How Passion Got Booked - An Interview with John S. Nagy

How Passion Got Booked - An Interview with John S. Nagy 

SPOTLIGHT* 

Editor’s Note: On March 16th & 17th of this year, I was In Jackson, Mississippi, having been invited to speak before the Grand Lodge of Mississippi’s Research Lodge. While there I saw a table full of Masonic books. I had to investigate. There I saw W. Bro. John Nagy (“Coach” to his friends). I entered into a fascinating conversation with him and the discussion turned into something of an interview. As we talked, I realized that what was being said, might well be of value to others. The result is this paper and interview. ~ MRP** 

Question: Coach, you’ve written and publish quite a few books. What inspired you to become a writer? 

Frustration and a passion for clarity. I joined the Craft to become a better man. The bumper stickers all claimed that the organization made good men better. But after I joined, I realized all too soon that not only was I not better for it, but everything that I went through had nothing to do with making me a better man. My experiences seem designed for me to be conforming to organizational guidelines, to make me a better member. Just about every answer I received from my Brothers could not be explained beyond what they were told when they were asked the same questions. None of the responses directed me toward betterment, just conformity. 

Question: Are you referring to the Masonic instructors who had you in their charge while you were a candidate. 

Yes, but I can’t limit it there. Long after I was Raised, I encountered the same inabilities in just about every Brother I encountered. Here are but three of thousands of questions that have less than sufficient responses from the majority of the Craft:

• What are vices and superfluities, how do they compare to each other and what must one do to successfully divest oneself of them?
• How does one go about cultivating virtue in one’s life?
• Where do we find the materials to make cement within ritual and how do these materials symbolically produce Brotherly love when properly applied and in such a way that it improves your life?

Sadly, there were no adequate answers to questions that point members toward what actually makes a good man better or how ritual spells this out for us. Every last one of these questions has an answer, but you have to look for it outside the meeting rooms, support staff and organizational literature. Brothers in charge truly don’t know adequate answers and are of little to no help. They’re all focused on supporting the degree machine, not the betterment of men. The more I sought answers, the more I realized that I was not alone in my efforts. I’ve encountered frustration in so many members and past members that I’ve lost count. We all had the same observations and gripes though. Ritual is filled with all sorts of gems, but there were no adequate guides that explained how to recognize, understand, access, and apply them. It was like having treasure maps that no one knew how to read. They all looked neat. They were fun to talk about. We all knew that there was more to them. But there was no support in reading them, much less how to use them to travel successfully through life. It’s frustrating knowing something of value is there and having no way to access it!

Question: What about the materials provided to you by Grand Lodge?

You’d think these materials would have helped. They’re certainly available to help the members. Unfortunately, we were finding dead-ends everywhere when we made any effort to investigate the commonly provided Grand Lodge materials. Most all of it was filled with things that sounded profound but didn’t really explain the nuts and bolts of recognizing, understanding, and applying the activities that made good men better. Furthermore, far too much of it was focused upon the rules, regulations and traditions, the lexicon and lore of the fraternity, and passing off far too much of the lore as history. Some materials reflected biographies of well-known members and expression of unsupported but well-embraced opinions that bolstered the overall appearance of the Fraternity. Sure, romantic notions are attractive, but when you get down to brass-tacks, next to none of it supported actually making good men better or even the slightest indication of how. And this doesn’t begin to touch upon things that were put into the materials that were borrowed from other jurisdictions and never checked out. This only aggravated our frustrations further.

Question: So, you wrote about it?

