Gravestone of Lt. Col. John B. Adkins, USAF

John B. Adkins

Bushnell, Sumter Co., Florida, USA

LOT 112, 0, 120

This post may seem a bit odd, but in the course of recently researching D-Day, I came across an article about the Normandy American Cemetery.  That in turn led me to take a look at the website of the Florida National Cemetery, and then on a hunch looked for and found this entry for my father on Find a Grave, made by one "13th Generation Fairbanks in America."

Apparently, the Mr. Fairbanks who photographed this marker has been documenting gravestones for eight years, and is currently focusing on veterans' final resting places.

I don't think it's morbid, but a way of both honoring my father and thanking the volunteer photographers, especially Mr. Fairbanks, for their efforts.

Dad did 2 tours in Vietnam, one in '67-'68 at Tân Sơn Nhứt (where he experienced the Tet offensive), and then again in, I think, '73.  

He retired after 25 years in the service after a posting at SOCCENT (MacDill AFB, Tampa, FL). 

Incidentally, I was born on the very same base.

Not sure what his job at SOCCENT consisted of, but he carried a red passport (one of three he had) with some pretty interesting visas stamped inside....  

When I once asked exactly what it was he did, he said, "I could tell you, but then I'd have to cut your head off and put it in my safe." 

I once visited his office, and while he was on the phone, happened to look down into the heating vent, where he had placed a white, folded card printed with the phrase "THINK WAR!" in red.

One day, I will dig out a letter he wrote his parents from his off-base barracks, in which some of the same ironic humor, and even cynicism, paint an interesting portrait of life in Saigon for the young (21 y.o.) Lieutenant from rural Ohio.

  

And people wonder why I tackle such dark subjects on LoS with humor.

There and back again: A week in Italy and Provence

I spent three years in Italy as a child, in the late-Seventies (the "years of lead", so-called because of all the political violence) and had studied there for a Summer back in 1990, so I was excited to be heading back for the first time as a family.  My wife went to Naples and Sicily, where she has roots, two years ago, but the kids and I stayed home for that one and felt jealous.

Our destination was Apricale, named one of Italy's most beautiful villages, which is saying something.  And it was indeed a beautiful old town, perched upon a small mountain, built for defense, a reminder of the time when "Italy" didn't exist, but a collection of small feuding states, some of them merely cities.  It's still a hard place to govern, which is partly by design; as a re-constituted republic (1946) recovering from Fascism, the constitution created a weak executive.  Governing Italy requires creating and then leading coalitions.  In a parliament with many small parties, this leads to political instability.  If one small party leaves a coalition, the government can fall and a new one needs to be put together.  Which has happened around 60 times since 1946.  But for the most part, the country "works".

Italy is an ancient place, rich in traditions which lend a continuity to daily life one might not expect if only the number of governments is considered.  And for all the differences between the north and south, as soon as you cross the border you know you're in Italy.  Nice was until relatively recently part of Italy.  I've never spent time there, but I can imagine that like Toulouse is France's "Spanish city", Nice's is France's "Italian city".  Which is to say that although you can feel the Spanish vibe in Toulouse, it is first and foremost French.  Likewise, I'm sure, with Nice.  Borders may be the result of history's vagaries, maybe somewhat arbitrary, but they do generally conform to natural boundaries more ancient than human:  the Pyrenées in the Southwest and the southernmost peaks of the Alps in the Southeast.  Despite very strong regional attachments, Italy does have a strong national identity and in Apricale, a few kilometers across the border, you feel its heart beating just as strongly as if you were in Florence, Naples or Rome.

Our route led us due east to Narbonne, then along the coast past Sète, Montpellier, Nîmes, Arles, Marseille, Cannes, Nice, Monaco and then in Italy, Ventimiglia.  A short jog north and you're in the canyon over which Apricale and a handful of other small towns are perched.  The older parts of these towns are small warrens of alleys that are not only formed by two buildings, but are often cut right through one of them.  It's as if you are both inside and outside at the same time.  You'd be hard-pressed to get an army far enough into the town to get to the top; possible, of course, but a hard slog.  I'm sure in some of these towns the streets ran with blood on at least one occasion.

