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Originally posted by ElectricCrow
Come on! This stuff is GREAT!!
Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
See how it works? Once you create the illusion of secrecy, trust seems to go out the window as a general, organizational thing.
Originally posted by Zeta_101
I mean, if we're not patriotic to our nation, if we don't trust our nation, how can we trust any other nation in the world?
Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
Sabatwerk, is that the "secrets"; a secret handshake? Are you saying that is all, because the real-life world friends that are Masons certainly haven't insinuated that! And, why would one need a secret handshake? Interesting. We regular ol, run of the mill Christians don't have a secret handshake, and we seem to do ok.
Sure, your lodge is in the phone book. So, when I call them tomorrow the person answering it is going to divulge all those little secrets that the guys at work won't dare whisper?
These guys seem a bit slow, too. Every night at about 30 minutes before get-off time, 5 new Masons follow an older one around the hanger where they are taught that secret handshake for about 5 minutes a night. If that is all the secret, that must be a HECK of a handshake, or those guys are a bit slow!
Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
As I stated before, this country was not created by Masons, but by Divine direction. Whatever or whoever tools He used is irrelevant.
It sounds like you are buying all the self-inflating "education", so I'm sure you'll be a 33rd degree with no problem.
But, while you are doing this, don't give me a line about "God-fearing men with honorable intentions" as I can be a part of such a group of people without secrecy. That which only thrives in the dark should be dragged into the light. If it dies, it is not honorable. This little light of mine; I'm gonna let it shine!
Excellent. I'm sure if you have the right connections and bloodline, you'll not remain in the local level where the unsuspecting good ol' boys who think they're just part of a boy's club are, but will be drinking the blood of virgin blondes from the skulls of goats in no time!
Originally posted by Nygdan
The masons, as far as I understand it, made the rites and 'teachings' of the group secret, and also wrapped up in 'esoteric symbolism', for a few reasons. One was because it was fashionable at the time to form groups that did just that, and thats why we find rosicurians and others forming at the same time that freemasonry went 'speculative' (ie, evovled from a stonemason workman's union into a 'speculative/philosophical' organization). There was also a concern that certain types of knowledge, when cast out like seeds into a field, will not grow in all furrows. In some you get wonderful crops and plants, and in others, nothing but weeds or barren dust. So the secrecy of the 'teachings' are to keep it out of the hands of the profane, for whom it would simply be misunderstood, or not understood at all.