Offering a toast to the visiting brethren is an obligatory duty at all lodge banquets, and omitting it is regarded as a major breach of decorum 1. This practice rests on the principle that individual lodges are local branches of a single universal family, in which every Mason in good standing possesses a fundamental right of visitation 1.
The available sources do not detail the specific protocol, order of proceedings, or wording required when proposing this toast at an installation dinner.
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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
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the lines are what make those bounds knowable — which seemed right
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A labour of love by Bro. J Arasu Shankher of Chennai. Thoughts, corrections
and suggestions are all welcome —
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Read it as a route to the sources.
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