Robert Davis EFCx 2025 Keynote

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Bro. Robert G. Davis is the Secretary Emeritus of the Guthrie Scottish Rite Bodies, having served the Scottish Rite as Executive Secretary for 30 years. He is a Past Master of three Masonic lodges in Oklahoma,  33° Mason and recipient of the Grand Cross, and he has served as the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Oklahoma in 2021. He is the author of four books “In Search of Light”, a course of hieroglyphic and moral instruction for the Symbolic Lodge. He is also the Keynote speaker at Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference 2025 in Seattle Washington September 20th. One of the organizers of EFC, Ken Lane, joins me to co host. Please welcome Brother Robert G. Davis.

https://robertgdavis.net/


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Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference will be held on Saturday September 20th. Our keynote speaker will be none other than today’s guest Robert G. Davis, well known Scottish Rite scholar and author of “In Search of Light”. Get your tickets in advance by RSVP to esotericmasonry@gmail.com. Details upcoming to conference website at https://www.esotericmasonry.com/

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Happy to meet. Sorry to part. Happy to meet again. 

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Transcript

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  Welcome to the Mystic Tie. A podcast for free Masons. I am your host, Troy Sru. You can find us online@mystictie.com. Brother Robert G. Davis is the Secretary Emeritus of the Guthrie Scottish right bodies. Having served the Scottish right as executive secretary for 30 years. He is a pass master of three Masonic Lodges in Oklahoma, 33rd degree Mason and recipient of the Grand Cross, and he has served as the Grand of the Grand Lodge of Oklahoma in 2021.

He's the author of four books. Including in search of light, a course of hieroglyphic and moral instruction for the symbolic lodge. He is also the keynote speaker at Esotericism and Freemasonry Conference 2025 in Seattle, Washington, September 20th, one of the organizers of EFC Ken Lane joins be to co-host.

Please welcome brother Robert G. Davis. Hello brother Robert Davis. It's a pleasure to meet you finally. Great to be here, Troy and you're here. Today I've got a co-host. I don't often have a co-host, but today got co-host Ken Lane, one of my. Organizers for Esotericism and Freemasonry conference. How you doing, Ken? I'm well, thank you. It looks like you're in the Scottish Rite Library there.

What a beautiful background. Mentally I am, but it's a great background. Brother Bob Davis. I've never met you. I've been meaning to come to Guthrie for years and I've finally joined the Scottish Ripe Valley here and haven't had all my degrees yet, but I will be coming to Guthrie hopefully in a future year.

And Ken speaks highly of you. So thank you for coming not only on the podcast, but also agreeing to be keynote at the Esotericism and Free Masonry Conference September 20th in Seattle, Washington. I I'm on this podcast we're specifically interested in how Freemasons got involved in the craft.

That's usually the first question I ask. Do you have a story about how you got involved? Oh sure. I I'm what you really would call the traditional Freemason. I'm the son of the Freemason and my father was a very active Freemason. We lived on a farm and ranch in, in northwest Oklahoma.

And his. Brother, my uncle was also a very active Freemason. And for as long as I can remember on Wednesday night, my, my dad would come in take a bath, put on a Sunday suit, slap on some old spice deodorants, and his brother had adjoining farms and his, him.

And they did that for 50 years. So I don't remember a time when I wasn't going to be a Freemason. And even and also significant we lived in northwest Oklahoma, which is a pretty isolated area. And the closest community to us was little town of about 2,500 population. And several of the of the traditional fraternal organizations existed there, including the Freemasons and the art fellows.

So not only was my father a Freemason, he was also an art fellow, and my mother was not only an Eastern star, but she was also a Rebecca in the art auxiliary group. And between. The meetings and the potluck dinners and the spatial social events, those two fraternal organizations had, I was more or less raised in a Masonic building.

And so I became very comfortable with a what lodges buildings look like and, so that so when I turned 21, I I petitioned the lodge for joining. Now the other thing that was significant about my journey is that I met most of the I met the respected men in that little town because we had all of our social conversations away from the home, either at church or in that community.

And over the course of my boyhood, I got acquainted with the most respected men in that little town. And then when I showed up for my entered apprentice degree, all those. Men were there. They were my father's friends, and they were Freemasons and they probably were very kind to me all of my young life because of their association with my father and the fraternity.