It's kind of hard to imagine though, because these towns are very friendly places.  Each of them has a lower part built along the river and if you kept to the main road and didn't stop, park and venture across the necessary bridge, you'd see a town built choc-a-bloc upon the hillside, but unless you already knew the local architecture, you wouldn't expect such a labyrinthine series of alleys, some leading into pitch blackness, other upwards towards the light, others covered by white-washed groin vaults with doors leading into houses, shoppes and bars.  There are fountains and piazze, of course, usually before the church and city hall, which are, as in France, often on the same plaza and more often than not, include a café.  This area was rather touristy, not in a tacky way at all, so maybe that explains why there seem to be far more cafés in an Italian village than in a French village of approximately the same size.  Aucamville has about 1000 residents and there is only one café.   Isolabona, where our campground is to be found, has 716 residents and at least two cafés, in addition to a restaurant.  The people seemed much more sociable than in our village; on our last night we strolled through town and the cafés were bustling with old men playing cards, teenagers looking on, some small families.  On the stoops and benches sat groups of women, young and old, chatting, peaceful and animated, in the deepening dusk, a fountain echoing softly off the walls, a small electric candle glowing in an iron mesh-covered niche with flowers, ex-votos and a statue of the virgin.  But in these towns, it didn't seem likely that people had yards and who wants to stay inside all the time?

This is an interesting theory, come to think of it; the characteristics of the people, the everyday sociability, the nightly ritual of coming together to gossip and joke, to talk, etc. is in these towns determined by the urban design.  I'd hesitate to use the word planning, the towns feel more organic than planned, but no one's the worse off for it.  In Dolceacqua, a larger village but more or less the same urban pattern, I'd marveled that the buildings and balconies are connected and reinforced (recall that we're on a rather steep small mountain) with numerous small "bridges".  Perhaps they are flying buttresses in this case, I'm not sure if the term here is accurate, but the effect is the same, each building is connected at several point to the one above it, so that what would in a flat city be an alley, open to the sky, is here part alley, part tunnel.  The effect is a kind of perpetual dusk, gloomy but without the negative sense of the word; they're rather lively places, but not prone to echoes and an abrasive hurdy-gurdy of sound.  Thus, pleasant places to chat, where you can raise your voice and not pollute the atmosphere.  The women chatting were grouped around the piazza and the roads/alleys leading up to it, relatively open spaces, where you get out of the gloom and as the sun sets, see some stars.  Farther from the church, the stoops were empty and the only sounds we heard were tin-can sounds of someone's radio playing some kind of mellow soccer game, the sound of cutlery and dishes being shifted, a mewling cat.

In these parts of town, one can often catch a whiff of the old sewers.  Nothing overpowering or rancid, but not exactly pleasant either.  Centuries of humidity and cloaca leave their traces, impregnate the cut stones.  There’s no disguising it.  This is what leads a lot of Americans to call these old towns “dirty” but they’re actually pretty clean.  We’re talking about places whose origins lie in the Bronze Age, if not earlier.  Give Sacramento a few more years, especially after their water is in such short-supply they’ll have to flush it all away with grey water.  Then it’ll really merit the moniker “Excremento”.

I had the opportunity to see an old amphitheater, the top of which must have made for a structure of considerable height.  Not these days, as the top now sits a few meters below street level.  When one digs a new basement or parking garage in a city like Ventimiglia, the shovel isn’t removing gravel, but cut stones and brick.  One doesn’t dig into the earth, but through the stratified remains of millennia.  In Cortona, Tuscany, my last (three-month) home in Italy, the city walls were layered like a cake:  topped by Renaissance construction, built upon medieval brick, in turn Roman and finally, when the earth was low enough to permit it, Etruscan foundations.  I swear, one day I came across a stone so ancient it would destroy a medium’s mind like the Russian villainess in the Crystal Skull film and there, in faded Enochian letters were the words “Adam + Eve 4ever” scratched crudely within a rough-hewn heart.  (Full disclosure:  I’m lying).

