https://www.fromthenorthpodcast.com/

A Mason in Harmony, 118 W 100 N, Logan, UT (2026)

10/11/2026

⚔️ The Art of War and the Art of Building: What Sun Tzu Can Teach a Freemason 🔨

About 2,500 years ago, a Chinese general named Sun Tzu wrote a short book on strategy. Today it’s read by generals, CEOs, coaches, and anyone who wants to win.

Freemasonry is about peace, not war. So why would a Mason read a book about battle?

Because Sun Tzu’s real subject isn’t fighting. It’s self-mastery, preparation, and leading people well. Those are the same lessons we teach in lodge, just with different tools. Here are five places where the two traditions meet.

1. Know yourself first

Sun Tzu wrote: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

Notice that he puts knowing yourself right next to knowing your enemy. A general who doesn’t know his own weaknesses will lose, no matter how well he studies the other side.

Masonry starts in the same place. Every new Mason is shown the rough ashlar, a stone fresh from the quarry. That stone is us. Our work is to see our own flaws honestly before we try to fix anything else. The oldest enemy most of us face is the one in the mirror.

2. The greatest victory needs no fight

This may be Sun Tzu’s most famous idea: “Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

A Mason learns to subdue his passions and keep them within due bounds. That’s the same victory. The quarrel you never start, the harsh word you never say, the grudge you let go. These are battles won before they begin. The common gavel isn’t for striking others. It’s for knocking off our own rough edges so conflict has nothing to catch on.

3. Harmony is strength

Sun Tzu listed five factors that decide every war. The first wasn’t weapons, terrain, or numbers. It was what Giles translated as the Moral Law: the thing that puts people “in complete accord with their ruler.” An army divided against itself loses before the first arrow flies.

Every Mason has heard that harmony is the strength and support of all institutions, especially ours. A lodge doesn’t run on rules and bylaws alone. It runs on brothers who trust each other and pull in the same direction. Sun Tzu would’ve understood a lodge perfectly.

4. Victory is decided before the battle

Sun Tzu taught that “The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat.” In other words, battles are won by preparation, not luck.

Masons get a tool for exactly this: the 24-inch gauge. It teaches us to divide our day between work, rest, and service to God and others. A well-ordered life is a prepared life. When hard times come (and they always do), the man who’s already built good habits stands firm. The square, level, and plumb aren’t just symbols. They’re a daily discipline.

5. Lead by caring for your people

Here’s a line that surprises people who think Sun Tzu was only about tactics: “Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys.”

Good leadership in a lodge works the same way. A Worshipful Master doesn’t lead by rank. He leads by serving. Our tenets of Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth mean we look after each other, especially a brother in distress. People follow those who care for them.

🏛️ Where the two paths part

To be fair, the comparison has limits. Sun Tzu also wrote that “All warfare is based on deception.” A general may need to mislead. A Mason may not. Truth is one of our core tenets, and a Mason’s word should be as straight as the plumb line.

And Sun Tzu’s goal is to defeat an enemy. Ours is to have no enemies at all, to build a temple of the spirit where there’s room for every good man, whatever his background.

Maybe that’s the best way to put it. Sun Tzu teaches the art of winning wars. Masonry teaches the art of making them unnecessary.

💬 Your turn: Which lesson speaks to you most? Have you read The Art of War? Share your thoughts below.

10/10/2026

Let’s Retire the Word “Esoteric”

My friend and brother, The Beehive Mason (https://www.facebook.com/beehive.mason801/), shared something this week that got me thinking. It’s about a word we Masons reach for all the time, and I’ve come to believe it’s the wrong one. That word is “esoteric.”

We hear it everywhere. “Esoteric Masonry.” “The esoteric side of the Craft.” “I’m more interested in the esoteric than the ritual.” I’ve said it myself. But the more I’ve studied where the word comes from and how the world hears it, the more convinced I am that it hurts us more than it helps.

Where the word comes from

“Esoteric” comes from the Greek esōterikos, meaning “inner.” Its partner is “exoteric,” meaning “outer.” Ancient writers used the pair to separate teachings for the general public from teachings reserved for a philosopher’s inner school.

Our own Brother Albert Mackey used the word in exactly that old sense. In his Lexicon of Freemasonry, he traced it to two Greek words meaning interior and exterior, and described how ancient philosophers kept their more difficult teachings for a chosen few in an inner school. He then applied the idea to the lodge: some brethren learn the ceremonies and stop there, while others dig deeper. Mackey wasn’t talking about magic or hidden powers. He was talking about study.