And so I've written this in one of my books, but, i'll never forget standing in the preparation room duly and truly prepared to be initiated waiting for someone to to return my knocks in the door. Consciously telling myself tonight, I'm going to be initiated in the manhood. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that free masonry was about the.

And me being the traditional son of a Mason which was the tradition of free masonry for 250 years. Reason we never had to solicit anybody for the fraternity is sons just always invited their, fathers always invited their sons to join. And so we had a we had a lineage pool that was very significant.

And that existed up until the depression of the 1930s. And between the impacts of the impression on depression on society and the impacts of World War ii, it created the first generation gap that furry masonry had ever experienced. So that was that's what put me on the path.

I understood it was the journey to man, and I wanted to grow up to be like those men who had been exem in my young life. And so the idea of. Freemasonry. Being an organization for men with integrity was just bred into me from a very young age, and it never left. And of course, the problem that I encountered is that nobody knew anything about Freemasonry.

And except for the language of the fraternity and back at that time, everybody could confer the degrees and they could do it quite effectively. But when when you would ask questions about what's this phrase that you first hear, that freemasonry is a system of hard lifts, represented by allegories and, and symbols or however that wording goes.

That's. That's, that is given to us in the preparation room before our first degree, and no one ever explains it. And when I started asking questions about that I just could not find any answers. And so that led me to start a Masonic library for myself. And now one thing that influenced the library and perhaps my attention to the philosophy of Freemasonry is that the only book that my father had, the only Masonic book my father had in his library was Albert Pikes Morals and Dogma.

And I got really curious about that book. And so when I was in the eighth grade, I read that book. I read that book from cover to cover and I know that I didn't understand 80% of that book, but what I saw very clearly in that book. That this man was trying to teach us the nature of manhood, the qualities of men and the virtues, morality and ethics that are associated with being men.

And so I picked that up outta morals and dogma and then just started making my own quest for information. So that's how I got started. Okay. So you were a Lewis, you were, your dad was a I was a Lewis, yeah. And here that's quite celebrated in this jurisdiction. Was your do you know if your grandfather was also a mason?

I don't know. Greatgrandfather that in this jurisdiction you have a jewel you wear, and I know several like triple lewises that know back two generations again. A lot of guys can't answer that question, but congratulations. One of my regrets is that I never never saw my brother or my father involved in the craft, so that, an interesting thing about that little town again is that they understood that tradition that sons follow their fathers in the fraternity, there were, my father had two sons. Both of us joined the fraternity. His brother had four sons. All four of them joined the fraternity.

And in addition to being a farmer, my father also worked for the agricultural stabilization and conservation service. His boss, the son was a Freemason. And so I, I also just picked up on the fact that, wait a minute, this association of young guys like myself that are joining, I know their fathers.

Yeah. And their fathers were all Freemasons. So they, I don't know if they consciously understood that as a lodge, but they certainly demonstrated itself effectively to me. So the next question I typically ask is, so you joined, why did you stay? What about the craft? Got it hook. Cindy, it sounds like you were interested in philosophy, so how did that. Get you to stay? I wasn't interested in the philosophy of free masonry originally. I was fascinated with the language as as a lot of of people are. And I was taught the catechisms by my father and my uncle. And so that even bonded us more closely together as Freemasons.

But, i, so I thought, of course, like many think today, if you're gonna be active in the fraternity, you're gonna have to learn the language. What happened to me was I joined the fraternity in the summer between college semesters and I took the three degrees in one summer, went back to school and did not return to my father's lodge.

But, but I the first job I got a master's degree at Oklahoma State University in economics. And and I knew from a fairly young age that I wanted to be a city manager. And that's a whole nother story. And he was a mason as well. But, so when I when I got my master's degree, I got employed by a sub state planning district, a called a council of local governments.

And at that time, those councils were organized because cities and towns had to have comprehensive plans before they could apply for federal grants. And my job as the regional planner for an eight county area was to write the comprehensive plans for these little towns. And so I found myself on the road two or three nights a week going to planning commission meetings and city council meetings and that sort of thing.

So I had an awful lot of windshield time. And so I just decided during my windshield time that I would start memorizing some of.

