Unlucky for some, it’s day 13 of the 100 Day Study Plan to learn Masonic ritual. If you’ve only just found this plan then you can easily start from Day 1, and see all the other days by clicking here: 100 Masonic Study Plan. Since we started we have now gone through the Installation ceremony (at least the parts the Master Elect needs to learn) a couple of times now.
We’re not planning to be be word perfect yet, but you should have a good grip on it, say be around 75% familiar. Now we are going over it, but this time you need to be competent – but don’t worry, you still don’t need to be word perfect. Basically, the aim now is to get to the stage where you may need the odd glance (or prompt), there may be a few pauses whilst you need to think, but all in all, it’s up there. To put it another way, if you were getting Installed in a few days time you know the ritual well enough to get by, and probably be at the standard that many are when they are Installed in the Chair. So today it’s…
Revising Masonic Ritual, Day 13 of 100: Investing IPM and Wardens
These are the first pieces of ritual you’ll be doing when you are Installed, therefore it’s likely your brain is going to be all over the place at this point. You therefore want to make sure that Investing IPM and Wardens is really locked down, so that your mouth can go into auto-pilot whilst your brain composes itself for the other offices. Remember, we’re revising this – you should have learnt it already. That doesn’t mean you’ll be perfect every time, there will be slip-ups.
find that by this stage you want to have the book open on the page (in my book Investing the Immediate Past Master is on 214, Investing the Senior Warden is pages 223-224, and Investing the Junior Warden is pages 224-225). I sit back and close my eyes and mouth along quietly. I find saying out loud (although barely audible) helps, it’s important not to just do the ritual internally, but get used to speaking it out loud. I then run through the ritual. Often I visualise the page (some people almost take a mental photograph of the page and almost read from this mental picture, whereas others can not use this method at all – it varies). Should I encounter parts I get stuck on I take a moment to relax and normally the words pop into my head.
If not I try to take a guess, or at a push have a glimpse to prompt the sentence. You’ll often kick yourself at how close you are. Of course, we aren’t getting to the stage where you’ll be performing this in Lodge just yet – you don’t want to be Investing your Officers with your eyes closed with long awkward silences. When you get to a sticking point repeat the line a couple of times, really paying attention to the wording. Then go back a couple lines and start repeating from there, notice how the words that you knew fluently lead into the part you had problems with. Repeat this a couple more time, then repeat the whole part again.
Once you’ve worked you way through Investing these Offices, go back to the beginning and start again. You’re not concerned with performing it at the moment, but you should be focusing on accuracy. By the end of this session aim to be about 95% accurate with the ritual.
The performance may be laboured, but we still have 88 days before you go into the Chair to work on presentation.