That’s a fine idea. The trouble is that the word didn’t stay put.

What the world hears

Over the last two centuries, “esoteric” became the umbrella term for occultism, Hermeticism, alchemy, Theosophy, astrology, and secret spiritual knowledge. Walk into any bookstore and look at the “Esoteric” shelf. You won’t find Mackey or Preston there. You’ll find tarot decks.

Academia has followed the same path. Brother Doug Russel has pointed out that scholars of Western esotericism at universities around the world place Freemasonry squarely within the esoteric traditions, even while Masons themselves have mixed feelings about the label. So when we call ourselves “esoteric,” we’re not just using a Greek word for “inner.” We’re filing ourselves on a shelf next to the occult, by our own hand.

Every anti-Masonic writer of the last 150 years has tried to paint us as an occult society with a secret religion behind the curtain. When we use the vocabulary of the occult to describe ourselves, we hand them the brush.

It isn’t even accurate

“Esoteric” implies there’s a hidden doctrine behind our ritual that only the enlightened few get to see. That isn’t what Freemasonry is.

We describe ourselves as “a peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.” The teaching is morality. The method is allegory and symbol. There’s no secret creed and no hidden god.

The United Grand Lodge of England said this plainly in its 1985 statement on Freemasonry and religion. It stated that Freemasonry doesn’t claim to lead to salvation by works, secret knowledge, or any other means, and that our secrets concern modes of recognition, not salvation. The same statement says there is no Masonic God, and that a Mason stays committed to the God of his own faith. Many American and Commonwealth grand lodges teach the same thing.

So what’s “hidden” in Masonry is depth, not content. A brother who’s sat with the symbols for thirty years sees more in them than a brother raised last month. That’s not because he was let in on a secret. It’s because he did the work.

I’m not alone in this

Some of the most respected voices in the Craft have wrestled with the same problem.

Brother Arturo de Hoyos, Grand Archivist and Grand Historian of the Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, and one of the foremost Masonic scholars living, has written on exactly this question. He acknowledges that the term is tainted for some people and acceptable to others, which is why it’s hard either to fully embrace or fully discard “esoteric Masonry.” He notes that when a brother calls himself an “esoteric Mason,” he usually means he sees elements of Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, or Kabbalah in our rituals. But even where those elements exist, he says, they may be only one layer of what he calls the “Masonic onion.” For a reality check, he recommends Harry Carr’s World of Freemasonry, Bernard E. Jones’s Freemasons’ Guide and Compendium, and David Stevenson’s The Origins of Freemasonry. Every one of those is grounded in history and documents, not mysticism.

Masonic author and researcher Philippa Faulks makes a similar point. She writes that there’s nothing wrong with looking for esoteric symbols in Freemasonry, but it is wrong to insist that those teachings are what Freemasonry is really about or where it truly comes from. She also observes that some fringe forms of Masonry are esoteric only because someone decided they were and built a narrative to support it.

Then there’s Roscoe Pound, Dean of Harvard Law School and one of the finest minds ever to write about the Craft. In his 1915 Lectures on the Philosophy of Freemasonry, delivered under the Grand Master of Massachusetts, Pound identified William Preston as the founder of the first school of Masonic philosophy, with “Knowledge” as its keyword. He noted that Preston’s philosophy is the philosophy of our American lectures, and the only one most American Masons ever become familiar with. In other words, the foundation of the work most of us received is the pursuit of knowledge and moral improvement through study. It’s philosophy, not mystery-cult.

None of these brethren are anti-intellectual, and none of them are dismissing the deeper symbolism of the Craft. That’s the point. You can love the depth of Masonry without using a word that tells the world we’re something we’re not.

A better word, and it’s already ours

We don’t need to borrow a word from the occult bookshelf. We already have the right one, and it’s been ours for three hundred years: speculative.

Our forefathers distinguished operative masonry, the craft of building with stone, from speculative masonry, the craft of building character using the stonemason’s tools as symbols. “Speculative” comes from the Latin speculari, “to observe, to look closely, to contemplate.” It’s related to specula, a watchtower, and speculum, a mirror. To speculate, in the old sense, is to stand on the watchtower and look out carefully, and to hold up the mirror and look honestly at yourself. I can’t think of a better description of what a Mason is supposed to do.