I also made an impulsive stop in Dolceacqua to visit the municipal cemetery which was much like the French style, with a mix of small above-ground tombs and quite grand mausoleums.  Two or three especially caught my eye because they showed that in this small and rather obscure town the Egyptian revival had made an impact on local funerary architecture.  One had a pyramid, another featured obelisks and a third had ornaments on the corners of the roof inspired by Egyptian models, such as those previously discussed on LoS with regard to Toulouse’s Terre Cabade Cemetery and the parish church at Ondes.  You can see these on the pyramid-roofed mausoleum as well.  I still don't know what this element is called, so if anyone out there has an idea....Also, being a fool, I neglected to note the dates.   If we compare with the examples in Ondes, Terre Cabade and Lisbon, I'd wager they date to the first half of the 19th century, probably sometime between 1830 and 1850.  The Egyptian revival was especially strong in Italy, or at least early.  In France it was kicked off in earnest after Napoleon's colonialist adventures in Egypt, whereas the Italians had been erecting obelisks since the days of the Roman Empire.  An obelisk was transferred to Rome by Caligula in 37 CE and placed in its current location in 1586; Bernini later designed St. Peter's Square so that the obelisk stood at it's center.  Bernini also put an obelisk at the center of his design for the Piazza Navona; it sits atop the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (1651).  Both obelisks evoke the axis mundi; Eden was said to lie at the center of four great rivers, at the very center of the world, hence the quattro fiumi, or "four rivers".

I came across another LoSian topic in Isolabona inside a church dedicated to Nostra Signora delle Grazie, in the form of a statue of Santa Lucia, the Sicilian saint whose eyes were plucked out.  She is depicted gore-free with closed eyes, holding the orbs on a plate in front her.  Seeing her there, so serene, made me think of how I grimace and groan at the slightest of aches.  Of course, no one who's had their eyes plucked out could be so calm, but it was rather humbling nonetheless.  The Gid and I have discussed Lucia in connection with Saint Agatha, another Sicilian saint, a virgin martyr, who, having dedicated herself to Christ, was brutally murdered for refusing the advances of a pagan suitor.  Agatha, however, had her breasts shorn off.  Gid first started an investigation into the link between the imagery of breasts and eyes in this little post, coming across a section of a book entitled Before the Milk of the Word: Eye Nipples by N. Hilton.  This is a fascinating essay and instead of summarizing it here, I encourage you to read it.  I was also intrigued to see a boat hanging from the ceiling of the nave;  I can only imagine that the name of this sanctuary, "Our Lady of Thanks" refers (in part) to the answered prayers of those who had husbands, sons or fathers set out to sea; Isolabona, is, after all, only minutes from the Mediterranean.  I've seen this in Spain (Tossa del Mar) and in such land-locked places as Rocamadour (with several model boats suspended from the ceiling) and Montaigut, in the form of a votive painting.

Tossa, Rocamadour and Montaigut all have what can be called Black Virgins and I'd hoped to see two more exemplars on our return trip.  I missed the one at St. Paul because I'd been expecting to stay nearby in Tourettes-sur-Loup, making it possible to pop out during our stay and have a look.  but alas!  Our real destinations was Tourettes, an hour away.  We didn't turn back.  Another watches over the cemetery at the town of St. Jean-Cap- Ferrat (I Googled it and it's about four humans tall!) but somehow, concentrating on a map perhaps, we blew right past it.  This town is between Nice and Monaco, you could almost smell the money in the air.  The French Riviera may be fabled and storied but you know, it is damn beautiful.  The town of Menton, between Monaco and the Italian border is, coming at it from the east, particularly impressive.  The Virgin at St. Jean also has an association with Cocteau, who wrote "There is a mysterious youth in the oldest stones of St. Jean."  So, if you're ever out that way....

