From: SL500000@brownvm.brown.edu (Robert Mathiesen)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Documented Evidence
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 15:57:03 EST
Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island  USA
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The key, I think, to keeping a family tradition alive is precisely a will-
ingness to be different -- you've put your finger right on it, Amanda!

The one and only *text* handed down in my family is one sentence long, as
follows: "Mathiesens [or whatever the current last name is] are different!"
There's a handed-down gloss as well: "This means not just different from
other families, but also different from each other, too.  Find your own way
to be different."  This is the only thing I really made a great effort to
pass on to my own children, and it took with both of them.  Everything else
is technique or technology, and anything that works can never be lost for-
ever.  You can always rediscover it for yourself.  It's only the stuff that
doesn't work that can get lost once and for all time.  Maybe that's as it
should be.  (Values and interests are another matter, of course; but they're
harder to suppress.)

My wife's family did it not with a *text* about being different,
but with a passed-on sense that they were Jordans (the last name) and
that this entailed an obligation to care about the family's past, and
specifically about the inherited papers.  All other descendants of my
wife's great great grandfather whom we have met share this trait, and
all have parts of the family documentation, which they value highly.
They are all trading xerocopies back and forth now, and my wife is
putting the whole corpus on line.  Pretty soon everyone will have it
all.

Your words about your own family are eloquent beyond any need for me to
add comments of my own.  One thing only: if your family had Masonic
connections and was in the Old South during 1850-1900, almost certainly
any fondness for esoteric interests would have led them to explore
General Albert Pike's version of Scottish Rite Masonry (Southern
Jurisdiction).

Now Pike wrote a lot, and there are also a few biographies of him.  The
biographers are all embarrassed by his esoteric interests and keep
resolutely silent about them, or misrepresent them as merely scholarly
excursions into comparative religions; but they will give you the titles
of his books, which you can then find and read for yourself.  His best-
known work has a title something like "Morals and Dogmas of Freemasonry,"
which sounds orthodox and theological, but is no such thing -- a bit of
protective coloration, I think.  This one has been reprinted recently,
and you can buy your own copy for about $50.  (I don't have the exact
details at hand.  Shall I make an effort to find out for you?  I'll be
talking to someone who knows in about a week.)  It's about the size of a
Webster's unabridged, but the print isn't so small, so it will keep your
hours filled for quite some time.

With the aid of Pike's books you may well be able to restore some of the
writing that once graced the pages of your family's now empty Book of
Shadows.  Those Masonic emblems on the tombstones may turn out to be highly
significant indicators of very precise levels of attainment within Pike's
system.

Good hunting.  I'd love to hear how the search progresses over the months and
years to come.  This is important work.  -- Robert

(Robert Mathiesen, Brown University, SL500000@BROWNVM)