Templar Edification

On the evening of 29 September every year, I light a fire in a rough-hewn shelter in the woods, and there my congregation and I celebrate Michaelmas, the Feast of St Michael and all angels. I confess it's one of my favorite pastoral traditions: the crackle of the leaves, the bite in the air, the sparks dancing upward from firelight to starlight. It is an ethereal time, when one can just begin to glimpse the form of things unseen. I have a special devotion to St Michael. I wear his image on a little silver shield about my neck, which I never take off. There he is, complete with flaming sword and leaf-shaped shield, in splendid Roman armor. And just as my shield bears his image, so his bears the image of the Cross. It is a reminder that no matter what forces may array themselves against us, the light of a single candle puts all the powers of darkness to flight. Put now out of mind the Precious Moments figures, the faeries with feathery wing. The angels of the Bible appear as giants a...

  A Royal Christian Shield E. John Erfourth, (from) 04 AUG 2019 Figure 1  Observation 1 – 18 th Century   Art taken from “Ovason’s Secret  Architecture”, late 18 th Century.  Citing Edward Kohout,  “Mundane Astrology”, 2002:  “The progression of the signs is  from left to right with the sign of  Cancer upon the keystone.  A reason that the signs appear to  be going in the wrong direction is  that we are looking into the  “temple” from the outside.  A heraldic shield that depicts an  ox , an eagle , a lion and a man are  direct references to the fixed signs  of the zodiac, namely Taurus,  Scorpio, Leo and Aquarius.”  What else might these mean? Anything else? Like what? 1   Figure 2  Observation 2 – Present Day   Citing the Grand Lodge of   Washington State online:  “Royal Arch Masonry tradition teaches us that the symbols on the shield are representative of the ...

September marks the beginning of the liturgical year for the Christians of the East, and the de facto kickoff of educational programming amongst Christians of the West. In either case, this fresh start coincides with an ancient feast: the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on 14 September, known in English as Holy Cross Day or simply Holyrood. I will tell you here the story as it was told to me in Jerusalem. Our Lord Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, was crucified atop the rock of Golgotha, also known as Calvary, which both mean “skull.” This site was in fact a rock quarry located just beyond the walls of Jerusalem, along a well-traveled road—an ideal location for the public execution of criminals. This much is well known. What we might not realize is that Jesus and the two thieves on either side of Him were the last people put to death at Golgotha. The earthquake reported in the Gospels split a crack in the rock from the quarry to the Temple, a crack which pilgrims can still reach down and to...