February 9, 2026 • 34 mins
We're joined by a fellow Craftsmen Online podcaster, Bro. Brian Mattocks, the host of "A Mason's Work." Bro. Brian is a Master mason who took his oath seriously. After becoming a Mason, he started making the Masonic Reflection Deck — an exquisite collection of 42 handcrafted cards, each imbued with the timeless symbols of Freemasonry. Each symbol is a key, unlocking new perspectives on daily challenges, long-term aspirations, and the pursuit of wisdom. In this episode, Brian walks us through his deck and how to elevate our journey of self-development.
Show notes and links:
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/craftsmen-online-podcast--4822031/support.
Show notes and links:
- Join us on Patreon. Start your FREE seven day trial to the Craftsmen Online Podcast and get instant access to our bonus content! Whether it's a one time donation or you become a Patreon Subscriber, we appreciate your support.
- Visit the Craftsmen Online website to learn more about our next Reading Room event, New York Masonic History, and our Masonic Education blog!
- Follow the Craftsmen Online Podcast on Spotify.
- Subscribe to the Craftsmen Online Podcast on Apple Podcasts.
- Follow Craftsmen Online on YouTube, hit subscribe and get notified the next time we go LIVE with a podcast recording!
- Yes, we're on Instagram.
- Get our latest announcements and important updates in your inbox with the Craftsmen Online Newsletter.
- Email the host, RW Michael Arce! Yes, we will read your email and may even reach out to be a guest on a future episode.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/craftsmen-online-podcast--4822031/support.
- Follow the Craftsmen Online Podcast on Spotify.
- Subscribe to the Craftsmen Online Podcast on Apple Podcasts.
- Follow Craftsmen Online on YouTube, hit subscribe and get notified the next time we go LIVE with a podcast recording!
- Yes, we're on Instagram.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Commons. Opinions and views shared during this program are
of those individual Freemasons and do not reflect the official
position of a Grand Lodge, concordant Body, a pendant body,
a Masonic authority, or Craftsman Online dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hey, welcome back to the Craftsman Online Podcast, the only
Masonic podcast endorsed by the Grand Lodge in New York.
I love saying that, and I love that they love us,
and ah can you feel it? It is the month
of Love in February. I'm your host, right Worsheville Brother
Michael Arsa, and yeah, I'm just looking for someone to
hug on this edition of the podcast. I do want
to thank all of our Patreon subscribers. Man, you were
(00:49):
coming through big and we love you. What do you
get just seven dollars a month. It gets you access
to all of the episodes of the Craftsman Online Podcast
without commercials, and that includes the subscriber extra episodes where
we get some bonus time with some of our guests.
If you want to get started, you can open up
the episode description on your player, check out the show notes,
(01:11):
and bang, there's a link to get to us on
Patreon at the Craftsman Online podcast. Well, this was a
year of growth for us, as we bring in this
week's guest. He is a fellow Craftsman Online podcaster and
dear friend host of the podcast A Mason's Work and
it's funny. He brought some visual aids, so it's like
show and tell with brother Brian Maddox this week.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Hey Brian, at least for today.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
And if you've been listening to his podcast, which I
know you have, you're enjoying the you know, every other day,
every couple of days, the seven minute you know dose
of how do I take freemasonry and take those principles
and those values and everything that we talk about in
our ritual and our meetings and our lodge and how
do I incorporate this into my everyday life? And then
Brian had a three D printer and a really cool
idea and brought the two together with a lot of
(01:57):
the symbolism that we have and the deck that we'll
be featuring two night when we go hands overhead display,
which he has the cool capability to do that on
his end. As we work through this, yes, you are
able to get this. The website is a Masonswork dot
Com We're also going to make sure that that simple
a Masonswork dot Com link is in the notes for
(02:18):
this episode, so you can just click and start ordering
this and get it for yourself, for brothers of your lodge,
or just an excellent gift. I do want to say
I received mine a while ago. I opened it up
because I was very curious, but I have not gone
through any of the exercises before we get into talking
about this, I do want to say thank you very much.
(02:39):
It was touching. It's you don't get handwritten personal notes
very often, especially ones that are embossed with the square
and Compass class act and of course my camera wants
to be in reverse mode. But he did make a
nice one with the Craftsman Online brand and a very
sweet personal inscription on the inside as well. With this,
(03:00):
and I was like, dude, this is going to be
with me for a lifetime. So thank you very much
for this gift.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
My pleasure.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
I love.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I love helping guys take the the objects of the
craft and turn them into artifact that they can pass
down or you use in their everyday life. The idea
with these and why they're maybe at the price point
they're at and at the build quality that they're at
is because you only need one. But the idea here
(03:32):
is you have in any given set Masonic symbols that
you probably are familiar with. You don't need to go
and learn something that you haven't already learned. Like that
was a big part of the conversation for me, is
I wanted this stuff to be accessible. You can take
(03:54):
some of the ideas here and just start to use
them to frame your everyday life. Every one of these
should again all call to mind a different sort of
Masonic symbol. Now you may not remember the symbolism from
each of us. You may not remember the in depth understanding.
That's what the books. For the books helped us helps
as a prompt so you get little prompts inside, like so,
(04:18):
what does the master mason kind of apron mean? Again?
How do I use that?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
What?
Speaker 3 (04:23):
When should I put that on? Do I ever stop
being an entered apprentice? Right? So a lot of guys
haven't done maybe the reflective contemplative sort of process here.
And what I wanted to do when I saw all
this stuff was I wanted to develop a Masonic contemplative
practice that did not require anybody to have deep repositories
(04:48):
of background coledge. The Masonic language is perfect in a
lot of ways, more perfect than most of the other
contemplative languages out there, because it's raftsman language. It's language
that's accessible by its very nature. The tools, you can
pick them up and without a ton of background, think
(05:09):
about them for just a couple of minutes and get
to this is how I need to use this to
solve the problem on tru turn right. So the book
is there is a prompt. It's not obviously like all disclaimers,
it's not endorsed by any Grand Lodge, so it is
not the definition for what any of these things are,
but it's a reasonable interpretation I think that you could
get to in reflection. So then how do you use it?
(05:32):
Is probably a logical next question. The way I start
is I pick a role in the lodge. So the
lodge is modeled after a working environment. So let's take
the role that's kind of the easiest and most obvious.
That's the role of the worshful master. And that should
that visual there should call to mind the you know,
(05:53):
the collar with the worshipl master's square and compasses or
the square on it. So so what is the role
of the worship It's important to understand that the worshuple
master doesn't do all the work right. The worshipul master
creates a space for the work to happen. Otherwise, he
wouldn't need additional support, he wouldn't need a junior warden,
he wouldn't need, you know, a senior warden, he wouldn't
(06:16):
need any that stuff. So you take on the role
of the worshfuel master and you say, Okay, what's the
objective I'm trying to accomplish here? What is the what
is the work that I'm trying to do? And maybe
you don't know what that is. Maybe you're like a
lot of people like me, you know, or like I
used to be. Anyway, until I discovered all this stuff,
I had no idea what I'm going to do with
(06:36):
my life none. So a lot of the time I
spent sitting as worshful Master as a concept, I had
no idea. So then I then I broke out.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
When you get to the master Mason level and I
can see easily how this deck could be. I don't
want to say a game to play and launch, but
probably one of the best lodge discussions you'll ever have
because someone's going to chime up and say, oh, well,
there's also during that you know, Herramic legend who sits
in the master's chair, And we should always be trying
to exemplify the wisdom that comes from most excellent King Solomon,
(07:12):
and you know, blah blah blah blah blah. And you
get into all of these discussions and how how would
somebody who is wise and is is a king, how
would they handle these situations? How can I tap into
the wisdom or the knowledge of these different individuals. You
could also sit there as you think about worshipful masters.
