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Comment by ransom1538 | Hacker News Reader

The Shriners are great guys that donate a ton of cash to children

Meh. Masons. The mason lodges were a place a bunch of guys got together in the 18th and 19th century, drank beers and bitched about politics (EG. No football yet). Because of their massive scale and their 'club' feel people immediately assumed a conspiracy. I wouldn't give them this much credit --- as the history channel does on some crappy episode of Ancient Aliens.

Now? I help old mason guys get out of their car door at Walgreens. Their lodges are almost empty, they are dying off in age and much of their lodge real estate is rented out for Justin Bieber concerts [1].

http://centersanfrancisco.com/nobhillmasonic/Tickets-Active....

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Like anything, it polarizes. There are some thriving lodges, expiring ones, and not a lot in the middle.

Personally, I think they are due for the pendulum to swing back in their favor as generations of men start asking themselves hard questions about what it means to be a good man. The quality of the answers provided by the internet, media, self help, whatever life coaches do, and even churches is limited, and yet the popularity of the topic shows how prevalent the need is. A resurgence could help repair the civil fabric.

I didn't know about the Hawaiian Kings, that's some peculiar trivia, but it makes sense, and I understand has a lot of precedents.

Can say that the new documentary on Netflix is hilariously accurate.

What about the new Netflix show is accurate? I was curious about the veracity of the show and the breadth of what it covers.

Mainly the kinds of characters you meet, and what it means to them. If someone found the documentary appealing, they likely wouldn't be disappointed by the experience either.

The founders of modern Freemasonry pulled in a lot of streams from the zeitgeist of the British Renaissance and Enlightenment, and that means that it's brimming with everything from alchemical terminology to astronomy and Egyptophilia. It also has a strong base in the Bible.

There is an argument that it was popularised in response to the removal of high ritual from the church during the reformation, and took the place of a lot of the mystery and esotericism which was lost along the way; and as such, it represented a threat to the Roman church, whose reaction spurred a lot of the conspiracy theories we see today.

Like the other poster who responded, I think it's likely to experience a resurgence, for similar reasons to the rise in popularity in the UK of choral evensong services in churches and cathedrals.

As far as discussing politics is concerned, Freemasons have long been enjoined from discussing politics in lodge, for a variety of reasons.

Freemasonry means different things to different places. In Europe, it followed the parable of certain sectors of the bourgeoise, some of whom ended up in very dark places after universal suffrage became commonplace.

For example, until fairly recently, in some Italian cities if you wanted a career in the civil service you had to choose between Catholicism, Communism, and Freemasonry. No conspiracy needed, just regular turf wars: three churches competing to place “their men” where decisions were made.

The vulgata is that Freemasonry is still relatively strong in Italian academia. It’s just a form of networking in a country that officially forbids networking as a concept — like many things in Catholic states, it is officially forbidden but everybody does it anyway.

It’s just a form of networking in a country that officially forbids networking as a concept — like many things in Catholic states, it is officially forbidden but everybody does it anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_Due

Yeah, that was what I referred to with the "dark paths". But the Cold War is long past, it's a different world.

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