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Wow.
Well, ok. here's the quick-and-sharp point: Elvis has not left the building, and Scottish Rite Masonry is a valid, powerful and incredibly alive spiritual and magical current.
I stayed up for 24 hours after the initiations, which took all day, then crashed and slept till 7PM.
The rites and rituals are enormously elaborate staged productions which feature many actors and long expositions. A lot of the content is *incredibly* Christian unless you pay very close attention, at which time it becomes clear that the spiritual stance being taken is actually using Christianity as a symbol or allegory for a much more general and interdenominational take on Man's relationship to God. As a Hindu, it took a bit of effort not to get a bit... just... "ARGH, NOT MORE JESUS STUFF!" but I hung in there and was rewarded. But you have to be prepared to remind yourself: "this is not about Jesus, or about the middle ages, this is about Man and God in the general case." Which it is, both explicitly and implicitly, but you've gotta be prepared to see the substance, not the forms.
Note that this is not at all the case in Blue Lodge masonry (that's the Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft and Master Mason degrees) which are 90% less Christian in their ritual and construction.
All that they require, by the way, is a belief in a Supreme Being - a monotheist god or absolute reality. I believe that Hinduism qualifies, and I suspect that forms of Paganism in which the God and the Goddess are seen as a single unit maifesting in two forms would be fine. Buddhism in it's absolute forms (i.e. Theravada) may be a problem, but I don't think the Masons would have an issue with it, if the Buddhist was happy swearing an oath on their conception of Buddhamind. Detailed theological readings are unlikely. The "Great Architect Of The Universe" is a recurrent theme, and one ought to be comfortable dealing with the concept of such an entity. I believe that is fairly easy for most of us. Hardcore chaotic polytheisms, however, may have problems.
Sorry about the Man's bit too. It's a problem. Co-masonry is active in the USA and Europe, though, and they're said to be good people although I haven't met any. It's hard to modernize an order in which 40% of the membership is over 75.
I also, coincidentally, heard tale of a Gay Lodge in Chicago - it's a lodge in Boy's Town with nearly exclusively gay membership. There are a couple of gay guys in my lodge and there's no prejudice to speak of. However, your milage may vary: in a Kentucky lodge, expect to find people from Kentucky.
Nor have I found any signs of antisemitism, although I'm in a Chicago lodge with a large Jewish population.
The vows...
hrm.
Well, those are one of the few Actually Pretty Damn Secret bits. They do say, often and publically, however: Masonic vows will never compromise your
* duty to God
* duty to your Country
* duty to your Family
* duty to your self
So they're contextualized in that way. Similarly there are very carefully worded understandings of the limits of things like Masonic Secrecy. I think an honest man can go in without fear of binding oaths of an intrusive nature. York Rite, of which I am not yet a member, has **INTENSE** oaths of a kind not found in Scottish Rite, however. Things one would really need to think long and hard about.
For me, the anchor in dealing with these oaths is the set of duties which they assert they will never compromise: I consider those the superior claim. And I've never been in a situation in my life in which the Oaths were going to constrain my behavior, other than when asking questions. The Blue Lodge oaths are unlikely to cause issues.
The Scottish Rite ones... hrm. Yeah, ok, there's stuff in one of those oaths that's going to cramp my style a little in some situations, but that's probably an area of my life I needed to tighten up in anyway. The encouragement to clean up my act is not unwelcome even if I'm a bit like "awww... ok then."
But these are practical matters: so far, no oaths with any negative or adverse ethical impact on my life have been offered. I do believe that some people with some ethical codes (Liber Oz, say) would have a hard time, as would people who're interested in abstract ethical situations: it's possible to imagine places where the oaths could cause problems fairly easily, but one then has to fall back on the set of duties which are stated as never conflicting with the oaths...
(thinks)
Yeah, this is a complex bit. I do not feel compromised, but there's definitely some pressure to be a more upstanding citizen than I have been previously. Not a pressure to conform but definitely a sense of "tow the line kid."
I'm willing to make that effort in exchange for what I've been given, shown and initiated into.
The secrecy is simple: Masons believe a bunch of really odd things, and our rites and rituals would upset the heck out of a lot of people. The content of the degrees I took would have got the entire populace of the lodge burned at the stake in Catholic countries up until a few centuries ago. Not because there's devil worship or whatever, but because the theological content is heretical in many significant details, because it's mystical theology which expects Man to make an effort to Know God. And that's never popular.
There's also a lot of political stuff about Justice and Peace and generally making the world a better place, internationalism etc. Not universally popular or acceptible to all parties.
So, zip lips, keep low profile, continue rolling out projects. $500 million dollars a year plus of charitable donations, and clearly (oh, now oh so very clearly) the magical foundations of this great expieriment we call America.
Bro. Muppet |
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