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Per Ardua ad Spiritus
Spiritus est qui Unificat
Great Britain
Lodge Golden Spiral No. 2
- Meeting Details and News
- Meeting in the City of London
- Easy access from main line stations London Bridge or Liverpool Street.
- Underground Aldgate and Aldgate East.
- Lodge Golden Spiral meets in London at Artizan Street, London, E1 7AF (entrance in Gravel Lane, E1 7AW) on Sunday afternoons in the months of January, February, March, May, June, September, October and November.
- The Lodge was Consecrated on Sunday 29th April 2001 as the second of the early Lodges in The Grand Lodge of Freemasonry for Men and Women. Members were drawn from various different Lodges following traditions set up in their own Mother Lodges; however there are 24 members consisting of Entered Apprentices, Fellow Craftsmen, Master Masons and Past Masters.
- History of where we meet
- Gravel Lane, near Petticoat Lane, above the Piazzetta (which means ‘Little Square’) is where the Craft was born in the Wonderful City of London.
- Around the corner from King Solomon’s House is the Invisible College, which escaped the Fire of London when the winds miraculously turned back from Bishopsgate in 1666. It is the most perfect location, in the midst of Huguenot and also Jewish history, with even an Egyptian Masonic Temple nearby, so important in the acceptance of Women in the Craft and right on where Annie Besant herself was educated about life in Toynbee Hall.
- Historia Magistra Vitae – History is the Teacher of Life: lessons will be learnt by people who understand the wonderful Mysteries of the Craft.
- Lodge Oration
- The Oration of the Lodge given at the Consecration on Sunday 29th April 2001. The, ‘Lodge Golden Spiral’ represents the Mystic Spiral which depicts the Journey of the Soul. The Spiral can be looked at in many ways, to see it as a symbol which denotes Eternity and the Path we travel as Freemasons; which we hope will lead us to Perfection and to the Truth of our fusion with our Divinity. But it is a circuitous Path, and we may feel we are going round in circles and wish to reach Perfection more quickly. But the steepness of the Straight Path is too dangerous for most of us, and we have to choose the gradual ascent allowing ourselves the protection of its gentle windings. The Spiral on which we travel through our lives and through time, is the means we have to compare ourselves with ourselves, so that we can discover how we have changed or how we need to change, since we passed last on the lower round of the Spiral. This is expressed in a poem by the 16th Century mystical Poet John Donne, which he called Satire III, when one feels that change is so slow in coming:-
On a huge hill, cragged and steep, truth stands, and he that will reach her, about must, and about must go; and what the hill’s suddenness resists, win so...’ This is so true of life. Often, as we walk round and round a situation or problem, we start to see it from many points of view, instead of being for or against it. Why have we chosen the ‘Golden Spiral’ for our Lodge name? Another mystical poet William Blake, who knew about Spirals, and lived in the 18th century, wrote the following lines in a poem he called ‘Jerusalem’.
‘I give you the end of the Golden String
Only wind it into a ball (clue)
It will lead you in at Heavens Gate
Built in Jerusalem’s Wall’
Symmetry and Balance
And can we say that one meaning we could give to the Golden String is our acceptance of a belief in God as fundamental to a spiritual understanding of our work in the Brotherhood of Freemasonry?