On The Level Podcast
Some people think Freemasonry is on the decline, not if we have anything to say about it! Join On the Level Podcast as we explore that Esoteric side of Freemasonry. We talk about the inner workings of our Fraternity, how to apply it's teachings to your every day life to become a better man, and general current events. Join our host and guests as we explore Freemasonry together and bring our ancient craft into the modern age!
On The Level Podcast
Top 10 Reasons Christians Dislike Freemasonry
We delve into the top conspiracy theories surrounding Freemasonry, debunking myths that often mischaracterize the organization. The episode emphasizes the importance of understanding the values, ethics, and community bonds inherent in Freemasonry while highlighting the role of open dialogue in dispelling misconceptions.
• Discussing common misconceptions about Freemasonry
• Clarifying beliefs surrounding secret knowledge and blood oaths
• Contextualizing Albert Pike's reference to "Lucifer" in Freemasonry
• Exploring the importance of individual belief systems within the fraternity
• Analyzing the misattribution of Masonic practices to other organizations
• Encouraging a deeper understanding of Freemasonry through cross-generational dialogue
#freemasonry #podcast #bluelodge #freemason
All we have to decide is what to do with the time of the Skeletons. You've reached the Internet's home for all things masonry. Join On the Level Podcast as we plumb the depths of our ancient craft and try to unlock the mysteries, dispel the fallacies and utilize the teachings of Freemasonry to unlock the greatness within each of us. I have you now.
Speaker 2:Let's go, yeah, get it. Welcome back, I love it.
Speaker 1:I love it Please. I love it, I love it, Please, please, hold your applause. Seriously, not for us guys. We're not worthy. We're not worthy.
Speaker 2:Buddy, how are you?
Speaker 1:Man, I'm good, good, Good to be back, good to be back. I saw some other people thought it was good that we were back. So, hey, hey, people didn't forget about us.
Speaker 2:Well, either that or like. Who are these guys? This is phenomenal. Just a Freemasonry Another one.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, we were one of the OGs actually.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I feel like there's a lot of podcasts out there these days and people talk a lot about Freemasonry.
Speaker 2:They do, which is going to lead into what we're talking about today. Unfortunately for you, me and and all the other brothers that we have out there, the ones that get the most views are typically the ones that are like they're worshiping space aliens and it's like, come on, guys, Like come on, let's talk about masonry what it is, what it isn't, let's get into it.
Speaker 1:I think that's Scientology that worships space aliens. I think it's anybody who has a destination with Kool-Aid in their future. I mean, what even you know these days? Space aliens? It's like there's a whole lot of religion being put into the alien stuff these days. Yeah, I don't know if you're following.
Speaker 2:If I'm being honest with you, like whenever it comes to conspiracy stuff, like I'm shoulder deep into conspiracy stuff, like, so you're probably going to hear me throw off some stuff today where it's like Matt, what on earth are you on? And I just want to be clear it's February, I'm doing a sober month, so these are all clear thoughts that I have or that I have on Freemasonry and conspiracy theories. Just stuff I've read. Not stuff I believe, but stuff I've read.
Speaker 1:Well, you being active in your church, you got a lot of people that came up to you and said things like oh, you know this right. You know that they were trying to prove to you how bad the fraternity is, so that's why we are creating this episode, which is top 10 conspiracy theories about Freemasonry that come from the Christian church.
Speaker 2:And, for the record, when Chris and I started talking about this idea, I sent him a list of almost 20 that I just rattled off off the top of my head. So yeah, there's all kinds of stuff that you know. Christians do have authentic issues with Freemasonry, which I get it, I understand it. There are some things that are that are cause for concern, especially given the fact that we are an organization with secrets. Christians typically don't like the fact that we are an organization with secrets. Um, but every organization has secrets. I mean, show me the inner workings of your checkbook, you know. Show me exactly your P&L statement for your household.
Speaker 2:That is proprietary information.
Speaker 1:Can I walk into the Vatican vaults and just see everything I want for myself? I want to so bad. Are there secrets?
Speaker 2:there that I'm not allowed to see. I think if Tom Hanks and Nicolas Cage could get together and just waltz right into and do like a mashup between the Da Vinci Code and National Treasure let's have that Like that's what I want, where they just bust open the doors and do it.
Speaker 1:I could definitely go for that, yeah. But I don't think Freemasonry is very coy about the fact that the secrets they keep are traditional secrets. It's modes of recognition. It's like secret words to denote which degree you're in, like, yeah, it's not like they're keeping a secret from mankind, it's not like they're keeping secret knowledge from people. Um, so there's obviously, and to some degree I think, masonry. Masonry capitalizes on that, because it's one of the reasons. I've talked to thousands of men about joining Freemasonry and I'd say 80% of the time one of the reasons they want to join is to find out the truth for themselves, because they've been hearing all this stuff out there. So that mystery kind of draws people to the fraternity. So I think, you know, if Masonry came out and told the secrets, we probably would never get any new members because they'd be like what?
Speaker 2:that was it yeah that's it, yeah, and even still, I think the the most I'm not even going to say compelling, but it was actually a good point and I had a decent rebuttal to it is they were like well, if there's all these good teachings in masonry, why don't you make them available to the public? I mean, everybody needs to know about all this and I'm like no, because we don't want everybody in masonry. I'm sorry, but there are certain people outside of the fraternity that should never be in the fraternity. They're troublemakers, or there are people currently in the fraternity that should not be part of the fraternity, and I think that's a fair statement.
Speaker 2:I will not expand on that, as my Masonic trials coming up in a couple of weeks. I'm not even talking about anything other than a couple of local people that I know where it's like local, get some better choices local people or local people, local people, yeah, and, by the way, if I sound weird, brothers, I apologize.
Speaker 2:Currently in the state of Florida, the trees are all fornicating and it has now infected my nose. And also it's the end of strawberry season and I'm in the winter strawberry capital of the world, so as those strawberries begin to die in the fields, it just makes the whole area smell interesting.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's pretty, you know, I'm sure when they're out it's a beautiful sight to see all those strawberries.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's awesome, it's awesome.
Speaker 1:Chocolate, cover those suckers and I join you Gross.
Speaker 2:Really. All right, yeah, terrible.
Speaker 1:So my question to you is do we go from like 10 to 1, like a countdown of the top 10 things? I actually number them where 1 are the easy ones to deal with and then they get more difficult as you go down. So we'll start with the easiest and wind up at the most difficult, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, so I mean, but I like the way that I probably should have renumbered them um, or redone them the way you said, because then everyone's on pins and needles for number one, but now you got to be on pins and needles for number 10.
