

And you've probably heard this awful joke.  I think I'm going to let out the real secret here. It's not green beans at all.  The letter G stands for gumbo because really to have a good lodge, you've got to make a, it's about making a gumbo. It's about having all the ingredients working together, not individually, but in this kind of harmonious whole.

So it has different ingredients are added different brothers are pitching in different. Talents and skills. You all of a sudden get a nice gumbo that people come in. They're like, Ooh, this is good. This is, I like this  combo. That's  so I hopefully that doesn't get out there too too far and wide, but  that's the real secret I think is it comes back to that, the fork and knife, the food of of Freemasonry, I think it's pretty good.

Important to point out too, as you were talking it occurred to me if you joined a Lodge and you don't seem to fit or you don't get excited about it, shop around for a different one. Even if you've got to drive a little bit to get to another small town next door to go to Lodge, it's worth it.

And it's one of these things I often say it's the original human potential movement without any of the culty trappings of, NXIVM or the landmark forum or whatever else, not that I want to be sued by any of those people, but human potentiality. We can show you guys who know how to make great green beans. 

One way to, one way to put it. So you joined the craft and I'm acutely aware that over your left shoulder is a holy Bible and over your right shoulder is Agrippa's three books of occult philosophy. 

I don't need you to go into detail. I just want to get in broad strokes. You keep the spiritual practice or some sort of spiritual belief before you join the craft.  How has it. Evolved or changed or grown has, as the craft contributed to your spiritual life.  Yeah the reference there to Agrippa is an interesting one.

In my book, I talk a little bit about that the lineage there and the moment in the Renaissance in which we get this slow sequence of people tiptoeing into describing Hermes as okay. During the inquisition and what parts of the hermetic literature are okay. And Agrippa is, the last in the lineage.

Who's it's cool. It's cool. And it takes from there and becomes widespread, right? You can in the book, you'll see where that lineage goes you talk about Bruno and him being. It's on fire. Yeah that didn't go well for him, unfortunately. There's they're trying to find where the boundaries are.

Bruno found the boundary. Bruno found the boundary. Bruno found the boundary, unfortunately. I think we all know people on the internet that would have been just like  Yeah, would have been the Brunos of the Indeed. Uber mages.  So for, for me, for my my own practices, when I look at the way the, some of the hermetic texts talk about this notion of ascension, dissension of our lower passions and drives, as well as maybe the dissension of things about us that are more ephemeral, divine, those kind of descriptors.

For me, the kind of model or scaffolding the kind of a mental map of experiences of lungs, rungs of a ladder or a stairway between the earthly and the divine, I practiced that in my own life in my own ritual setting in my own alchemical lab of sorts before I became a mason.

I think one of the things that really changed is some of the descriptors that masonry uses, like the stairway the winding staircase and, the use of the liberal arts and sciences. Some of the notions of the square and their compass are three lights and the notion of those as symbols between the earthly, the heavenly, and the communion between the two helped me to add the.

Some symbols to my understanding of symbol set that helped me to communicate, even for myself, some of the interior things of communion that were taking place between lower parts of myself and parts that felt.  much further, much farther outside or or deeper inside, maybe depending on how I framed them.

And I think one of the  biggest, parts of the transformation, and I've talked about it with several people. Masonic members, especially, I think, as guys sit in the east of their lodges, seems to be a common advice. And it's an interesting one in light of maybe my hermetic and religious perspectives is the importance of daily prayer, of a prayer, a time period in which you set aside, for that communion, that communication in which you both are active, but also passive, both of those kinds of things as a practice of prayer of a, of daily prayer.

It's been an interesting perspective of, Mason's as advice, but also my own experience of the importance of that, of it being something that I've given a lot more consideration to its importance for myself, but also how I fit into my community and my group and giving consideration of not only my own wants and egotistical desires, how I think maybe the lodge should be, or our community should be.

But having that as a daily practice within a certain setting, within my own sort of space, has been, I think, a really important part of the ritual practices I've added that have helped me maybe grow and, our notion of good men becoming better men having that as a practice is definitely Enriched sort of my view of my, my place in the lodge and how I can serve to make our lodge a better gumbo. 

That's an excellent way of putting it. Earlier, we were talking about your book still, I alluded that maybe we would get back to this. I always have viewed Freemasonry as  a scientific approach to, to, to  spiritual irrationality that so much of Spirituality or religion is just  some other person asserting what their invisible friend says,  and that their invisible friend says should be right for you also. 

