Eight Secret Societies (2016)
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
* "Secret societies" have an air of mystique about them, and that played no small part in my joining. The theatricality of some rituals gives a sense of gravitas to the group that is often lacking in everyday life.
* Freemasonry at least does a lot of quiet charity. There is a not-insignificant amount of money they give to help people out, and they do very little publicity of this. In fact... I'd wager you haven't heard of Freemasons doing anything at all in a long time, if ever.
* The perceived exclusivity of membership in a society like this is often portrayed as conducive to arrogance in its members in popular media, but every single Mason I've ever met is extraordinarily humble.
* It's an unfortunate reality that most societies like this are gender-specific.
* Freemasonry is theistic, rather than explicitly Christian. Interestingly, the Catholic church _hates_ Freemasonry, for some reason.
Freemasonry (and secret societies of the same style) was very active in the Age of Revolution and participated in the uprooting of the Church's power base.
As an active Catholic, Freemasons have always been seen with extreme suspicion, if not outright fantasies. But you could say the same of the way Catholics are perceived in some places, in particular among Anglo-Protestants and Socialists.
Freemasonry demands active participation in a religious liturgy in which Christ is implicitly excluded.
When the Church warns against such worship and the basic attitudes (beliefs) it inevitably expresses, it is not expressing hatred but charity: concern for souls and loyalty to the mission it received from Christ in Mt 28:19-20. My guess is that you will find the same instincts in e.g. Eastern Orthodox churches.
When I think about it... Freemasonry has a very different religious focus than most Abrahamic religions, despite its origins in the same. Yeshua ben Yosef is basically ignored in favor of other historical, and explicitly allegorical, figures.
Part of what attracted me to Freemasonry was the quality of their enemies, as whatever those accusers had a problem with, I was pretty sure I wanted to be on the other team. The other thing was finding the pigpen cipher doing security work. It's so not-secret I don't mind being relatively open about it, as you know that every other guy you meet in it had to be vetted as not a total danger to himself and others.
The other part that interested me was a (perhaps apocryphal) story about how lodges in the UK were instrumental as neutral territory between religious partisans during the Troubles, and other stories about the idea of a persistent commitment to meeting on the level with men as peers that transcends the official politics of the day. To me, this is a crucial part of the fabric of civil society, just as much as the Chatham House rule is. We need this ability to have honest discussions as individuals now more than ever. There's a rule you don't use the privacy of lodge to discuss politics or religion, but outside, guys who would be on the opposite sides of a civil war right now sit and listen to each other over pints, test ideas, and really listen on the basis that dozens of other guys say this guy is ok, so even if I don't agree with him, there's something valuable about his experience. The continuity of basic fraternity among men as an essential principle of civic life is what religions and politics fundamentally lack.
I think the high bar is the theism, as that's probably the only irreconcilable difference in beliefs, as the logic of ideas from the axioms of theism vs. atheism are just alien to one another.
Men being able to meet and relate as equals outside their public lives requires a level of trust that only comes with the mutual guarantees of privacy. It sounds meta, but really, imagine just having a lot of friends you trusted and who would give you the benefit of the doubt, but had enough distance like co-workers where you weren't very judgmental of each other.
The secrecy aspect is really about setting a personal boundary, where the few secrets themselves are yours to keep, and this ability to have something that is yours, whereby there is a you independent of your other relationships, and that is a foundation for breaking co-dependency habits and other boyhood things a lot of guys never manage to grow past.
It's a very mixed bag, but you see where you are, and where other guys are at different stages of their lives and circumstances. It does seem unlikely in hindsight that a committed Catholic partisan would defy the papal bull, risking excommunication, and accept initiation into masonry, but the principles of masonry, encoded in allegories and a kind of memory palace (the method of loci) of symbols gives you a set of reference ideals you can measure your own character by and develop personally against them.
Lumping masonry in with secret socieities and cults is pretty dumb. When I hear conspiracy theories about masons, I always ask, "cui bono?" Who benefits from discouraging good men looking for moral and ethical lessons from finding each other and recognizing each other as equals? When you look at historical movements against fraternal organizations, it's worth asking, who fears good men?
Anyway, looking back, all it has cost me is the ability to give short answers.
But yes, I agree with your observation about Masonry being a kind of neutral territory and equalizer. I have known Masons that, in public, I am adamantly opposed to... but under the roof of a lodge, get along with perfectly fine.
