Bloke
Premium Member
I gotta start a thread on this (GSATOT!) - Masonic Acronyms.....
Masonic Acronyms are incredibly popular and incredibly confusing !
We all know many of them, but I just spent some time trying to workout what the hell I was being invited to when invited to the DGLME..... It turns out I was being invited to the District Grand Lodge of the Middle East... which is not in the Middle East at all - it's in Asia and working under Scotland. I will not forget that and here is the history of it;
What crazy Masonic Acronym got you stumped ?
Masonic Acronyms are incredibly popular and incredibly confusing !
We all know many of them, but I just spent some time trying to workout what the hell I was being invited to when invited to the DGLME..... It turns out I was being invited to the District Grand Lodge of the Middle East... which is not in the Middle East at all - it's in Asia and working under Scotland. I will not forget that and here is the history of it;
The District prides itself as the most multinational, multiracial, multicultural District as it covers, as far as the Grand Lodge of Scotland is concerned, the whole of the ASEAN region. It has currently, under its jurisdiction, Lodges in Malaysia (Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah & Sarawak), Singapore and Thailand. At one time it also included the Lodges in the countries of Indonesia, Brunei & Laos, where the Lodges are currently in darkness. It thus theoretically, encompasses a region of 3 million square kilometers and covers a population of over 300 million.
The District Grand Lodge of the Middle East was consecrated in Kuala Lumpur on October 20, 1916 to bring under a local banner, the then 3 operative Scottish Lodges in British Malaya, namely Lodge Scotia No. 1003 (Penang), Lodge Tullibardine in the East No. 1118 (Kuala Lumpur), and Lodge Malaya No. 1146 (Klang).
It was called Middle East for in the early Nineteenth Century, anything East of India but not in the Far East (Hong Kong, China & Japan) was the Middle East. In the Twentieth Century, the term Middle East has become associated with the region that was then known as the Near East. The Lodges in the region however, do not wish to the change the name, as it has grown on them by usage and by tradition.
The above is from http://www.dglme.my/about_dglme.php
What crazy Masonic Acronym got you stumped ?