Sunset Lodge #369 will confer the prestegious Hiram Award on one of our members.  Michael Wamback, a Past Master of Sunset Lodge and Adeptus Minor of Solvitur Ambulando will be presented with the award at a celebration to be held at Sunset Lodge on December 30th.  The celebration will be a “Maritime Kitchen Party” theme, and will consist of a meal of fish & chips, followed by the award presentation and entertainment in the Lodge Room.

We encourage our members to attend this event, to celebrate Micahel’s Masonic achievement.

Date: Tuesday, December 30th, 2009
Location: Sunset Masonic Temple,
1720 Ocean Park Blvd., Santa Monica CA
Time: Dinner 6:30 PM and Program 7:30 PM
Reservations are required by December 20th, 2009
(310) 452-3943 or sunsetlodge@verizon.net

Solvitur Ambulando will hold a curriculum development session at our December meeting.  The Society will break into two focus groups, with one group focusing on the Blue Lodge and the other on the Eastern Star Chapter.  This will be a continuation of the program started in 2008.

This event will give our members a chance to further develope ideas that will result in an increase in education about or orders for our candidates, as well as a chance to address individual issues in the Lodge and Chapter.

Due to the nature of this event, it will be open to members of Sunset Lodge and Ocean Park Chapter only.

The November meeting of Solvitur Ambulado was held at Sunset Masonic Temple on Friday, November 14th, and was well attended.

Following a wonderful pot-luck dinner, Michael Wamback presented certificates of grade to each member who had earned a grade in 2009.  Grades conferred this year ranged from Initiate to Adeptus Minor.  This banquet celebrated the completion of the first year of our Society.

There then followed a very brief business meeting, at which was duscussed who would be presenting lectures in the ensuing year.  There was expressed the desire to hold additional organizing meetings, for the purpose of developing a curriculum for candidates in the Blue Lodge and Eastern Star Chapter.  It was decided that the Society would host three of these events in 2009.

The meeting was then adjourned with good fellowship.

Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher, was born on April 22, 1724. He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe and of the late Enlightenment.

Freemasonry existed in a less organized form for many hundreds of years prior to the formation of the Grand Lodge of England in 1721. Many have speculated that early Masonic lodges functioned more as trade guilds, rather than as repositories of philosophical and moralistic thought, as exist today. At some point, many believe, scholars sought refuge in Masonic Lodges to discuss scientific and philosophical ideas that would have been considered heretical at the time. These “free thinkers” transformed the “operative” workman lodges of the time into the “speculative” philosophical lodges that we have today.

There is also little doubt that the teachings and rituals of Freemasonry continued to evolve throughout the age of enlightenment and reason that was spreading throughout Europe in the 1700′s. To this end, one of the most influential philosophers in the latter part of the age of reason was Kant, and students of Freemasonry should acquaint themselves with his thoughts, particularly as it concerns reason and morality, should they wish to glimpse the birthing of our Masonic beliefs.

In his essay “Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?,” Kant defined the Enlightenment as an age shaped by the Latin motto, Sapere aude (“Dare to Know”). Kant maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority. His work reconciled many of the differences between the Rationalist and Empiricist traditions of the 18th century. He had a decisive impact on the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century. His work has also been a starting point for many 20th century philosophers.

Kant asserted that, because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable evidence, no one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not, and, conversely, that no one could really know that there is no God and no afterlife. For the sake of society and morality, Kant asserted, people are reasonably justified in believing in them, even though they could never know for sure whether they are real or not. He explained:

“ All the preparations of reason, therefore, in what may be called pure philosophy, are in reality directed to those three problems only [God, the soul, and freedom]. However, these three elements in themselves still hold independent, proportional, objective weight individually. Moreover, in a collective relational context; namely, to know what ought to be done: if the will is free, if there is a God, and if there is a future world. As this concerns our actions with reference to the highest aims of life, we see that the ultimate intention of nature in her wise provision was really, in the constitution of our reason, directed to moral interests only. ”

The sense of an enlightened approach and the critical method required that “If one cannot prove that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is not. And if he succeeds in doing neither (as often occurs), he may still ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical point of view. Hence the question no longer is as to whether perpetual peace is a real thing or not a real thing, or as to whether we may not be deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former alternative, but we must act on the supposition of its being real.” The presupposition of God, soul, and freedom was then a practical concern, for “Morality, by itself, constitutes a system, but happiness does not, unless it is distributed in exact proportion to morality. This, however, is possible in an intelligible world only under a wise author and ruler. Reason compels us to admit such a ruler, together with life in such a world, which we must consider as future life, or else all moral laws are to be considered as idle dreams… .”

