A New Opinel

An old Victorinox, a heavy ZT, and Freemasonry

Yesterday I ordered a new Opinel pocket knife.

It wasn’t a major purchase. The thing costs twenty bucks. It’s just some wood and carbon steel in a design that hasn’t changed much over the past 135 years. It’s made in France though, so that’s cool.

I’ve owned carbon steel Opinels for most of my adult life, and to my mind these super inexpensive and plain knives are the very best available for what they are designed to do. They are designed to cut stuff, and they cut stuff better than any other knife I’ve ever encountered. The carbon steel is super easy to keep razor sharp, and it’ll go through anything with ease.

But, they aren’t designed to do anything else at all.

If one tried to use the blade as a screwdriver, I’m fairly certain it would break. Likewise with prying, or anything else beyond its intended use.

Photo by Testeur de CBD on Unsplash

As a younger man, I carried a Victorinox Swiss Army style knife. These knives also hold a very keen edge with a blade profile that makes cutting a breeze.

In addition to that, depending on the model, such a knife offers a number of other tools. I well remember using the scizzors often, and the tweezers. I’d hone the different blades to different levels of sharpness for varying use. I even remember using the little saw once in an emergency.

Some years ago I bought a ZT 0350. Now that’s a knife! Razor sharp, and ready for hard use and even abuse. I doubt you could break it if you tried. If you need an overbuilt tank, it’s your knife.

Holding the ZT in hand gives me confidence that no matter what I ever asked the knife to do, it would do. It would not fail under any conditions that I could put it to. It’s also really fun to play with. That assisted opening is powerful, and that power is expressed in really audible and tactile ways. It’s loud and snappy.

But, I’ve never carried the ZT through my day. It’s too heavy. My pants would fall down around my ankles. It is overbuilt to the point of impracticality for my everyday use, so it only comes out in specific situations.

These knives remind me of our Ancient Craft.

Heading down to our Craft Lodge for a Stated Meeting or a Degree. Men have been doing just that for many generations. We know exactly what to expect. It hasn’t changed much at all over a very long history.

It’s not modern, or particularly exciting, indeed it is a throwback to a much earlier time. Technology hasn’t even really meaningfully touched it.

But it works extremely well. It does exactly what it was intended to do. We have to use it as it was intended to be used for it to work, but as long as we do our part, our Craft Lodge will deliver on its promises to us.

Just as that Opinel knife does.

We can add to our Craft Lodge experience.

We can join the York or Scottish Rite. Become a member of the Eastern Star or Amaranth. We can become a part of our organizations for youth. Become active in one of the many invitational Orders. Join the Shrine or the Grotto.

In this way, we can do more things, and we can expand our understanding of just what our Craft is.

Just as we can do more things with a Victorinox Swiss Army Knife than we can do with a more humble and basic Opinel. We can come to see that while a knife is a blade with a handle, it can be more than just that.

We can feast on a much rarer experience

Like that strikingly overbuilt ZT knife. We can go to truly amazing events like a Spring Reunion at Guthrie Scottish Rite, the wonderful Esoteric Conference put on each year in Seattle, the Starlight Fellowcraft Degree held under the forest canopy in Quilcene, or even the Cascadia Mystic Convergence being sponsored this spring by Centralia Lodge.

These things, and so many others like them are awesome!

But, like that ZT knife, being too overbuilt and too heavy for everyday carry for most people, most Masons couldn’t thrive Masonically if their only connection to Freemasonry was the occasional big and wonderful event.

The ZT is unbelievably nice, but much more often, we just need that little Opinel. The Victorinox filled with gadgets (the more gadgets the better) lets us do a lot, but if it weren’t for the blade, the gadgets wouldn’t have reason to exist. The heart of the Opinel, the razor sharp blade, is likewise the soul of the Victorinox, no matter how much else might be added.