Another thing that always struck me as interesting is that Masons do not recruit. This is an intentional policy, and fascinating. Once I discovered the existence of my home lodge, I had to seek them out. There were no flyers or "you should come by sometime" offhand comments.
Internet communities are essentially fraternal socieities and we know the good ones when we see them, but don't quite have the recipe for making ones that thrive. Open source projects are the closest thing I've seen to masonry, where you are only the quality of your work. I'd even wonder whether the BDFL model of open source projects could learn something from how to use progressive chairs and a rotating executive.
Anyway, I'm generously tolerated as a member of #581 in Toronto. It's been quite an adventure. :)
There must be some lone and hungry men left solitary in the world, like Diogenes, to irrationally and unpopulary make war on the consensus of kings and groups reasonable men.
She went on to tell me a long story of how my grandfather had to join the masons to be allowed to play in a jazz orchestra in South Africa, where he had moved. When he tried to leave the masons years later, they made his life difficult for a period and even went so far as appealing to his manager that he was not a person of good standing, and spreading rumours.
He stood fast and nothing came of it, but the story left a bad taste - I can believe it was a one off and most lodges wouldn't act like that, but the story stopped me from proceeding.
Shame as it sounded interesting. (my other issue was that I'd have to lie to pretend I believe in a god, and I didn't really fancy lying about that as my lack of belief is fairly core to me)
Also... it's also my experience that once you become a Mason, you are a Mason for life, regardless of your feelings on the matter. You can't quit. This, I think, is similar to how you can't be an ex-Marine. There's a whole lotta philosophy I could chat about there, but that's really a subject for an in-person talk over a few pints, not something to spout bytes over the Internet about.
So, sort of like getting a Ph.D.?
>breaking co-dependency habits and other boyhood things a lot of guys never manage to grow past
could you elaborate?
Also, my grand uncle was a freemason, but he was rather arrogant and did not care much about the rest of the family, so I never learned anything about freemasonry from him.
Those are the only touch points that I had with freemasonry.
I believe that the Scottish Rite Temple at Columbia Road and 16th St. NW in Washington, DC, funds a children's health center around the corner for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_ban_of_Freemasonry#Conti...
I miss that. I think I need to get in touch with the local lodge and reconnect.
Hiding affairs under a seal of masonic secrecy would be dangerous business in America.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is arguably one such. Its existence is not a secret, but its 1970s plan to make the US more friendly to corporations didn't become known until it had already worked.
Another characteristic about secret societies is that actually they need to be very public (to get new members), and what is a secret instead is the reason why the society exists, that part is not revealed unless becoming part of the group.
Isn't that like Scientology, I've read you must spend a lot of money and time to get read in to their secrets.
It was fun explaining the whole concept of secret societies and conspiracy theories in terms that would be intelligible to an 8-year-old. My kids (her brother is her twin) had a hard idea with the whole concept of secretly coercing somebody to do something that’s not in their interests.
Why explain when you can play.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati_(game)
www.sjgames.com
Duncans Ceremonies is the most famous revelation of Masonic secrets, but no dues-card and not being 'in the book', ultimately counts for nothing, as you won't even be able to properly converse with a mason, nor enter a lodge, without either.
A Secret Society might be completely secretive, and yet be unable to resist helping themselves to claiming some credit. Kind of like the Anonymous hacker group in their day. Or Ross Ulbricht adopting the name "Dread Pirate Roberts" on all of his work which really hurt him when he was caught.
It’s repeat action that gets them.
Selection bias, no? You're drawing a conclusion about the whole from the subset who seek fame and get caught.
You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks of himself as evil. Everyone is the hero of his own story.
Take “the dread pirate roberts” you know it’s a reference to The Princess Bride right? The hero of The Princess Bride?
Now Ross ram a high drug site on the dark web. Was Ross evil? He certainly didn’t think so. He philosophically disagreed with drug laws. The Silk Road didn’t trade in things Ross thought were evil (I seem to recall from the write up in wires that he banned human trafficking etc). He simply thought everyone should have the right to choose for themselves. I bet he thought he was providing a service.