It's just the men you know who have sat in
(07:32):
that chair and maybe you have had to make tough
decisions whether it was in lodge or out of lodge
for the year that year. And how what leadership can
you embody of the decisions that they made? What traits?
So yeah, I love all of this.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
So the idea is, you know, you sit down and
maybe you're struggling to figure out what your purpose in
life is. And that's like a regular occurrence for a
lot of folks, particularly the younger men who haven't kind
of come to that level of self awareness yet where
they're like, this is really my jam, so so sit
is Worstful Master and say, okay, what's my what's my situation?
What am I trying to do with myself? I know?
(08:09):
For example, For for example, maybe I break out my
trial as the Worstful Master and say, okay, listen, the
one thing I definitely know is that whatever I choose
to do from a occasional perspective, it has to be
it has to be filled care right. Some guys, you know,
(08:29):
I'm going to pick a profession that is you know,
traditionally you know, and sarcastically souldess. Right. Some guys grow
up and go, I want to be an accountant. So
maybe the trial isn't their jam, right, maybe they move
to a different tool. For all the accountants out there,
I apologize, I'm just having fun, but you get the
idea that as Worstful Master as a role play, some
(08:53):
of these tools are going to resonate with you more
than others. Which ones are you rejecting, Which ones are
you keep? Which ones are you working with? Which ones
are you avoiding? That just that conversation alone is the
journey of a lifetime. If you spend time thinking about it.
But let's say, rather than trying to plot the course
of your life as WORKSHPIL master, maybe you're confronting a situation.
(09:15):
Maybe you're looking to earn a little more revenue. Right,
who isn't these days? So that's a different job altogether, right,
that's the that's a treasure's job. So the treasure's job
is going to manage resource and help figure out, you
know how all the resources and whether or not you're
getting your ROI and all that kind of stuff. The
treasure can use the entire suite of tools as well,
(09:39):
So you can sid as a treasure as a mindset
and go, hey, if I'm looking for more revenue, what
have I done? The Three Knocks are a great example
of that. What have I done to seek more revenue?
Who have I asked for help? And what actions did
I take to get right? And I'd love to tell you,
like this was something I sat down and like, you know,
(10:01):
this is all in the ritual. It's about five minutes
deep in some reflection and you go, I can get there.
I didn't invent anything. This is all in their baby.
It's like prego, so you know, for the for the
younger guys, it's based on old tomato sauce commercial, but
(10:22):
it's all in there. What it's not or what it
wasn't for me was actionable. And this is the beginning
of the process of taking all of this apparatus, the
lodge as concept, the symbols as tools, and breaking them
down in a way that lets me put all of
(10:44):
my thinking out in front of it and move those
thoughts around without all of the discomfort of trying to
figure out what I'm thinking or feeling. I'll get to
that too at some point, like that's an important part
of the discovery process. But if I have it in
front of me, I can do the workforce. Everything I
make at a Mason's work is designed around sonic symbols
(11:07):
that can be used to help you become a better person.
That is everything. These little chips here, this little let's
talk later chip. This is a chip that I give
to somebody when we're in the middle of you know,
that open meeting stuff before dinner or after dinner or whatever.
When somebody does something and I'm like, hey, maybe I
need to give him a little bit of counsel. I
(11:29):
just put this chip in his hand so I don't
have to try and correct his behavior right away, or
if I have a business thing right where I want
to talk to him later about large business because he
brought something up in conversation, but now's not the time.
This is going to help me have those conversations so
I can get better at correcting it in private and
celebrating in public. Everything here, all of these tools are
(11:51):
all designed to help you. I'm a better mason.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
One thing I can't wait for is now that I
have this deck, is to jump into Masonic education. I
can't wait until we obligate a new man, a new brother,
or we're getting ready to pass an ea to fellowcraft,
or even get ready to raise a sublime Master Mason,
because this is going to be the highlight of the
(12:16):
end of our Okay, you've displayed proficiency. Now let's have
some fun. Let's actually have a snowball fight here. Let's
toss this back like you would Dad with the ball
in the backyard, like, let's do this. Let me give
you this, I'll take this. Let's build this conversation. Because
it is tough sometimes to get into esoteric or philosophical
(12:38):
or higher level conversations with guys just by saying Okay,
so the twenty four inch cage, how would you practically
use that in your life? Like we're all we've already
got the pre programmed answer of what I started with was, well,
the ritual says this, but if you really tried to
do that, it would pretty much be impossible. But here's
how you could make it work. If you think about
it this way or that way with a tool like this,
(12:59):
you have it in your head, you're examining it here,
you're really reinforcing that of what you already know.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
So if you take the twenty four inch gage at
face value, what it really is is like, okay, go
get your Franklin Clevy planner or whatever your favorite day
planner is and get to it. Start counting time. But
that's that's like the low ball interpretation of U. That's
the easiest possible place to kind of think about. Why
(13:27):
don't you sit for a minute as junior ward and
talk about the twenty four inch game senior warden or
the junior warden whose responsibility is rest and refreshment and
genuine rest refreshman right, the idea of nourishing self care
and taking you know, making sure that we have enough.
So that we can bring our best self to the
(13:48):
table as work. Now, let's break out the twenty four
inch gauge and approach it from that lens that perspective,
and the job changes completely. The tool changes right as
cognitive lens as these tools can give you so much
more than even the surface level interpretation. And I'll tell
you now, when I was raised, there was no like, oh,
(14:11):
here's your twenty four inch gage, here's the recommended reading
this go now. I wouldn't want it because without the
context of the role I'm trying to use that gauge in,
it doesn't make any sense anyway.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
And tools like this make freemasonry fun because I always say, hey, look, dude,
if you can't do the basic proficiency of whatever the
catechism is or whatever the learning is that you have
to do to display that you're an to prentice before
you can move on, and you are not going to
have fun in this because we're going to have conversations
around you and it's all going to go completely over
(15:07):
your head. And it's okay if at first like you're struggling.
We all did, but eventually it gets in there and
then it becomes ingreat and then you can actually put
some of this to action. So like, for example, one
of the things I noticed with your deck, and I'm
just going to hold up some of the ones that
you made for me, is they come apart. It's like
a four D and you can lay the unlike playing cards.