So when a brother says he loves “the esoteric side of Masonry,” what he usually means is that he loves the speculative side: the philosophy, the symbolism, and the work of finding meaning in the ritual. Good. So do I. Let’s call it what our own tradition calls it.

If “speculative” feels too formal for everyday conversation, there are plain-English options that are just as honest:

Symbolic Masonry: the study of what our symbols teach.
Contemplative Masonry: reflecting on the lessons of the degrees.
Philosophical Masonry: the moral and intellectual tradition behind the Craft, in the spirit of Preston and Pound.

A word of fairness

I’m not saying brothers who use “esoteric” are doing anything wrong. Mackey used it. Many writers have used it beautifully, and I’ve learned from them. Among scholars, it can be a precise, neutral term.

But we don’t only talk in scholarly rooms. We talk on Facebook, at the coffee shop, and with the man who’s thinking about knocking on our door. In those rooms, the word promises mysteries we don’t sell and confirms fears we’ve spent centuries answering.

The challenge

The next time you’re about to say “esoteric,” try “speculative” instead. See if it doesn’t say exactly what you meant, and say it better. We’re the speculative Craft. That’s our heritage, our method, and our identity. Let’s own it.

Thanks to The Beehive Mason for getting me thinking. I’d love to hear where my brothers land on this one. Am I splitting hairs, or does the word matter?

Fraternally,
A Mason in Harmony

10/09/2026

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” — Albert Einstein

Yes, Einstein really said this. He wrote it in a 1940 paper called “Science and Religion,” presented at a conference in New York. It’s also in his book Ideas and Opinions.

But he didn’t mean religion the way most people do. Einstein didn’t believe in a personal God who answers prayers. For him, religion meant a deep sense of awe at the order and beauty of the universe. It also meant a commitment to values that science alone can’t give us. Science tells us what is. It can’t tell us what we ought to do.

That idea should feel familiar to every Mason.

We meet under the Great Architect of the Universe, and we don’t ask any brother to define that name for anyone else. The Fellowcraft degree calls us to study the liberal arts and sciences, especially geometry. We learn that the more we understand the world, the more we see design, order, and harmony in it. Knowledge and reverence aren’t enemies. Each one keeps the other honest.

Einstein wasn’t a Mason. But on this point, he could have stood comfortably in any lodge. Faith without study can wander blind. Study without wonder can lose its way.

Keep learning, brothers. Keep your sense of awe.

10/08/2026

"It is distinctly no easy matter to get at the bedrock truth regarding Cagliostro or to form any just estimate of his true character." "He was probably a little mad." -Dr. Mackey in Encyclopedia of Masonry

Image credit: By Jean-Antoine Houdon (France, Paris, 1741-1828) - Image: http://collections.lacma.org/sites/default/files/remote_images/piction/ma-31835295-O3.jpgGallery: http://collections.lacma.org/node/233639 archive copy at the Wayback Machine, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27297876

10/07/2026

"What was mankind's greatest invention?" Fire? The wheel? The sword? I would argue it's history itself. History isn't fact. It's narrative, one carefully curated and shaped. Under the pen strokes of the right scribe, a villain becomes a hero, a lie becomes the truth.

What we choose to tell our children and what we censor. What we illuminate and what we gloss over. History as an act of addition and subtraction.

A wise man once said, "A people without history is like a tree without roots." What's missing from the wise man's history? When did story replace record? When all the facts fall short of believability, fantasy feels reassuringly solid. And since this is my history, I get to decide which parts have been subtracted, which have been added.

History is the ultimate weapon, because it harnesses time itself. Used correctly, the past can alter the present. What other invention can do that?

-Foundation Season 1

- Image by: By Carstian Luyckx - Sotheby's, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58069540

10/07/2026

Did you know?

Early in the Entered Apprentice degree, a candidate is placed in the northeast corner of the lodge — a specific spot, not a random one.

The lodge is read symbolically as a miniature world, and the northeast corner sits at the meeting point of the brightest point (the east, associated with the rising sun and the Worshipful Master's station) and the point of least light (the north, traditionally associated with darkness). Standing there, a new Mason is compared to the first stone laid at the foundation of a great building — the cornerstone everything else will be built on.

It's a position, but it's also a promise: what gets built next depends on what's laid first.

10/06/2026

Did you know?

The sprig of acacia is one of the quieter symbols in Masonic ritual, but it carries real weight. Acacia grows in arid, difficult ground and stays green through conditions that would kill most other plants — which is exactly why Masonic tradition adopted it as an emblem of the immortality of the soul.

