Note: This article was originally posted on Braden Lodge‘s website, but has been moved here by its author. It is presented here in its original form. An updated version has been incorporated into Welcome to the Brickyard.
Matt Gallagher
Freemasonry is shrouded in a pop-culture mystique of danger and intrigue. Now I won’t comment on if any of those intrigues are true (hint), but one thing is for sure, Freemasonry has gotten a reputation as an organization in decline. This is very much not true.
Freemasonry is growing almost everywhere in exciting ways. Lodges are bringing in young, vibrant members, eager to learn traditions and add their own modern perspective. What is true, however, is that Freemasonry, along with every other fraternal club, saw huge booms in the twentieth century, and those boom times are gone. Frankly, those boom times were probably not that great for Freemasonry. They drew the focus away from self-improvement and brotherhood, and into more publicly-focused areas. Rather than helping each other grow better, many used their brotherhood to help each other grow richer. Charity became an industry, rather than a personal offer of relief, and to the receiver an acceptance of responsibility.
When membership declined from these lofty heights, some Masonic lodges moved toward an any-and-all-comers view of membership. But Freemasonry is not for everyone. Sadly, it’s not even for most people. And joining a Masonic lodge when you shouldn’t isn’t good for you, or your lodge. Here’s why you shouldn’t join Freemasonry.
You’re looking for business contacts
I can’t say you won’t find them in a lodge. You can’t help meet potential business contacts when you meet new people. But frankly you’re probably not going to have much luck. Masons come from every walk of life. Going to a lodge for networking is like going to a ball park for networking. No one is there to listen to your pitch, the person you’re talking to is as likely to be out of work as he is to be able to do anything for your business interests, and frankly, you’re a giant distraction.
There are networking benefits. If you meet a brother who is a mechanic, then you’re a pretty good chance he’ll give you a square deal (there’s no Masonic discount, sorry) and treat you right. Not because you’re both Masons, but because he’s probably just a good guy. If you’re looking for help expanding your client base, however, look elsewhere.
Who you should join: The Rotary Club
Rotary International is a worldwide service club for both men and women, dedicated to bringing together businessmen and professionals, conducting business in an ethical manner, and coming together to serve their communities and provide humanitarian efforts. Their motto: Service above Self.
You’re looking for a place to serve pancakes
Masonry has been called the world’s greatest charity, and though we do affiliate ourselves with several charitable groups, and believe that relief is a core tenet of being a better man, Freemasonry isn’t a service club, it’s a brotherhood.
Community service–raising money for your town, or youth groups, park amenities–is a beautiful, noble thing. Plenty of Masonic Lodges that do this. In some of these cases the pancake breakfasts, spaghetti dinners, corn roasts, etc. are more to keep a lodge’s doors open than for the community at large, but most are to raise money for Masonic youth clubs and educational scholarships.
But in all honesty, if your focus is on community service, there are clubs that just plain do it better than we ever will.
Who you should join: The Lions Club
Lions Club International does community service probably better than anyone in the world. I frequently see them out in my community, getting involved and getting their hands dirty. They are also very active in charity work. Their motto: We Serve.
You’re looking for a social club
A great masonic lodge will have great fraternity, and that fraternity is part of a package of dedication, ritual, education, and self-discipline. Freemasons aren’t friends, we’re brothers. Members just looking for pals and drinking buddies, without being willing to give that extra part of themselves will ultimately find Freemasonry a very lonely, unfulfilling pursuit. It can be said of any group that you get what you give, and that’s especially true in Freemasonry.
Who you should join: The Elks Lodge
The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks began in much the same way as the Shriners began. As an excuse to drink. The organization has since expanded from these modest goals into a larger service organization, doing charity and community work, but still greatly remain a social fraternity.
They are open to men and women, and include some light ritual and regalia, originally borrowed from the Freemasons but have long since been adapted to their own purposes. Much like Freemasonry, they are enjoying a youthful resurgence in places across the country, by young men and women looking for fraternity and people of good character with which to befriend.
You believe Freemasons are a secret cabal here to bring about a New World Order
Yeah, we did that already. It’s called Western Democracy. The representative republic you’re enjoying if you live anywhere in North America or Europe is what we were working toward. We weren’t the only one’s, but we looked the best doing it! You’re welcome, Earth!
Who you should join: This Guy
He needs friends.
Adults don’t often have a lot of time on their hands, and we’re all looking for different things in life. I’ve interviewed plenty of petitioners who try to convince me what a great Mason they’ll make, but when they get that great honor, they discover they should have done more listening than talking, and that Freemasonry is definitely not for everyone. Don’t settle for it. If you’re exploring the Craft and you find you’re turned off by aspects of it, don’t limit yourself to Freemasonry. There are many opportunities for you.
But if you find yourself interested in not just friendship, but brotherhood; if you believe you need to improve yourself rather than just your community; if you believe that charity begins with a hand up, not a hand out, then absolutely knock on our doors. We’ll be there to answer.
Practical Freemasonry 
Your welcome? Are you kidding? Your new world order has ruined everything and enslaved millions in suffering sadness and debt.
LikeLike
If you mean Western Democracy, Lane, I can see what you mean. Although Feudalism wasn’t particularly nice, either.
The question remains on my lips today who invented the stock exchange?
It’s basically a gambling racket that supposedly influences the fate of entire economies.
We’ve got these speculators that take everyone’s hard earned cash and turn it into a bunch of imaginary numbers and then apparently decide to react to whatever populist issue is running through the media. Although what they really do is get memos in advance about what to look out for.