Speaker 1:Number 10 yeah, we'll just opposite these numbers. So numbers starting at number. The most common things that you're probably going to hear that if you're a Freemason about Freemasonry is Freemasonry has its own path to salvation. Yeah, you do hear that a lot, that it's going to take the place of church in your life and allegedly Freemasons have their own Bible that takes out the first commandment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the first commandment being that thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Speaker 1:So, um, a lot of people have your Masonic Bible, no doubt, and I'm sure you've checked it for yourself, right? I've got four of them, Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got four Masonic Bibles. Uh, one is from, oh man, it's from like the 1940s, but it's some friends of ours that her grandfather was a Mason and she's like, hey, I've got no use for this, Do you want this? And I'm like, yes, I want that. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, so, and of course I. Of course I go to the Old Testament and I check the 10 commandments and, hey, is this altered in any way, shape or form? And the short answer is no. Every.
Speaker 2:I've checked Bibles on altars. I've checked Bibles that we keep tucked in the altars because we always have a backup for some odd reason. I've checked every Masonic Bible that I can get my hands on and immediately go to the Ten Commandments. And okay, what is the first one that's there People? The Masonic Bible or the Freemason Bible? That's, there is a standard King James Bible, which is not my favorite translation of the Bible, by the way, but it is a standard King James Bible. It's not even the Trump Bible. Some would say it's the best Bible. I wouldn't say that personally, but some would say it was the best.
Speaker 1:Everyone says it's the best.
Speaker 2:Everyone says it's the best. You pay $100 for a Bible. People say it's the best.
Speaker 1:But no, it's just a standard King James Bible. That's all it is. I mean, it's not standard in the sense that there are some pictures added to it, right, like we have some George Washington's photos in there, I think King Solomon's pictured in there, so maybe it's in the beginning, right. They talk a little bit about, like, how Freemasonry relates to it a little bit, but then you've got essentially the same bible everyone else has dude.
Speaker 2:My daughter has a bible where daniel and the lion's den. The lion has a smile on its face. Let that sink in for as long as you need well, here's the other thing.
Speaker 1:Um, they probably feel outsiders probably feel like we're coveting our Bible above another Bible, um, and we can explain that very easily. So when you become a master Mason which for an average person takes in the in the United States, at least in the jurisdiction of Florida, about six months on average to work your way through the three degrees Sure, if you're in England it might be three years or seven years, but here it's about six months and it's a long journey. You're doing a lot of work and at the end of your Master Mason degree you are presented with your personal Masonic Bible and inside that Bible are your degree dates and the signatures of everybody that was there the day that you were made a Master Mason.
Speaker 2:So it is kind of a keepsake and a memorabilia item for you personally and your part in the fraternity. So I don't know how you guys did it down in sarasota, but at my lodge we only got our bible, the working tools and our apron after we did our master mason give back, do y'all? Guys do the same thing, or is it right whenever you're raised?
Speaker 1:We award the Bible the same day of their Master Mason degree. After the lecture Okay. Because it's given to everyone regardless. Not everyone's required to do a give back for their Master Mason degree. So obviously, if you don't do your give back, you should still get your Bible. What you won't get is your apron.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's obviously a whole separate presentation. For once you do get your Master Mason proficiency, but we like to give it out that day. They actually get their dues card that day. A lot of lodges don't have that prepared and ready, but we have a great secretary process in our lodge so they have it all ready for them.
Speaker 2:They're handed their dues for that, they're handed their card, they're handed their bible. They get it all on the same night. I didn't get my dues card until probably I think it was like a month and a half after, because I I was raised on december 9th of 23 and I think it was in january I went over to lakeland lodge and one of the brothers over there, I mean, was flipped out that I didn't have a dues card. And yet I was trying to attend a meeting there and he's like why don't you have your dues card? And I'm like, bro, like they haven't been sent out yet. And so I had him look up on the Grand Lodge website. I had already been installed as junior deacon at this point and so I had him look up on the Grand L deacon and he's like well, do you have your id on you? Of course I have my id. So like, check it. And finally the secretary called us back and he's like yeah, I just haven't gotten around to sending out the dues cards yet.
Speaker 2:So there you go even still at lakeland lodge. Here we are in february. I still don't have my dues card for lakeland lodge, but I've got amity, so hopefully that works out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Amity should work in the state of Florida Should.
Speaker 2:You have some of the brothers that do not like Amity at all. They want you to have the raised seal dues card and they're like no, I'm not accepting that crap.
Speaker 1:And I'm like come on, guys, I take it they were over the age of 60.
Speaker 2:Yes, so either way back to the point of Freemasonry having its own path to salvation. If you're listening to this and you are not a Freemason, or as we like to call you, they're profane. Please don't take offense to it.
Speaker 1:But it sounds bad.
Speaker 2:I know it's the profane. If you're listening to this and you're not a Mason and you are staunchly against Freemasonry, I want to go ahead and put this point to bed. Freemasonry does not have its own path to salvation, while it is an organization that has multiple different religions and faiths in it. On the petition that you fill out and you can go to any Grand Lodge website anywhere in the country and you can download their petition and it asks you flat out if you have your religious stance solved, figured out for your own there is no path to salvation in Freemasonry.
Speaker 2:Now we do talk about that. There is a place that we are headed to, that we are traveling to, and that is the allegory for heaven. So for me, being a Christian, that for me is talking about heaven and it's talking about the kingdom of God. So, but for some of our Muslim brothers, that could be talking about their iteration of that, or Jews, or whatever the case might be, you have to have your religion figured out and Freemasonry is a supplement to help with your faith and practice. It's a supplement to help make you a better man. It is not the final end all be all of. Oh, we have our own path to salvation? We don't. It does not exist of. Oh, we have our own path to salvation. We don't.
Speaker 2:It does not exist.
Speaker 1:Right. So I think one thing you said I'll correct or add to it. You said we have multiple religions as part of Freemasonry. But not really. I guess they're not part of Freemasonry. I guess they're accepted by the fraternity. That's fair, there's no real religion as part of our fraternity at all. Um, you know, we religions represented.
Speaker 1:I should probably yeah, I probably should have worded that better but honestly, you know, if you look at any lodge in the united states, the only religion you're gonna see represented is probably christianity. Yeah, I don't think you could really say any other religion maybe. No, you could see, like, other cultures, but not other religions. I think Christianity is the only one directly represented, because every lodge, at least in the state of Florida and I believe in the entire United States, does have at least a depiction of the two saints' job on their wall. Yep, so you're going to find those Christian symbols in every freemason lodge in the state.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and even, and even still. I mean, I had a conversation. Uh, you know, we have a muslim brother over at uh, over at lakeland. I again, I love this guy, um and so he and I were having a conversation about the three abrahamic faiths. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it? This was long before I ever joined masonry. But wasn't there a push through the Grand Lodge to only have the three Abrahamic faiths as part of Freemasonry here in the state of Florida?
Speaker 1:We had a Grandmaster try to pass some legislation for that, yeah, but the brothers wouldn't allow it.
