Author: jjapitana

Summer 2024 Issue Out Now: Prince Hall, Then and Now

The summer issue of California Freemason Magazine is out now! And, for the first time ever, we’re devoting its pages to exploring the proud and vibrant history and the current state of Prince Hall Masonry. The issue was developed and executed in partnership with the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of California.

For nearly 170 years, our jurisdictions have progressed along separate and parallel tracks. But in recent years, the organizations have grown closer together, partnering on a range of philanthropic efforts and, at the local lodge level, joining together for everything from degree conferrals to social events.

In this issue, we are celebrating that partnership by taking a deep dive into the history and legacy of Prince Hall the man, as well as the history of the organization that today bears his name. We also examine ways in which neighboring lodges from our two grand lodges have found common ground; we explore the constellation of appendant and concordant bodies within Prince Hall Masonry, tell the history of a short-lived Filipino lodge boom within Prince Hall, and we profile several extraordinary members pushing the fraternity into the future. There’s also a can’t-miss interview between Grand Masters G. Sean Metroka and David San Juan, in which they discuss ways their groups can work together and what they see as the future of this historic partnership.

All in all, it’s a special issue of California Freemason Magazine and one we hope lives up to its name by highlighting and celebrating the wider world of Masonry in this state and remind everyone that regardless of race, ethnicity, or background, we are all California Freemasons.

Summer 2024 Issue Out Now: Prince Hall, Then and Now

Read the new issue at californiafreemason.org

Since 2015, the Grand Lodge of California has made a priority of developing new Masonic lodges throughout the state. The idea is to both establish a greater presence in communities without an existing lodge, as well as to offer a greater range of choices to members.

It wasn’t always like this: Only five lodges that launched from 1970 to 2000 are still in existence. However, in the time since then, a whopping 36 new lodges have opened up (including two research lodges), along with four more under dispensation. Of those, 25 were established since 2017.

What has this lodge-building boom meant for the fraternity?

For Danny Foxx and the other charter members of Pilares del Rey Salomon № 886, it was a vision for a Spanish-speaking lodge that wouldn’t just meet and confer the degrees of Freemasonry, but also be a hub of Masonic education and philanthropy. At Seven Hills № 881 in San Francisco, Mark McNee says the challenge was to forge a new culture from scratch. Charlie Cailao, the current master of Palos Verdes № 883, points out that his lodge received its charter over Zoom. As a lodge without a home, his group relied on an unusual commitment from its members to stay together.

That was certainly the case for the eclectic band behind Ye Olde Cup and Ball № 880. Formed as the first “affinity” lodge in the state, Cup and Ball is made up of Mason-magicians who meet at Los Angeles’s venerable Magic Castle.

In this issue of California Freemason, we’re exploring what it takes to get these groups off the ground, how they define themselves within the landscape of Masonry in the state.

Ethnically diverse, culturally attuned, sometimes proudly eccentric, these groups show that while building a lodge is no easy feat, it’s also worth the reward.

Read the new issue at californiafreemason.org

Read the new issue at californiafreemason.org

The parallels between Masonry and magic are clear to anyone who’s sat in a lodge room during a degree conferral or been astonished at a performer’s card trick.

They are both ageless institutions associated with secrets that members promise to keep within the circle. Both require a certain showmanship and panache to deliver a truly memorable experience, but most important, they share some significant membership overlap: virtually every one of the most celebrated magicians of the past 200 years have been Freemasons.

In the Magic Issue of California Freemason magazine, we’re casting a light on some of those connections; we look back at some of history’s famous Mason magicians, sit down with the first-of-its-kind magic affinity lodge, and hear from an expert about one of history’s earliest stage performers.

Read the new issue at californiafreemason.org

Read the new issue at californiafreemason.org

Most people know that there are two things that Masons don’t discuss in the lodge room: politics and religion. Instead, they focus on the things that bind them, not that divide.

Could that be a model for a more harmonious world outside the lodge? Well, yes and no. In this issue of California Freemason, we’re going deep on the idea of common ground—and the way Masons seek it out. Is it realistic for people to never get into heated arguments about politics? Probably not. But Freemasonry gives us a framework for establishing and nurturing relationships in which we seek to move beyond the familiar old hangups that keep so many people at a perpetual distance.