And and it turns out the first one that I memorized was the that was the stair lecture. And as that's a fairly long lecture. But I learned it because didn't seem to be very much esoteric language there. So I pretty much could learn the whole thing. And so anyway, when I got settled in.

In Enid, which was a regional economic center in North central Oklahoma. I just showed up at one of their lodges one evening and because I thought I would try to get active in the fraternity. And and so I sat on the sidelines for three or four meetings and this old gentleman came up to me one evening and he says, brother Davis, do you know any freemasonry?

And I said no, I just know the the catechisms and then I know this thing called the the stair lecture. And he said, you do. He had been given that stair lecture for 35 years and he was just begging somebody to take that away from him. And so he taught me the esoteric language in that stair lecture, and they put me in.

The office of Junior Steward that fall, and so all of a sudden, I was a well-liked young man in the fraternity, but the other significant thing that influenced me and I think it's something that we need to seriously consider in our contemporary, we had another elderly man in that lodge in Enid who was a, an a certificate lecturer.

He's the man that knew all the adoptive memory work and he taught the language and the floor work to all the officers of the lodge, including me. And and he told me that, when I got appointed as Junior Steward that was his doing because his practice was that if you want to become an officer of a lodge, you start at junior steward.

And then his approach was that all you learn is the language and the floor work of that position. And don't try to become an a certificate guy. Don't try to do all this stuff. Just learn the language and the floor, work in every chair, and start with junior steward because that gives you an automatic seven year, Masonic experience.

And it's a progressive learning experience because you're memorizing, ritual of floor work. In each position of the lodge and in that particular lodge, when you became a junior warden, you had to confer the EA degree, senior warden, you conferred the fellow craft and worshipful master, you conferred the master mason degree.

So that seven years of Masonic involvement and activity and learning, when I became the master of the lodge, I got my a certificate the very next year because that old man was right. It was just a short step to completing all of the work of Masonry. So that was a really important thing that happened to me because, I knew that I could not think about the hieroglyphs. I could not think about the allegories. I couldn't think about the meanings behind the symbols of freemasonry if I couldn't bring the words into my consciousness to start with. And so it was very important to me that I knew the language and knowing the language then I could start studying the language so that also had a.

A big impact on me. And then the, of course the next thing that happened to me because nobody knew much about Freemasonry. I wanted to know where Freemasonry came from. Fortunately there were a lot of books, Albert Mackey's history and UL's History. There were a lot of books on the history of Free Masonry, and I acquired all of those and I read them.

So I had satisfied myself that number one, free Masonry was the oldest fraternal organization in the world. And and that meant that it had sustainability that many other. Didn't have. And so it had an inborn strength that that I felt like had to be continued forward in every generation.

And if free masonry's success depends on every generation. And so that's when I went on this path. To study the history of Freemasonry. And then of course, knowing the ritual words, I got really curious about who authored them. Where did the ritual language of the fraternity come from? And that's what led me to write the book on the Mason's words, which was the history, evolution of the American Masonic ritual.

And fortunately the ritual of freemasonry has been exposed from the very beginning. Know, in my own research I discovered that 16 exposures, the Masonic had been published prior to 17 and another 20.

That, that gave me the ability to determine how much we we adopted from the operative Mason guilds, how much we adopted from Masonic authors that went to France and various different places that, that, that was another aspect of that. But that, see, that was just another quest I took to find out for myself.

The, his, the language itself and the history of the fraternity, and then the historical development of the language. And and I might say this, since this is.

The information that I acquired in writing the book, the Mason's words came from the Cedar Rapids library in, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It's the largest Masonic library in the United States. And I literally spent two weeks in that library researching the history and evolution of the, so I just wanna make a plug for that library.

If you're ever in Iowa, you just have to go to the Cedar Rapids Library. It's only four stories, anyway, that's my story. Thanks. Thanks for that tip. I'm often talking I have been talking for years. There's a professor in Calgary and I have his book here, and he's a professor of religious history.

And he posits that the printing of Holy Books removed the need for art of memory and that the original meaning of the living word is that. For religious and fraternal organizations the memorization of short tracks or entire books was important because words are expressions of thoughts.

And for you to think the thoughts of the of the people you're surrounded by and be it to use a masonic word inculcated with changes the way you think about the outside world and this living word. What is what is spoken by aspirants and participants of these traditions and in masonry, we're one of the few that still treat the memorization of our Holy book.

