Read up on their founding and history, they brought it upon themselves. They wanted to be the mysterious Boogeyman from their inception because the founders thought it would be cool and fun.
Honestly, he's not wrong, it does look cool and fun. I wish there were non-religious secret sects.
In high school we started a secret order, made a logo and symbols that we printed into stickers and would hide around the school in weird hidden places, even published a fake newspaper that we left around referencing it's mythology and origins.
About 4 years after we all graduated I heard that apparently someone replaced the national anthem tape with one repeating the order's phrases and terms.
My god I hope that train keeps running away.
Isn't that what the Order of Odd Fellows is?
I love secret societies because they always remind me of LARPers. I used to go to this comic shop that held a Vampire:The Masquerade LARP thing, and they would all act secretive and sneaky, and come in the backdoor and things.
For only checks again $44.99 USD you can become a doktor in the Church of the Subgenius.
Y'know... maybe I'm losing some of the magic in my older age but I wonder, since the internet became ubiquitous we almost got rid of secret clubs to gathering as many people as possible on a stage.
Now I know the Masonic Lodge is the number one we think of, with their secret rituals and the like. But I was in another in scouts, Order of the Arrow, that you had to be voted in by your troop, had their secret rituals, etc. Why secret rituals? Because being in a secret club is fun! Knowing things that others don't is fun! Are the rituals little small things that once people learn them are "meh?" Sure! But it's fun during that time.
Now since I don't have kids can't speak to young kids today, but lord only knows before that how many "Secret clubs" I was in throughout my life growing up in school. Now by secret club I mean, group of us would get together, have a club, secret handshake that would be forgotten by the next week, fall apart then a new one form in like a month when "Do you know what would be awesome? If we had a secret club! One with a clubhouse! Yea!"
The Masonic Lodge, Fraternal Order of the Eagles, and all these others were basically clubs where everyone hung out and bullshitted, then of course when they're gathered they get pissed off about some social thing or another and then it becomes a movement. Shriners were apparently a drinking club that was "We should help kids!" and made a full non-profit hospital system in the long run... the main reason on helping kids, because if a bunch of chucklefucks are gonna get around and drink they figured they should do something.
But I've heard the Masonic Lodge is dying from lack of memberships going in, no one really cares on a lot of the secret societies, and hell I don't think the trope of kids having their "secret clubs" has been a thing in the last decade in media. I wonder if this is something we're losing as a culture. It'll never quite go away, as long as there's a group of people that wants to go "ours" it'll happen, but it's an interesting thing to see.
The Masons are secretive. Many very high level historic figures have been Masons. It's a good old boys club to get in you need to be sponsored by another Mason. You don't hear a lot about their accomplishments. And you would expect that a social group that contained many of the important men in history wouldn't just be sitting around doing nothing in secret.
To my personal knowledge of them, just a bunch of businessmen who jerk each other off basically.
If one freemason owns a business, and another finds out they do and they also have a business - there will be some sort of service from one company or the other so they can make each other money. Basically, they just support members and will give them preferential treatment over someone they don't know.
It's kind of like church?
I can't really provide much insight, but I was once contracted by a local Masonic lodge to install new windows. I had unsupervised access to pretty much any room that had a window in it, and I was even permitted to look around in the windowless chamber where they performed many of their rituals. They were actually pretty excited to show me around. I can't imagine that they would allow a perfect stranger into their secret lair if they really had anything to hide. But, ya know, take what I say with a pinch of salt as it's just one anecdote about one lodge in Nowhere, Ohio.
That's their strategy, let some laymen in to look around, show them some fake 'secret' rims to show they aren't really that special, while the clevery hidden real secret doors are quietly moved as you leave and enter each room. You end up being just one boring anecdote on the Internet, but over centuries it adds up to hundreds of 'eh' accounts to hide the real story.... It's brilliant!
Meh. I lived in an old Mosanic Temple in my 20s. They had moved the lodge to another part of the city and kept this place there. They have lofts upstairs and I rented one.
It was cool in an old type of way. But there weren't any hidden places we found in the 3 years we lived there.
It’s a somewhat secret organization even if they no longer take it too secretly, and it used to be made up of people who got things done. People who could take control of things if they acted in concert. It’s easy to imagine a secret organization within the secret organization that really dies trying to to manipulate the larger population
Yeah, I know at least one Mason I don't think there's anything interesting going on there. I can definitely see why people think there is.