Dolceacqua also featured a shrine to Mary where she was placed in a grotto.  This may be a reference to Lourdes, or could be a native tradition.  Mary associated with a cave also appears in Spain, at Covadonga (from Cueva Doña, I believe), which is also, like Lourdes noted for its healing waters.

Our two nights in Provence were spent drinking and chatting and really......a lot of drinking.  In the daytime, it was hours by the pool.  No mysteries, history, culture or anything worth reporting from an LoS standpoint.  But have no fear.  I'm off to Morocco in a month and I can already feel something Burroughsian and Gysinian in the wind....

Coming soon:  Photo-essay of my collection of Argentine folks saints (all four of 'em!) and an interview with original Discordian Hope Springs.

Aucamville Project 11: Mary on the Cross (redux)

3/3:  I'd forgotten I'd already done a (quite different) little riff on this theme:  The Virgin and the Cross.

Toulouse is known as "la Ville Rose" (the Pink City) because of the brick with which its buildings have been constructed since at least the Middle Ages.  These bricks are not the smallish rectangular jobbies you might think of in American or English construction.  In Toulouse and the surrounding areas the principle brick is called a "foraine" and is about 45 x 25 cm and 5 cm thick.  They're quite heavy and make for a solid wall.  45 centimeters is no small shakes.

 

The gatehouse to the Aucamville cemetery gives a sense of the ingenuity with which these foraines can be put to use.  The walls are made with them, as are the decorative elements of the cornice and the pediment, even the frame of the arched entry.  I've always liked this gatehouse, which is simple  but elegant.  The size and shape of the cross in the pediment is determined by the material:  four foraines make up each arm, and to me, it has always looked something like a flower.  If you look at our other posts about architecture in Toulouse (example), you'll see that everything from walls to bridges to obelisks to chateaux are made with these foraines.  I suppose that's due to the fact that the soil around here is pretty much pure clay.  If I dig in my garden, I will find this clay with some river stones mixed in, but very little dirt or vegetal matter.

In Toulouse, the Terre Cabade cemetery (see the previous example I mentioned), whose entrance features two brick obelisks, takes it's name from this clay-like earth--"cavade" in Occitan.  (Like Spanish, the v and b sound is pretty much interchangeable in some Occitan dialects).

For stately buildings, this clay is put into a more or less standard mould and fired in a kiln to produce bricks of terra cotta, or terre cuite.  But humbler buildings, barns and even homes will be made of unfired brick.  The clay is mixed with some straw and dried in the sun.  The uncooked bricks have the same dimensions as a foraine.  They are not usually used on the north face of a structure, and even the humblest of buildings will use cooked brick at their foundation, as well as to frame windows, doors and reinforce the corners of a structure; sometimes a row or two will be thrown in to solidify the wall, along with smooth flat river stones, or galets.  This architecture is much like that of the American Southwest, with wooden beams and adobe walls.  The principal difference is that in France, one almost never finds a flat roof.

Anyway, this is less about architecture than it is to present a few images for The Gid, something that astonished him:  the Virgin Mary at the center of the cross.

The two examples presented here are typical of the region, in material and imagery:  they are made out of wrought iron as opposed to cut stone, and the crosses use a vegetal motif.  Get your Joseph Campbell out, as Yggdrasil definitely comes to mind.  In the first example below, I find a deft piece of work; the vines curl about Mary's head and the leaves are clearly star-shaped, thus evoking Mary's halo of stars.  Whether intentional or not, the leaves as a crown of stars symbolically connect Heaven and Earth, referring (I believe) to the Tree of Life as a kind of axis mundi (see Aucamville Project 4).  It would also connect the very terrestrial act of burying the dead with the post-mortem voyage of the soul to heaven.

Example 1.  Note how the vine forms a halo of star-shaped leaves around Mary's head.

