[showmyads]
Recently I joined a Masonic Group as an associate. It thought the best thing for me to do was sign up and explore the lodge, check out the food, take advantage of member discounts and just soak in what I could find. If it appealed I’d do what was necessary to go to the next level.
I had also been invited to a ‘meeting’ and, while I didn’t take up that offer as I could not be available that particular night of the month, I was curious to know if there was anything relevant to me.
There was a quarterly magazine released by this particular lodge and as an associate I received it in the mail (snailmail to my home. I didn’t know that still happened in some places. The last time I checked my letterbox was 6 months ago and that was only because I saw something sticking out of it!)
What concerned me most was that the magazine was terribly boring and looked like something from the 70s with 90s style publishing. There were articles about special gatherings with pictures of people all over 70 years of age. There were articles that had been written several months previously that had only just been published. And the articles were on things that could only appeal to people who were born in the 1920s and 1930s.
One article had me laughing out loud. It went into great detail about how they needed young blood or the lodge would collapse. How they should change their system to be about thinking about the young people and appealing to the young people. The fact that this was printed as an article in a magazine 6 months after it had been written pushed the point home that this organisation was going to die a slow death if someone didn’t throw the magazine away and instead create a Mason news app for the Ipad!
Needless to say I didn’t get anything spiritual out of being an associate member, and the idea that I might need to go through 30 levels of hierarchy discussing 20th century topics and showing respect to people who only deserve it because they’ve passed some tests and have been their longer, just to learn something new, did not appeal to me in the slightest.
Thankfully, I found that this is not the same in every lodge in the world. There are many lodges that are ‘happening’ and forward thinking with a lot of young people. There are also lodges that are focused on the ancient mysticism that is part of the masonic order, dropping all the handshakes and ceremonial time wasting that has become part and parcel of orders in recent centuries.
As soon as I find some time I’ll do some more research and decide on the right order for me. Any masonic orders running night clubs playing electrance?