Speaker 2:So it got voted down by the craft.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:I think Pete Holmes. There's a comedian named Pete Holmes. I love Pete Holmes. There's a comedian named Pete Holmes.
Speaker 1:I love Pete Holmes.
Speaker 2:Oh, he's great. He talked about it at one point in a standup special. He goes God is the name that we put as a blanket over the mysteries of the universe, and it's like I'm not entirely mad about that. That's a good agnostic stance of I don't know how to quantify whatever that entity is, but there's something there Right. And that's just the first step. Whatever that entity is, but there's something there Right.
Speaker 1:And that's just the first step. Yeah, I mean, I know it's talking about religion gets hairy, but I have really read a lot about a lot of different religions and also about history. So as you study history and the history of religions you start to see commonalities appearing, you know, appearing through time, and I know people don't want to accept that or talk about that. Their religion came from something else. Everyone thinks their religion is the only thing that's ever existed. Unfortunately, if you look at humanity, it's not true. We have a huge smorgasbord of religions that you find some common elements of in most of them throughout time, definitely in the major ones that have stuck around through the ages and the fraternity, I think, kind of celebrates that. A lot of our degrees teach moral lessons and many of the characters in our degrees are characters from the Old Testament that are kind of plucked out and fleshed out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:That's fair to say. I mean, we probably don't take from Christian figures or Muslim figures or any of the others. So I guess that probably leads to one of the later bullet points we're going to talk about, which is the Jewish faith being preferred.
Speaker 2:But I would say, it's not there. At the end of the day, like I said, it's you know the Bible, the fact that we have a Bible.
Speaker 1:it celebrates the fact that, as Masons, we all believe and in Florida we make the Christian Bible the one that's preferred. If you go into any lodge in Florida, it's actually required that a Christian Bible be open and placed on our altar in the center of the lodge.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it kind of pokes a hole in the hole. Masons want to replace Christianity. We couldn't function without it in Florida.
Speaker 2:Well, and again, I think what a lot of Christians and again I'm speaking as a Christian like I want to be clear about this, I'm speaking of this from a Christian perspective is what some Christians seem to have an issue with is that Freemasonry is not exclusively a Christian organization.
Speaker 1:Right that is their whole big ordeal Right and it's never going to be, and I know I've seen people get actually upset about it in various settings in the fraternity yeah, mostly when someone says a prayer. I was the president of Master Mason Association and that is basically where all the principal officers from all the lodges in one district come together for a once a month meeting to talk about what's going on. And we do in Freemasonry, always pray before anything that we do and usually at the end of everything we do. So I asked a random person to say a prayer beforehand and they said a christian prayer and said on jesus name, I pray amen. And everyone said amen, you know, or the way we say it, and things went on. However, I had multiple people come up to me and say they were offended that I allowed that to happen because they were Jewish or Muslim people who felt that that wasn't right in Freemasonry. So I see why Christians would get upset about the fact that you don't pray to Jesus specifically, because that is a uniquely Christian thing, right.
Speaker 2:Jesus being the one you pray to Right. But here's the counter that I would give to that. Knowing the scriptures, the way that I do is Jesus. Whenever he said the Lord's Prayer, jesus was not praying to himself, he was praying to God. So there is nothing wrong as a Christian or a Freemason to pray to God. That is perfectly acceptable in the Christian faith. And if you are a Christian or a Freemason to pray to God, that is perfectly acceptable in the Christian faith. And if you are a Christian that says, oh no, we're only supposed to pray to Christ, I would counter you with this no one goes to the Father, but through me You're going to the Father. You're speaking to the Father in the Christian faith through the name of Jesus. You're not speaking directly to Jesus.
Speaker 2:You're using Jesus as a vehicle to speak to God. There's nothing wrong in the Christian faith with praying to God, and I think that's perfectly acceptable.
Speaker 1:There you go, and I think this is why Freemasonry has publicly been around for over 300 years and it lives in a lot of different lands, that that religions change depending on the land that you're in. But the one thing no one really gets upset about is god. Right, we all kind of agree to god being the one that we can all agree. I may not be the same one in our minds, but that's okay. It doesn't have to be the same one, because in Freemasonry it's a very individual personal journey. So when you say a prayer, it's to your God when you pray, when you say a prayer.
Speaker 1:So Matt and I could be saying the same prayer and at the end or in the beginning, when we mentioned God, be thinking of a different religion. But it works because God is a very general thing and in Freemasonry they try to make it even more general by calling God by names like the architect of the universe or the great architect or the grand architect or the supreme architect of the universe. And again, I don't know who gets offended by this. I guess you're not using the, the language they like. That's not the language my church likes or my mosque likes, not how we do it, but that's not what we're doing here.
Speaker 1:We're not replacing the church or the mosque, or you know, it's a supplement, that's all it is and we have to refer to our creator as something, and so they're trying to go as general as they can here. We can all agree that whoever we're praying to created the universe. Right? No one's going to get offended by that idea.
Speaker 2:And obviously he was phenomenal at geometry because he set everything in time and it's existed. For if you're one of the literal deists from Genesis, it's the Bible is anywhere, or the earth is anywhere from six to 8,000 years old, or if you believe carbon dating, it's billions of years old and all the sun, moon and stars all follow the same path, Right? Whoever, whatever created this was phenomenal at their job.
Speaker 1:Right and Freemasonry really celebrates that in a way that I don't even know that people think about often enough in their church, which is the beauty of it all. In our lectures, especially the fellow craft lecture, we talk about astronomy and how this is where you really see the strength and the beauty of your creator, when you look to the heavens, plus geometry, like you you said, because it's a repeating pattern that is consistent. Um, I saw, I saw ricky jar jar vase.
Speaker 2:I think he's an atheist guy um, he's so pompous, it annoys me, but his roast of the grammys a couple years ago.
Speaker 1:He said yes, man, so good you could take any religion and erase it from history and it probably won't ever come back the same way that it was. But you can erase all of science and math from history and it will come back exactly the same way it was, because those things are just true, they're repeatable, they're verifiable, they're observable.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I would put science in that, and the reason why I say that is you know, whenever some person gets up on tv and they said trust the science, um, we all know who I'm talking about. Science changes that's the whole purpose of science is to disprove a thing and to prove a new thing science is always the best idea of what we have about something at any given moment yeah, so.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if you could say that science or even mathematics would come back the exact same way, because, okay, who's to say someone's using metric instead of empirical? Um, or you know who's to say that, uh, you know that gravity is going to have a different, you know a a different thing to go with it. But, either way, science is constantly changing. I don't think it would ever come back exactly the same way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hopefully it would come back better. So what I've noticed is, as this UAP and all this crazy stuff is becoming more and more prevalent in the conversation, at least in America, you see a lot of scientists that are acting like their science is a religion. It's like no, that's not what I believe, believe, that's not what I think. So you can't think that. And it's like hold on a second now. Science is supposed to be open to new ideas. You can't say anything is settled in science, uh, or you, you know you could rely on it because you tested it and repeated it. But when you get new information, you have to find a way to account for that in your worldview as a scientist, I would think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:But you hear a lot of scientists say that's ridiculous, that's silly, you know, whatever, and either way back to the prayer thing.