That’s something Masons may be specially prepared to do. Says Past Grand Master Russ Charvonia, “We as Masons are better equipped than any other organization or society that I can think of, including religious organizations, to do this work.”

Read the new issue at californiafreemason.org

Read the new issue at californiafreemason.org

It was 1957 when Grand Master Leo Anderson stood on the corner of California and Taylor streets, at the top of Nob Hill, and looked out over the nearly complete California Masonic Memorial Temple. It had taken more than a decade to get to this point—ten years of planning, false starts, relentless fundraising, and even tragedy. But at long last, the temple was rounding into form.

“Hardly a day has passed since construction was started that I have not gone to the top of Nob Hill to watch the workmen at their labors,” Anderson wrote. “I saw it as a mighty steel frame, showing the strength and mighty sinews of California Freemasonry. Then they poured the cement that united the structure into a common mass. And finally, as you will now see it, they adorned the Temple with beauty by applying the white Vermont marble slabs that face the building.… Brethren, a part of that building is mine. And even in its unfinished state it is among my most treasured possessions, because it is not something I have bought, but something I have given. I hope every California Master Mason will be able to look upon the California Masonic Memorial Temple with the same pride and sense of ownership.”

In this issue of California Freemason Magazine, we’re casting our gaze anew at our fraternal home. The fact is, the building has only grown more important since those words were written. It’s the meeting place, staff offices, and general headquarters of the Masons of California, yes. But it’s so much more. It’s an architectural treasure, a city landmark, and a thriving arts and music venue. It isn’t just Masons who can look at the building with a sense of pride and ownership; it’s the entire community.

Now, the building is entering a new phase in its evolution—one that will begin to fuse its dual purposes. This October, as thousands of Masons and their family members gather at the CMMT, they’ll see a series of QR codes posted around the building, linking visitors from within the fraternity and outside of it to information about the building’s history, its uses, and its significance to Freemasonry. They’ll also find information about the wonderful Emile Norman endomosaic window, the newly built Freemasons’ Hall, and a primer on what Freemasonry is all about.

Sixty-five years ago, Anderson was bowled over by the significance of the California Masonic Memorial Temple. It’s safe to say it’s lived up to his hopes for it—and then some. We think he’d be awful proud.

Read the new issue at californiafreemason.org

When Saul Alvarado, now a member of Santa Monica-Palisades No. 307, first began researching Freemasonry, he had a good idea about what it was all about. What he was more surprised to learn was Masonry’s importance to Mexican history. Just as the founding fathers of the United States had been Freemasons, so too had the heroes of the Mexican Revolution and the War of Independence. “It was like, wait a second, Mexico has Masons, too?” he recalls thinking. “That really gave me the nudge to learn more. It made me want to get more involved.”

In this special issue of California Freemason, we’re doing just that. We’re taking a Masonic road trip south of the border to learn about the long history of Freemasonry in Latin America, the surprising state of the craft both there and in certain pockets of California today, as well as taking a peek into what the future holds for the fraternity in multiple countries. From an architectural road trip through Cuba’s Masonic lodges, to dispatches from the center of a Masonic population growth in Brazil and Argentina, to inside California’s two Spanish-speaking lodges, it’s a chock-a-block tour through Masonic Latin America.

In addition, be sure to check out some fun online extras this issue, including video profiles of Logia Panamericana No. 513 and Napa Valley No. 93, plus a multimedia slideshow of a 1909 train trip from Los Angeles to Mexico City carried off by a special Masonic delegation.

By highlighting and celebrating the fraternal connections between members in California and those in Mexico, Argentina, and all points in between, we can deepen the bonds of friendship binding Masons together throughout the world and—just maybe—help to usher in our vision of “a world in harmony.”

Says one member in Guadalajara, Mexico, “When you go to a lodge in another country and see someone you haven’t met before, he’s going to call you a brother. It makes you feel like you’re part of something that’s very ancient and very big. I feel like I have a responsibility to keep it going and to keep it great.”

Spoken like a true hermano.

Read the After Life issue: californiafreemason.org/deathsdoormen

These Masons working with death have an intimate familiarity with the other side: an emergency medical technician, a musician-slash-gravedigger, and hollywood’s go-to medium.