In 1738 the Pope forbid all Catholics from joining a Masonic lodge (open to men of any religion, and secretive, no doubt to avoid Inquisition), and called them 'depraved and perverted' (unlike the Church, of course). No doubt the faithful kept the rumor-mills turning.
A secret fraternal order with invite-only membership?… perfect scapegoat by the real perpetrators of evils.
It is not invite-only membership; that is disinformation. You can apply to join today if you choose.
It is not disinformation. My comment’s context was about the founding days and not today. When the lies about Freemasons/Illuminati were first being spread, it was invite-only. Now, it’s ASK12B1 and you still must undergo an interview process. Including, months worth of training before the first degree.
It used to be. In fact ideally you were descended from a freemason and also vouched for.
Times change.
They used to wield real power or influence in protestant Midwestern and East coast areas in the 1800 to early 1900s.
Because they control the British crown
and keep the metric system down.Isn't thqt the stonecutters?
Because once upon a time, the lodges were where literal important historical figures worked out the details on their conspiracies.
Because conspiracy theorists are idiots who can't or won't face the facts of reality.
While true, this doesn't explain why specifically the freemasons are targeted.
Because they are a reasonably long lived organization with at least some rules and rituals that can be used as a base for theories. If they didn't exist, a different organization would be used as the seed, or a fictional one would be made up. Unless you can think of a number of other organizations that for some reason aren't picked on the same way? Church can't be used quite the same, because they are to mainstream and inclusive, though secret societies within churches often get the same treatment.
Which facts. How does the world work, in your estimation.
Way I see it, you have two competing overarching theories, "spontaneous order" and "orchestrated order". You look at the U.S./Western empire, with its totally hierarchical command structure, and a big "?" at the top above SCOTUS, Congress and the Presidency, who all inexplicably follow the same agendas opposed to the will and benefit of the people, it seems to me a perfectly reasonable conclusion that somebody is in control. I don't think it's the Freemasons - this was kind of an old trope throughout American history (see the early 1800s Anti-Masonic Party), but knocking out individual dumb theories for who's in charge doesn't disprove all of them.
IMO, "conspiracy theories" are a natural attempt to explain observed reality (inequality, mass conditioning/brainwashing, global militarism and empire, etc.). They can be informed by falsehoods and/or manipulated into harmful movements (MAGA for example), but again, doesn't disprove the entire idea of society being controlled. The only way you get to such a disproof is by an exhaustive analysis of every social institution demonstrating it's not being controlled. Going, "these things just happen on their own" without any further detail is hand-wavey.
Have you considered you can really accuse anyone you disagree with of "being idiots who can't or won't face the facts of reality"? Maybe reality is as hideous and our society as controlled as they say, and you're the one can't or won't face the facts of it. That kind of discourse doesn't get anyone anywhere.
You're attacking a straw man. There are groups vying for control. The question is whether or not there is one group controlling everything, and I think that's highly unlikely.
Way I see it, you have two competing overarching theories, "spontaneous order" and "orchestrated order".
I see a lot of chaos, too. Conspiracy theorists will look at something that I regard as chaos (say, the Sandy Hook massacre) and say, "Oh, yeah, that was planned (by a conspiracy)." There seems to be an unwillingness to accept that there is a lot of chaos on the world, and while some things are controlled, much of it is not.
Lots of important and influential people were members and used their private little club to conduct business and make plans. That planning and business got called “conspiracy” because it happened behind secretive closed doors and involved rituals even though that same planning and dealing continued on outside the Masons when the club was no longer as popular among the well heeled.
They never shook off the image of importance even though the club is nowhere near the numbers it used to be.
Idk but as one there is no way a bunch slightly racist old white Christian men can organize anything beyond the local and maybe state level.
Masonry is really cool and used to be highly influential for all levels of society but it’s not that anymore. It’s really sad. My grandparents generations were joiners. After the war everyone joined a society. My parents joined some. But nowadays that’s very rare. Everyone in my lodge was 50-80.
I think the propaganda comes from a similar place of earlier Jesuit propaganda. A bunch of men meeting in secret, seeking education away from church and state, highly involved in the community. Now it’s just having meals, meetings, and planning which charity event to do.
