The Equinox (Volume I, Number X)

THE EQUINOX and in this case, the Chancellery fortunately reposing in the trained legal hands of Very Illustrious Brother Higham, it is certain that no inadvertence has been committed. I pass over therefore the breach of Article II and Article XI, which render this Convocation powerless to proceed to the business for which it purports to have been summoned, and I ask at whose instigation these illegalities have been committed? There is not one of you who is ignorant of the answer. The age and infirmity of our lamented Grand Hierophant allowed him to yield to improper persuasion, to be deceived by an intrigue no wilier than those he had so often defeated in his prime, and to relax the strict rules of our Constitution. Even to this exalted Sanctuary there has been admitted, in flagrant violation of Article VI of our Constitution, a man who is not and never was a member of a lodge in good standing working under a Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons. The Sanctuary must be purged. But it is not for this that I have left my very pleasant encampment in the Valley of Paris. Were the man of whom I speak a man free and of good report, I should perhaps have held my peace. I am not here to stickle even for the funda- mentals of our Rite. But he is not even a free man, but the hired tool of a woman. Do you wonder if I protest that a woman—and women are excluded even from symbolic Masonry—should seek the usurpation of our Sovereignty? And yet this alone would not have induced me to exchange the amenities of my encampment in the Valley of Paris for the sterner and gloomier grandeurs of the Valley of Manchester. Who is the woman of whom I speak? What are her antecedents? Is it a Blavatsky or a Joan of Arc that seeks to XXV111