Yeah, it's very seriously and because for me the Holy Book of Freemasonry is the opening and closing in the three degrees and the conferral of the degrees. And so it's interesting to see, hear you say that was important to you when you were new at Mason to understand, not only to memorize it, but to understand where it came from and how it evolved and why we express those ideas.



I consider all of Freemasonry to be Western esotericism by the academic definition. When did you yourself become interested in that beyond the confines of the ritual work? 

I got actively involved in the Guthrie Scottish Riot as a young man or young Mason and and Guthrie Scottish Riot has a tradition of staging all 29 of their degrees, and they've done that every year since 1917.

And I had access to so much of Masonic information that is not given at the Blue Lodge level. And then I got hired to become the the secretary of the Scottish, so I, in the Scottish temple. Then I had access to. All of the degrees I had access to all of the house of the Temples books on Thes.

And so I was suddenly in a place where I could study anything I wanted to study about free masonry. But the thing that.

Made it clear to me that Free Masonry was an esoteric organization where the meanings were hidden within the, had to do with, with the obvious fact that the completion of Masonic learning could have never been the three degrees of the Blue Lodge. Because, the first two degrees of the Blue Lodge, you might say are ritualistic degrees, but the third degree is clearly a mystery play.

It comes from an entirely different tradition. And of course it leaves us with something that was lost and and we're not told how to find that, which is lost, but just the fact that it was incomplete. Who would create, three plays with the highest play, leaving us with with such a profound question to think about.

It became clear to me that that actually there was a. Associated with everybody at Freemasonry. And that became very obvious to me. Once I studied the Scottish right degrees, it became very obvious that the the of the, symbolic lodge degrees is the quest for an awakening consciousness, and that's a very important quest because that's something that men don't think about.

They have to be told that. That they must learn to understand what the concept of awakening consciousness is. Otherwise, they'll just simply live in the moment day in and day out. And it just doesn't, it never occurs to them to go inside themself and start thinking about the psychological structure of their own being.

And I think when I came to the I came to the idea that there's a series of quests associated with free masonry and that first quest. A important one, a foundational one, and that's the of consciousness. And and so that means that each of the bodies of the Scottish that the series of degrees in each of those bodies also relate to a.

And so I just kept identifying what the essential quest was in the journey to the the highest degree that was available in the Scottish right. And then I did the same thinking when I went through the degrees of the Scottish wr the York right. And and I discovered that all degree control bodies of free masonry are esoterically sound.

I might argue not so much with the Knight's Templar but setting the knight's aside, all other degrees are esoterically based. And so that's what's lost. That has to be found. What is the esoteric nature of the fraternity and how do you discover it? And then what do you do with it once you discover it?

Excellent. This is, this is excellent material. I'm glad we're having a chance to talk today. But I'm acutely aware we've been going for 20 minutes and Ken Lane has been patiently sitting here listening. Ken, I know you know. Brother Davis better than I. Do you have some questions for Brother Davis?

He knows me too Well, 

Maybe that's not so good. We'll find out. 

Not too not enough. I relish our relationship and I'm grateful to have you as not only a brother, but a friend. I'm interested in your opinion of. The fraternity. When I joined, I'm at 30 years now. And when I joined, I would say for the most part, lodges were very social and charitable.

And so when we talk about the philosophical nature, it was why the lodges in my path have focused on that is it wasn't there, but it was screaming at you to get involved and pay attention to it. So I'd like two comments if I can from you. One, what was it like when you joined and part two? I'm working with young men who are wanting to join the fraternity today.

And what I'm finding today is everything that you're talking about is that they are feeling somewhat ostracized, that just being a man in today's culture where we talk about toxic masculinity and. The networking that men used to have, they don't have today. They're very much looking for, I think, our founding principles.

That's what I'm experiencing. So I'm wondering what did you experience when you first joined and then today are you seeing this, what I will call, I think a renaissance that's happening? 

Unfortunately I didn't experience, free masonry at a young age any differently than most men.

Experience free masonry today. The one difference may be that we always wore our Sunday six. We always dressed in coats and ties the Masons that era. Believed that it was that the fraternity had enough integrity that if they can wear their best suit at church, they also should be wearing their best suit in the tile spaces of the lodge.