Speaker 2:So, and then we'll move on from this data point. But some of the people have an issue the fact that we end a prayer with so mode it be and we don't end it with the word amen. So allow me to read to you what the translation of the word amen is. Amen is a word of Hebrew origin commonly used in religious contexts across various languages and cultures. Its primary translation from Hebrew is so be it or truly so mode it be is Gothic Latin for let it be or so be it, which is the same thing. It's the same thing. It's the exact same thing. It's just using a different language. It's like we're saying God instead of Dios. It's the same thing.
Speaker 1:It's a little bit silly One of those things that somebody who has an issue with that just isn't thinking that deeply about anything. Probably.
Speaker 2:Honestly, it's my biggest frustration whenever I talk to some of these types, because they are all arrogance and little to no knowledge. You know, for example, we've talked on here before about, you know, the young man in my young adult class that had tattoos, and some of the older members of our church had an issue with him having tattoos because of the book of Leviticus. And I'm like, bro, if you're going to combat them, stay in the book of Leviticus, because the rest of Leviticus says that you're not supposed to eat unclean animals. So no shellfish, no pork, none of this stuff. When's the last time you had shrimp or lobster? And then, of course that it's stone your local gay people and drag them outside the city gates before the sun sets.
Speaker 2:It's like stay in the book of Leviticus. Either all of it applies or none of it applies. Pick a lane. I don't care which one you pick.
Speaker 1:I agree with that 100% and I asked a friend of mine who's Jewish about that specifically, because I know a lot of Jewish friends who are very careful about what they eat because it is written that way in the Old Testament. But the more Reform I think they're called, they have a Reform Jewish branch and he said, no, we've realized that the intent of that was because people were getting sick eating that stuff.
Speaker 2:Yes, but we now know that Pig is a very disgusting animal.
Speaker 1:You can cook it and it helps you not get sick and therefore we don't follow that anymore because we have ways to prevent the issue they were having from happening to us, which is a very real like. I appreciate that outlook on things. Yeah, I get that it's a slippery slope of changing things. I get that you don't want to like change your belief system or it might turn into something else, but I think you know and that, like, don't eat this because God said so. Well, okay, but he was trying to help you at the time and now we have fire and we know how to cook it. We know how to cook pork at a certain temperature to kill the things in it, as well as shellfish 165 degrees for those scoring at home, unless you're going to work, but over a long cook, and then that's whenever you wrap, because you've now hit the stall.
Speaker 1:You're welcome wow, I don't know about shellfish. You probably don't cook shellfish, do you? I don't. I don't eat shellfish anyway oh dude, yeah I'll.
Speaker 2:I'll throw lobster on a grill in a heartbeat.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, it's so lobster yeah, yeah, yeah, but I hear I think of like the oysters and the nasty things people eat no, no, so I'll do.
Speaker 2:I'll do scallops, shrimp and lobster, those, those are my shellfish. So every year we we go to the keys for mini season, um, and so we've been doing that ever since I was a kid, so yeah, so come July, early August, you'll see me I'll have like scratches all up and down my arms and everything. It's from their antennas, so all their horns face forward as like a weapon of offense. So it's like you know they'll sit there and they'll just scratch me all to kingdom come.
Speaker 1:And I'm just like doesn't change my day, you're delicious, I don't care. Well, there we go. I hope that we've answered sufficiently the idea that Freemasonry has its own path to salvation. It doesn't.
Speaker 2:It only took us 35 minutes to answer one question. How long do you have today, sir?
Speaker 1:Here we go, we could do this. We could do this. Number nine, the god or gods that Freemasonry worships, the great architect of the universe, are things that they fear or think is evil.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they pull this from. I can't say the name, according to our obligation, but what they say is that there is an entity that is a combination of Jesus, baal and Osiris, and so that is the God that Freemasons worship, and that's not even remotely close. So whenever we refer to God and Freemasons, if you have a Muslim standing to your right and you have a Jew standing to your left and we pray to the great architect of the universe, in my mind I'm picturing God of the Old Testament, yahweh. Whenever you have a Muslim brother standing next to you, he's praying to Allah. Whenever you have a Jewish brother standing next to you on the other side, he's also praying to the God of the Old Testament. So, yahweh, so again it. Freemasonry is an individual journey. There's no cut dry standard procedure of, oh no, we're all praying to this one entity that's not found in either one of our holy books.
Speaker 1:That's a minute.
Speaker 2:That's our god yeah, yeah, oh gosh, we're going to get into that too. No, um, yeah no, it's not baphomet, not, you know, lucifer or Beelzebub.
Speaker 1:I mean the Anunnaki?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the Anunnaki and it's not the lizard people. It's not lizard people. We're not praying to lizard people, okay.
Speaker 1:The thing about this is they don't tell you who God is. Like we said in the beginning, you should know that before you come to this fraternity and whoever you said is the God that you worship, is okay with the fraternity. They're not going to try to change your mind or say you're wrong or what about this or what about that? It's never going to come up.
Speaker 2:And back to that point, that specific point that you just brought up. If Christians have an issue with Freemasonry not being an exclusive Christian organization, you better not be a member of Costco or Sam's Club or your local gym or your local golf club. If an organization has to be 100%, exclusively Christian for you to be a part of that organization, you can't go anywhere. You can't even go to Publix to buy groceries, because you're going to get atheists in there. You're going to get Muslims and Jews in there. Of course the Jews aren't going to hit the pork section, but that's beside the point.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you just look around inside your own church, you'll probably see some people that are questionable if they really believe enough to be considered the same religion as you.
Speaker 2:Well, and still, what is a church? A church? Christ said I did not come for the healthy, I came for the sick right. A church is a place for sick people who are trying to become better. What is masonry? It is good men trying to become better. That's all it is.
Speaker 1:That's right. I mean, at the end of the day, that's all it is. There are ceremonies, I agree, but every religion has its own ceremony. Every fraternity has its own ceremony. You join a fraternity in college, you're going to have a ceremony attached to it. This isn't uncommon, it's not out of the ordinary. And it's not out of the ordinary.
Speaker 2:And even if you look at certain ceremonies within the church, whether it be the Lutheran Church, the Catholic Church, baptist Pentecostal, the ones that handle snakes I don't know what those ones are, but they all have their own ritual or ceremony or whatever title you want to give it. That is not exclusively found in the scriptures. That is something that the church fathers early on of that specific denomination. They're the ones that created that and instituted that. So they've just moved forward with because it's tradition. Now, this is the way that we move forward.