In the second example, we find a form more common in this area, where the Cross itself is like a tree.  The flowers are lilies, symbols of the Virgin, almost exploding from behind her in a luscious bouquet of vegetal grace, iron-clad to boot.  The spring-like form to the right of Mary's head (from the viewer's perspective) adds an especially dynamic touch.  Recall also that the fleur-de-lis, a stylized lily, is a long-standing symbol of French royalty; the lily as a symbol of both French royalty and the Virgin Mary would also link Mary with France.  As an aside, a cock is also commonly used on these wrought-iron crosses and it, too, is a symbol of France.  Current notions of laïcité aside, France is a decidedly Catholic country, or at least a Marial one:  no village is complete without a statue of the Virgin.

Example 2:  The Queen is dead, long live the Queen.

These use of these crosses is not confined to grave markers; for a detailed discussion of the many ways they are used, please see "Too late, baby. Slay a few animals. At the crossroads."

I'm also looking forward to an upcoming guest post by LoS pal Tim Wilson, who will write about these crosses, especially in the funerary context, and traditions derived from the pre-Christian worship of Hecate.  I don't know what he'll write, but I'd like to mention that Hecate is a tripartite goddess who was often portrayed facing three directions; this is linked to her function as a goddess of crossroads, of which death is a sort, I suppose!  Hecate, unsurprisingly, is sometimes viewed as an influence on Marial attributes; the latter's symbol, the lily, in it's stylized fleur-de-lis version, is often used to symbolize the trinity.  Hecate was also seen as a Savior, the Mother of Angels, which definitely fits in with Mary's role in Catholicism.  She is also associated with the underworld, which is especially resonant in the context we're looking at here.  I predict Tim will go into these ideas pretty thoroughly and, if I know Tim, not without a great deal of erudition and a dash of humor.

Finally, the third example below is less typical of the region, but the mandala-like, vaguely floral motif at the center really grabbed my attention.  It may merely be a pretty abstract design, or it may be intended to represent a flower or even the sun; a floral motif is clearly present at the base of the cross, with leaves growing up the sides and some kind of flower on the middle, a lily perhaps, or a lotus.  The flower strikes me as vaguely Egyptian.  The extremities on the arms and top of the cross also seem like stylized flowers.  If the "mandala" is a solar symbol, this could allude to the Occitan cross used in these parts, which some theorize may derive from a Gaulish solar disc.

This stone cross also has a weird androgynous quality, evoking at once both a curvaceous feminine form and a phallus.

So in these iron trees and this stone representations of flowers, as well as in the flower-like design of the gatehouse pediment, we have an interesting visual metaphor for the ephemeral being immortalized.  The flower is ephemeral but, like the Christian hope for the faithful at the end of the world, returns to life.

One final thought.  As the Aucamvillois bury their dead in the clay, one can't help but wonder that if on some level they are reminded of the origin of all life in Adam, who the Bible tells us, was formed by God from a lump of clay and then fired in His kiln, so to speak.

Human life grown from the soil, like a brick....or a flower.

A dreaded sunny day / So I meet you at the cemet'ry gates

Here's a little ditty for all you latter-day Egyptian Revivalists and cemetery groupies.... 

Back in 2009 I posted about the Egyptianized elements of the Terre Cabade cemetery (Toulouse), especially the pair of obelisks at the entrance.

Briefly put, these obelisks derive from Egyptian temple architecture and were adopted by the Phoenicians, who, if we are to believe Biblical accounts, applied them (as pillars) to the design of Solomon's Temple.  These pillars (Jachin and Boaz) were later incorporated into Freemasonic Lodge architecture (see I ♥ Phoenicia and Pillars of the Community).

The other day I happened to be skulking around the Saint-Simon neighborhood of Toulouse and saw that all of the pillars in the wall surrounding the parish cemetery are capped by regular pyramidions.  This is actually a rather widespread design, so I don't make too much of it....I'm not sure if it's a conscious case of "Egyptianizing" or not.

Saint-Simon:  Pillar with equilateral-sided square pyramidion. 1775?

