I’ve been a Mason for 20 years, Past Master, 32°, Scottish Rite & York Rite. I don’t have any juicy secrets (like “33° Masons control the price of Ovaltine”), and I’m of the view that we’re / they’re mostly harmless. That said, I’m disillusioned. The Brotherhood is broken and not fulfilling what they promise to their craftsmen, which is to make good men better. It’s become one big LARP that sucks free time and money from its members and gives nothing back to the Brothers, their families, communities, or the world.
They broke their oath, I’ll break mine. Ask me anything. Or nothing.
Has any of the teachings/literature made you a better as a person than you were the day before you joined? If so, what was the most enlightening lesson?
Nothing I ever read (although there was one book I read the name escapes me, but it talked about how Masonry fills the lack of rites-of-passage for men). Any positive growth I experienced was mostly self confidence of running the lumbering beast of a lodge for a year. I probably could’ve had the same effect by running my own business.
The rites-of-passage, sounds like creating a solution for a problem that was never there and normalizing a constant jumping-through-hoops mentality.
It kinda makes sense.. nothing to mark a transition from boyhood to manhood, like Bar Mitzvahs (“you’re a man now”) or going into the army. Maybe that’s why some adults have trouble adulting. Then again it could just be a convenient argument.