The plant shows up at a specific point in the Third Degree, tied to themes of loss and what survives it. Without spelling out ritual detail, the takeaway travels well outside the lodge: some things are built to outlast hard conditions, including character and memory.

A small evergreen sprig, carrying one of Masonry's largest ideas.

10/05/2026

Did you know?

Look down in most lodge rooms and you'll find a checkered floor of black and white squares — the tessellated pavement, bordered by an indented or tessellated edge.

The pattern is read as a picture of life itself: light and dark, joy and sorrow, prosperity and adversity, laid out side by side in no particular order, exactly the way they actually show up in a life. The border around it is usually explained as the blessings and comforts that surround a Mason throughout — a reminder that even on the dark squares, support is close by.

It's easy to walk across it without a glance. It's also one of the more honest symbols in the room.

10/04/2026

The Oath You Took Is Not a Masonic High Five

Brethren, let's talk about something we don't talk about enough.

At some point in your life, you knelt at an altar. You were blindfolded, unsure of what came next, and you placed your hands on the Volume of the Sacred Law. Then you spoke words. Serious words. Words you agreed to "of your own free will and accord."

And then you stood up, the light came, and the brethren welcomed you. There were handshakes, smiles, maybe a meal afterward. It felt like a celebration, and it was one.

But here's the problem. For too many of us, that's where it ended. The obligation became a memory of a nice night instead of a promise that shapes every day after it. We treat it like a high five at the end of a game. A moment of fellowship. A ritual gesture. Something you do, enjoy, and forget.

It was never meant to be that.

An obligation is a debt, not a decoration.

The word itself comes from the Latin obligare, "to bind." You didn't just join something that night. You bound yourself to something. You took on duties to God, to your country, to your neighbor, to your family, to your brethren, and to yourself. Those duties didn't expire when the lodge closed.

A high five costs nothing. It's over in a second and asks nothing of you tomorrow. An oath is the opposite. It costs you something every single day, and it asks you to show up when it's inconvenient.

Think about what you actually promised.

You promised to help a worthy brother in need, as far as you could without harming yourself or your family. Have you called the brother who stopped coming to lodge two years ago?

You promised to keep a brother's lawful confidences. Do you guard them, or do they become parking-lot gossip?

You promised to warn a brother of approaching danger. Have you had the hard conversation with a brother who's drifting toward trouble, or did you just watch?

You promised to obey the laws of your Grand Lodge and the bylaws of your lodge. Do you know what they say?

None of these are ceremonial. Every one of them is a real-world action, with real people on the other end.

Why this matters now.

Our fraternity doesn't decline because of bad ritual or boring meetings, though both hurt. It declines when men forget that the obligation was real. When a Mason's word means no more than anyone else's, there's no reason for a good man to seek us out. The world already has plenty of clubs. What it lacks is men who keep their word when nobody is checking.

That's what we're supposed to be. That's what the world was promised when it saw a square and compasses on your car or your ring.

A man's word used to be his bond.

Our forefathers in the craft lived in an age when a handshake closed a deal and a promise was enforced by reputation. Freemasonry took that idea and made it sacred. We didn't invent integrity, but we built a whole system around teaching it, testing it, and holding men to it.

Every degree you took added weight to that promise. You didn't receive three pats on the back. You received three obligations.

So here's the challenge.

This week, go back and reflect on your obligation. Not the exact words, which we keep within the tiled lodge, but the substance. The duties. The intent behind them. Then ask yourself one honest question:

If my obligation were the only evidence of who I am as a Mason, would it be enough?

If the answer is yes, keep going. Set the example for the brother next to you.

If the answer is "not yet," that's okay. The cable tow has length for a reason. There's room to grow, and the lodge is full of brothers who've been where you are. But don't let it stay a high five. Make it a covenant again.

You were made a Mason in a single night. You become one by keeping your word for the rest of your life.

Sincerely and fraternally.

10/04/2026

Two stones sit in most lodge rooms — one rough, one finished — and they're not there for decoration. They're there to make a point every time you walk past: nobody starts finished, and nobody stays exactly where they started, either.

I think about that pair more than almost any other symbol in the lodge. Progress isn't a straight line from rough to perfect. It's a daily decision to pick up the tools again. Grateful for a fraternity built entirely around that idea.

A Mason in Harmony

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