The two interconnected foundations of what Kant called his “critical philosophy” that created the “Copernican revolution” that he claimed to have wrought in philosophy were his epistemology of Transcendental Idealism and his moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason. These teachings placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds. With regard to knowledge, Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science could never be accounted for merely by the fortuitous accumulation of sense perceptions. It was instead the product of the rule-based activity of “synthesis.” This activity consisted of conceptual unification and integration carried out by the mind through concepts or the “categories of the understanding” operating on the perceptual manifold within space and time, which are not concepts, but are forms of sensibility that are a priori necessary conditions for any possible experience. Thus the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within it are dependent upon the mind. There is wide disagreement among Kant scholars on the correct interpretation of this train of thought. The ‘two-world’ interpretation regards Kant’s position as a statement of epistemological limitation, that we are never able to transcend the bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot access the “thing-in-itself”. Kant, however, also speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental object as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Following this line of thought, some interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alone – this is known as the two-aspect view. With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather is only the good will itself. A good will is one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanity – understood as rational agency, and represented through oneself as well as others – as an end in itself rather than (merely) as means to other ends the individual might hold.

It is in the philosophy of Kant that we find illustrated many of the themes which resonate in Masonry.

(Wikipedia – Immanuel Kant)

Researchers said Thursday they have identified the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus by comparing DNA from a skeleton and hair retrieved from one of the 16th-century astronomer’s books.

The findings could put an end to centuries of speculation about the exact resting spot of Copernicus, a priest and astronomer whose theories placed the sun, not the Earth, at the centre of the universe.

It wasn’t until centuries later that astronomers found evidence the sun was not the centre of the universe, but rather one of billions of billions of stars, but at the time, it was a radical departure from the belief that the Earth was at the centre of the universe.

(Read article here)

Solvitur Ambulando will be hosting our 1st annual festive board on Friday, November 14th @ 7:00 PM.  A pot-luck dinner will be served, followed by the awarding of degrees for this past year.

It has been a very successful 1st year for our Society, and we hope to see as many of our members present as possible to receive thier recognition.

This event will be open to members of the Society and invited guests only.

For more information, please contact Michael Wamback

Religion has in fact historically treated speculation as either negative as attempting to second guess Providence by betting on future crops or on the other hand positive.  For if Nature is the face of God then Nature is a legitimate, even obligatory, object of speculation as to where its bounty may be found and also speculative thought may also as reveal God’s nature.

(Read article here)

Several members of Solvitur Ambulando attended the installation of Most Worshipful Larry L. Adamson as Grand Master of Masons in California. MW Adamson is a Past Master of Sunset Lodge and a Hiram Award recipient for his outstanding efforts on behalf of our lodge.

MW Adamson gave an outstanding speech, part of which was of particular interest to members of our society. Working with Dr. Margaret Jacobson, professor of history at UCLA, the Grand Lodge of California is going to create a program with UCLA on Masonic Studies. This program will provide scholarships and support research on the various themes of Masonic History.

MW Adamson placed a strong emphasis on Masonic Education, which is something that is near and dear to the hearts of those who are members of Solvitur Ambulando.

Should members of the society find themselves in San Francisco, we encourage you to visit our Grand Lodge at 1111 California St., directly across the street from Grace Cathedral.

The National Geographic Society special on Freemasonry.

On Thursday, September 25th, Worshipful Clifton Aduddell, a Past Master of Sunset Lodge, will present a lecture on the history and mythology of King Solomon.  Clifton will examine the legend of Solomon, as well as explore some of the more current theries that ties the events in the life of King Solomon as presented in our Masonic ritual with possible events which occured in Egypt.

Clifton has proven to be a very entertaining speaker at past events, and this promises to be one of the more fasicnating lectures presented this year.

Thursday, September 25th @ 7:30 PM

Bodhi Tree Bookstore, 8585 Melrose Ave, West Hollywood CA