So, I do read classics from time to time and recently have started to notice how awfully lot of them were freemasons.
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Bram Stoker, author of Dracula - Buckingham and Chandos Lodge No. 1150.
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Mark Twain, author of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and many more - Grand Lodge of Ohio.
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of those cozy Sherlock Holmes mysteries - Phoenix Lodge No. 257 in Southsea.
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Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book - Hope and Perseverance Lodge, No. 782, in Lahore.
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Sir Walter Scott, author of numerous historical novels, including Ivanhoe, Rob Roy and many more - Lodge St David, No. 36 in Edinburgh.
You get the idea. A lot of classic authors were freemasons. Now, even if we discount all the theories about masonry etc, it's still a lot. No, really! Why almost all of our historical, adventure and other classics were written by freemasons? Would those books even be considered classics, if not for the mason membership of those authors? Hell, maybe those books were written with a specific purpose and were made into "famous" classics deliberately, precisely because of freemasonry of their respective authors?
Back then book reading was kind of like Hollywood and Netflix of today and we all know how much propaganda and ridiculous lies are in movies these days... So, seems to me a lot of our history and general worldview might have been created deliberately... and we might be living in an essentially manufactured world, where everything we think we know, might actually be not what it seems to be...
So, what are your thoughts? Does anyone know any more famous freemasons?
Masonry came to Russian Empire from Western Europe, mostly from France and gain some popularity among Russian elite for a while. Russian aristocracy borrow a lot from the West. However, this borrowing was mostly superficial, like f.e. uniform of army was borrowed to some extent, but military strategy and tactics was homegrown. Same with masonry. It was not able to overcome deep orthodox background, so it mutated into specific Russian variant.
If you read Russian, and really interested in history of masonry, then you have access to large library of Russian literature about masonry. Again, I'm not sure it is strictly relevant for Western masonry, but it still could give some hints and clues. There is even some new book in two volumes, I didn't read yet, published in 2021 - "Системы и ритуалы российского масонства XVIII–XIX вв."
Yep, I can imagine cultural borrowing being only on superficial level, while deeper levels remain significantly different from the original meaning. That book seems interesting. I might look into it. Thanks.