So that had a minor impact on me, but the, the only other thing that was different is that more of the brothers actually attended the meetings of the lodge than do today. And, but the reality was that.

Depression in world.

That made American free masonry different than free masonry in the rest of the world. And and what happened during the depression was that we also have to remember that it doesn't matter what state we live in, or I suppose province we live in, they're all rural in nature. They may have some large cities, but by and large, America.

Before the depression of the 1930s there were, it, there were typically three generations of males in every household. And because the rate of out migration didn't exist, and so if your grandfather was a mason, your father was a mason, and you were living in the same household with those two generations, you would just automatically follow the path of your father's.

And the depression sent people away from the the homes of their founding and to get jobs. And when they got those jobs, they weren't in the same rural area, so they never came back home. And, so that was the first thing that happened. And then immediately following that world War II came along and we had a lot, we had a large military influence of Freemasons during World War ii.

And it wasn't unusual for, officers to encourage men to join the fraternity because they felt like that, that may provide some benefit to them when they were shipped overseas. And I know that to be true because we have a large military base in southwest Oklahoma called Fort Sill. The commander of that base would give weekend passes to the men on that, the soldiers on that base to, to come attend the Guthrie Scottish R and and the other thing that happened during that period of time, this great influx of men coming in the fraternity lodges got bo down on conferring degrees.

As a matter of fact, it's all they had time to do. And they were doing it more than once or twice a week. Some of 'em were doing it four or five times a week. Some of them were doing one day classes. And so we created for a whole group of men that were coming in, in the fraternity at that time we created a free masonry that was ritual based and with the depression in World War ii.

That generation of men never looked back over their shoulder to see what Freemasonry did in the culture of men prior to the 1930s, and that put us in a kind of a one dimensional situation for American freemasonry. There's a whole nother story that I wrote about in Understanding Manhood in America that showed how Freemasonry consciously tried to keep itself in the center of the most popular ideas of manhood in every generation.

They weren't always successful at it, but they're very conscious about adapting what they needed to do to stay. Culture of men, and that was all. Now, interesting thing about.

And so we found ourselves inheriting all these huge Masonic buildings and without the leadership in place to endow those buildings we just simply enjoyed the. The benefit of doing our work in those buildings and let the building crumble before us. And then we waited too late to discover that we're in trouble in keeping these old buildings.

And then, to put misery on top of that. We didn't have the leadership in place to do anything about it anyway. And so that just that sort of represented a, an aspect of the long decline in membership that's occurred since then of World War ii, an American Freemasonry. And I was curious enough about that myself, that I made a study of what was going on in the rest of the world.

And I contacted grand Lodges and I discovered that in, in, in continental Europe and in in the uk in south America. Free Masonry operates at a different level. Free masonry operates at a level of small lodges. When you look at the lodge membership of lodges in continental Europe, they're between 25 and 50 men.

And that is just amazing that we didn't see that as Americans. If you have a lodge of 25 or 50 men and then it turns out that all those men had a social affinity or an occupational affinity, and in fact every lodge with very few exceptions, as the affinity lodge in the rest of the world then you see that gives you a freemasonry.

That is a real eyeopener. It enables you to develop meaningful relationships with very few men whom you have shared the same obligations with, and because of the the confidence. That we have with each other. You can lay out your problems with trusted men and those men can help you get back on a path to self-improvement.

And the whole function is all, has always been self-improvement and personal development. And that function is realized when we operate at a small level. And so I, if I had a recommendation for free Basery today, it's not so much a recommendation. I think it's the thing that's gonna enable the Renaissance to happen, and that is that we have to come to the realization that we're going to lose the number of lodges and there's not anything we can do about it.

We can create as many new lodges as we want to create. And when we make the decision to do that, let's think about where they should be located from a strategic point of view and and what what the lodge experience should look like. And and don't get hung up on creating two or 300 or. 400 member lodge, when your lodge hits, whatever your, the bylaws, bylaw, says that when we hit 70 members, we're going to form a new lodge and that can be 50.

I don't care what the member is, but that's gonna be one of the secrets moving forward is we we've think in terms of the importance of lodge, the importance of small number members in. And then the importance of having a quality experience in every aspect of that fraternal environment. 