Uh, not all are Christian or white. There are many lodges encompassing Filipino or Asian brothers. There’s also the Prince Hall masons for African-Americans. Additionally, the Scottish Right are not Christian-based like the Knights Templar.
my WM is a black African
You’re right. I am not saying that. I am generalizing based of experience and 95% plus of the masons I encounter. Prince hall exists where I was too ;)
It's just a frat for grown men. College fraternities can be similarly secretive and try to appear "fancy", but at the end of the day it's all just dudes hanging out in a clubhouse.
From what I've come across, it's from a combination of their secrecy (historically to the point of death, read about
Hiram AbiffWilliam Morgan who was mobbed to death by Freemasons just North of where I used to live), their links to the upper class, their place in the spiritual sphere (they have Anglican/Templar associations, which is why the pope forbids joining, and these put their links to the British crown into perspective, as well as the fact they have their very own equivalent to the Vatican Secret Archives, which is a common theme, with the more gender-inclusive and Knights-Hospitaller-sprung Sovereign Military Order of Malta being their strictest rivals), their feud with what has come to be known as the LDS church (Joseph Smith was said to have been a Freemason who took off with their secret "ideas" to make the Book of Mormon), the fact they have historically looked down on those who leave or operate from other societies such as the Oddfellows, and some of their practices, such as the fact they used to be unwilling to testify against each other in court (I don't know if this is still true, but to put that into perspective, the United States recently reprimanded Scientology for the same reason), how "expensive" it is to actually be a member, their overlapping with what would today be called Gnosticism (oddly the G symbol does not stand for Gnosticism, though one cannot deny what comes across as some very sectarian observations/tendencies), and how it's 2025 and they still don't allow women to join (they also used to not allow people of color to join either, up until recently, and they still require someone to have a spiritual upbringing), which is why I am not one (I could join the Eastern Star, but it's almost knock-off-esque compared to the actual thing, which actually used to frown upon the Eastern Star as "missing the point", plus they wouldn't take kindly to my upbringing since my details would fall outside their range of knowledge).In a way, it's comparable to how we might critique a British megachurch, if that megachurch was formatted like a university fraternity club. I had known many Freemasons, which is the norm where I used to live because there is a high enough Masonic presence in the area that they built the streets (arranging the sidewalk in a literal square and compass design), with family members of my friends participating in the group. I have nothing against them on their own, but with their sense of superiority and duty (especially with foreign entities involved) that often gets stereotypically mixed in with their demeanor, they can be as overbearing as sand here (coarse and rough and irritating and getting everywhere), which for a long time has not just led me to speculate myself but also forced my hand in a way. When you combine an obsolete sense of self with extreme exclusivity, well, there you go.
I am one if you want to AMA
I wonder if it's only in my country, that they are told to protect israel? I read that in a freemasons documents, that I found on his computer in a totally legal way...
Did your organisation also have to change opsec these past 10 years?
Uuh and are you also encouraged to do business with other masons, to keep accumulating wealth?
I wonder if it’s only in my country, that they are told to protect israel? I read that in a freemasons documents, that I found on his computer in a totally legal way…
Uhmmm two of my lodge members have been bombed by Israel during their military service hahaha. We are not fans.
Did your organisation also have to change opsec these past 10 years?
I haven't been in it 10 years.
Uuh and are you also encouraged to do business with other masons, to keep accumulating wealth?
No. Although one can only do business with people one knows, and I know Masons.
How does one become a Mason?
To be one, ask one
Because they won't tell people what they do in their ceremonies. It's really not all that interesting, to be honest.
That is another misconception. The ceremonies are in books and on the internet. The only real secret is the means-of-identification.
My great grandad was a Mason all his adult life (~16 until his death at 99), as were my father and grandfather. None made it to the 33rd degree, which I'm not sure how much study, effort and money they put fourth, in effort. I know it irked me father and grandfather they had to pay the Masons $300 to perform "Amazing Grace" on bagpipes, at my great grand's funeral, which was his dying wish, so they walked away from the society.
Lon Milo Duquette speaks about the Masons, a bit, in some of his talks, but I've not delved deeply into their customs. I think there's quite a bit available, online, if one is interested enough to research. I'd think they are like any other organization: differing beliefs and political orientation among individuals, but I could be wrong.
Because they're secretive fucks.
The halls are visible to the public. Our friends and family know we are Masons. We have registered charities and bank accounts. The only real secrets are the passwords and handshakes.