Speaker 1:And how many branches of Christianity are there today? Too many. Do you even know that?
Speaker 2:No, I do not know that.
Speaker 2:So I've been a part of a Lutheran church, a Baptist church there are more than 45,000 denominations of Christianity Doesn't spread Cause, even in the, even in the, the denomination that I come from, the church of Christ, there's multiple branches within that and you have certain churches of Christ. That and this is how petty it gets in the church of Christ, and I'm sorry my COC-ers, uh, but we are petty. Um, they're very legalistic and so it's like if that church of Christ down the road has a kitchen, well, paul said that you know, do you not have kitchens at home to eat food at home? So that church down the road that has a kitchen is now anti church of Christ because it has a kitchen? No, dummy, it's that they have a kitchen. And Paul was talking about getting full and drunk on the Lord's Supper. Read it in context, my guy.
Speaker 1:That's beyond my understanding text.
Speaker 2:My guy I. That's beyond my understanding. Uh, I could. If you want to get into denominations, I will wreck the rest of this podcast about denominations.
Speaker 1:There are a lot of them, though we can agree there's a lot and here's the thing.
Speaker 2:If you even want to consider it from an aspect of spiritual warfare, the best thing that the enemy of christians, satan, the best thing that satan came up with, was denominations. You mean to tell me that we can split and disagree on something petty and stupid and never speak to these people again. It's like no wonder the world's devolving into chaos is because believing people are not standing up and saying there is a better way to conduct yourself than this madness that you're doing.
Speaker 1:I will um.
Speaker 1:I'll go a step further run it and say that, uh, as somebody who was in a situation where I was an atheist at one point in my life my son had an accident that changed my perspective on things I struggled to get into church. Um, every time I went I felt like I'd get further from the relationship I was trying to create with my creator. Um, it was not good and uh, freemius and re has really helped do that in a way that I didn't get when I went to church, and I think it's because it's not so dogmatic, like like it depends on which church you go to, which rules they have and you know who's good and who's bad and all that stuff, whereas you can go into any fraternal lodge of Freemasonry and they follow the same rules. No one's going to, no one will care if I'm one denomination of Christian or another or I don't know what to call myself. No one's going to care or judge me as long as I'm trying to be better as a man.
Speaker 2:Yes, and, by the way, so on our last podcast we got a comment on how we shouldn't be talking about politics within Freemasonry. Do you realize how many comments we're going to get just on covering these topics right here?
Speaker 1:Oh, it's going to be a lot. We shouldn't be talking about religion. It's like guys, we can talk about religion. We're not in a tiled meeting, like you know. We can discuss it. That's something we've repeatedly um dealt with, and our philosophy has always been if you struggle to talk about those things, you haven't learned your early lessons in masonry yet, so you need to go back and check yourself. Uh, clearly, we're not allowed to talk about this stuff in an open lodge, a tiled lodge rather, which, which I totally get. Why would would you? You're trying to do business, you got a small amount of time. Why would you be talking about this? Stuff Doesn't make sense. However, freemasons are not prohibited from talking about anything, unless you live in the state of Florida, and then maybe you won't be allowed to talk about certain things. But we're not supposed to be prohibited from talking. We're supposed to explore, ask questions together and learn together from our different experiences.
Speaker 2:And for what it's worth for the section that you edited out. I agree with you. So future you like in a couple of days whenever you're editing this, just know, Thank you, I'm with you bro.
Speaker 2:From both this me and future me. Yeah, exactly, okay. So number eight Freemasonry and Satan worship. Are Satanists allowed? So one of the big things that keeps getting thrown around in the social media circles and even the preaching circles, like there's a preacher out of I think I think it's out of Nevada or something like that he wears an amoeba blazer whenever he preaches. He did like a 14 or 15 part study on Freemasonry and he's like, oh, they exclusively worship Satan. So, yeah, exclusively worship Satan.
Speaker 2:Now my thing is and I'll be transparent about this I studied Freemasonry for almost 15 years. Before I ever approached the West Gate, before I ever filled out a petition, I studied the fire out of it. Before I ever filled out a petition, I studied the fire out of it and I realized that a lot of the stuff that comes out about Freemasonry is typically conspiracy theories. It's people that were kicked out of the fraternity, people that were looking to make a quick buck, people that felt like they were wronged by the fraternity, whatever the case might be, and so it kind of led me into it. So I'd be lying if I said that at least 20% of me, that at least 20% of me whenever I joined Masonry.
Speaker 2:A good 20% of me was trying to see is there anything nefarious here? Because if there is something nefarious and something as bad as everybody says that it is, yeah, I'm going to blow the top off this thing, you know, and actually expose something as evil as this, especially as a devout Christian being. In Freemasonry, and especially having gone down the York Rite, I haven't found that at all, not even a little bit. If anything, it's actually strengthened and emboldened my belief in Christianity to the point where I'm not just following doctrine talking points anymore, I'm not just following tradition anymore. I'm actually reading and studying esoteric Christianity. I'm studying the church fathers, and it's actually led me to a much deeper understanding of my faith, using the same tenets out of Freemasonry that we talk about. It's also made my interactions better, being able to keep my passions under control.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's a human thing we tend to lose the forest for the trees. You know, if you focus on the message and the meaning more than the legalistic side of anything, you're going to be a happier person, probably be a better person. So are we satan worshipers? No, that one's easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah and it's never mentioned in any of his forums that I'm aware of, nor are we led to do anything. You know the the worst I've seen in the fraternity are the people that caught up in the bureaucracy of it. That's the worst I've seen personally and that's not part of the fraternity. That's a human problem.
Speaker 2:There's another data point we're going to get to. It's number two on this list is that Lucifer is mentioned in some Masonic writings, but not in the in the aspect of what you would think. So more to come. Stick to the end of the video to see that data point.
Speaker 1:All right, that one was an easy one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, easy.
Speaker 1:Number seven.
Speaker 2:Blood oaths. So it is no secret whatsoever and I've come to tackle this a few different ways it is no secret whatsoever that in the entered apprentice degree the fellow craft and the master mason there is an obligation that you take and there is a penalty for violating said obligation.
Speaker 1:It has to do with a physical nature of oh, so is that what they mean by blood oaths?
Speaker 2:That's what I thought it meant Blood oaths is your hand and like drip blood or something, and yeah that you know they'll hang you by your ears and, you know, tickle your feet with a feather until you can't stand it anymore, and then you confess to sin. I don't know.
Speaker 1:No, we do take an obligation which is similar to an oath, I guess. No, it's not. It can't be the same thing, Right.
Speaker 2:They refer to the obligation as a blood oath is that if I do not fulfill this, then penalty will come upon me.