No, I researched first. I looked into what was written about the Light I sought. Initially, I stayed focused on materials that were provided by Grand Lodges. I believed that they would be comprehensive. I soon found they were nowhere near adequate. I found that the materials supplied were too often borrowed from someone who had borrowed it from yet another borrowed source. As I explored the long chains of borrowed sources, inevitably I found a lot of conclusions were based upon some long dead author who used the words perhaps and maybe in their statements. Materials being provided for educational purposes were based upon conjecture; they were guessing based upon what was believed to be evidence. They too often were not factually or historically based or assumptions. An example would be the word Free used within the terms “Free & Accepted,” “Free Mason,” “Free Stone,” and “Free Born” is not based upon the modern-day definition of the word Free, as in “unrestrained.” The terms are all based upon the word franche, which meant, “superior; excellent; pure; top-notch; master.” Research backs this up. As a result of not knowing this, you have a lot of poorly researched papers trying to justify the “without restraint” definition wrongly assigned to the word as applied to the four terms. I learned early on that the Craft sources are filled with far too much inbred materials to be sufficient in rendering supported conclusions, unless you are looking to merely show that current explanations are right in line with what has already been written by other Craft members. Craft lore influences within its overall literature base are that strong. When you look at all the interconnections, they form a supportive web that even manipulates non-members in their research offerings.

Question: Non-member authors?

Yes. At one point in my research efforts, I encountered a multi degree non-member author out of the Northeast who wrote a book about English Etymology and he had cut and pasted the definition of freestone right out of a conjecture based paper written by a member of the fraternity. In a follow-up addendum to his initial book that he publish about a year later, he pretty much admits he cut and pasted the explanation without fact-checking, that he never felt right about it and proceeded to reverse what he cut and pasted showing that further research proved this explanation to be wrong and why. It was at this point that I recognized I had been fishing in a freemasonic barrel and needed to throw my line into a bigger body of water; one that allowed for more Light than the closed-in barrel I had been dipping my line into. And that has made all the difference in the world to my efforts. An example is the ruffians’ names are not names! They’re phonetically approximated and cleverly rendered statements in a foreign tongue that is no longer spoken in the dialect where they originated. They have also been encoded to divert attention from the obvious.

Question: How did you arrive at this?

I used sources existing both inside and outside the Craft to do the research. Not one Fraternal source was able to figure this out. However, when I researched the history, locations and the dialects spoken within the surrounding regions at specific points in time, it became clear that the person who wrote their names into ritual for the first time was sending a direct message into the future for someone to decode, if they took the time to connect the dots. It was figured out in 2019. Their “names” first appeared in print in 1760. So, how did it stay hidden two-hundred and forty some-odd years? Why did members never look into what these names actually were communicating? Why did they simply ask whomever they were training to memorize the script and make sure the next generation did the same? This is but one example of the multitudes of things hidden in plain sight that members should be encouraged to look into, explore, assess, and apply within their lives to make themselves better men. But members are too busy training members to train members to make members rather than cultivating them into better men.

Question: How did you start writing?

My frustration compelled me to research. I wrote things down because the more I discovered, the more I became unclear as to the significance of my findings. I was in overload and writing was a way for me to sort the information out on paper, rather than in my head. This was of great assistance to me since the more I researched, the more overwhelmed I became. Writing was cathartic. It freed my mind of clutter and it helped me clarify what I thought I knew about of my research efforts. And there was an unanticipated benefit of bringing forth tremendous order to the chaos of my mind. There was value in the act of writing something down clear enough so that another person who didn’t do the research would understand what was stated enough to convey it to another party so that they would understand. This would mean I had to write it down so clearly that someone using these materials to instruct would not convey them in a confusing manner. Readers would “get” what was conveyed in writing and be empowered (and compelled) to convey it to others well. I wanted to make sure that I would not have to revisit the materials and question their validity. Several sources had to concur with the findings, and it had to be clearly expressed so that when I went back to what I wrote, I would understand fully what was put forth and why. Each book I wrote lays the foundation for the next. Just like the degrees, you must fully comprehend each level before you can begin to grasp the next. The first book was a documentation of the first wave of research. Sure, there are things within each book that stand alone, but the whole series is a progression through the research.

Question: At what point did you decide to share your writings?