Was he evil? Not in his own mind. Did he seek fame with his name? Err, no? He was choosing a handle to specifically mask his name (he always planned to play the “it was the other dread pirate roberts the whole time” card)
I don’t think you can point to a single person who thinks of themselves as evil. (Even psychopaths don’t think of themselves as evil, they just don’t think other people are worthy of consideration. —I seem to recall that hitler was a vegetarian. If you asked him he’d say he was a hero of his people.)
And as for criminals seeking fame… probably no more or less than any human seeks fame. Or maybe to say it another way, everyone probably seeks recognition of skill.
There is meticulous, introspective, malicious, terrible intent that reads its head. Luckily it seems rare but sadly I’ve come across it.
1. Greed: You desire something that someone else has so you steal it, or cheat to get it etc. and thus cause harm to those who lose what you gain.
2. Jealousy: You love/want somebody but they give their love to someone else, you hate that someone else - because you think it prevents you from getting love. Then you do bad things to those people who you are jealous of to make them look bad etc., or even do things to make them disappear from the scene etc.
3. Envy: You see that some people have what you don't and therefore you hate them and want to destroy their happiness.
The last one is the worst kind of evil. In 1. you get something by stealing. You benefit from that. In 2. you (try to) prevent someone from directing love away from you. But you still do it for love, to get love, and maybe you do. In 3. you are just pure evil because nobody benefits, not even you, from destroying the happiness of others.
Envy is the worst kind of Evil. You try to prevent others from having something you can not have.
I think you make a good point that maybe "Evil" does not exist but "Evil People" do. We need to recognize them and condemns them, and avoid getting killed by them.
Nope. It's to recruit. They want to recruit people that can help make them more money (or friendships).
When we were voting on new members, it was a silent vote with unanimous consent required. Any vote could be retaken at the order of the master. This means that if someone is eligible and should be a mason, and the vote comes up with a negative vote, the master can say a few words suggesting people reconsider and take the vote up again.
There was only once that I saw someone not pass the first ballot to become a mason. The master said that we should reconsider, and most of the brothers in the room chose not to vote the second time (as a symbol they were not the negative vote), and many of those who did showed their ballot before casting it. The second vote passed.
This as a process indicates there's plenty of room for abuse: any single master mason can anonymously vote to exclude someone for any reason they want. It's up to the folks around them to set them square if they are out of line. I can easily see an lodge existing where there wouldn't be any members willing to speak up in someone's defense.
It's my belief that none of what I've posted here is exposing any of the secrets of a master mason; but if any fraternal members disagree I'll happily edit and delete this post, and I don't intend to expose anything; but instead demonstrate that masonry (as well as, I'd assume, most other 'secret' societies), is as good as the members in the lodge.
It took a while for American lodges to recognise that.
Though actually maybe private members' clubs have some kind of exception to that - gender is also a protected characteristic under that act, but there are gentlemen's (only) clubs still (ladies' too perhaps, I'm not sure).
They are all, by definition sexist, but you are allowed under UK law to be such when deciding who to invite to a party.
What would be interesting, is if one became a monopoly in its niche (often clubs have a _thing_), whether one could argue they missed out on serious opportunities in work because they were not allowed to join, but I don't know of such a case being risen.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/06/garrick-club-v...
But not sure why they decided to include the Molly Maguires. Sounds like a plain mob to me, the Yakuzas and the Cosa Nostra probably have more rituals than those, and both are still very much in existence.
IIRC, the one I'm referring to was a dead chapter that a few people offered to take over, something to that extent.
> Although the Free Gardeners have always remained independent of Freemasonry, the history and organisation of the two orders show numerous similarities. Some commentators have pointed to possible mutual influences in the ancient history of the two organisations
Think about a game of Poker where the members of the society gave each other nodes and winks about their hand.
Few are called, even fewer accept the call.
The majority of the nice people of the UK don't follow or even understand them.
I haven't even mentioned their parades.
Ireland has similar groups but they're tiny and mostly ignored.
I'm "blood brothers" with some kid who was five when I was, and his name escaped me decades ago. Nobody is to ever know this, so I guess I just broke that oath.
By the powers invested in me as the Head Inquisitor of Occult Secrets I banish you from the Secret Society of Occult Blood Brothers of Hidden Blood Secrets which shall not be named!
FOREVERMORE you are banished and may never enter the Secret Santorum of the Holy Lodge!
So far, that's been a pretty easy oath to keep.
They aren't secret anymore - not when they are in the Smithsonian!