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CARRY THE THOUGHT TO COMPLETION: PERFORMANCE OF ESSENTIAL RITUAL

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MASONICFX

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When it occurred isn't as important as why. When did it become wrong to allow the candidate and lodge completion of a thought?  The reason I bring this up is a question that has tempted various criticisms, not of ritual but the performance. Imagine listening to Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No.5 if each musician played as if it were a solo piece; punctuated by him walking to centre stage,while the audience waited and continued while he took his seat, while we waited while each musician did similarly. After so much attention went into the creation of our ritual, it is curious that we transformed it into something quite hard to recognize. Once upon a time, coffee beans were purchased unroasted, taken home, roasted to taste and made into the drink. To compare  that with the watery cup handed to us at the drive way window is a large step. Coffee is coffee afterall.  Are we suggesting ritual is somehow maluable to popular taste without losing something in the translation? Ridiculous. Shifting focus repeatedly during ritual is not random. It is widespread and deliberate. I'm thinking following plot, embedded with old world language, metaphor, mystery and metaphysics is important to extract symbolic meaning. So much parading interrupts every single phrase, every overreaching impression.  Why the debate brethren? Why can I not have a moment uninterrupted, to follow the stream?  Shakespeare being read-out to an audience would be a calamity, unless we were with actors during their intimate rehearsals where they are sorting meaning to allow appropriate emotional tone to be imparted. I am thinking ritual so revered as ours would be treated with similar respect?  Maybe, we intended that a quick superficial glance was enough. Maybe we were wrong making that assumption.  Maybe that explains our current state of thinking.  Effort is the price we pay for being part of an ancient brotherhood.  

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