(15:29):
I can lay this and kind of make my own
Masonic hand. And it was so fascinating because for example,
this the letter G. I think in every jurisdiction we
all have that very famous lecture about the letter G
that comes at a certain part in the degree, which
then you could lay the compasses on top of it,
and you could then put the square on top of
(15:51):
the compasses, and then this empty frame here, which was
my favorite, like this is the Freemason framework. And then
you put all of this together and you're like, okay,
take these four things and what does this break them apart?
Put them all back together? What does this represent to you?
Like this is going to be such a fun conversation
tool to have with brothers in law.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
You can't wait, what I think more than anything, and
just by virtue of that kind of sentiment alone, I
want to hear about it now. And because we have
the deck, we have a language to talk about. This
is not merely the contemplative practice, which in and of
itself as a secular contemplative practice is just richer than
(16:30):
anything I have found. And I'm going to toot my
own horn here, but as a secular contemporative practice, it's amazing.
As a shared vocabulary, it now has the ability potentially
to compound efforts in a way that we really don't
take advantage of. This lexicon is so capable and so valuable.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
You give a couple explanations and in these some ways
to use this deck instructions In the Little Handed Dandy
booklet that will with your deck, there's the photo frame game,
which looks totally fun. Use it as a frame and
take a picture of something in your environment and then
again having that conversation of how it relates to it.
And it's just a random draw, which makes it even
more fun. A random picture and a random sum daily meditation.
(17:15):
You touched on that reconnecting with your Masonic journey, arranging
the cards or assembling them in the order of your
Masonic journey, that would be a fun thing to do.
Strategy generation or problem analysis. Think look at things that
are going on and figure and take a random card,
reflect on the concepts on how it could help get
to a solution empathy. You talk about that in here
(17:36):
Gaining New Perspectives project Planning. The other thing is is
that I knew a master that wanted to do the
old Tyler's lecture, but you know, similar of like, hey,
I'm going to sign a working tool from this degree
to these brothers, and I'm going to let you know,
break away for like ten minutes and then come back
in the lodge and tell us what your group thinks
about how much more cooler man would it be as
(17:56):
if you actually had the Ford things to go into
that the room. Your discussion is you're never going to
want to come back into the lodge because you're going
to have so much fun in that breakout. But then
when you do come back into the lodge, that's going
to be pretty amazing too, because literally only one person
can talk about the compasses because there's only one set
of the compasses in this game.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
You get all of that back, and maybe it's been
there in your lodge, maybe it wasn't, now it can right.
You get all of that and when you start when
you start doing like diagnostic let's say a buddy comes
to you and they're really strong because we're supposed to
be here to help each other out, help them find
(18:36):
the role that they're struggling, help them find the place
that they're struggling from, and then when you see them next,
you don't have to go through the whole context and say, hey,
last time we talked, you were having a hard time
with your chap and your chap, let's talk about that, right.
It's so much better and so much stronger as a
(18:57):
toolkit to be able to facilitate that mutual aid that
we talk about as core of PRAP.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
So he's a fellow podcaster. He's a wonderful Pennsylvania Free Mason.
He's a brother Brian Maddox from a Mason's Work That
is the podcast. The website is a Masonswork dot com.
He's been showing a little show and tell tonight. He's
busted out his Masonic reflection deck. It wouldn't be fair
because I'm sure there's a listener or two that's going, okay,
(19:23):
so how did he do this? What we kind of
tease a little bit about this, what's the craftsmanship? Because
that's what baffled me is that some of the symbols
that you have pulled into this, like the three knocks
that you showed on the overhead shot. I would have
never thought how to put all that together, but that
is such an important part of our ritual and a
part of our story. Give us some of the craftsmanship
(19:45):
and some of the thought that went into making these decks.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
So my journey with three D printing started about halfway through.
I guess what is my Masonic career at this point currently?
And when I say halfway through? So it started in
twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and I bought it because
I did not have any real sense of how I
(20:09):
was going to learn math, Like what so, uh, you know,
I'm a computer guy. I'm kind of a tech nerd.
I like this kind of stuff for fun. I got
a three D printer and sat on it for a
while like just wasn't there. And then I again I
saw that Academy of Masonic Knowledge reservation uh, and went, oh,
(20:33):
maybe I can actually use this to do some inner
work as opposed to just acquire one of the seven
Liberal arts and be done with it, right, And I'm like, well,
how would I use this to navigate my stuff? So
what what what things would I want to think about? Right?
So the three knocks, for example, it's not called out
(20:55):
in the ritual for other than a sense in most jurisdictions,
but I went, that was a really important part of
the conversation. It was important enough that it made it
into the ritual that fifteen guys have to get together
in practice, So let me let me think about this
for a minute. Maybe maybe there's something to it. And
so for all of the symbols in here, they are
(21:18):
all they all represent a function or a perspective or
a concept. And so when I understood what the three
knocks were all about, I went, okay, cool, I now
want to add that to the sort of list of perspectives.
I want to include that I can extrovert and work
without in front of it. And so for each of them,
(21:39):
I drew the symbol. My idea again was to make
them super accessible. So this is not, to be quite clear,
it's not high art. There is artisanship. But somebody who's
been practicing drawing for a lifetime is going to look
at this and go, you know, this is very very
chunky stuff.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
The fact that things overlay in a what is a
three D. I don't know if I'm saying this right.
There's a three D printer or a four D printer.
I don't have one obviously, So a three D printer
becomes a four D symbolic portal that you can go
into and like look into these cards and use your
mind to move things around. Like, yeah, I thought this,
(22:48):
this is awesome. When I first saw this, I was like,
I gotta talk to Brian about this. I did not
expect to have my own set, And again, I really
appreciate it. I know I'm not the first brother that
you've shared this with. I'm wondering who the first person
was and how you said, Hey, I had this crazy idea.
Just walk with me here, what do you think of these?
Speaker 3 (23:08):
I made it for my lotch so I actually it's
custom in my district or my jurisdiction to give the
worstall master to give a gift to the brethren on
their birth. And so I heard that, I thought, wow,
this is cool. I went into the East and I
made one for every one of the brothers in my launch.
So I brought about fifty two one hundred of these
(23:30):
to the table. I knowing that most of the guys
some percentage of guys were going to show up. Then
I started giving them out and to people that seemed
like esoteric or introspective thinkers in my jurisdiction. And I
got it in the hands of or at least conceptually
in the hands of a couple of follows from the
Sonic Like podcast, and they just they said, well, just
(23:55):
be prepared to make a ton of these things. I
was like, I wasn't happy with them. They were good,
but not like amazing, So let's, you know, work on it.
And so then I spent the next kind of eight
months after that being on that show toning what I
wanted to say and how I wanted to say. And
(24:17):
the deeper I went into it, the more I expert.
Just like everything, the further you trace it easier become right.
The further I went, the more parallels I found in
modern psychology, in the wisdom traditions, in all of these,
you know, places where we store wisdom and knowledge as people.
And I said, the only thing that was missing for
(24:39):
me for any of this was just the accessibility components.
So by drawing these out and making them accessible, I
get past some of the difficult spots. The cards are
one thing. These coins are new. These are all role
based coins because in writing the book, I'm now working
on the full blown book. Not the little guy here.