By Antone Pierucci

The Lifesaver

Driving an ambulance is about as stressful as it gets. That’s when Dondi Manzon falls back on what he’s learned from Freemasonry.

 

Guillermo “Dondi” Manzon
Emergency Medical Technician
Sunnyside № 57

Health care workers face death and dying on a daily basis. It’s an experience that can rub a man raw if he lets it, especially in the pandemic era. For Guillermo “Dondi” Manzon, an emergency medical technician and former officer for Sunnyside № 577, the philosophical teachings of Masonry are some of his most important tools for staying grounded.

Manzon, 58, didn’t originally set out to pursue his current line of work. When he immigrated from the Philippines in 2002, he had a degree in engineering and experience as a pharmaceutical rep. At first he found a job in marketing for a private ambulance company. But he was intrigued by ambulance work itself, and within a few years he gave up his job to start his next chapter. “Just like that I was an EMT,” he says. Well, not quite: There was training involved. “Lots of training,” he says with a laugh.

A Close Encounter

During his first shift, Manzon immediately had a brush with death. “We got a call for this man who was on dialysis; he was unresponsive,” Manzon says. On their way to the hospital, Manzon had an epiphany of sorts. “I remember staring at this man, who was only in his fifties, and thinking to myself, Wow, I need to lead a good life while I can.” It took him several more years to find Masonry, but when he did, it all clicked. “Here was a group of men who made it their mission to do good in the world,” he says. “I knew I wanted to be a part of this force for good right away.”

Although he had grown up around Masonry, with his uncle and other relatives in the Philippines belonging to lodges, Manzon had never really thought much about the fraternity until he began his second career.

Over the years, Manzon has clung to Masonic philosophy when times get tough. In a dozen years as an EMT, he’s never had a patient die on him, but he’s still seen more suffering than most people. “Freemasonry has helped me deal better with my ill patients,” he says. “It’s given me the tools to be a better man and look after people the best way I know how.” For Manzon, the most impactful tenet of Masonry is the one that charges a man to be an upright citizen. “That directly translates to my work,” he says. “I strive to be a better EMT every day because of it.”

In the end, Manzon knows there’s only so much he can do for the individuals that pass through his care. But with Masonry in mind, he has a framework to better handle the stress his work can entail. “Religion has taught me salvation after death,” Manzon says. “Freemasonry has taught me how to live.”

The Caretaker

A musician and erstwhile gravedigger reflects on what we leave behind.

Dylan Luster
Artist & Gravedigger
Yucca Valley № 802

The first song Dylan Luster ever recorded was written after spending an uncommon amount of time among the dead. He was 25 years old, newly sober, and coming off stints as a gravedigger and crematorium worker. At the crematorium, his task was to crawl into the facility’s incinerators to sweep out the residual ash. The furnace was massive—and imposing—reaching temperatures of 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. “The door was like 400 pounds of steel,” Luster recalls. “If the chain that was hoisting it up broke, there was no way to lift that thing. Sometimes I think about it—like, jeez, I was in some other mindset.”

The grisly work forced Luster to confront big questions about life and death. And it awakened his artistic spirit. In one of his first recorded songs, “Soul Remains,” he writes, “I been workin’ on my life, through the pain and the trouble and strife / They can break my body, but the soul remains.”

Songs of Transience

Years later, the indie-folk singer still finds inspiration in transience. Luster’s time at the crematorium was bookended by a groundskeeping gig at a cemetery near his childhood home in Norwalk. The work, quiet and contemplative, suited his temperament. While watering flower beds, mowing grass, and yes, digging graves, he let his mind wander. “Once I started to really sober up, I wanted to go back to the peaceful gardening at the cemetery,” he says.

That wasn’t Luster’s only inspiration. Around the same time he decided to get clean, Luster’s mother shared three blue books with him, inscribed with the words “NOVEMBER 6, 1933 INITIATED.” They contained the work The Symbolism of the Three Degrees by Oliver Day Street.