Speaker 1:Fair enough. So I mean, when I bought my home I had to sign a paper that said if I didn't make the payments, they would take my house, like I made an oath to pay.
Speaker 2:So the counter to that would be is that, yeah, but they're not going to, you know, physically harm you in any way. You're just going to be homeless.
Speaker 1:Sure, sure. First, I'd like to know how they know about that, because that's one of the secrets of Freemasonry are the obligations right and the penalties. It's because there's nothing secret about Freemasonry anymore. Everything is out there, everything oath because we do say there is a penalty to violating the oath. I have seen people violate their oath and the penalty is certainly not what it was said to be in the oath.
Speaker 2:No, they just get kicked out of the fraternity, that's the penalty.
Speaker 1:Your penalty is either suspension, expulsion or reprimand. Those are the penalties. Right and reprimand doesn't mean 18 lashes with a barbed flange on your back. It means hey, don't do that again.
Speaker 2:Which is weird, because normally I pay extra for that. No, so, so even still, they, they, they harp on the fact that there is a oath or an obligation within Freemasonry and there is. And so, again, I've come to tackle this a handful of different ways. It depends on how far you want to follow the logical argument. Okay, so the logical argument is well, you shouldn't do, you shouldn't swear by anything in heaven or by your own head, or you know, jesus talks about that. Let your yes be yes and your no be no, right, which is perfectly fine. I'm totally on board with that. Have you ever signed to get your license renewed? Were you swear or affirm the information that you put on there is true? Or have you ever been sworn in for testimony at a planning or commission hearing where you raise your right hand? Do you swear or affirm the testimony you're about to give is the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth. Or I'll even take it a step further have you ever been to a marriage ceremony?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a marriage ceremony says forsaking all others until death. Do us part. That is technically a blood oath right and even still, marriage ceremony or marriage vows are not found in the scriptures at all.
Speaker 1:That is something that has been made up, that is, you know, it's people that are taking things way out of context and exaggerating them. Yes, is what that is Because, like you said, there are a lot of oaths that are taken and I don't think the one that we take is any like we talked about. The only penalty you're going to get for breaking the oath that you take, and in the worst cases, you can be expelled from the fraternity.
Speaker 2:Well and historically, you can't find any example of a person being murdered in the way that Freemasons talk about the penalty for violating our oaths. You can't find that anywhere at all. But to kind of allude to a future episode we're going to do about, born in blood from john robinson, is the blood oaths and the, those obligations that you take and the oaths that you swear is more tradition based than it is anything. So rewind the clock back to the 1300s whenever the knights, templars, are being hunted down by the catholic church. They had to be super selective on who they allowed into their ranks.
Speaker 2:Now, some would argue that Templars and Freemasons merged at that point, which I'm in that camp of. I believe they merged at that point Because even if you look at our mosaic floor, you look at the symbol in the back of the room that has the dot, the circle and the two lines on the outside. If you look at all of that, that's all Templar symbology, or it could be taken as Templar symbology, and so they had to be super particular about that of a person being murdered in the way that, uh, the obligations lay out exactly.
Speaker 1:There's one story which we talked about once on this podcast of uh, a guy who disappeared and there was masonry was kind of publicly involved in it. So there was an accusation that they killed the guy, but that was never proven. I think it's just a story well, you know what it was.
Speaker 2:Chris is because the person went in there and they gave the sign and everything to the judge and the judge just let him go, man, if it only worked that way.
Speaker 1:I would uh, I'd be suing everybody in winnie, yeah if only it worked that way.
Speaker 2:If only it worked that way. If only it worked that way in Masonic trials.
Speaker 1:We are halfway there. Number five the pentagram. So people say that in Freemasonry we use the pentagram a lot. You'll find it in the Scottish Rite in some of the imagery that they use. I think particularly you mentioned the Eastern Star uses it as one of their main symbols. So I I got this light reading book called the unlocking the hidden keys of solomon.
Speaker 1:So I heard about that book yeah yeah, solomon is a big part of the masonic traditions. He's a. He's a character that appears often and is somewhat revered in the fraternity, but he's also in every other major religion, which is where they got it from his character, and he's widely regarded as the greatest and wisest king who ever lived. Right, you have the story in the Bible of all the two women and he's like oh, I cut the baby in half because he wanted to see who really loved that child.
Speaker 2:I mean, how wise could you be with like 300 wives and 700 concubines? You don't have the time in the day, my guy, you're running a kingdom.
Speaker 1:He, uh, he was a busy guy at Solomon but, um, in reading the book, there is so much symbolism that I think Christians would view as satanic. It was shocking to me. Um, you really can't do any of the things that he's saying you should do without using pentacles and pentagrams, and so I don't know at what point the pentagram became such a negative thing or associated with Satan worship. I guess Satan worshipers generally try to use reverse imagery, so an upside down cross and upside down star David, maybe, maybe that's how it got there.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you hit on that. So the upside down cross is is one thing that people talk about, where they're like oh, that's satanic, okay. So I will remind everybody who is a Christian listening to this, who has an issue with Freemasonry I'm not talking about the brothers, I'm talking about the people that have an issue with Freemasonry and some of the symbolism. Whenever you see an upside down cross, that is not satanic. That is the cross of St Peter. If you remember your scriptures, peter was going, was said to be crucified, and he said I am not worthy to be sacrificed or so sorry to be crucified in the same manner as our Lord and the Romans that were at the time. They were like, bet, we got you. So they crucified him upside down so that way it would not be in the same manner as Christ. So a lot of this stuff where it's like oh no, that's satanic imagery. No, it's not. You need to learn history a little bit better.
Speaker 1:And the Eastern Star is such a good organization.
Speaker 2:It's hard to believe that. It'd be hard for me to believe that they're worshiping satan. Still, the five points of the star. If I'm not mistaken, it's alluding to five women found in the old testament right, right yeah like I'm not.
Speaker 2:I'm not an eastern star person, I just I don't have the time for it. But that's one thing that, whenever we're setting it up and I'm asking, I'm like hey, by the way, you know what? What are you know, all these symbols? Are all these symbols and everything? Because there's like a sheath of weed, a chalice, all this other stuff, and I'm like what are all these things? And they're like oh, it's representing five women that are found in the Old Testament, that were pivotal women in the Old Testament, and Solomon.
Speaker 1:I think Christians view Solomon as a good guy right In their religion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know anybody that speaks ill of him. If you're going to speak ill about Solomon, then you got to speak ill about David, and then, of course, christ comes from the line of David Right, the line of the tribe of Judah. So if you're going to speak ill about that, you're speaking ill about the line of Christ, and at that point you're treading on dangerous territory.
Speaker 1:I just wanted to make sure, because if you've ever looked at the seal of Solomon, apparently there is a pentagram as part of the seal.