(25:01):
This is just a This is more like a prompt uh,
you know set up. Uh. The full blown book, which
has the scientific underpinnings of what I'm doing, has all
of the call outs to the various therapeutic you know,
practices that inform all of this work. I said, I
need to better develop the protocol. We need the roles right,
(25:23):
so your jurisdiction will vary. My my jurisdiction has some
very interesting sort of roles and titles that you don't
find in a lot of blogs, Like a person really
knows where that is.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
I was going to say, that's that's the first one
that comes to mind. I don't even know how to
say it correctly.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Try and spell it goo goo yeah. Yeah. Google gives
you fifty to fifty on whether or not you can
actually spell that. But when I was at Masonic Week
last year, some guys were like, hey, listen, if you
could come up with something to help me do for work,
I like, I like little tokens just for that. So
(25:59):
I said, okay, well, you know here's where this goes, anyway,
So let me cook these up again. The idea is
you take on these roles, and every one of the
roles in a working lodge is a different perspective. That's
the one thing that a lot of guys don't get.
This is not ceremonial only, right. The deacons have, you know,
a job translating the will of the worstful master from
(26:22):
one role to the other. That's something that we kind
of completely ignore when we say carry messages. It's not
carry messages. There's an interpretive act. The secretary has a
meaningful cognitive job, right, that's the memory keeper for the lodge.
It's not just admin and making sure you fill out
your dues cards correctly. It's it is what's worth recording,
(26:45):
and are you recording it? Honestly? The work that's in
freemason that's available to you. Again, disregard any of these things.
Go draw them out on cards on your own. You'll
get to some easy, great places. If you want to
head start. The tools are already made. I've already made
a set of tools that you can use. But this
(27:07):
isn't denied no one. This knowledge is in the craft
for anyone willing to look. And I'm even willing to
venture that you don't have to be a mason to
know this either. The tools, because they're working man's tools,
are designed to be used by anyone that's capable of work. Right.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, I was gonna say, for those that are familiar
with the term lodge of instruction, it's like having a
lodge of instruction in your pocket. And that's what I
was just blown away with this because having these deeper
discussions and you hit it like right on the head, man,
like having a discussion about roles, the actual physical rules
during a degree where you're supposed to be no, no, no,
(27:49):
you need to walk with this person. No, your shoulders
need to touch at this point. You need to be
here by the time this person finishes saying that or
otherwise we look. But then we get into the deeper
part of like why are you and what is the
meaning for this? And yes, of course it's for the
brother that is going through this, or the candidate that's
going through this, or are the brothers that are watching,
(28:09):
or just for yourself, but also there's this other deeper
deep and you can start going into the layers of
all of this and tools like this, take those very
difficult and sometimes complex conversations to have and make it
so easy that anybody can get it, and then then
you can start having the real exchange of like Okay, well, hey,
(28:31):
thanks for sharing this with me, because now when I
think about this, I think about this, this or that,
and you're like, awesome, whatever it takes, you've got it,
and we're making a connection and it's happening.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
And that connection, that deeper connection, empowers the ritual. So
we do a lot of things backwards in the craft
writ large and I don't want to get into a
deep meta conversation about it, but one of the things
we do is we correct the ritual side of the conversation,
not the understanding sentiment kind of side of the conversation.
(29:01):
If a guy knows why he's saying what he's saying,
he'll care a lot more about getting them mm hmm yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Meaning.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
So this helps you get to that meaningful understanding. You
hit the nail on the head there, that meaningful understanding,
and it elevates the experience not just for you as
an individual, but for everyone around you. The more you understand,
the more you can deep in your own experience of
the craft. And again I'm not looking for, you know,
(29:29):
some the interpretation of somebody you know, one hundred years dead.
I'm interested in what it means to you. Brother our say, like,
what does this mean to you? Because you're in my lodge.
George Washington, regrettably is not in my lodge. He's never
going to be in my lodge, and he has performed
all of the masonry he's ever going to perform. The
(29:50):
guy in my lodge, I want to know his VI
I want to know what tools he's working. I want
to know what he's working on. Because if I can
make the investment and the guy in the room rather
than perhaps the deep investments in the historical context, there's
guys that love that. And I'm not trying to say
it's not valuable, but I'd much rather work with the
guy in the room because he's the guy that I'm
(30:11):
going to need help from. George Washington when I'm struggling with,
you know something in my career and my work. He
can't show up and be like, Rian, you should have
you should have digged and stead of zagged.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Let me help you with that flat tire.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Brian, I got you, Yeah, exactly, and so so this
is a craft for living men that want to embrace
that and do the work with other men.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
All right, let's talk about a Mason's work. We introduced
you as a new part of our crafts One online
podcast team in December, which seems so far away we went,
we got through the holidays or into the new year,
and I've been digging this, listening to your episodes. And
when I received this deck and was you know, looked
at a very kind letter that I mentioned that you
(30:56):
wrote for me and the inscription on the inside and
kind of cheated and started looking into the little and
seeing what some of this stuff was about. It really
gave me more context about the episodes that you're sharing.
And when I talk to people about what a Mason's
work is, I tell them, Okay, so it's brother Brian.
He was kind of this frustrated Mason that you know,
he wanted to talk about these things and he just
(31:17):
couldn't find the people to talk to, so he just
turned it into a podcast. And his whole mission is
he wants to take all of those things that we
talk about in our ritual and it really not just
bring them into everyday life, but drag it you kicking
and screaming into realizing that you can do this in
everyday life and it doesn't have to be this torturous
(31:37):
thing to be like, oh, I must walk up brightly
and be a mason because I am a mason.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
We have a lot of knowledge and depth of wisdom
in the craft if you look for it, and a
lot of folks are practicing it on a daily basis,
but they haven't reconciled that practice back to the tools
they and because they've not taking that connection backwards, they
(32:02):
can't teach it to somebody else. So why would you
form a community of practice where you can't meaningfully talk
to each other about the practice itself. The podcast is
designed to help folks contextualize some of the knowledge and
hear about what happens when you care about what happens
when you use it wrong, because I have, you know,
(32:24):
for as much as I've done a lot of work
on this, I am regularly screwing this up and so,
and I have no problem telling folk like I missed
it this week, or I you know, I use this tool.
I learned the lesson of this tool because I did
it wrong for a long time. And here's what this
(32:46):
tool is capable of teaching, and that's really the design
a lot of podcasts kind of an overview of the tool,
an overview of the roles perhaps in the launch, an
overview of some of the fundamental underpinnings that the Masonic
education provides. There's a ton of not just the role
based or the tool based application, but there's a lot
(33:09):
of pretty explicit rules about the way the world works
embedded in the Craft that we don't really hear a
lot about. You may hear, you may remember some of it,
maybe from the Middle Chamber lecture. If you're in the
Preston Web jurisdiction, if you're in in the Pennsylvania jurisdiction,
you'll hear about it alluded to more than anything else.