And you look back at those who founded us, you mentioned so many of those scientists before that I think their approach to religion would have been, I'll keep my own council, thank you, and I'll build my own relationship. With whatever deity  or spiritual entities exist,  and I don't see a lot of evidence  overtly in the craft any more of that because I think You know, society is secularized and freemasonry is has successfully secularized You know, we keep a gloss of deism  in the craft but I want to get your opinion on what I was just saying  could it have been that the original purpose was to encourage the individual  especially guys that were very materialist and into materialist science, to also apply the same scientific principle, the observe, the observation of of the outside.

Why shouldn't we observe the inside and keep a journal and try and keep a measurement tool in this sort of thing?  Could you talk, do you feel comfortable talking about that? I could edit this later. No, sure. He strayed to dangerous territory.  Dangerous territory. No. I think that when you look at the documents of the early rural society as their founding with Asheville and some of those Robert Boyle skeptical chemists, those kinds of things.

There's skepticism that's that should definitely be there, but what they're asking is about, at least in part, with alchemy and early chemistry, what becomes early chemistry is that are there, is there things that you can do chemically that you can go through processes  and create something that brings on communion of some sort.

And they, they're phrasing it in old English, but they're talking about communicating with. Angels and having dreams, different kinds of states of consciousness, even before we have, some of the terms and jargon and lingo for modern psychology, that's what they are effectively approaching.

They're trying to describe states of mind in which you think I'm communicating with something that is not me. And the sort of the terrifying moment of facing something in which that might, that experience takes place. These are the early pioneers of the modern scientific method that we come to rely upon in universities, accredited universities.

But at their early stage, they're definitely looking subjectively. They're looking at what we now would think of as the mind, psychological, internal kind of dialogues. And so partly the opening, very opening of my book plays on this idea of the potency of the mind, how strong we know the mind really is.

We all know the nature of this, but the question then becomes, is it possible to communicate with  God or some voice, some unseen thing that we can then reliably think this is really the voice of the divine. In my book, I talk a little bit about the experience of Adam and Eve communicating with the divine of Moses and the bush.

And so I use some biblical episodes to show sort of the nature of when they have these kind of communications and how shocking and how awe inspiring, both awful and awesome those experiences are. And I think for, when we look at the lineage of Dee and Ashmole and those guys that are the carriers into the early Royal Society and the beginnings of our modern scientific method.

They're interested in what that is. What can create that? Is there a material that you can produce that you need? They seem clear to be describing too. There needs to be some kind of internal work that prepares you for consuming whatever this external chemical might be. Without the internal work, it seems to imply.

That there's some real risk. There's some real danger to these chemicals that they're describing. And when you look at the lineage going all the way back to the Egyptian Greco Roman period, and you look at the earliest bits of alchemy and then the development through the medieval period they start describing things at a certain moment in time.

In the Holy Roman Empire, actually as a home brewer, an avid home brewer, I became interested in the beginnings of brewing beer. When did we start brewing? And as somebody who studies Arabic, I've always been interested in why The word alcohol is clearly an Arabic word, but in Islam, alcohol is not acceptable.

Harrah,  and intriguingly is never found in the Quran.  It's not alcohol they're describing is cha or wine.  So the word alcohol actually develops a little bit later, and the use of it is very broad. So as I looked into the early history of. brewing and distilling and these different processes, chemical processes. 

The first person who successfully describes hops beer brewing is Thaddeus Hadjic, who is the royal physician to Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor, and is the person who John Dee stays with. When he comes to Prague, he stays at Hajiq's house. Hajiq is not only the royal physician, he's a practicing alchemist, and he's the first person to describe the chemical process of brewing hops beer.

And so as a home brewer and as somebody familiar with the hermetic sciences, as well as the lineage of, Dee and his connection to early Freemasonry, The Ashmole for me, this was a highlight moment where all of these things come together. And then as I asked the question of why is it during the first century of Freemasonry is a speculative endeavor. 

All of the lodges universally are in pubs and ale houses. It's in places where there's a home brewer. There's somebody who knows the process of brewing and to some degree distilling. It's just how you have to, especially hops based brew. And as the distilling, as we get stills. For making hard alcohol as it spreads to, the United States, Freemasonry and stills,  we get all sorts of different flora being used locally in these new worlds.

And there started distilling all sorts of little potions and, using them locally. And at the end of my book I talk about the Chesapeake as one particular area where they hang on to their stills for a very long time. Even after there's commercial brewing and stills, they hold onto theirs for a long time.

And there's good reason. They have secrets in their brewing. And they're distilling and they want to hold on to them. And so Freemasonic Lodges is autonomous locales that were early for a century brew houses pubs ale houses. There's reasons why the brew master would have had a particular kind of recipe.

