Originally posted by Santeria
That being said, the fact remains that you guys are just a select few Masons from a select few lodges. Obviously, by the descriptions given, you all attend pretty average and mundane lodges.
Yet all Lodges operate in pretty much the same way. Everything that happens in a Lodge, whether it be ritualistic in degree initiations or the order of business observed at monthly meetings, follows the same pattern, in accordance with ancient usage and Grand Lodge law.
The fact that you don't participate in or have knowledge of a conspiracy doesn't mean that Masons don't conspire. The fact that you totally rule out any notion that some important Masons conspired in the past makes you naive.
Since any Master Mason can visit any regular Lodge in the world, and practically all Lodges have visitors from other Lodges at all meetings, it is not realistic to think that some Lodge could hide some sort of conspiracy from other ones.
Frankly, I find it suspicious that the Masons here are so adamant about showing that Freemasonry is just a secret club that does totally normal and mundane things except it is a secret. I mean, one of you even quotes Albert Pike in your signature!
What's wrong with Albert Pike? He was a highly respected Masonic student and scholar.
The Scottish Rite and the York Rite are real. The levels are real and meaningful. Membership in the club by a good many of the players who shaped the world for the past 300 years is real. Yet, you guys act annoyed that people refer to the levels with meaning (low-level and high-level).
That's because the Scottish and York Rites do not make a Mason "a higher level". I'm a member of both: in the Scottish Rite, I'm a 32° Knight Commander of the Court of Honour. In the York Rite, I'm a Knight Templar and knight of the York Cross of Honour. I also belong to other Masonic bodies that you may or may not have ever heard of. But none of those makes me a "higher level". All Masons meet on the same level of equality, which is sort of the whole point.
even "low-ranking") Masons. 