(33:31):
But there's a ton of bedrock sort of reality shaping
truth that is embedded in every one of these symbols
and across the craft are large and so the A
Mason's Work podcast is designed to service.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Thanks again to our guest this week, Brother Brian Maddox.
He's the host of A Mason's Work and if you
want to get your own Masonic reflection deck or learn
more about his podcast, you can find him at a
masonswork dot com and yes we love having him on
the Craftsman Online podcast network. I'm right Worshipville Brother, Michael Arsay.
I always enjoy our time together and next week's episode
(34:08):
is going to rock literally as Metal Drew, New Jersey's
favorite Freemason and ours two comes back for an episode
as we seek light beyond the Lodge. That should be
a good one. Until next time, let peace and harmony prevail.
The Commons. Opinions and views shared during this program are
of those individual Freemasons and do not reflect the official
position of a Grand Lodge, concordant Body, a pendant body,
a Masonic authority, or Craftsman Online dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hey, welcome back to the Craftsman Online Podcast, the only
Masonic podcast endorsed by the Grand Lodge in New York.
I love saying that, and I love that they love us,
and ah can you feel it? It is the month
of Love in February. I'm your host, right Worsheville Brother
Michael Arsa, and yeah, I'm just looking for someone to
hug on this edition of the podcast. I do want
to thank all of our Patreon subscribers. Man, you were
(00:49):
coming through big and we love you. What do you
get just seven dollars a month. It gets you access
to all of the episodes of the Craftsman Online Podcast
without commercials, and that includes the subscriber extra episodes where
we get some bonus time with some of our guests.
If you want to get started, you can open up
the episode description on your player, check out the show notes,
(01:11):
and bang, there's a link to get to us on
Patreon at the Craftsman Online podcast. Well, this was a
year of growth for us, as we bring in this
week's guest. He is a fellow Craftsman Online podcaster and
dear friend host of the podcast A Mason's Work and
it's funny. He brought some visual aids, so it's like
show and tell with brother Brian Maddox this week.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Hey Brian, at least for today.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
And if you've been listening to his podcast, which I
know you have, you're enjoying the you know, every other day,
every couple of days, the seven minute you know dose
of how do I take freemasonry and take those principles
and those values and everything that we talk about in
our ritual and our meetings and our lodge and how
do I incorporate this into my everyday life? And then
Brian had a three D printer and a really cool
idea and brought the two together with a lot of
(01:57):
the symbolism that we have and the deck that we'll
be featuring two night when we go hands overhead display,
which he has the cool capability to do that on
his end. As we work through this, yes, you are
able to get this. The website is a Masonswork dot
Com We're also going to make sure that that simple
a Masonswork dot Com link is in the notes for
(02:18):
this episode, so you can just click and start ordering
this and get it for yourself, for brothers of your lodge,
or just an excellent gift. I do want to say
I received mine a while ago. I opened it up
because I was very curious, but I have not gone
through any of the exercises before we get into talking
about this, I do want to say thank you very much.
(02:39):
It was touching. It's you don't get handwritten personal notes
very often, especially ones that are embossed with the square
and Compass class act and of course my camera wants
to be in reverse mode. But he did make a
nice one with the Craftsman Online brand and a very
sweet personal inscription on the inside as well. With this,
(03:00):
and I was like, dude, this is going to be
with me for a lifetime. So thank you very much
for this gift.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
My pleasure.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
I love.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I love helping guys take the the objects of the
craft and turn them into artifact that they can pass
down or you use in their everyday life. The idea
with these and why they're maybe at the price point
they're at and at the build quality that they're at
is because you only need one. But the idea here
(03:32):
is you have in any given set Masonic symbols that
you probably are familiar with. You don't need to go
and learn something that you haven't already learned. Like that
was a big part of the conversation for me, is
I wanted this stuff to be accessible. You can take
(03:54):
some of the ideas here and just start to use
them to frame your everyday life. Every one of these
should again all call to mind a different sort of
Masonic symbol. Now you may not remember the symbolism from
each of us. You may not remember the in depth understanding.
That's what the books. For the books helped us helps
as a prompt so you get little prompts inside, like so,
(04:18):
what does the master mason kind of apron mean? Again?
How do I use that?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
What?
Speaker 3 (04:23):
When should I put that on? Do I ever stop
being an entered apprentice? Right? So a lot of guys
haven't done maybe the reflective contemplative sort of process here.
And what I wanted to do when I saw all
this stuff was I wanted to develop a Masonic contemplative
practice that did not require anybody to have deep repositories
(04:48):
of background coledge. The Masonic language is perfect in a
lot of ways, more perfect than most of the other
contemplative languages out there, because it's raftsman language. It's language
that's accessible by its very nature. The tools, you can
pick them up and without a ton of background, think
(05:09):
about them for just a couple of minutes and get
to this is how I need to use this to
solve the problem on tru turn right. So the book
is there is a prompt. It's not obviously like all disclaimers,
it's not endorsed by any Grand Lodge, so it is
not the definition for what any of these things are,
but it's a reasonable interpretation I think that you could
get to in reflection. So then how do you use it?
(05:32):
Is probably a logical next question. The way I start
is I pick a role in the lodge. So the
lodge is modeled after a working environment. So let's take
the role that's kind of the easiest and most obvious.
That's the role of the worshful master. And that should
that visual there should call to mind the you know,
(05:53):
the collar with the worshipl master's square and compasses or
the square on it. So so what is the role
of the worship It's important to understand that the worshuple
master doesn't do all the work right. The worshipul master
creates a space for the work to happen. Otherwise, he
wouldn't need additional support, he wouldn't need a junior warden,
he wouldn't need, you know, a senior warden, he wouldn't
(06:16):
need any that stuff. So you take on the role
of the worshfuel master and you say, Okay, what's the
objective I'm trying to accomplish here? What is the what
is the work that I'm trying to do? And maybe
you don't know what that is. Maybe you're like a
lot of people like me, you know, or like I
used to be. Anyway, until I discovered all this stuff,
I had no idea what I'm going to do with
(06:36):
my life none. So a lot of the time I
spent sitting as worshful Master as a concept, I had
no idea. So then I then I broke out.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
When you get to the master Mason level and I
can see easily how this deck could be. I don't
want to say a game to play and launch, but
probably one of the best lodge discussions you'll ever have
because someone's going to chime up and say, oh, well,
there's also during that you know, Herramic legend who sits
in the master's chair, And we should always be trying
to exemplify the wisdom that comes from most excellent King Solomon,
(07:12):
and you know, blah blah blah blah blah. And you
get into all of these discussions and how how would
somebody who is wise and is is a king, how
would they handle these situations? How can I tap into
the wisdom or the knowledge of these different individuals. You
could also sit there as you think about worshipful masters.
It's just the men you know who have sat in
(07:32):
that chair and maybe you have had to make tough
decisions whether it was in lodge or out of lodge
for the year that year. And how what leadership can
you embody of the decisions that they made? What traits?
So yeah, I love all of this.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
So the idea is, you know, you sit down and
maybe you're struggling to figure out what your purpose in
life is. And that's like a regular occurrence for a
lot of folks, particularly the younger men who haven't kind
of come to that level of self awareness yet where
they're like, this is really my jam, so so sit
is Worstful Master and say, okay, what's my what's my situation?