I was walking away pondering that and saw a pair of pyramidion-capped pillars, and wondered if indeed, the builders weren't after all referencing the obelisk as entrance to a temenos, or sacred space.  I think this pair of pillars, whose pyramidions differ from the others, once marked an entrance.  Note that the walls to either side are made of brick and river stones (galets); in between, there is only brick.  I imagine it was once open and bricked up at a later date.  These obelisks are incredibly phallic, more so than most obelisks, the pyramidions strikingly glans-like.  This stylized form represents the penis, and the earth or cave which the tomb represents is likewise the womb.  Which is fitting for a cemetery, actually, as a symbol of resurrection.  Life from death, yadda yadda.

Saint-Simon:  Gateway with truncated square pyramidions.  1775?

The church dates from 1775, but there's no telling when the cemetery wall was actually built.

Just a few days later I passed through the town of Lévignac and saw a much more definite Egyptian reference.  Here we have something between an obelisk and a steep pyramid.  The left structure retains a cross, whereas the right cross (bam!) has tumbled down.

Entrance to Lévignac cemetery.  Date unknown.

Judging from the condition of the wall, I'd guess these are roughly contemporary with Terre Cabade (ca. 1840)  I'd be willing to guess within ten years or so of the latter.

Anyway, no earth-shattering revelations here; cemetery obelisks are ubiquitous in France, usually as monuments to the Great War, but this is only the second obelisk/pyramid gate design I've seen for a cemetery.

For a more thorough treatment, I encourage to follow the links to our previous posts.

Compare to:

Terre Cabade cemetery entrance, Toulouse. (1836)

Entrance to Passeio Público (not a cemetery), Rio de Janeiro. (1779-1783)

Ouroboros

Two recent posts featured on other websites:

Masonic Republics
A lil' look at monuments in Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Blagnac.

Sunshine State
KKK and Freemasonry in Florida.  Did I really use the SWAG method?

I link back as both a courtesy and an encouragement to read the other interesting posts these sites contain.

Update 6/6

Thought I'd add

Order and Progress in the Dérive: Freemasonry and Positivism in the Urban Landscape of Rio de Janeiro
An elaboration of Masonic Republics.

Down in a Hole

This post began as a continuation of my last, but as it became longer and longer I decided to make it into a post of its own.  I'd be grateful if any reader could help me out with the unanswered questions contained within, as well as adding their thoughts to the role of caverns and vaults in Masonic contexts.

Are Freemasons obsessed with Caves?



The Masonic Grand Lodge of Arizona meeting in the cave in the mine of the Copper Queen Consolidated Mining Co. at Bisbee, Arizona, Nov. 12th 1897 / A. Miller. 

In his introduction to James Shelby Downard's Carnivals of Life and Death, Adam Parfrey writes: "As seen in this book, Downard believes caves are fundamental to Masonic beliefs and ritualism, part of the secret history of the United States."  Parfrey illustrates his text with the above photo of the Grand Lodge of Arizona, which can be obtained from the Library of Congress website.

As Albert Mackey states in An Encyclopedia of Freemasonry:  "In the ceremonies of Freemasonry, we find the cavern or vault in what is called the Cryptic Freemasonry of the American Rite, and also in the advanced Degrees of the French and Scottish Rites, in which it is a symbol of the darkness of ignorance and crime impenetrable to the light of truth."

The Masonic symbolism as Mackey sees it, then, is essentially that of Plato's Allegory of the Cave.

A.E. Waite's Encyclopedia has a slightly different take:  "We come to see that the Cryptic Grades, the Royal Arch of Enoch and so forth are not modern inventions in respect of their traditional histories.  The common basis of all is of course the literal existence of subterranean vaulted chambers beneath the site of the Temple."  Ultimately, "our secret vaults are like concealed treasures [lying] beneath temples not built with hands" containing the ""Ark of our salvation" [which] bears the true Mason to Eternal Mansions and the Everlasting Presence."

Nothing untoward in either of these definitions, contrary to Downard and Parfrey suggest.