And this is an alchemical skill that people were taught.  And when you look at the early exposés, the early exposures of speculative Freemasonry, all of them describe the table lodge experience of them doing toasts and drinking very specifically for toasts that are for the master, the wardens, and then for the candidate.

The question in part becomes, you gave the candidate a beverage that maybe isn't what they expect.  Maybe it's been brewed and it has something else, some sort of taste. mind altering or psychoactive chemical component, and then you put them in a chamber of reflection, and then you put them through the degrees, just about the time that it starts to kick in, what kind of transformative experience would it have?

How much more would it deepen the experience of the initiatory dramatic ritual?  Now, obviously, as there becomes centralization and there's grand lodges, they're like, wait, what are you guys doing over there in those? Slow down.  Slow down, Cagliostro. You shouldn't. Exactly. Exactly. But nevertheless, we can see the concept if somebody's gone through a deep transformative experience like that, and they know somebody else has likewise gone through it, they face their mortality, they've approached the altar, they've taken the oath, the notion of being brothers in that sense is deepened in a very significant way.

A real transformation maybe has taken place that you can say you've gone that through that no matter what you believed politically or religiously differently than me. If you've gone through that, And you've had that experience. We've had a common experience of real death.  And and here we've circled back to talking about entheogens again.

Yeah. That's I can assure anybody within the sound of my voice that there's nobody drugging you if you go to get initiated at a Masonic Lodge. Definitely true. For good or ill, we're not doing that. Anymore,  but there's some historical evidence that we might have been doing it and who doesn't like a drink with their festive board?

It's interesting how many lodges went dry and never went back. I know it was common in, in the lodge that I believe the craft lodge I belong to here, the Duke of Connaught Lodge. We were dry, I think to about 25 years. Ago. And so it wasn't even that late that we were allowed to have a beer after lodge.

And no that's a fascinating little bit of history. I think it's important to my book focuses more on the pubs and alehouse component of Freemasonry. However, at a certain point a hundred years in or so we shift to this notion of the temple as the lodge, right? And I think if you look at that period, especially The temperance movement time period right before the prohibition of alcohol, the level of alcoholism in North America in the US and Canada like was in, we were drinking three times as much as adults, as we are today.

And the level of alcoholism public alcoholism and drunkenness in the streets had gotten to. An intolerable level. It led to the temperance movements. I think there's something really important to note there as the lodges shifted as well, that there's a balance to be struck. There is an important notion of temperance.

That's part of being serious about the work. Our lodge, we describe it as an ethos, work hard and we play hard. We, when we are in lodge, when we come to lodge, We're serious about the ritual work. We're serious about the experience of of our lodge the kind of feeling and the approach to the altar should be something that we take with solemnity.

It's something that we want to make sure our ritual is up to snuff so that it's going to be something that the candidate has a really. Excellent experience.  However, when we are done, we want to make sure that we have a lot of fun and have a really fun time. The joyful experience of being part of the fraternity.

It shouldn't all be work. So that's the part of making sure that we enjoy one another's company. That might be going to a place where we have some wine or a beer or something like that, but also making sure everybody gets home safely. And that nobody's imbibing too much so that they are intemperate as well.

So I think there historically was a need maybe to shift from one to the other. Today, there's a need for balance, certainly. But I think, if your lodge becomes just work, it'll become too dry and boring. If it's just a party scene and things like that, it's not necessarily a Masonic lodge. There's other organizations that are more about the camaraderie and drinking and the like. 

I think it's important to strike the balance, the middle between those two of the work in the temple and the fun times in the pub as part of the lodge as well. How does it say in the work to be certain not to convert the means of of refreshment to intemperance and excess, right? Yeah, exactly. Dr.

Brother Nathan Schick? Any further comment before we wind up the show here? I don't know if I have any further comments any speaking engagements that are coming up or any other podcasts to watch for. I right now am doing quite a few speaking engagements locally within Arizona jurisdictions.

I've booked out quite a few different local lodges.  📍 so mostly that's what I'm going to be working on for the next little while. And I am working on a few articles that will be coming out. But other than that's primarily where my focus is right now. Yeah, so that's the future couple of months.

I'm currently the senior warden at my Masonic Lodge. As I prepare for potentially my year sitting in the east, I'm trying to keep my engagements planned. So I'm not over burdening myself as well. It, This, I had an excellent time. And at some point in the future, I'll invite you back for a follow up interview or maybe we'll invite you to one of our listener events where we do a, like an online Q and a thank you so much for coming today.

I really appreciate that. Yeah, no, thanks. I really appreciate you having me on the mystic time. 

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