Expecting Rain

One time I was at a Dylan concert in October 2004 in Boulder, CO. I'll be darned if at the end of the show, old Bobby didn't turn to me and raise both of his arms, elbows bent at 90 degree angles, obviously some sort of intentional sign. Before that, it looked like he touched his wrists and kind of pulled up his sleeves a bit.
Anyhoo, I was just wondering if anyone else saw this sign or gesture. I read on some of the reviews that he did it at a couple of other shows around that time. Someone interpreted it as saying, "look, nothing up the sleeves." I didn't know what it meant, still don't really. But I was thumbing through a book on Masonic symbols, and wouldn't you know that the exact sign ol' Bobby gave to me is well known as the Masonic symbol for distress. It's sometimes accompanied by the statement: "Oh Lord, My God, is there no help for the widow's son?" If I had known this at the time, I might have inquired as to whether Bob needed my help, as he did direct the sign at me after all. Anyone know what it meant? Or is that like asking what one of the songs means or whether he's sold his soul? On a related note, I got a set of cufflinks that Christmas as a gift.

Let's get this story straight. Were the cufflinks a Christmas gift from Bob? Or are you suggesting that the great man's uncanny paranormal powers enabled him to PREDICT that you'd receive a set of cufflinks for Christmas? I think we should be told.

"The "High Sign" or Grand Masonic Hailing Sign of Distress
A phrase or gesture which is only to be used in extreme circumstances is the Grand Masonic Hailing Sign of Distress, or "High Sign". A Masonic defendant in court or "caught in the pinch" might bury his head in his hands and cry, "Oh Lord, my God, is there no help for the widow's son?"

The gesture which can accompany this is for the mason to raise his arms over his heads in a "hands up" fashion and then lower them in three distinct stages pivoting his arms at the elbows until they are perpendicular to the ground keeping his palms down.

Any Mason seeing this gesture or hearing these words is oath bound to do anything possible to save the other Mason from danger, up to, but not including, the loss of his own life"

[quote="Eddie"]Let's get this story straight. Were the cufflinks a Christmas gift from Bob? Or are you suggesting that the great man's uncanny paranormal powers enabled him to PREDICT that you'd receive a set of cufflinks for Christmas? I think we should be told.[/quote]

No, the cufflinks were from my sister. And she didn't give me the "high sign," or any other sign for that matter. So, come to think of it, I don't know if the two were related.

"sign on the cross" entails excerpts from several masonic chants circa 1600.

My local pub in Bow, East London is called "The Widow's Son". All these years I've been served my pints of Stella Artois by a nest? coven? conspiracy? of bleedin' freemasons. Stone me! Hadn't really picked up on any particular signals on the part of the bar staff before but I'll certainly be on my guard from now on. Phew! A narrow escape. Thanks.

There's a picture of the distress sign toward the bottom of this page:

http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/secrets.html

I'm not smart enough to cut and paste it or do an image link, maybe someone can.

Curiouser and curiouser! It seems that Bob's stage "Eye" logo (about half-way down the link page) is a masonic symbol. This puts everything in an entirely new perspective.

bob sucking brandos dick i can put up with .but a x freemason......no no

woah

i must of missed something...

"The Widow's Son" pub is also known as "The Bun House". Its sign depicts a 19th c. Royal Navy rating- bell-bottomed trousers and all- looking up at a net suspended from the ceiling and full of the kind of buns sold in UK baker shops at Easter: "hot cross buns". The legend is that the widow who owned the pub bade farewell to her sailor son when he went off to sea and promised that she'd bake him such a bun when he came home at Easter time. He never did. But each year the widow baked the promised bun in expectation of his return. And to this day you'll find a net of fossilised buns hanging from the ceiling of the bar. A new one is added each Easter Sunday, when ratings from visiting Royal Naval ships in the port of London hold a party in the bar to honour the tradition.

But even odder is the story of the poltergeist that haunts the ladies lavatory of the "Bow Bells" pub on Bow Road. It's known as "the phantom flusher" for reasons it would be indelicate to spell out.

These damn freemasons get everywhere.

C'mon, no one saw him do that?

No, HST. That sign from Bob was meant for you and you alone. You were given a task to do. Have you done it?

No, queenjane, but I did pass the message along to Dan Brown, and he agreed to take care of it for me. [/quote]

Uh-huh... I passed something too.

Theodore Roosevelt: Often expressing his interest in Freemasonry, Roosevelt visited lodges at home and abroad. He participated in Masonic ceremonies on several occasions while President, delivering the principal address on one occasion and wearing Masonic regalia on another.

William H. Taft: Taft was another of the Presidents that took part in various Masonic activities while in office. On one occasion he posed for a picture while wearing Washington's Masonic regalia at the White House.

Warren G. Harding: Becoming a Mason only three years before his death, Harding nevertheless became very active Masonically and joined a number of the appendant orders.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Mason for thirty-four years, Roosevelt participated in numerous Masonic activities, including "raising" his son Elliott as a Master Mason in 1933.

Harry S. Truman: Becoming a Mason in 1909, Truman was the second President to have served as a Grand Master, being elected Grand Master of Missouri in 1940. He was probably the most active Mason of any President since Washington. Millions of Americans witnessed his Masonic funeral service on national television

Bob Dylan: Known to have served as Junior Warden of his lodge in Minnesota. Eventually holding membership in three different lodges (Masons may move membership from one lodge to another or, in some states, become dual or plural members), Dylan was Chaplain in the second of these in Malibu.