Parfrey, also mentions the underground vault of the York Rite in his handsome book Ritual America, as well as (presumably under the influence of Downard) the importance of caves to Masonry in general.  To illustrate, he reproduces the very same picture of the Arizona cave meeting used in his intro to Carnivals.  In a second photograph, without any commentary, one can discern "Volcano Lodge" embroidered on a banner.  Sadly, the patchy text is pretty much as it is with the rest of the book; it's choc-a-bloc full of beautiful images but rarely provides enough context to properly understand what we're looking at.  It's clearly organized to be sensationalist and panders to the most negative views of Freemasonry out there, but having said that, Freemasons themselves have produced many of these unflattering, silly or sometimes sinister images.  It is these images that make Ritual America, subtitled A Visual Guide, a book worth having, with the caveat that one has to look elsewhere for a more nuanced history of the Craft.

Thinking that if caves are so important to Freemasonry, there must be other examples than two photos, one of which Parfrey uses in two books, I did some Googling and came up with a few more examples of Lodges using caves as meeting places or with other Masonic connections:

Zedekiah's Cave

• http://www.mastermason.com/fmisrael/quarries.html


• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zedekiah%27s_Cave

The cave opening [to Zedekiah's Cave] is beneath the north wall of the Old City of Jerusalem; close to the Damascus Gate. From the entrance, the main path leads south for nearly 225 meters (~740 ft) till it reaches the main large cave called "The Freemasons Hall."

This cave may really be King Solomon's quarries, anyway being a real quarry and in the vicinity of the Temple Mount. This cave has special meaning for Freemasons in general, and for Mark Master Masons and the Royal Arch in particular. Starting in the days of the British Mandate, the cave was used for the ceremony of Mark Master Masons. This was temporarily suspended between the years 1948-1968. The impressive ceremony of the consecration of the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the State of Israel was carried out in the caves in the spring of 1969, and ever since then, the Mark degree has been performed in the caves on the average of once a year. 

These are the "subterranean vaulted chambers beneath the site of the Temple" referred to by Waite and are also mentioned in the Ecclesiastical History of Philostorgius known only through a summary by Saint Photius.

Royal Arch Cave

• http://nprsr.qld.gov.au/parks/chillagoe-caves/about.html 

There is a cave in the Chillagoe-Mungana Caves National Park called "Royal Arch Cave."  I can't find a specific reference to Freemasonry but it seems unlikely that the name is a coincidence.  There was a Masonic Lodge in Chillagoe at least as early as 1907.  This Lodge became Chillagoe Lodge No. 166 when the United Grand Lodge of Queensland was created in 1920.

Can anyone can confirm or deny that this cave was named for the Masonic body?

Malheur Cave

• http://www.burnslodge.org/malheur.html

Malheur Cave is a classic example of a large lava tube cave.  The cave is 17 miles east of Crane Hot Springs and is owned by the Masonic Lodge of Burns [No. 97, Oregon].

In 1938 two members of the lodge, Ulysses S. Hackney and Charles W. Loggan, came up with the idea of holding an outdoor stated meeting in the Malheur Cave 52 miles east of Burns. They devised a plan to use the Malheur Cave for an outdoor meeting of Masons in Oregon.  Their idea was well received, and the first official outdoor meeting of Masons in the Western United States was held at the Malheur Cave at a stated meeting, under Special Dispensation, at 8:00 pm, October 1st, 1938....After supper the Lodge was opened in the cave on the Master Mason degree, and the MM degree was conferred upon Brother Fellowcraft William Merle Bennett.

Forty-nine masons registered, and twenty-one different lodges from seven states and one foreign country were represented. Lighting was by gas lanterns.

Perhaps not such a propitious name, for malheur in French translates to woe, misfortune or bad luck.....

Eblen's Cave

• http://union38.org/wordpress/?page_id=142


• http://freemasonsfordummies.blogspot.fr/2008/06/eblens-cave-degree-weekend-august-15-16.html

A Masonic degree is conferred every year in Eblen's Cave, a natural cave that can comfortably hold 300 people. It is located 8 miles east of Kingston on the Clayton Brashears farm. Over the years, degrees have been presented by lodges from Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Delaware, California, Florida, Mississippi, Kansas, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Ohio and Maryland.

This event was inaugurated in 1972 "to institute an activity that would promote more interest in Masonry."