What am I trying to do with myself? I know?
(08:09):
For example, For for example, maybe I break out my
trial as the Worstful Master and say, okay, listen, the
one thing I definitely know is that whatever I choose
to do from a occasional perspective, it has to be
it has to be filled care right. Some guys, you know,
(08:29):
I'm going to pick a profession that is you know,
traditionally you know, and sarcastically souldess. Right. Some guys grow
up and go, I want to be an accountant. So
maybe the trial isn't their jam, right, maybe they move
to a different tool. For all the accountants out there,
I apologize, I'm just having fun, but you get the
idea that as Worstful Master as a role play, some
(08:53):
of these tools are going to resonate with you more
than others. Which ones are you rejecting, Which ones are
you keep? Which ones are you working with? Which ones
are you avoiding? That just that conversation alone is the
journey of a lifetime. If you spend time thinking about it.
But let's say, rather than trying to plot the course
of your life as WORKSHPIL master, maybe you're confronting a situation.
(09:15):
Maybe you're looking to earn a little more revenue. Right,
who isn't these days? So that's a different job altogether, right,
that's the that's a treasure's job. So the treasure's job
is going to manage resource and help figure out, you
know how all the resources and whether or not you're
getting your ROI and all that kind of stuff. The
treasure can use the entire suite of tools as well,
(09:39):
So you can sid as a treasure as a mindset
and go, hey, if I'm looking for more revenue, what
have I done? The Three Knocks are a great example
of that. What have I done to seek more revenue?
Who have I asked for help? And what actions did
I take to get right? And I'd love to tell you,
like this was something I sat down and like, you know,
(10:01):
this is all in the ritual. It's about five minutes
deep in some reflection and you go, I can get there.
I didn't invent anything. This is all in their baby.
It's like prego, so you know, for the for the
younger guys, it's based on old tomato sauce commercial, but
(10:22):
it's all in there. What it's not or what it
wasn't for me was actionable. And this is the beginning
of the process of taking all of this apparatus, the
lodge as concept, the symbols as tools, and breaking them
down in a way that lets me put all of
(10:44):
my thinking out in front of it and move those
thoughts around without all of the discomfort of trying to
figure out what I'm thinking or feeling. I'll get to
that too at some point, like that's an important part
of the discovery process. But if I have it in
front of me, I can do the workforce. Everything I
make at a Mason's work is designed around sonic symbols
(11:07):
that can be used to help you become a better person.
That is everything. These little chips here, this little let's
talk later chip. This is a chip that I give
to somebody when we're in the middle of you know,
that open meeting stuff before dinner or after dinner or whatever.
When somebody does something and I'm like, hey, maybe I
need to give him a little bit of counsel. I
(11:29):
just put this chip in his hand so I don't
have to try and correct his behavior right away, or
if I have a business thing right where I want
to talk to him later about large business because he
brought something up in conversation, but now's not the time.
This is going to help me have those conversations so
I can get better at correcting it in private and
celebrating in public. Everything here, all of these tools are
(11:51):
all designed to help you. I'm a better mason.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
One thing I can't wait for is now that I
have this deck, is to jump into Masonic education. I
can't wait until we obligate a new man, a new brother,
or we're getting ready to pass an ea to fellowcraft,
or even get ready to raise a sublime Master Mason,
because this is going to be the highlight of the
(12:16):
end of our Okay, you've displayed proficiency. Now let's have
some fun. Let's actually have a snowball fight here. Let's
toss this back like you would Dad with the ball
in the backyard, like, let's do this. Let me give
you this, I'll take this. Let's build this conversation. Because
it is tough sometimes to get into esoteric or philosophical
(12:38):
or higher level conversations with guys just by saying Okay,
so the twenty four inch cage, how would you practically
use that in your life? Like we're all we've already
got the pre programmed answer of what I started with was, well,
the ritual says this, but if you really tried to
do that, it would pretty much be impossible. But here's
how you could make it work. If you think about
it this way or that way with a tool like this,
(12:59):
you have it in your head, you're examining it here,
you're really reinforcing that of what you already know.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
So if you take the twenty four inch gage at
face value, what it really is is like, okay, go
get your Franklin Clevy planner or whatever your favorite day
planner is and get to it. Start counting time. But
that's that's like the low ball interpretation of U. That's
the easiest possible place to kind of think about. Why
(13:27):
don't you sit for a minute as junior ward and
talk about the twenty four inch game senior warden or
the junior warden whose responsibility is rest and refreshment and
genuine rest refreshman right, the idea of nourishing self care
and taking you know, making sure that we have enough.
So that we can bring our best self to the
(13:48):
table as work. Now, let's break out the twenty four
inch gauge and approach it from that lens that perspective,
and the job changes completely. The tool changes right as
cognitive lens as these tools can give you so much
more than even the surface level interpretation. And I'll tell
you now, when I was raised, there was no like, oh,
(14:11):
here's your twenty four inch gage, here's the recommended reading
this go now. I wouldn't want it because without the
context of the role I'm trying to use that gauge in,
it doesn't make any sense anyway.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
And tools like this make freemasonry fun because I always say, hey, look, dude,
if you can't do the basic proficiency of whatever the
catechism is or whatever the learning is that you have
to do to display that you're an to prentice before
you can move on, and you are not going to
have fun in this because we're going to have conversations
around you and it's all going to go completely over
(15:07):
your head. And it's okay if at first like you're struggling.
We all did, but eventually it gets in there and
then it becomes ingreat and then you can actually put
some of this to action. So like, for example, one
of the things I noticed with your deck, and I'm
just going to hold up some of the ones that
you made for me, is they come apart. It's like
a four D and you can lay the unlike playing cards.
(15:29):
I can lay this and kind of make my own
Masonic hand. And it was so fascinating because for example,
this the letter G. I think in every jurisdiction we
all have that very famous lecture about the letter G
that comes at a certain part in the degree, which
then you could lay the compasses on top of it,
and you could then put the square on top of
(15:51):
the compasses, and then this empty frame here, which was
my favorite, like this is the Freemason framework. And then
you put all of this together and you're like, okay,
take these four things and what does this break them apart?
Put them all back together? What does this represent to you?
Like this is going to be such a fun conversation
tool to have with brothers in law.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
You can't wait, what I think more than anything, and
just by virtue of that kind of sentiment alone, I
want to hear about it now. And because we have
the deck, we have a language to talk about. This
is not merely the contemplative practice, which in and of
itself as a secular contemplative practice is just richer than
(16:30):
anything I have found. And I'm going to toot my
own horn here, but as a secular contemporative practice, it's amazing.
As a shared vocabulary, it now has the ability potentially
to compound efforts in a way that we really don't
take advantage of. This lexicon is so capable and so valuable.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
You give a couple explanations and in these some ways
to use this deck instructions In the Little Handed Dandy
booklet that will with your deck, there's the photo frame game,
which looks totally fun. Use it as a frame and
take a picture of something in your environment and then
again having that conversation of how it relates to it.
