Symbols, Lodges, Officers, Positions and Degrees
In order to fully understand the purposes and principles of Odd Fellowship, instruction in ceremonial form is divided into degrees. These degrees are dramatic in form and aim to emulate and impart the principles of the fraternity: Friendship, Love, Truth, Faith, Hope, Charity and Universal Justice. Each degree consists of symbols that aim to teach a practical moral code and encourages members to live and act upon them to act positive change upon the world. In the past, when most Odd Fellows lodges offered financial benefits for the sick and distressed members, such symbols, passwords and hand signs were used as proof of membership and to protect the lodge funds from impostors. These symbols, signs and passwords have been carried forward to modern times as a tradition. The most widely encountered symbol of the IOOF – on signs, buildings and gravemarkers – is the three-link chain ("the Chain With Three Links", the "Triple Links") with three initials, 'F', 'L' and 'T', one each inside each link, signifying Friendship, Love and Truth.
The Independent Order of Odd Fellows in the US has three levels of "Lodge": the Lodge, the Encampment, and the Patriarchs Militant. In addition, there is a private club named The Ancient Mystic Order of Samaritans (AMOS). In Australia, this system has been implemented in a slightly different, but largely similar manner.
Read more about this topic: Independent Order Of Odd Fellows
Famous quotes containing the words positions and/or degrees:
“The season developed and matured. Another year’s installment of flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes, finches, and such ephemeral creatures, took up their positions where only a year ago others had stood in their place when these were nothing more than germs and inorganic particles. Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out scents in invisible jets and breathings.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“So that the life of a writer, whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was not so much a state of composition, as a state of warfare; and his probation in it, precisely that of any other man militant upon earth,—both depending alike, not half so much upon the degrees of his WIT—as his RESISTANCE.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)