Yeah.

Brother, brother Davis, this is fascinating. I'm acutely aware of your time commitments, so I'm just gonna, just a couple more things. First of all. Do you have an exhaustive list of your publications, like what books you published and when is it a website somewhere so I can put it in the show notes? 

I think they're, I think they're on Amazon, but my website where I sell my books is just www do robert g davis.net.

Yeah. 

It sounds

and also maintain a blog there too. So if you just wanna read about some personal musings of Brother Davis. I have a number of blog spots on that same website. There's 

there one more thing I wanted to ask. The membership in organizations like this can get political in some at some time.

I'm sure you've run up against. Conflict in your Masonic career. Do you have advice to do Masons, that you could be concise with that? What my, my advice to me is just my mind, your, it's the, this famous quote from Crowley mind your own business. You know what I mean?

Mind your own work and don't worry too much about what other people are doing, even if they're working against you. Yes. I, all you could do is what you could do. Do your best. 

Yeah I think the, if you're doing some practices which aren't part of the adopted work such as chambers of reflection and, festy boards outside of lodge and stuff like that, that's just something that improves the quality of your lodge and the men in it. And you should be very proud of that.

And you shouldn't do anything to put it on guard individual. Would decide to protest it simply because he doesn't understand anything about it. So yeah you've got to have credibility. And you've got to have credibility in your grand lodges. And the only way you're gonna have credibility is you've got to be actively involved in all the branches of the fraternity.

And that's hard. And that's not necessary. Something that a young man can aspire to do at the beginning of his Masonic journey, he needs to take it. In, in bunches I suppose. But he has a lifetime to study and learn, and his knowledge about free masonry. He will, he needs to also find that his interest group doesn't necessarily now exist in his lodge.

But it exists and it's, and you can find it through, the worldwide web. Social media and all that sort of stuff. And then these groups more often than not come together because of their spatial interest. That's what's going on in the esoteric masonry world right now. And so I think it's just important that, you, you must be taught what the journey of free masonry is about. You must understand what mature masculinity looks like, and you must integrate those ideas into your heart and soul so that you actually live as a man with integrity. A man who's a respected man, and the goal is to be respected by everyone who knows you.

And you know that's a choice and a decision that you make. It's the kind of man that you make from yourself. And Free Masonry gives you all of the guideposts to take that journey and become a respected man. And when you're respected, it doesn't matter where you're at. You have influence. So it's important to be a respected man in the fraternity because you have influence as a result of the respect you've gained and you use that influence to move the needle.

Sometimes slowly but surely 

now in the interests of marketing are esotericism and free Freemasonry conference where those who are already Freemasons and those who are looking can find their affinity group. At least in the Seattle or Pacific Northwest area you're coming to give a keynote address entitled their Hermetic principles and their Associations with Free Masonry care to expand a sentence or two as to what that will be.

I think you've spoken well for yourself today that people would be foolish to miss your keynote address. What would you want to say about your keynote?

Are very important to be aware of and especially important to develop an understanding of because Hermeticism and Hermetic philosophy wa was one of the principle methods of teaching 17th and 18th free masonry. So the men in the 17th and 18th century had a different knowledge base than we have today.

And one of the things that it was heavily weighted on was hermeticism. So I'm going to talk about what the hermetic principles are. They're fairly well known in the sense that they were published, I think in 19 10 or 1920 in a book called the Cabal by Three Initiatives whose names were not given, and, so what they are is pretty readily available. What they mean is a different story, and so I'm.

How they are applied to how we live today. And then I'm going to suggest that once we understand the hermetic principles, then we can start talking about the nature of consciousness and and so the real meaning behind the talk is gonna relate to the question, what is consciousness?

It's a terribly important question because, we began with this awakening we, awakening awareness at the Blue Lodge level, but that awakening awareness also represents an elevation in consciousness. And then once you understand it as an elevation in consciousness, then you can make the quest of what pure consciousness might look like.

And because consciousness is the one aspect that we have that ties us to deity and in a very esoteric way. And so we move from, we move from being men to defining what our journey's going to be. We take on the role of the material masculine soul, and once we discover what that is, we relate it to our own elevation and consciousness.