Gerald R. Ford: Still living at this writing, it is perhaps too early to summarize Ford's Masonic life. In addition to the Presidents listed, it is widely believed that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were Masons, but documentation of their Masonic memberships has never been discovered. Lyndon B. Johnson received the first degree and was thus an Entered Appentice, but he never became a Master Mason.

I am bloody well stunned. Is this for real? I thought Masons were known to be anti-Semitic, but what I know about it you could write on the head of a pin. Have I got that all wrong??

I WILL say that I was shocked to see, recently on our local MLK march, a group of black gentlemen who were wearing those fez hats and carrying a banner saying they represented a Masonic lodge. I guess I always thought Masons were somewhat racist as well. Am I thinking of another fraternal organization?? Is the Scottish Rite organization the same thing as Masons??

My Dad was actually a Mason. He only rarely attended their meetings but he was very proud of the fact that he was one. He got a newsletter containing mostly boring material, as far as I could tell. And he had a lapel pin from it that he would wear on those rare occasions he wore a suit, like when he went to church several times a year when Mom insisted. Before he died he made arrangements that he was to have a Mason service performed, so sure enough four fellow Masons showed up at the Funeral home and performed it. My job was to make darn sure I brought the thingy that goes around his waist for that service so he could be buried with it. My oldest sister grumbled about the whole deal, she didn’t like it and wished he had not made those arrangements. But being as he did, we were bound to go through with it.

As a youngster I was obliged to join DeMolay, which I was told was like a youth version of the Masons. It was formed, I guess, to pay homage to a Frenchman named Jacque DeMolay, who we were taught was unjustly executed a long time ago. All I remember is, there were a lot of things to memorize and a bunch of strange ceremonies to perform, and a lot of sadness you were supposed to feel about poor old Jacque. After about a year, I couldn’t stand it any more, it just seemed too darn boring and pointless, so after much pleading with Dad I was allowed to quietly drop out.

And that’s all I know about it. I suppose it’s all evil or something, but I just found it boring, that’s all. Did I mention the word "boring"?

Now, the Boy Scouts! Now THERE was something that useful and FUN!

maybe bob sold his sole to the freemastodons

who keep him locked up in a trunk

I believe I've mentioned the 17th-18th c. English architect Nicholas Hawksmoor ("The Devil's Architect") on this forum before. A pupil of Christopher Wren- who built St Paul's Cathedral, London- Hawksmoor was popularly supposed to be a freemason or a satanist because he based the designs of the London churches he constructed after the Great Fire of 1666 (the number of the beast!) on classical, pagan sources. Take a map of London and mark the positions of his churches and you arrive at something resembling an occult pentacle. It's an historical oddity that the environs of his buildings have been associated with grisly crimes: the Marr/Williamson murders of 1811 and the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888. And it was certainly an odd notion to build Christ Church, Spitalfields on a Plague pit- using the dead as its foundation.

A more likely explanation is that Hawksmoor's interest in freemasonry led him to incorporate classical/occult symbols into his designs. You'll find in the churchyard of St Anne's, Limehouse- for example- a white stone pyramid. Very curious.

For further information, read Peter Ackroyd's novel HAWKSMOOR or Iain Sinclair's book of poems LUD HEAT.

Interesting stuff, E. Wasn't there something having to do with Masons re: the Jack the Ripper murders? For a while, they thought the killer was a Mason for some reason. What was it? Also, I seem to remember there was something written on a wall about the "jewes are the men who will not be" something or other. And it seems like there was something in the scrawl that led investigators to infer it was related to the Masons. Am I confusing several pieces of minutiae?

I guess I'm kind of like Jim W in that if I was ever exposed to anything about Masons, I found it pretty boring, and didn't pay attention very well.

Also, why are they called Freemasons in England, but not so much in the US?

Yeeeeah!

You would think it would be the other way around.

burgundy

English writer Stephen Knight wrote a book called JACK THE RIPPER: the final solution (1976) which first proposed the Royal Family/Masonic conspiracy theory of the 1888 Whitechapel murders. Knight's source was literary hoaxer Joseph Sickert who later confessed that he'd made up the whole story. Essentially this involved Queen Victoria's surgeon Sir William Gull and a group of homicidal freemasons murdering a group of blackmailing East End prostitutes who had discovered that the heir to the throne Prince Albert Victor (known as "Eddy"!) had married an illiterate Catholic and fathered a child.

Knight professed to see ritualistic details in the manner of the murders which fingered the masons: the type of mutilation, the writing on the wall you mention etc. It was all bunk.

But a good story never dies. The Johnny Depp movie FROM HELL, in which Depp plays a highly fictionalised Inspector Abberline, resurrects the masonic myth and adds a few touches of its own. Worth seeing, actually.

Knight also went on to write a book about the Masons themselves, THE BROTHERHOOD. He died young (of a brain tumour) and this, of course, only added fuel to the conspiracy theory: murdered by avenging masons, obviously!

As for the transatlantic difference in nomenclature, I have no idea- but THE BROTHERHOOD might help.

"They run a brick and tile company"

"Bertha Mason shook it, broke it
She hung it on the wall"

"Build your house outta mortar and bricks"

Crikey! Now I'm REALLY worried....