As I mentioned before, Parfrey's Ritual America also reproduces a picture of Volcano Lodge (No. 56, California), so a quick search turns up:

"Masonic Cave"

Volcano has an annual picnic usually held on the First Sunday of October at the "Masonic Cave" site (less than five minutes from the Lodge Hall). The Masonic Cave got its name from the first meetings there to organize a petition to the California Grand Lodge for a Volcano Lodge Charter.

Apparently the Lodge held some early meetings there as well.  That said:  "The caves were abandoned after five meetings when the Masons moved into their new meeting hall which they shared with the Odd Fellows, which was most likely a bit warmer and dryer."

George Washington Cave

Parfrey also mentions that George Washington used a cave as a Lodge meeting place.  Further inquiry reveals that the cave in question is George Washington Cave in Jefferson County WV.  "Tradition has it that the large three-room cave was the first Masonic meeting place west of the Blue Ridge. Samuel and John Augustine Washington were among a group of Masons who bought the cave in 1773 and in 1844 there was a major Masonic celebration there."

There a video about the cave here.  Unfortunately, there is no proof that George Washington actually ever set foot inside the cave, let alone attended Lodge there; it's merely part of local Masonic folklore.  His signature is scratched into the wall, but this could easily be spurious.  As anyone who lives in the areas where George Washington roamed can tell you, if every place that claims "George Washington slept here" is correct, Brother George would have had to have been something like 300 years old.  I just pulled that figure out of my hat, but you get the idea.  George Washington is such a towering figure that everyone wants to claim a piece of him, like pieces of the True Cross or hairs from Saint Whatchamacallit's beard.

I think anyone wanting to make a case that Masons are mad for caves does have a few examples to support their case, but the evidence is scanty at best.  Proof that Masons are doing evil and creepy things underground, like so many lil' devils, has not been documented at all, Parfrey's offhand mention of Benjamin Franklin's attendance at Sir Francis Dashwood's visits to the Hellfire Club aside.

A handful of Lodges occasionally meeting in caves really is a trifle compared to the literally thousands that do not!  Zedekiah's Cave has a long and obviously very important place in Israeli Freemasonry and the Rites mentioned by Mackey and Waite, yet this is easily explained by it's proximity to the Temple Mount and that the Temple is the central metaphor of Freemasonry.   But even this cave witnesses only one yearly event.  Eblen's Cave and Malheur Cave also hold one event per year, and those only date back to 1972 and 1938, respectively.  Volcano Cave is also only used once a year.  At one point the cave was used for more regular Lodge meetings, but only five times, until a more suitable place was found.  The Washington Cave seems more important not because it was a cave, but because it has been linked, perhaps apocryphally, to George Washington.

As Parfrey, Waite and Mackey write, it is true that a cavern or vault plays an important role in the Royal Arch Degrees.  At one time some Freemasons considered that the Royal Arch was the true culmination of the first three degrees; indeed, a dispute over its place in Masonry in the early 19th century even led to a  "schism" in English Freemasonry, which at one point boasted rival "Antient" and "Modern" Lodges with differing views.

So, one cannot entirely cast aside Parfrey and Downard's belief that caves are central to Freemasonry.  That said, the subject takes up all of four paragraphs of text in the 300+ page Ritual America.  As for Downard's book of weird masochistic fantasy, I can only say that what he purports to be Masonry is a complete load of horseshit.  I've said this elsewhere:  pick a symbol, any symbol.  You'll find it in Freemasonry:  boats, hearts, anchors, daggers, flowers, beehives, rainbows, tools, etc. ad nauseum.  I don't know why caves or vaults would be especially troublesome.  The empty tomb is is many ways the climax of the Passion--er, that didn't come out right!  What I mean to say is that it "proved" for many that Jesus was in fact what he claimed to be.  Early Christians met in catacombs.  What is a catacomb but an extensive cavern and underground vault?

So, it's not a big deal either way, but it was interesting to follow up and I'd be grateful for anymore examples that might be out there....