Donald Trump’s stockbroker probably knew about XYZ issue before he did and they probably knew because one of his CIA buddies has a stockbroker that leaked the information that way who probably got told by someone else. It’s supposed to be illegal, but then again so are a lot of things that are paraded around in our faces on a daily basis.
Now this farce of an economic system , basically gambling, is what drives a number of policy decisions. It supposedly can decide who sits in that oval office and who does not and with that which country is friends with who and who isnt.
Supposedly back in the 30s possibly, the bretton woods accord was done to prevent a stock market crash from happening again. One of the logics that heaps later came out of that was during the GFC, the Australian Treasury gave everyone some money to stimulate the economy. However, this didnt deal with the underlying cause, which was the subprime lending scam, which was being manipulated by stock brokers!
Even the Bretton Woods accord didnt factor that in. Probably because people want to assume that others are as honest as they are and wont rip anybody off. Although the entire history of the world shows more or less that its these handful of completely selfish pricks that stuff it up for the rest of us.
Does that sound like democracy (majority rule) to you or does it sound like oligarchy? That’s right it sounds like oligarchy.
There has never been a true democracy anywhere (except maybe tribal societies of old) and stock markets are one reason why.
Now in this present society ask yourself is there anybody who can live without money? If the answer is yes, then perhaps you have something to learn. Like maybe how to be a better mooch, or how to use dark magic to get stuff secretly, or maybe you just got lucky and were born on a fertile corner of the land that isnt being hassled by something.
Whatever.
But do you really want to live without money? They’ve got you sucking at the corporate teet. Whether you mean to or not. This website, run by an ISP, probably corporate and if it’s going via the USA ISPs, the NSA as well.
Most forms of scarcity are artificial. So some arsehole can make money off the ups and downs.
You’ve heard of energy vampires, right, people that build you up so that when you get knocked down they siphon off the energy? TV is a bit like that.
What do you think the stock market is? More or less the same thing.
So what they do right is anything but democratic. Because if we had an actual democracy we probably wouldnt need charities. Like those made homeless during the sub prime scam – they didnt need a charity, they needed an honest system that said that you’ve paid your loan, your not the one that should be out on the streets.
So you know, freemasons or not. We havent got democracy yet and the system sucks, full stop.
But ah dont go too far to the left or right because they’re nuts. It’s just a different type of arsehole shitting on the common folk.
Really though, the fair thing to do would be to cancel all their trading licenses and close their bank accounts. It’s pretty much guaranteed that if theres a stock market blip, there’s a public scare campaign to go with it, and where there is that, there is some arsehole trying to profit off the matter.
Maybe buying cheap and selling high during artificial scarcity or something similar? One product influences the supply chain. Materials, production etc. Might not be the obvious end product but something further back.
Find the source there, find out who is benefiting. Find out who is benefiting, find out the real source of the scare campaign and the market blip. Or follow the money they say….
The toilet paper shortage in Australia makes no sense. For a respiratory illness. Okay but it’s not Kleenex or Sorbent, the brand that benefits, at least not straight away. What’s the supply chain? Theres probably forestry involved or recycling. There could be something with common ground, like maybe a parent company that yet another parent company has shares.
The stocks in that company or resource company benefit from the scare. That’s the company that needs to be watched because that’s the controlling interest. And the stockbrokers working to manage that portfolio need to have their licenses suspended because they are the ones breaking the law.
So when we see say a public health scare, and they should have closed the borders months ago, logically they probably already had a vaccine and/or treatment (so why didnt they, in any direction, let’s not blame one country when stocks are traded between borders faster than posts go on blogs). Okay, who benefits?
Is it the citizens? Gosh no. Is it the government? Probably not most of the time because they now need to think of quarantines, health centers, stimulus packages etc. Is it the local shops? No of course not.
There will be beneficiaries in those places. Citizens, incidental at most. Government, depends on corruption – a problem everywhere. The local shops, only by a temporary price hike and panic buying due to thinking there isnt going to be any of the thing. The media sells more stuff :omg that foreign country with weird food is making us sick and now stupid people are panic buying toilet paper:
Dont be silly. People weren’t panic buying TP until they believed other people were and they werent going to be able to wipe their bums. And it makes no sense in context unless theres something further down the line that someone is benefiting from.
So are we going to be handing out free face masks and toilet paper as charities or are we going to use our brains and have the arseholes shitting on us arrested?
LikeLike
By the way, arrested in this case can also mean spiritually arrested.
Let’s not forget that there are people in these situations, some that might not work on the stock exchange but be paying close attention to its functions that take advantage of it.
They might even be an ordinary pleb with a fake charity, foundation or front organisation of some kind.
But behind that ordinary seeming pleb is dark magic. Not all illuminati canals live in high places, sometimes their henchmen dont even have jobs.
It could even be a small group of arseholes that just want to be the government
Look at us riding in on our white horses we have the cultural solution to your economic problem
OKAY. WELL GUESS WHO CREATED IT THEN…..
Dont blame China when it could be Freemasons/Theozophists posing as natives that caused it. For their own wallets, egos, energy, the lot.
The same charity that caused the problem solved the problem sometimes.
Lions Club and Rotary….no not those guys. Think of something more discrete that might get more attention or it might not later.
And stock brokers
“How did he get that idea??”
LikeLike
I just quit after 20 years due to racism and massive amounts of narcissism.
32° shrine knights templar.
I hope it crumbles to the ground.
LikeLike