Templar Edification

My high-school curriculum did not require Latin in order to graduate—I’m not quite so old as that—but I am old enough that it offered Latin as an elective. To be honest, it was an easy A, especially as I’d already taken a few semesters of Spanish, itself a Latin derivative. With its low level of stress and heavy dosage of Roman history, Latin class soon became a favorite of mine. We even took a bus-trip to Broadway, in order to see A Funny Things Happened on the Way to the Forum, which tickles me to this day. I try to watch the DVD on every Saturnalia. This youthful dalliance with the Classics continued into my undergraduate matriculation [the formal process of enrolling and admittance as a student at college or university], where I signed up for further Latin courses, a minor focusing on Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, and even a few graduate-level Imperial Roman history classes. I met one of my best friends there; upon graduation, we were invited to join an international ...

The Knights Templar formally the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ of the Temple of Solomon played a significant military role in the Crusades, a series of religious wars initiated by Western European Christians primarily between 1095 and 1291. These campaigns aimed to recapture Jerusalem and other holy sites in the Levant from Muslim control, while also defending Christian pilgrims and the Crusader states established after the First Crusade. Levant is French for rising sun in the east Mediterranean. Now Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria. Home of Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam or Mohammedism. The phrasing "drive back the encroachment of the Muslims" reflects a perspective common in medieval Christian sources and some modern interpretations: viewing Muslim expansion particularly by the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia and ongoing control of formerly Christian territories in the Middle East as an existential threat to Christendom that needed to be reversed or contained ...

This month, I’d like to make a book recommendation. Consider it a home-stretch supplement to your summer reading list. I’ve known of Malcolm Guite (pronounced like “kite”) for some years now. An Anglican priest and poet, he’s been the featured speaker for the Canadian Rockies Theological Conference, which several of my Order—the Society of the Holy Trinity—have attended and enjoyed. I own some of his books of liturgical poetry, and often share his sonnets online, especially for Michaelmas. This year saw the release of the Rev’d Guite’s magnum opus, an Arthuriad entitled Merlin’s Isle. Rabbit Room Press published the first of its four volumes, Galahad and the Grail, in April, with a second tome, The Coming of Arthur, due out in November. The action starts in media res, with the arrival of the Grail Knight, the achievement of the Holy Grail, and the subsequent healing of the Fisher-King and his Wasteland kingdom. Rev’d Guite retells the tale in epic English ballad form, which he requests...

Reflections from the 2026 Minnesota Grand York Rite Session Some weekends are measured by motions passed, officers elected, and gavels sounded. Others are measured by handshakes renewed, laughter shared in hotel hallways, conversations that seem to pick up exactly where they left off a year ago, and quiet reminders of why we first knocked at the West Gate. The 2026 Minnesota Grand York Rite Session was decidedly the latter. My journey began Wednesday evening as I arrived in St. Cloud. The hotel had not yet awakened to the energy that would soon fill its halls. After checking into my room, I called home to say goodnight to my family. As has become our tradition whenever I'm away, they insisted on a video tour of my hotel room before bedtime. Afterward I ventured around the corner for dinner, returned to my room, and settled in for the night, looking forward to what the coming days would bring. Thursday morning began simply enough with a few cups of coffee from the in room Keurig, br...

An old memory recently came to mind at our Summer Bible Study on miracles. Forgive me if you’ve heard me tell it to you before. The summer after seventh grade, my family moved. The basement of our new house had yet to be finished, so we stored a lot of the boxes that we hadn’t yet gotten through down below, including quite a few packed-up books. Alas, when autumn came around, we learned that our fresh, clean, concrete basement had been built over a seasonal spring, and the whole thing flooded. We came home on the evening of my birthday to find three feet of standing water working its way up the stairs. My mother waded waist-high through the deluge, taking stock of the damage, when, looking down, she spotted something yellow and rectangular on the bottom. She reached underneath, soaking her entire arm, pulled the object up, and immediately grew pale. Our home congregation, which I’d attended ever since my birth and baptism, used bright yellow Good News Bibles for Sunday School and Youth...

By: Companion Eric Thiem In the Select Master Degree, we are informed of items of significance that are placed in the Ark of the Covenant to be discovered by future generations on their return from Babylon; or in the case of York Rite Masonry to be discovered previously in the Royal Arch Degree. One of those items to be placed in the Ark is an omer of Manna. Doing research; one finds that an omer was an ancient unit of measurement, which is one tenth of an ephah, roughly equivalent to 1.5 to 2 quarts worth. Another definition is the amount of manna it would take to feed one over a period of time, roughly seven weeks or the time between Passover and Shavuot (1) . The Old Testament describes manna as being a fine flake like bread that tasted like wafers that were made with honey. In Exodus 16:19-20, Moses instructs the Israelites not to keep the manna more than a day and when the Israelites disobeyed Moses and kept it and they discovered the manna to be full of maggots and have a pungent...