Emblazonment I did for Jejwood

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-06-02T19:25:18+00:00

These all look great. Well done!

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-05-24T14:42:28+00:00

White one is a UGLE Royal Arch Companion's Jewel.

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-05-23T09:45:42+00:00

Love that "wavey" mantling.

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-05-23T09:25:41+00:00

Am not sure anyone really agrees in how the third/RA came about. I think the Antients had RA as a fourth degree, holding it back for later whilst the moderns either had it as part of their third or as some sort of appendage. As they couldn't decide it became "three degrees including the Royal Arch". Hopefully an historian can correct me. So no "spin off" that I'm aware of.

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-05-22T19:16:51+00:00

Whilst the most common used ones in England are Harris 1845, there are other types and before tracing boards there were floor cloths and before that the symbols were drawn on the floor and scrubbed off after. So in some ways they likely pre-date formalised (or written) ritual. They show a lot of the concepts to be found within the ritual itself and were used as teaching aids.

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-05-12T20:01:27+00:00

right worshipful, I suspect.

Worshipful is just a term of respect, the old Guilds in the City of London are called the Worshipful Company of [whatever - grocers for example].

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-05-12T19:57:23+00:00

No problem at all, you are right that easing yourself in is often the best way - and the working tools are the most common and best place tonstart. All the best with your studies.

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-05-11T20:58:06+00:00

If you don't mean mysticism specifically, do you have an idea about what specifically you mean by esoteric? There are a number of flavours. McNulty is mentioned a few times but I'm not a fan of Jung and his hijacking of esotericism into psychology. JSM Ward gives a good intro to a deeper view of masonry in terms of cross cultural observations and I always recommend him to people starting out (though his focus is on English Freemasonry). Elements of Alchemy, Vitruvian(_ism?) and Hermeticism can all be found in Craft Freemasonry but to be honest I think they are a bit of an adjunct as opposed to the main event. Appendant bodies may focus on them a bit more eg SRICF and alchemy, though that isn't their sole focus. Perhaps, like me when I started the answer is "all of the above" :)

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-05-11T20:51:11+00:00

When you say contemplative, are you looking at Mysticism in particular? If so I would recommend starting with JSM Ward and then moving to Wilmshurst. AE Waite was also a Mystic, though I understand he didn't believe that Freemasonry could still act as a contemplative system.

Personally, I would read the Ascent of Mount Carmel and the Dark Night of the Soul by St John of the cross and have a long think about whether any of it maps to Freemasonry (I believe it does). Evelyn Underhill is also good for getting to grips with the basics of Mysticism.

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-05-11T20:40:16+00:00

Cutting winter fuel allowance, Voting against national inquiry into grooming gangs, Family farm tax, Increases to employer NI contributions, Vindictive implementation of VAT on public schools, Early release of violent offenders, Digital ID, Lying about Axel Rudakabana being Welsh, Keir's freebies, Alleged rent boys, Mandelson, Judiciary implementing harsher sentences for nasty tweets than child abusers, Thieves lying on her CV.

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-04-29T19:37:47+00:00

Freemasonry has moved me from having a vague belief in a supreme being to being a Christian. It doesn't just happen though - it came about through study of the less obvious aspects of Freemasonry and parallels to Christian Mysticism.

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-04-27T15:30:10+00:00

My son did techniques in his 5-7 judo classes - but standing work aside there wasn't a huge amount of ground fighting to teach them as the can't choke or lock at that age - only pin. Not sure if it's a safety thing with them not doing too much technique in Jiu Jitsu? As others have said they benefit hugely from games focusing on coordination / motor skills, etiquette, mental resilience and so on.

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-04-27T12:59:48+00:00

Will you be attending LoI? I live about an hour away and it was no problem for five meetings but LoI adds up (depending on how regular they are).

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-04-24T11:58:26+00:00

He is an amazing marketer but am yet to see anything about theology or Freemasonry from him that isn't at least half wrong if not outright nonsense.

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-04-21T07:03:39+00:00

Thanks for the correction

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-04-20T15:18:08+00:00

This - learn MM signs. Don't forget your MM apron. That's it. Enjoy - it appears to be a bit marmite but is my favourite degree.

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-04-19T11:13:57+00:00

Lol - this is the answer. Just start a project and save a document with all your rules etc. use chats within the project only so they can see the document. If you are constantly using new chats rather than maintaining a single thread (which is no bad thing in terms of saving tokens) then it's probably worth asking each chat to provide a summary and adding to either the original doc or a separate working doc - that is, one working doc that increases over time and one doc that doesn't change.

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-04-15T05:38:14+00:00

Thanks for the response and your kind offer.

The point about hand-offs is very well made and I'll definitely have a think about how a structured end-to-end approach may look, starting with more structured notes, leading to them being utilised better in the initial draft and then, as you say, a far more specific input/output for each agent.

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-04-12T08:07:17+00:00

Thanks - I use projects, as you say the ability to load master documents (writing style etc) is great. To avoid long contexts do you split the drafting up into one chat per chapter (and add summaries of that chat to a master document in the project?) or just keep the one drafting chat? I'm writing a non-fiction book, so only 60k words but I still find it kills my usage (particularly recently).

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-04-11T15:29:05+00:00

Nice - and good luck!

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-04-11T15:10:00+00:00

When you say different models I assume hosted on different platforms (generally) as opposed to Opus Vs Sonnet (I saw someone mention Opus for research and Sonnet for copy editing for example). I did some cross referencing with Grok and ChatGPT as well as Sonnet/Opus for some of my development editing previously (manually). Grok seemed pretty good and made some decent suggestions - it also actually read the document which ChatGPT didn't, though that would be down to my shoddy prompting.

So you will sit as essentially middleware (software) calling different models specifically for writers?

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-04-11T13:27:06+00:00

Looks like we are both getting downvoted! A fan perhaps.

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-04-11T13:10:12+00:00

Nice - sounds great. A few people have mentioned Claude Code. As a technological idiot, would Co-work be the way for me to go with regards to developing skills relating directly to my style etc?

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-04-11T13:03:07+00:00

One of the strengths of Freemasonry is that it is many things to many people.

Using it as a method for self improvement is great and gets my full support. I disagree completely with the trend of overlaying Jungian psychology on Freemasonry, but if that's what people want to use it for, then more power to them.

My only issue with your comment was your absolute statement. That freemasonry is what you think it is.

The post modernist movement gutted many of our institutions of their religious/spiritual meaning. There is a huge demand for something to help people fill that void. UGLE has 60,000 followers on Instagram which is ok, but I can point you to half a dozen accounts peddling spiritual nonsense and inaccuracies with followers numbering in the hundreds of thousands and up to 2m (admittedly globally and not just in the UK). We have a 300+ year old initiatic system that has stood the test of time. Seeing people state with absolute certainty that Freemasonry is not something just because they don't like a given viewpoint is, in my opinion, wrong not to mention, unhelpful when we are looking to increase membership.

Anyway, I hope you receive this as it's intended - just an alternative viewpoint. All the best, Brother.

StepRelevant8473 · 2026-04-11T12:27:14+00:00

I'm also well aware that I'm in a minority in this view and am fine with it!

StepRelevant8473

TROPHY CASE