From Mandiles Azules, we make public today what we believe is excellent news: The Grand General Chapter of the Grand Orient of France has just launched its new website.
Some time ago, the Grand Chapter of our neighbouring country had a means of communication on the Internet. Nothing comparable to what we have now, which also puts an end to a relative period of silence: A modern tool intended primarily to provide service, information and training to the members of the Grand General Chapter of the Grand Orient of France. It will also be useful to us who, for several months, have been making available to our readers, little by little but uninterruptedly and respecting copyright, the works provided by thinkers and historians of reference and essential reading in the experience of this ritual practice that unites us all.
We are talking about a useful tool for us Spanish speakers because, in addition to the translation work that Mandiles Azules will continue to carry out and disseminate, we have at our disposal an information source authorized both by the solvency of those who make up the entity and by the historical legitimacy of the Grand General Chapter of the Grand Orient of France.
Whoever visits this space will find two clearly differentiated areas: one intended – like other similar obedience spaces – to serve as an administrative platform for the members of the Grand Chapter. Another aimed at a broad audience made up of people interested in Freemasonry, members of the General Grand Chapter and members of the blue lodges who may have some curiosity or directly the intention of continuing their Masonic experience through progression in the Orders of Wisdom of the French Rite.
The website of someone who is the guarantor of a tradition does not neglect the most basic aspects of communication. Notably, this is a recently created space in which, at the time of writing this brief note, there are many spaces designed to disseminate the publication from which we have largely drawn: Joaben. Likewise, the publication of the externalization activities organized by both the Grand Chapter and the local structures that comprise it, the Sovereign Chapters, is planned.
History is not forgotten, either. The greeting of Jean Pierre Catala as the visible head of the Grand General Chapter of the GODF is joined by a brief review that points out the fundamental milestones experienced up to the present day: The founding of the Chamber of Degrees in 1782, the constitution of the GCG in 1784; its integration into the Grand Orient two years later; its geographical expansion in the period of the Napoleonic wars; the creation of the College of Rites; the period of drowsiness; the survival of the French Rite Section within the College of Rites, its reactivation, the foundation process…
In short, we are talking about a new tool at the service of the founding Rite of Enlightenment Freemasonry. A Rite free from any temptation of appropriation and that treasures a fundamental characteristic, universality; something that explains the emergence of multiple independent jurisdictions beyond French borders and that, from a formal point of view, crystallized with the signing of the Lisbon Charter on April 24, 2011, by 17 different entities that assumed the obligation to respect the characteristic values of adogmatic and liberal Freemasonry.