And it's just a random draw, which makes it even
more fun. A random picture and a random sum daily meditation.
(17:15):
You touched on that reconnecting with your Masonic journey, arranging
the cards or assembling them in the order of your
Masonic journey, that would be a fun thing to do.
Strategy generation or problem analysis. Think look at things that
are going on and figure and take a random card,
reflect on the concepts on how it could help get
to a solution empathy. You talk about that in here
(17:36):
Gaining New Perspectives project Planning. The other thing is is
that I knew a master that wanted to do the
old Tyler's lecture, but you know, similar of like, hey,
I'm going to sign a working tool from this degree
to these brothers, and I'm going to let you know,
break away for like ten minutes and then come back
in the lodge and tell us what your group thinks
about how much more cooler man would it be as
(17:56):
if you actually had the Ford things to go into
that the room. Your discussion is you're never going to
want to come back into the lodge because you're going
to have so much fun in that breakout. But then
when you do come back into the lodge, that's going
to be pretty amazing too, because literally only one person
can talk about the compasses because there's only one set
of the compasses in this game.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
You get all of that back, and maybe it's been
there in your lodge, maybe it wasn't, now it can right.
You get all of that and when you start when
you start doing like diagnostic let's say a buddy comes
to you and they're really strong because we're supposed to
be here to help each other out, help them find
(18:36):
the role that they're struggling, help them find the place
that they're struggling from, and then when you see them next,
you don't have to go through the whole context and say, hey,
last time we talked, you were having a hard time
with your chap and your chap, let's talk about that, right.
It's so much better and so much stronger as a
(18:57):
toolkit to be able to facilitate that mutual aid that
we talk about as core of PRAP.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
So he's a fellow podcaster. He's a wonderful Pennsylvania Free Mason.
He's a brother Brian Maddox from a Mason's Work That
is the podcast. The website is a Masonswork dot com.
He's been showing a little show and tell tonight. He's
busted out his Masonic reflection deck. It wouldn't be fair
because I'm sure there's a listener or two that's going, okay,
(19:23):
so how did he do this? What we kind of
tease a little bit about this, what's the craftsmanship? Because
that's what baffled me is that some of the symbols
that you have pulled into this, like the three knocks
that you showed on the overhead shot. I would have
never thought how to put all that together, but that
is such an important part of our ritual and a
part of our story. Give us some of the craftsmanship
(19:45):
and some of the thought that went into making these decks.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
So my journey with three D printing started about halfway through.
I guess what is my Masonic career at this point currently?
And when I say halfway through? So it started in
twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and I bought it because
I did not have any real sense of how I
(20:09):
was going to learn math, Like what so, uh, you know,
I'm a computer guy. I'm kind of a tech nerd.
I like this kind of stuff for fun. I got
a three D printer and sat on it for a
while like just wasn't there. And then I again I
saw that Academy of Masonic Knowledge reservation uh, and went, oh,
(20:33):
maybe I can actually use this to do some inner
work as opposed to just acquire one of the seven
Liberal arts and be done with it, right, And I'm like, well,
how would I use this to navigate my stuff? So
what what what things would I want to think about? Right?
So the three knocks, for example, it's not called out
(20:55):
in the ritual for other than a sense in most jurisdictions,
but I went, that was a really important part of
the conversation. It was important enough that it made it
into the ritual that fifteen guys have to get together
in practice, So let me let me think about this
for a minute. Maybe maybe there's something to it. And
so for all of the symbols in here, they are
(21:18):
all they all represent a function or a perspective or
a concept. And so when I understood what the three
knocks were all about, I went, okay, cool, I now
want to add that to the sort of list of perspectives.
I want to include that I can extrovert and work
without in front of it. And so for each of them,
(21:39):
I drew the symbol. My idea again was to make
them super accessible. So this is not, to be quite clear,
it's not high art. There is artisanship. But somebody who's
been practicing drawing for a lifetime is going to look
at this and go, you know, this is very very
chunky stuff.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
The fact that things overlay in a what is a
three D. I don't know if I'm saying this right.
There's a three D printer or a four D printer.
I don't have one obviously, So a three D printer
becomes a four D symbolic portal that you can go
into and like look into these cards and use your
mind to move things around. Like, yeah, I thought this,
(22:48):
this is awesome. When I first saw this, I was like,
I gotta talk to Brian about this. I did not
expect to have my own set, And again, I really
appreciate it. I know I'm not the first brother that
you've shared this with. I'm wondering who the first person
was and how you said, Hey, I had this crazy idea.
Just walk with me here, what do you think of these?
Speaker 3 (23:08):
I made it for my lotch so I actually it's
custom in my district or my jurisdiction to give the
worstall master to give a gift to the brethren on
their birth. And so I heard that, I thought, wow,
this is cool. I went into the East and I
made one for every one of the brothers in my launch.
So I brought about fifty two one hundred of these
(23:30):
to the table. I knowing that most of the guys
some percentage of guys were going to show up. Then
I started giving them out and to people that seemed
like esoteric or introspective thinkers in my jurisdiction. And I
got it in the hands of or at least conceptually
in the hands of a couple of follows from the
Sonic Like podcast, and they just they said, well, just
(23:55):
be prepared to make a ton of these things. I
was like, I wasn't happy with them. They were good,
but not like amazing, So let's, you know, work on it.
And so then I spent the next kind of eight
months after that being on that show toning what I
wanted to say and how I wanted to say. And
(24:17):
the deeper I went into it, the more I expert.
Just like everything, the further you trace it easier become right.
The further I went, the more parallels I found in
modern psychology, in the wisdom traditions, in all of these,
you know, places where we store wisdom and knowledge as people.
And I said, the only thing that was missing for
(24:39):
me for any of this was just the accessibility components.
So by drawing these out and making them accessible, I
get past some of the difficult spots. The cards are
one thing. These coins are new. These are all role
based coins because in writing the book, I'm now working
on the full blown book. Not the little guy here.
(25:01):
This is just a This is more like a prompt uh,
you know set up. Uh. The full blown book, which
has the scientific underpinnings of what I'm doing, has all
of the call outs to the various therapeutic you know,
practices that inform all of this work. I said, I
need to better develop the protocol. We need the roles right,
(25:23):
so your jurisdiction will vary. My my jurisdiction has some
very interesting sort of roles and titles that you don't
find in a lot of blogs, Like a person really
knows where that is.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
I was going to say, that's that's the first one
that comes to mind. I don't even know how to
say it correctly.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Try and spell it goo goo yeah. Yeah. Google gives
you fifty to fifty on whether or not you can
actually spell that. But when I was at Masonic Week
last year, some guys were like, hey, listen, if you
could come up with something to help me do for work,
I like, I like little tokens just for that. So
(25:59):
I said, okay, well, you know here's where this goes, anyway,
So let me cook these up again. The idea is
you take on these roles, and every one of the
roles in a working lodge is a different perspective. That's
the one thing that a lot of guys don't get.