Speaker 2:Ooh, now I want to look that up. Stand by, ladies and gentlemen. There's a star with five or six points.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's just the Jewish star. Yeah, and because? Why? Because he was Jewish.
Speaker 2:We need to get Jonathan Green back on this podcast, where he starts talking about alchemy with the symbol.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Alchemy was very important in Solomon's time. I don't see how Solomon was a Satanist when he used the pentagram and his seal.
Speaker 2:No, I mean there's an argument to be made.
Speaker 2:That you know. So God told Solomon in the Old Testament where he said hey, don't marry women from a foreign land because they'll pull you astray. And they did. He married women from a foreign land. They pulled him astray. They'll pull you astray, and they did. He married women from a foreign land, they pulled him astray. He ended up building uh altars to bale ashtoreth and malik in the high places. So he built them in high, uh, you know highlight like up in the mountains and everything which was a point of like respect and everything.
Speaker 1:So that's just how it was done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for him being so wise, he did some dumb stuff. He really did um. But at the end of the day, I don't think all the symbolism of freemasonry is what some christians think that it is. Um, you know, it's just.
Speaker 1:You need to learn history a little bit better yeah, I mean we have symbols like a coffin and a skull and crossbones and, of course, because it's related, people assume you're worshiping that idea of death. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:A cross is a symbol of death. In itself.
Speaker 1:it's a symbol of death. Like Jesus died on it, it literally was the vehicle of his death. So here, how can you not comprehend that it doesn't mean you're worshiping death. He is a symbol that is part of death.
Speaker 2:Here was my first telltale sign that there are some fanatics within the christian religion. So my family used to put on a halloween party. Uh, every year when I say halloween party, chris, these were legendary halloween parties we would take our barn. Uh, we had like a, like a four or five thousand square foot, like a metal barn that we would convert that into a haunted house, so it would, and like we would connect two barns together. So we have like the wood barn where the company started at, and then we had the metal barn that was for storage. We'd empty all of it out, create the, the everything I mean.
Speaker 2:At one point one guy gave us his old vehicle, his old truck that he had. He was like, oh, I'm just going to get rid of this old truck, do you guys want it? We're like, yeah, we absolutely want it. We flipped it in the ditch on the way to our house and we're stopping people. Like we had a cop car set up and everything. We were stopping people and we're like, hey, do you know this person? Can you get out and identify this person and the person under the sheet? Would you know, jump out and scare them.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Funniest things ever. But I remember there was a lady in the church who had an issue with us throwing a Halloween party, because everything to do with Halloween is satanic, and we sat there and we thought about it for a little bit Actually, my mom was the one who rebutted her on this and she's like well, what about a skeleton? You have a skeleton inside your body. Does that mean that you're satanic? Well, no. What about bats? What about pumpkins? Well, what about all? And she well, what about pumpkins? Well, what about all? And she started just listing it on and on and on because we didn't have, like you know, demons and everything flying around. No, it was just like we had a guy in a jason mask with a chainsaw that we took the blade off of, like that's, that's what we had going on yeah, my wife grew up in a very conservative family and they did not celebrate halloween.
Speaker 1:Her family doesn't believe that. They think that Halloween is worshiping Satan or something. I guess is what they think.
Speaker 2:It's fine if you want to think that and you want to apply those standards to your own house, but if you have like my daughter, you know, like this past year for Halloween we dressed up as my wife was Moana, I was Maui, so I had like this big inflatable costume. I think I sent you a picture of it.
Speaker 1:You did, I've had like this big inflatable costume.
Speaker 2:I think I sent you a picture of it, you did. I've got like this big inflatable costume with a wig because I'm bald and I have to have one of those. So, by the way, how do you people do it with hair? Disgusting, I was sweating all down the back of my neck, gross, anyways, thank you. And so my daughter was hey, hey the Chicken, and so it's like all right, we went around and just asked people for candy. You know, it was great, it was a great time.
Speaker 1:There you go, Pentagram. It's not evil innately and it's certainly not worshipped in an evil way in Freemasonry. The pentagram isn't even part of any of the three degrees that are part of proper masonry.
Speaker 2:No degrees that are part of proper masonry. No, and even still, if you read the florida digest, the florida digest states that the eastern star is not an appendant body of masonry. Even though we do a lot of stuff together, um, it is not an official, organized appendant body of free masonry. And that's something I found just this past week researching something in the digest. That was point six that we had. It wasn't number five, that was point six that we had.
Speaker 2:It wasn't number five, that was number six, that was six. Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right. Number five Freemasonry being a Jewish and or Jesuit order. And there are certain rabbis that have gone out and talked about how Freemasonry at the top is all Jewish and that it is a Jewish and or Jesuit order. Now we need to clarify the difference between Jewish and Jesuit, jesuit being a branch of the Catholic Church, jewish being other. We all know what the Jewish culture and belief is. So, chris, what are your thoughts on that, on Freemasonry being Jewish and or Jesuit?
Speaker 1:I don't know where it's coming from. You know, I think that the three degrees revolves around characters out of the Old Testament and it's possible that people feel like that means we're preferring the Jewish faith over the others. But the way I looked at it, and still do, is all of the three major religions agree on the Old Testament. I understand taking characters from that one and using that in your rituals because you're not going to offend any of the major religions. They all agree with those characters.
Speaker 2:Well, and even still the disagreement between the three abrahamic faiths, and y'all guys heard me say it earlier what I mean by the three abrahamic faiths is islam, judaism and christianity. The disagreement between the three of them is the blessing of abraham. You know, did it go to ishmael, which was abraham's firstborn male son, or did it go to isaac, which is the one that he had with sar? So that's kind of where that split happens. And even still, if you go to the tomb of Abraham that's found in, I couldn't even tell you what country it's in. I'm sure I can't pronounce it, but there's actually a, a, a divide where if you want to go down the Muslim path, then you can go down the Muslim path. They view Abraham as their forefather and they believe Ishmael got the birthright. And then if you go down the Jew or the Christian path, then it goes through the path of Isaac.
Speaker 2:It's a great conversation to have. It's a great historical study and that's why some Muslims that I've researched they view Jews and Christians as cousins. Not all Muslims are exactly the same and that it's death to the infidel. Not all of them believe that. There are some that still view it as a peaceful religion, that no christians are our cousins. And even still, in the quran, it mentions jesus as a prophet, uh, as a prophet of god. So, um, again, some some cultural understanding, some more understanding on religion, um, I think would squash that pretty easily hebron in palestine is where his grave is, by the way, Thank you.
Speaker 1:People were screaming it and I wanted to give them some relief. It's definitely not a Jewish faith-based organization. You could say there are a lot of Jewish people at the top of the fraternity. How would I know that? I don't ask who's Jewish and who's Christian in the fraternity, so I don't really have a way that I could say that's true or false. So if I, as somebody who has been part of this fraternity actively for the last six years, don't know their faith, how the heck do you? Great question how do you know who's at the top of our fraternity? I call a little bit of BS on that one no-transcript.