The books had belonged to Luster’s grandfather, who belonged to a Masonic lodge in Fort Worth, Texas. Though they’d never met, for Luster the books served as a channel through which his grandfather could offer him guidance from beyond the grave. Finding Masonry at that tumultuous time gave Luster something to work toward. In 2013, he applied to Golden Trowel Norwalk №. 273; the following year, he was raised to Master Mason. In 2019, he affiliated with Yucca Valley № 802.

Where Your Spirit Goes

Masonry helped Luster navigate sobriety and process his thoughts. “It can occupy your mind with different philosophical questions and different threads to pull,” he says. It also sharpened his thoughts on death. “When I think about the afterlife, I don’t think of some other dimension. I think whatever you do in this world, it impacts other people. That is kind of where your spirit goes.” That outlook in turn helped Luster focus on his music career. In 2016, he released a self-titled EP. Last year, he put out two more singles, “Judy’s Highway” and “Eastward Winds.” Both explore those themes of impermanence—a common refrain in Luster’s work.

These days, Luster has a collection of 10 new songs in the works, grouped loosely on the experience of waiting for something to pass. Each song features instruments played and carefully recorded, one track at a time, by the musician. One of the tunes, “Other Side” could be about achieving a goal—like the completion of an album, or completing the degrees—or reaching the other side of this existence. He’s leaving it up to the listener to decide.

The Medium

 

In Hollywood, Chris Sanders is the go-to guy for the esoteric and paranormal.

 

Chris Sanders
Paranormal Consultant
Culver City-Foshay № 46

Though his official title on the television series My Ghost Story on A&E’s Biography Channel was casting producer, it’d be more accurate to call Chris Sanders a paranormal consultant. His work on the show entailed things like scouting haunted houses, sourcing esoteric experts, and vetting real-life ghost stories.

The gig was just one of many to showcase Sanders’ unusual expertise. And in the years since, he’s carved out a special niche for himself at the intersection of esotericism, metaphysics, and Hollywood. “I knew where to look,” Sanders says of his foray into what one might call supernatural television programming. “I knew how to speak the language of these folks.”

Sanders has had a lifelong interest in “the arcane and metaphysical.” In 2000, newly single, he moved to Los Angeles in search of something new. A chance encounter led him to a Hare Krishna temple, right around the corner from Culver City Foshay № 467. He decided to take a leap of faith. “It was a magical moment,” he says of approaching the lodge. “My prayers were answered. That sent me out on a whole new path.”

Sanders connected immediately to the philosophical aspects of Freemasonry, and within a year had been raised as a Master Mason and was serving as a lodge officer. In 2008, he became lodge master.

An Expert Opinion

His personal interests have also opened some unlikely doors in Hollywood. While Sanders has had small acting roles in blockbusters like Pirates of the Caribbean: At the World’s End, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, and HBO’s True Blood, he’s also built himself into an on-screen authority on Freemasonry. In 2009, he was featured as an expert speaker in the History Channel show The Nostradamus Effect, as he was in the 2017 documentary 33 & Beyond: The Royal Art of Freemasonry. In addition, he’s served as a producer on the WeTV series Ghosts in the Hood, performed an exorcism on the 2013 A&E series American Haunting, and appeared as an actor and producer in several cult and horror films.

His entrée came from a suitably unlikely source: A couple of well-known witches who ran an occult shop that Sanders frequented. Having been approached by a TV producer, the shop owners recommended that Sanders be involved in a proposed reality series— which eventually became My Ghost Story: Caught on Camera. “They knew I had a background in the paranormal and was good on camera,” he says.

In February of 2020, Sanders landed his dream gig: a “fly-on-the-wall show” for a major cable network, shot from the barstools of the Little A’Le’Inn, a watering hole near Area 51 in Nevada. “You walk into this strange bar, you’re at the counter grabbing a beer, and the guy next to you is like, ‘I was abducted by Bigfoot,’” he explains of the show’s premise. “And you’re like, ‘Well, I was abducted by aliens.’”

Those are actual stories that would have been featured on the show—if not for COVID-19. Still in early production when the pandemic hit, the project was shelved.

It’s unlikely that project will be raised from the dead, but in the meantime, Sanders isn’t waiting around. Now, he says, his next project will be a memoir. “I thought, What do I have to offer this world?” he says. “The people I’ve met, the things I’ve seen and done. I have these stories in me. And they should be told.”