Re: Just wondering.......
 

Hmmm, OK,
Well looks like the guy that asked me was serious then assuming what gary_580 said was correct and given the fact that i seem to have inadvertantly asked the right questions at the wrong time.

I assume since its a religious thing that it would be taken that i wasnt chosen by god or something but still seems a bit hairy. I assume once your in that there must be some sort of "threat" against you blabbing otherwise any secret would have been out long ago.

Still dont know what to make of it - or if i would be interested (erring on the probably not) - i just find it intregeing.

Re: Just wondering.......
 

The impression that I get from reading The Hiram Key, and The Book of Hiram (both written by practising Masons Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas), is that Freemasonry is a spiritual addition compatible with any religion.

In the book I'm cirrently reading (The Book of Hiram) there is a url for This site . I have had a look, but not really had a good poke around to see what all is there. Still, looks interesting.

Re: Just wondering.......
 

"On the square" I always thought was related to the Masonic symbol of a set square and compasses, but I could be wrong.

Quite a few of my friends are in it (well, three, plus the uncle of one), plus I got my wireless router/ADSL modem cheap through one of them who knew a man through it. You get the idea. I was at uni with a girl who used to serve drinks at Masonic dos and came away with the firm impression it was fat old men with an excuse to get ****ed.

Two contradictory things form my impression of freemasonry - either it's a slightly expensive men's club dinner organisation where you can get nicely sozzled with other blokes and get away from the trouble and strife for a bit, with some amusing silly games with aprons and ropes before the drinking begins, or it's a nasty closed-in organisation which makes decisions undemocratically that affect people outside it (including those like women* and people who can't afford it or don't get asked who are thus disenfranchised).

I got asked and took 0.003 seconds to say bugger off - the misogyny and requirement for a belief in a Supreme Being is incompatible with being a lefty atheist anyway. My old man did similar, I believe (being in the legal profession, which is pretty well infested).

* Yes, I know about female lodges, I also know about female rooms at men-only golf clubs. The principle is the same - keep them out rather than let them in. It's also possible to do charity work without a silly apron on, before anyone pulls that one out.

Pointless list of American masons (interesting in the light of Lindbergh and Roosevelt popping up in another thread):
13 Presidents:
Buchanan
Ford
Garfield
Harding
Jackson
Johnson
McKinley
Monroe
Polk
Roosevelt, Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Theodore
Taft
Truman
Washington

Nine of the Declaration of Independence signers as well as 13 of the delegates to the new nation's Constitutional Convention were Masons. Other prominent Masons in U. S. history were Paul Revere, Sam Houston, Will Rogers, Henry Ford, Charles Lindberg, Douglas MacArthur, John Wayne, Norman Vincent Peale, and Edwin "Buzz " Aldrin (second man on the moon)"

Re: Just wondering.......
 

Add in that Washington was designed and built on Masonic principles, and the first stone of the Whithouses' foundation was layed according to Masonic tradition, by George Washington, wearing full Masonic regalia.