What is the role of the Grand Chaplain in Freemasonry?
The Grand Chaplain shall attend the regular Communication and other meetings of the Grand Lodge, and there offer up solemn prayer, suitable to the occasion, as established by the usage of the Fraternity. This is outlined in Rule 26 of the Constitution.
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Much of what a Freemason would like to know is already written down — in Anderson's Constitutions and Dermott's Ahiman Rezon, in Preston and Mackey, in Knoop and Jones on the mediaeval mason, in Claudy for the newly made Mason, in Pike for the Scottish Rite, and in papers read before lodges of research over three centuries. The difficulty has never been that the answers do not exist. It is that they sit in works few of us have to hand.
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The library closes in the 1930s for most subjects, so where a question reaches beyond it — how a jurisdiction stands today, what a museum holds, what has been found since — Grand Lodge sites, lodges of research, museums and archives are searched as well.
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The answers are written by AI and can be wrong. Each names its sources so that you need not take it on trust.
This site takes for its emblem the point within a circle, bounded by two parallel lines. It teaches a Mason to keep himself within due bounds, and the lines are what make those bounds knowable — which seemed right for a tool that will not claim more than its sources bear, and that shows you where the lines fall.
FreemasonryGPT reads a library of Masonic books and papers spanning three centuries, from Anderson's Constitutions of 1723 to the transactions of lodges of research, and has answered several thousand questions, each one published with its sources. It is built and maintained by Bro. J Arasu Shankher of Chennai. Thoughts, corrections and suggestions are all welcome — do write.
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