And and of course what we're ultimately interested in is is identifying within ourselves what God consciousness might be.

Thank you for sharing. Is that s enough? 

You've hit it out of the ballpark and I know that we wanna be respectful of your time, but I have to ask one, just a 62nd question for you. We always talk about everything that you give to the fraternity, and so I would just give you 60 seconds to tell us how is it that you found such a wonderful woman in your life that allows you to travel and do this, and is so gracious with your time.

Yes. Thank you for complimenting my dear lady, Sharon. Yeah, we, I joined the fraternity the same year that we got married, and I can't tell you how many times she thought I might've got a little mixed up on my priorities there, but two, but she was a, fortunately she is an independent woman herself.

She had her own career and and she she never was a dependent person in the sense that, her life depended on, what I did. But I think where I lucked out actually was my very first job. Now, it's very important when you get married in college, you get out of college, you have your very first job, and it's the most money you've ever made.

That's pretty significant even to your lady. It turns out my first job was a traveling job. I was gone three or four nights a week. But that's what I did. And she understood that from the very beginning. She just knew that was a part of it. So I think where I got lucky is she was used to me being gone quite a bit.

So it never bothered her very much. 

Please thank her for sharing. We're just better because of it. Yeah. 

The only thing she asked me today, which is hard to answer, she says, when are you ever gonna retire? Really retire, and that's tough. It's hard to retire being a free mason 

having known several retirees it's a myth nobody puts.

The minute you stop, you're gonna, you stop swimming. It's like being a shark The minute you stop swimming, that's it. Don't, yeah. Don't let anybody convince you to retire. Please don't. 

Yeah. 

Thank you for your contribution.

Thank you Troy. Thank you. It was my pleasure to meet you. 

Yes. Hope to 

see you in the Guthrie, Scottish right temple.

Someday 

will, probably next spring. And I'm not that interested if it upsets people because it just seems to me that these sorts of things need to be participated in. There's so much effort. Being put into it, and every year the guys are warning me. This could be the last year.

It's I can't wait. I'm just not gonna wait anymore. Yeah. I'm led to ask this question and see how you guys respond. Anything further on your desk, brother? Secretary? 

I I'm at the age where I've I've actually written my funeral service and my rose CRO service, I've taken care of that obligation because that would be something that my lady wouldn't have any idea, what was important to me. So I took care of that. I do have I, I'm still wanting to do a, pictorial, the Scottish temple. I'm surprised that's never been done.

And so I'm thinking I'm go ahead and do that. So that's probably my next writing thing, just to get it over with. No. 

Okay. I would buy one. 

Yeah. Yeah. And I I wrote an education course on, the York right degrees, the chapter and council degrees, because they are esoterically sound.

 📍 And I ne I never did anything with the orders of the temple. And for some reason, my, my creative mind is starting to tell me that I maybe could write a another education guide on Templarism. So that might be in the future. Let's see.

Very much look forward to seeing you guys in, in Seattle, though. 

Yes, that'll be likewise. That'll be Seattle 20th. If you're mystified as to where to find tickets, listen to either of the show bumpers, or you could just go to esoteric masonry.com and find a link to get your tickets there. We have a hell of a lineup this year for individual speakers.

It, this might be the best lineup yet for our 10th anniversary season. And yeah, I look forward to meeting you myself. Thank you so much for being here today, and I look forward to seeing you all again soon. 

Thanks, Bob. Yep, my pleasure. 

 



 Thanks for listening today. You can support the show by liking, sharing, and subscribing on your favorite podcast indicator. Even more helpful, leave us a review. We are looking to create a directory of free Masonic events and publications. If you are aware of something coming up, please let me know by email.

In the meantime, check out the Masonic conferences website@masonicconferences.com. Esotericism and Free Masonry conference will be held Saturday, September 20th. Our keynote speaker will be none other than today's guest, Robert G. Davis, well known Scottish right Scholar and the author of In Search of Light.

Get your tickets in advance by RSVP to Esoteric masonry@gmail.com. Details upcoming to conference website@esotericmasonry.com for other events. Check out our calendar@mystic.com and don't forget to sign up for our newsletter while you are there. Graphics and web hosting are by Zibo Creative. A special thanks to Mocha only for our theme music.

Happy to meet, sorry, depart. And happy to meet again.