Initially, I had one primary reader in mind – me. I desired a book that I would want on my bookshelf as an in-depth read and reference. I knew that what I wrote was first and foremost to put down in writing what I researched and uncovered. It was only when I got to the point where I was going to share it, as in publish, that I also wanted very much to make sure anyone who read them would understand how the research unfolded and why. In this respect they represent a continuum of research that needs to be read from beginning to end to best understand. I learned so much along the way and I added new twists to the foundation when I uncovered new aspects of already visited topics. That’s what happens when you’re continually researching and writing about new things or new viewpoints on old things. You come across new materials and new viewpoints.

Question: And that brings us back to your publishing them.

Yes. I wanted to eventually produce books that I would want to have on my bookshelves; books that I wanted to read and that I would invest in without hesitation because they had within them the Light for which I joined the Craft. The bonus was that I knew I was not alone in this so publishing made these books available for not just me, but also for others who had the same interest. I have been blessed with far more than what I set out to do. As a direct result of my initial frustration, I learned how to do my own research and writing. In sharing what I wrote, I also have a network of like-mind, like-hearted and like-spirited Brothers around the world who have the same passion for Light, as I do. I also have had more Brothers than I can recall tell me that what I wrote within my books is exactly what they joined for. What I have expressed through these books has given them back a hope that was dying due to the fraternity’s current focus.

Question: But how did the publishing of these books come about?

Ah! That’s just it. I was so frustrated by my first few years within the fraternity that I shared my displeasure with a few officers in my lodge. They said that I wanted more out of the meetings, provide what you want, and we’ll give you meeting time. So, I took some of my research and created papers to share with my lodge brothers as presentations during open meetings. But, I can tell you that reading papers in open lodge was not truly appreciated. Kindergartners love having things read to them; grown men, not so much. They much prefer reading these materials for themselves.

Question: But you currently speak at lodges around the country all the time.

Yes. And the difference now, from what I did in the beginning, is that almost everything I present to my Brothers is unscripted. It’s live and unrehearsed and the only thing I have to go with is an outline to lead me and the audience down the road. I’m sharing from my heart the light that is within and my passion for what I offer is evident to all involved. If I had not taken the time to internalize the Light, clarify it through writing and literally make it a part of me, I would not be able to convey that Light with clearly directed passion so that Brothers who are interested will not only understand that Light, but feel it as well. I found all too soon that the Brothers who heard what I spoke of wanted to know if they could read up on what I shared. I initially just sent them a copy of what I wrote, and sometimes the research notes that accompanied them as well and when asked. Unfortunately, it got to the point where I was being asked for multiple papers with notes. I was encouraged by quite a few Brothers to put them into a book so that they could read them and refer back to them, sort of like what I initially had in mind for myself.

Question: So you put them into book form?

I did. And once I did, Brothers wanted copies which led to another challenge — once they obtained one book, they wanted more.

Question: What’s your biggest challenge in all this?

The finishing touches, as in, taking care of each book’s continuity, grammar, and typos. I have a group of dedicated proofreaders to assist in tracking each of these issues and who each have their specialty. This is where those who can best work and best agree really come in handy. A dependable team of Brothers is a Godsend in these matters. And the second is don’t sweat the continuity, grammar, and typos once the book is published; that’s what second editions are for. Brothers sincerely seeking the Light it has to offer will understand what is trying to be conveyed, appreciate the efforts to get it into their hands, and do so without judgment.

Question: Did you ever imagine that you’d have published over a dozen books as a result of your passion for Light?

No. But I do realize now that, quite by accident, I took on a responsibility to explain the road maps we call Ritual when I started researching them early on. My passion for Ritual’s Light drove my efforts forward. My desire to share is also driven by the belief that future generations will be better informed as to what these maps direct us to do. I hope this is evident in these books. Every last one of them targets a different aspect of Craft development. Each is designed to cultivate a different aspect of thinking and being. Each has become more than just a conveyance of Light. They are empowering tools, and in the right hands they can transform the way a Brother thinks to the better.

Question: Thanks for taking the time to talk.

You’re most welcome and it has been an honor, privilege, and a pleasure. Thanks for asking!

  * Published in The Journal of the Masonic Society; / Issue 49 / SUMMER 2020
** Bro. Micheal R Poll, Editor