The Purpose of the Order as we understand it would be to seek large grants from corporations dealing in mystical lemon-type products (such as Lemon Pledge etc.) to sponsor the Order by paying generous sums to all who participate in our rituals, primarily consisting of long dour marches wearing lemon coloured derbies, drab suits, and sashes with medals, through places of no historical interest (if possible), holding aloft, rampant or couchant, fresh lemons in hands sinister, accompanied by eerily discordant brass bands, followed by irresponsible feasting, etc. One patron-saint of the Order would be the French 'utopian socialist' Charles Fourier, who believed that if Civilization could be overthrown and replaced by the society of Harmony (in which all Passions and manias would be encouraged) the ocean would spontaneously turn to lemonade. The Irish patron of the Order is Lord Glendale, best known for his ingenious escape from Dublin Castle via tunnel in 1798; later as an enthusiastic horticulturalist he made several unsucessful attempts to introduce lemon-farming to West Cork and Kerry. Another Irish patron would be John Toland (d. 1720), freethinker, pantheist & druid, who founded a pseudo-masonic Order of the nights of Jubilation in Holland in the early 1700's, devoted to eating and drinking.

Just as the Orange Order was a Masonic offshoot, the Lemon Order is a masonic shoot-off, inasmuch as the L\O\ founders made a pilgrimage to Freemasons Hall on Molesworth St. in Dublin and received there a message from certain Hidden Masters in the all-lemon-colored basement chamber. As a result one of our founders G\C\, whose grandfather was a 33° Mason & who is himself a spoiled Mason, became spiritually empowered to bestow the title La Grande Citronne upon all female officers of the Lemon Order, in accordance with the mystic rites. (It is believed by some that the 'Hidden Master' was actually the Honble. Eliz. Aldworth (1695-1775), the only woman ever initiated into Masonry - in Doneraile Co. Cork - after being discovered 'asleep' behind some curtains in the Lodge during a secret ceremony. unlike Freemasonry, the Lemon Order is amdrogynous or bi-sexual, i.e.open to all genders, hence the significance of the the Honble. Elizabeth's (alledged) manifestion in the Lemon Room at Molesworth St.)

1795 - Sept. 21 - Orange Order founded, first G\M\ named Wilson
1996 - Sept. 21 (exactly 200 years later) Lemon Order founded, first G\M Wilson. (Note: Just as 2001 will be the precise 'millennium' & not 2000 so 1996 marks the exact bicentennial of 1795)

(P\L\W)