Difficult Questions About Freemasonry (2001) | Hacker News Reader

Difficult Questions About Freemasonry (2001)

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31 pointspoundofshrimp24 comments

>I've read the ritual in an exposé; what is all this strange stuff?

>Remember that Masons solemnly pledge to keep the ritual secret. An "exposé" is the product of someone who has broken a promise to his friends and neighbors and to God. Can you really trust that such a person is telling you the truth?

By this reasoning you should never trust whistleblowers.

Yes, this jumped out at me as a classic disciplinary tactic of cults, along with this:

> Morals and Dogma was first of all written for those who have received the degrees of Scottish Rite Freemasonry in the form developed and edited by Albert Pike (the "Pike recension"). For someone to attempt to interpret the contents without the knowledge of the degrees is like trying to understand a book on quantum physics without having mastered the basics of dynamics and statics.

The reasons Freemasons might want to dissemble around Pike are obvious, given that he is both still given prominent billing in their Washington DC temple and was one of the highest ranking early members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Understand that Masonic degrees usually can be divided into a ritual portion and a lecture portion elaborating on the ideas found in the ceremonial. Morals and Dogma contains extra written lectures for an obsolete series of degrees Pike revised in the 1870s. Sure, there's a lot you can take away from the extra lectures, but you're missing a lot of context without knowing the contents of the degrees. The lectures in Morals and Dogma were deemed to be not secret, but the ceremonials were. As a result, a lot more people outside of Masonry are familiar with Morals and Dogma than the ceremonials. These days, you can occasionally find the rituals for sale, but they're rather uncommon. The Supreme Council now publishes Magnum Opus, the first draft of the degrees that would eventually go along with Morals and Dogma.

There is no contemporary evidence that Pike was a member of the KKK, only one person making that claim 20 years after he was dead.

I’m a mason. It’s a force for good in my life. Some like to emphasise the mystique around Freemasonry but, seriously, it’s like amateur dramatics meets a supper club. I enjoy the fellowship and the local connections that I have built as my work life is online, remote and global. If you think it may be something you’d enjoy you’ve got nothing to lose if you contact your local lodge to express interest, and contrary to popular belief it is a simple matter to disengage if it’s not for you after all.

I think that most (sensible) people do not fear that Masons are devil worshippers, but rather that malicious people can hijack these groups to advance their political agenda.

If you think this is far-fetched, you should keep in mind that one of the greatest political scandals in Italy involved a deranged masonic lodge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_Due

Related: is anyone here part of any sort of secret societies in Silicon Valley that they want to write about? I've heard rumors about these sorts of things, but never read anything specific on the web.

I'll just throw out there that I've been interested in Masonry lately, during the pandemic I realized how lacking connections are in my life and the idea of a fraternity of men that have joined together to be better is something that I would want to be a part of.

I've been going to some of their open meetings lately and enjoyed them, but what I've found of masonry I've liked so far. It isn't some big secret it is more like an institution that helps builds connections amongst people.

I wonder if they'll change their policy on mandating belief in a God of some kind, as agnosticism and atheism become increasingly popular.

There are no rules that your higher power is an anthropomorphic, omnipotent, omniscient, sky chair god. The definition is entirely up to the candidate and there is no quiz or qualifications.

I think most agnostics and atheists don't believe in a higher power just in general. And if you stretch it to, "the nothingness you believe in is your supreme being!" the definition is so loose as to be meaningless.

A word with no end is a deed with no boundaries. What a thing isn't means as much it its identity as the things is definitely is.

They already did back in the 1800s the French formed the Grand Orient and removed the requirement of a belief in a higher power. The Grand Orient of France is not recognized by other branches of Masonry necessarily but it is already there.

These questions aren't difficult.

The write-up comes across as self-important. I never thought about a single one of these questions because I assumed freemasons was a club like rotary or knitting group.

I'm always interested in different perspectives on work and life, but the mysticism surrounding this is very off-putting.

You don't get career connections from masonry its very focused on volunteering however on the downside it often cares more about buildings than people it still exists within the context of a culture of hyper individualism and this colors to fraternity.

As for me the more interesting questions would be why and what. Without this the answers to the questions which I don't find that important (and difficult) sound kinda kafkaesque.

"Since Masonry's tenets are brotherly love, relief, and truth, if the Masons did run the world, it might be a better place. Many of the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution of the United States were Freemasons; the principles in that document have stood the test of over two centuries. Would a Masonic government be so bad? Look at the governments founded by anti-Masonic groups: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Iran under totalitarian religious rule. Where is the real problem in the world?"

lol, so what they're saying is the world isn't run by Masons - but it should be!

But what about the Stonecutters? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXtQMz1RGNw

Freemasonry has been relatively accurately called "The Mafia of the Mediocre".

Certain type of people join it to make connections and get ahead in the life. This has lead to corruption when there was members in the business elite, politics, judges and the police who never acknowledged that they were members of the same club and had a rule of testifying against other freemasons.

I had a little look around, and it seems this is true, or at least has been true in the past.

https://theconversation.com/the-freemasons-no-longer-have-si...

The relationship between police officers and Freemasons became a major issue in the 1960s, largely as a result of investigative journalism by the The Times and The Sunday Times. Revelations were made about corruption in the Metropolitan Police’s CID unit and surrounding the activities of the Obscene Publications Squad. Senior officers were receiving illegal payments on a regular basis in return for allowing London sex shops to trade unrestricted.

The fact that London detectives shared membership of the same Freemason lodges as active high-profile London criminals became public knowledge. Senior officers were seen spending time with convicted London criminals in Mediterranean holiday villas.

Ultimately, this led to major reforms of the Metropolitan Police. Criminal investigations resulted in custodial sentences for a number of senior CID officers and voluntary retirements for many more.

More recently:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/31/freemasons-b...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/25/decorated-underc...

It was a town council of elders with a sufficiently vague moral outlook as to support pretty much male with a vaguely theistic outlook to participate.

If you go to Preble Hall[1] you can see John Paul Jones' Masonic artifacts. Woop-de-doo.

Clearly, the idea of a secret handshake club has been a burr under the saddle of many. And that there was racism afoot is seen by the Prince Hall lodges of the blacks. Yes. But time has shifted society away from exclusive clubs, and the Masons amount to a drinking society anymore.

[1] https://www.usna.edu/Museum/PrebleHall/index.php

This is an artefact of a club, not freemasonry. One could level this accusation at golf, private members or country clubs, for instance.

Why is this on the first page of Hacker News? How comes the community find these questions interesting enough to upvote them to the first page?

Because it’s a slow news day? It’s the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend in the US. Bank Holiday weekend in the UK too.

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