This is not ceremonial only, right. The deacons have, you know,
a job translating the will of the worstful master from
(26:22):
one role to the other. That's something that we kind
of completely ignore when we say carry messages. It's not
carry messages. There's an interpretive act. The secretary has a
meaningful cognitive job, right, that's the memory keeper for the lodge.
It's not just admin and making sure you fill out
your dues cards correctly. It's it is what's worth recording,
(26:45):
and are you recording it? Honestly? The work that's in
freemason that's available to you. Again, disregard any of these things.
Go draw them out on cards on your own. You'll
get to some easy, great places. If you want to
head start. The tools are already made. I've already made
a set of tools that you can use. But this
(27:07):
isn't denied no one. This knowledge is in the craft
for anyone willing to look. And I'm even willing to
venture that you don't have to be a mason to
know this either. The tools, because they're working man's tools,
are designed to be used by anyone that's capable of work. Right.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, I was gonna say, for those that are familiar
with the term lodge of instruction, it's like having a
lodge of instruction in your pocket. And that's what I
was just blown away with this because having these deeper
discussions and you hit it like right on the head, man,
like having a discussion about roles, the actual physical rules
during a degree where you're supposed to be no, no, no,
(27:49):
you need to walk with this person. No, your shoulders
need to touch at this point. You need to be
here by the time this person finishes saying that or
otherwise we look. But then we get into the deeper
part of like why are you and what is the
meaning for this? And yes, of course it's for the
brother that is going through this, or the candidate that's
going through this, or are the brothers that are watching,
(28:09):
or just for yourself, but also there's this other deeper
deep and you can start going into the layers of
all of this and tools like this, take those very
difficult and sometimes complex conversations to have and make it
so easy that anybody can get it, and then then
you can start having the real exchange of like Okay, well, hey,
(28:31):
thanks for sharing this with me, because now when I
think about this, I think about this, this or that,
and you're like, awesome, whatever it takes, you've got it,
and we're making a connection and it's happening.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
And that connection, that deeper connection, empowers the ritual. So
we do a lot of things backwards in the craft
writ large and I don't want to get into a
deep meta conversation about it, but one of the things
we do is we correct the ritual side of the conversation,
not the understanding sentiment kind of side of the conversation.
(29:01):
If a guy knows why he's saying what he's saying,
he'll care a lot more about getting them mm hmm yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Meaning.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
So this helps you get to that meaningful understanding. You
hit the nail on the head there, that meaningful understanding,
and it elevates the experience not just for you as
an individual, but for everyone around you. The more you understand,
the more you can deep in your own experience of
the craft. And again I'm not looking for, you know,
(29:29):
some the interpretation of somebody you know, one hundred years dead.
I'm interested in what it means to you. Brother our say, like,
what does this mean to you? Because you're in my lodge.
George Washington, regrettably is not in my lodge. He's never
going to be in my lodge, and he has performed
all of the masonry he's ever going to perform. The
(29:50):
guy in my lodge, I want to know his VI
I want to know what tools he's working. I want
to know what he's working on. Because if I can
make the investment and the guy in the room rather
than perhaps the deep investments in the historical context, there's
guys that love that. And I'm not trying to say
it's not valuable, but I'd much rather work with the
guy in the room because he's the guy that I'm
(30:11):
going to need help from. George Washington when I'm struggling with,
you know something in my career and my work. He
can't show up and be like, Rian, you should have
you should have digged and stead of zagged.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Let me help you with that flat tire.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Brian, I got you, Yeah, exactly, and so so this
is a craft for living men that want to embrace
that and do the work with other men.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
All right, let's talk about a Mason's work. We introduced
you as a new part of our crafts One online
podcast team in December, which seems so far away we went,
we got through the holidays or into the new year,
and I've been digging this, listening to your episodes. And
when I received this deck and was you know, looked
at a very kind letter that I mentioned that you
(30:56):
wrote for me and the inscription on the inside and
kind of cheated and started looking into the little and
seeing what some of this stuff was about. It really
gave me more context about the episodes that you're sharing.
And when I talk to people about what a Mason's
work is, I tell them, Okay, so it's brother Brian.
He was kind of this frustrated Mason that you know,
he wanted to talk about these things and he just
(31:17):
couldn't find the people to talk to, so he just
turned it into a podcast. And his whole mission is
he wants to take all of those things that we
talk about in our ritual and it really not just
bring them into everyday life, but drag it you kicking
and screaming into realizing that you can do this in
everyday life and it doesn't have to be this torturous
(31:37):
thing to be like, oh, I must walk up brightly
and be a mason because I am a mason.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
We have a lot of knowledge and depth of wisdom
in the craft if you look for it, and a
lot of folks are practicing it on a daily basis,
but they haven't reconciled that practice back to the tools
they and because they've not taking that connection backwards, they
(32:02):
can't teach it to somebody else. So why would you
form a community of practice where you can't meaningfully talk
to each other about the practice itself. The podcast is
designed to help folks contextualize some of the knowledge and
hear about what happens when you care about what happens
when you use it wrong, because I have, you know,
(32:24):
for as much as I've done a lot of work
on this, I am regularly screwing this up and so,
and I have no problem telling folk like I missed
it this week, or I you know, I use this tool.
I learned the lesson of this tool because I did
it wrong for a long time. And here's what this
(32:46):
tool is capable of teaching, and that's really the design
a lot of podcasts kind of an overview of the tool,
an overview of the roles perhaps in the launch, an
overview of some of the fundamental underpinnings that the Masonic
education provides. There's a ton of not just the role
based or the tool based application, but there's a lot
(33:09):
of pretty explicit rules about the way the world works
embedded in the Craft that we don't really hear a
lot about. You may hear, you may remember some of it,
maybe from the Middle Chamber lecture. If you're in the
Preston Web jurisdiction, if you're in in the Pennsylvania jurisdiction,
you'll hear about it alluded to more than anything else.
(33:31):
But there's a ton of bedrock sort of reality shaping
truth that is embedded in every one of these symbols
and across the craft are large and so the A
Mason's Work podcast is designed to service.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Thanks again to our guest this week, Brother Brian Maddox.
He's the host of A Mason's Work and if you
want to get your own Masonic reflection deck or learn
more about his podcast, you can find him at a
masonswork dot com and yes we love having him on
the Craftsman Online podcast network. I'm right Worshipville Brother, Michael Arsay.
I always enjoy our time together and next week's episode
(34:08):
is going to rock literally as Metal Drew, New Jersey's
favorite Freemason and ours two comes back for an episode
as we seek light beyond the Lodge. That should be
a good one. Until next time, let peace and harmony prevail.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Betrayal Season 5
Saskia Inwood woke up one morning, knowing her life would never be the same. The night before, she learned the unimaginable – that the husband she knew in the light of day was a different person after dark. This season unpacks Saskia’s discovery of her husband’s secret life and her fight to bring him to justice. Along the way, we expose a crime that is just coming to light. This is also a story about the myth of the “perfect victim:” who gets believed, who gets doubted, and why. We follow Saskia as she works to reclaim her body, her voice, and her life. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at betrayalpod@gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.