W Bro David Cowley greets RW Bro Martin Blackburn
Anchor Lodge celebrated two ‘firsts’ when W Bro David Cowley was installed in April in Northallerton.
David, who hails from the Isle of Man, is a personal friend of the Provincial Grand Master of the Province of the Isle of Man, RW Bro Martin Blackburn. Both Brethren share a passion for the TT motor cycle races on the Isle, and are involved in the organisation and safety of the event. David was delighted when Martin accepted the invitation to attend the installation, the first time in 152 years of Freemasonry in Northallerton that a PGM from the Isle of Man has attended a meeting.
At Anchor Lodge, it is has been, from time immemorial, the custom to place into the chairs of Senior Warden, Junior Warden and Inner Guard for the Installation Ceremony, those available members who were Masters of the Lodge the longest time ago. On this occasion, and for the first time in the Lodge, the three Brethren were Officers of the United Grand Lodge of England – WBro Mark Hall PAGStB, W Bro Nigel Weightman PGStB and W Bro Stephen Robinson PSGD(image).
It is also the custom for the Brethren taking the Chairs to sit in a line before the Secretary’s desk for the beginning and end of the ceremony, prompting comments on the similarity to the ancient Japanese proverb “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” popularized in the 17th century as a pictorial Shinto maxim, carved in the famous Tōshō-gū Shinto shrine in Nikkō, Japan, and used there with the slogan is Mi-zaru, kika-zaru, iwa-zaru, ‘No seeing, no hearing, no speaking’, with a pun on saru, Japanese for ‘monkey’, and it is used seriously to teach prudence and purity. The Lodge photographer W Bro Taff Lines could not resist asking the Grand Lodge Officers to reproduce the maxim.
The Three Wise Monkeys, Nikkō Tōshō-gū
Photograph of Three Wise Monkeys: Ray in Manila, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
