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Consider the Ravens

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The Society of the Holy Trinity (STS) is a pan-Lutheran Order dedicated to helping pastors to fulfill our ordination vows. We gather, pray, learn, eat, celebrate, and worship together, through both the Liturgy of the Hours (i.e., offices of prayer at regular hours of the day) and the Divine Liturgy of Word and Sacrament. We hold these retreats quarterly, with our local Chapters each assembling three times a year, and the General Retreat of the entire Society convening annually. For over a decade, our General Retreat took place at Mundelein Seminary outside of Chicago, a lovely spot reminiscent of Narnia. This summer, however, will be our first at Saint Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana. I had to look up the legend of St Meinrad. As the story goes, Meinrad of Einsiedeln was a ninth-century Benedictine priestmonk in modern Switzerland, known ever after as the “Martyr of Hospitality.” He established a hermitage on the slopes of the Etzel Pass, only then to move deeper into the wilderness due t...
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Order of the Garter

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By: Eric Thiem In April’s education on the history of Cryptic Council, a small portion of the article mentioned degrees that were initiated in a Council of Cryptic Masons that were no longer performed. One of those, the Knights of the Round Table was discussed in detail and presented in the August 2025 Beauseant and Buckler. I decided to delve into another of the “Dead Degrees,” the Order of the Garter and determine if I could uncover the history of this degree. A garter is a functional piece, or band of clothing of an elastic nature designed to hold up another piece of clothing, usually a stocking or a shirt sleeve (1) . They were typically tied to the stocking just below the knee. With advances in modern clothing, they have lost their use as a functional piece of clothing. The history of a garter being a functional piece of clothing dates back to at least the Middle Ages, if not earlier. For most of history, they have been associated with a bridal tradition; symbolizing luck at the c...
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Faith in No-Thing

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I saw a post online the other day, which claimed that 49% of Minnesotans—less than half—say that they believe in God. Now, I don’t put much weight behind such polls, however they gather their data. I remember reading recently that 30% of self-identified atheists also affirm that they believe in God. Try to make that one make sense. But the very notion of “believing in God” is something of a category error, a confusion of terms. Most people who deny belief in God are thinking of a god; that is, of a powerful yet limited supernatural or spiritual creature of some sort, akin to what Jews and Christians might call angels, or even fae. Yet God is not a god. God, in the classical sense—as understood by the great monotheisms, including Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Baháʼí, Zoroastrians, Platonists, and, I would argue, certain strains of Buddhism—is not a part of Creation, not a being within the universe, not even properly an object of belief; because God is not an object, not a th...
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The Mote in God's Eye

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Years ago, I saw a little miracle. After a funeral, in the bleak midwinter, we set out to the cemetery for a graveside committal. The wind whipped up something wicked, lashing at our coats and scouring any exposed flesh. The air temperature, without windchill, had plunged into the negative 20s. The family proved reluctant to get out of their cars, but soldiered on, following my lead. You should’ve seen the grimaces on the faces of the men when I took off my hat to pray, knowing that they ought to follow suit. Not that I could blame them. Have pity on the bald. Graveside committals typically don’t take terribly long. If one follows the Occasional Services book, we’re only out there for five to 10 minutes. At one point, the officiant—that would be me—pours out a cylinder of sand, the symbolic first handful of grave dirt, whilst intoning, “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Given that we were standing exposed in what felt like a wind-tunnel, I fully expected the sand, fine and...
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The History of Cryptic Council Masonry

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The history or Cryptic Council has its formal origins in the American Colonies, shortly after winning independence from Great Britain. Cryptic Council at its inception was originally part of the York Rite Chapter Lodges. The Royal Master and Select Master degrees were part of Chapter prior to Cryptic Council separating from York Rite Chapter. The Chronological order of the Council degrees had the Royal Master Degree was conferred just prior to receiving the sublime Royal Arch Degree. The Select Master degree was conferred shortly after receiving the Royal Arch Degree. It is thought that the Royal and Select Master Degrees originated in France in the first half of the 18th century. The Royal and Select Master degrees were known as travelling degrees throughout the Eastern United States in the late 1700’s and 1800’s and were conferred on special occasions similar to how we  in Minnesota and in many other states confer the Super Excellent degree today. Council was split off from Royal...
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Gebal

During the closing in the Select Master Degree, we are introduced to a person by the name of Giblim. We learn that he and twenty one others are from a place known as Gebal. Gebal was a city in ancient Phoenicia. The city of Gebal was located on the Mediterranean coast on what are now the foothills of Southern Lebanon. It was located 26 Miles north of modern day Beirut. The name Gebal translates into “Mountain of God.” The city of Gebal was known to the ancient Greeks as “Byblos.” Byblos was known in Grecian times for its extensive trade and facilitation of moving papyrus between Egypt and Greece. Byblos was also known as playing a pivotal role in the dissemination of written information in the ancient world 1 . The word Bible derives from this Greek name. The city of Gebal was thought to be founded around 8800 BC, making it one of the first and oldest continuously occupied cities in recorded history of the world. For the first few thousand years, Gebal was originally a dependency of Eg...
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Ardagh Chalice

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In the nineteenth century, two young Irish lads digging in a potato field discovered, beneath a slab of stone, literal buried treasure from over a thousand years before. This remarkable collection became known as the Ardagh Hoard, currently on display at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. And the most famous piece of the hoard remains the Ardagh Chalice. The chalice is a large, two-handed Eucharistic cup, crafted of beaten silver with decorations of gold, bronze, brass, pewter, and enamel; composed of over 350 pieces, all told. While fashioned in a late Roman style, its construction proves unmistakably Irish. Remarkably, its most striking feature—a prominent polished crystal surrounded by a gilt disc and blue jewels—lies hidden away on the chalice’s underside, beneath the foot, such that only the priest elevating the cup during the Divine Liturgy would see it. I take this as a reminder, not to the congregation but to the officiant, of the true concealed treasure of the chalice: ...
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