Speaker 2:a Jesuit order we have to bow down to the Catholic Church. No, If any Jew or Jesuit or Catholic Church or anybody were to walk in and tell me to bow down to them, I'm probably going to throw hands. I'm just throwing it out there. It's just not going to happen.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:All right. Number four four stories of abuse, drugs, other nefarious things that freemasons get into. Um, you know, of course there's a, there's a video circulating of a guy who was a musician, uh, and he was going to go through an initiation process where there was a humiliation ritual and, um, you know, people wanted to physically abuse him. There's also stories out of other countries.
Speaker 1:Is that the guy that said you have to get peed on or something?
Speaker 2:No, no, no, that's a different guy that we'll get into later, but yeah, so I mean, there's all kinds of these stories that whenever you get into Freemasonry that you have to go through some sort of a ritual, that you have to go through a humiliation ritual, that you have to sacrifice your kids to the fraternity you know and let people have their way. I'm just going to go ahead and throw this out there and I'm going to make it as simple as humanly possible. If there were ever any allegations at my lodge because I go to a lodge that's in the great county of Polk County headed up by Sheriff Grady Judd, who's the best sheriff in the country I'm going to throw that out there, he's the best sheriff.
Speaker 2:I'm throwing down the gauntlet, Chris Dang. If that were to happen and a brother were to come into the lodge, even in a tiled meeting, and say guys, I just want to go ahead, I have these desires and I did X, Y, Z thing to a kid or to a woman, or whatever the case might be.
Speaker 2:That guy would fall off of a curb before the authorities were ever called uh, and and by fault, yeah, by fall off a curb. Everybody knows exactly what I'm talking about. This guy would just get curb stomped I doubt he'd have any teeth left and then it would be calling the police and saying hey, by the way, he just admitted all of this to us, uh, and I don't know how he ended up in that situation that he's in, but you're probably going to need a full body cast.
Speaker 1:Yes, we don't like child molesters. None of us, no one I've ever met in the fraternity likes child molesters. In fact, you cannot become a Mason if you are a child molester and if you're accused of child molestation you're probably going to be suspended and if you're convicted of it, kicked out of the fraternity, because we don't tolerate it.
Speaker 2:Now, that's the legal side of it. The legal side of it is that you're going to be kicked out. And also, yeah, actually here's something I read in the digest, chris, because I was researching some stuff this past week. But why would you be researching?
Speaker 1:stuff in the digest.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm certainly not interpreting anything out of the digest. I got warned about that. But what I yeah, what I was reading in the digest is that the Grand Lodge can investigate a situation. So let's say a brother were to come in and he were to confess to crimes Right, doesn't matter what the ability to file charges. And then there has to be an investigation by grand lodge, right? Grand lodge will then determine if there should be civil charges filed against that guy, right? So freemasonry is very strict on. If you break civil law, not only are we going to kick you out of the fraternity, but we're going to turn over all evidence to the proper authorities. That way, actual civil punishment can be doled out upon you.
Speaker 1:Makes sense right? Yeah, I mean to me, but I'm a Mason. So to those that aren't Masons I would say you don't have to worry about that being certainly not an institutional problem. I'm not going to say there's people that don't have problems that we don't know about, because I'm sure there are, but it's not an institutional problem. There are certain places where people are trusted with children. They molest those children and it's found out that they do molest children. They are not prosecuted. They are moved to another place where they can go talk to different children.
Speaker 2:Are you talking about the Catholic Church or the Boy Scouts? I didn't name them.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it happens a lot in the catholic church or has in the past been a major problem and that's an institutional problem, and that is not the case in freemasonry. Where are the reports in the media of the freemasons molesting kids or, uh, doing drugs or having group rape parties or?
Speaker 2:whatever there was one out of I'll have to find the lady's name and send it to you but there was one out of, I think, britain, uh, out of the uk, uh, where this lady went off and she talked about all this stuff that happened to her and happened to like her sibling, and they put on a play to reenact the whole thing. But whenever it got investigated, nothing was ever found about that other than this is the musings of, like, an eight year old kid. Uh, you know, but either way, nothing was ever found of that.
Speaker 1:What was the accusation?
Speaker 2:The accusation was is that, um, in the lodge, during a tiled meeting, they were, they were performing horrendous acts on children, um, you know, and that there was a ritualistic murder and, of course, all the stuff we're always blamed of doing. I'm sorry, but I've never seen a ritualistic murder like still to this day.
Speaker 1:No, I haven't either. It's offensive that anyone would even accuse us of doing something like that.
Speaker 2:It's all day long, but at least have something to back it up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's ridiculous, this one's just ridiculous.
Speaker 2:You can call me all kinds of things, you can tell me that I have fantastic hair, but if the facts don't support it, they don't support it.
Speaker 1:I like your. Yeah, I like your hair this chrome dome like.
Speaker 2:Can you see the reflection off this thing right now?
Speaker 1:it's shiny.
Speaker 2:It is a perfectly shined cue ball.
Speaker 1:That's what it is it's almost like you have a halo. It has an angelic glow coming off you. I love it oh all right number three.
Speaker 2:So number three is one that's constantly brought up and, chris, it's a picture I sent you last year. There is a picture that is floating around and I can share my screen. If you'd like me to, I could pull it up and share my screen probably should.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, I was kind of shocked when you sent this to me because I had never seen the picture before.
Speaker 2:I never heard of this story that people were telling about us before, but it did cause me to have to research it, and it was pretty fascinating, okay, so I'm going to share my screen for those who are watching on video, and this is going to be from your favorite website, x so. So this is the picture that we're talking about. So, for those who are listening on audio, what you're seeing is you're seeing, uh, freemasons who are lined up holding swords. They're all in tuxedos, or at least in black dress. You can tell that the aprons are from another country. They are not from, uh, here in the united states, so they appear to be somewhere, um, like I said, another country.
Speaker 2:So I'm thinking af and am uh, with the light blue that's around it, um, plus over the jacket, yeah so and and what you have is you have a older man appears to be in his late sixties who is walking, a young boy, um, probably to be about 10 or less, and the young boy is wearing a veil over his face. And so, uh, the caption of the picture says Freemasons dress little boys to brides for a Masonic wedding ceremony. This horrific photo was taken from have no idea how to pronounce that Masonic Lodge number 762 in Brazil. So, chris and I actually did the research on this, and so here's what we found out on this. Chris, do you want to tell the story, or should I?
Speaker 1:Well, I have a bad memory, but what I remember of this story is that this is coming from a ceremony. I think it was started in french lodges, if I recall um, and it's very common for masonry to sponsor orphanages and um schools for children, especially impoverished children. And to this day we have a lot of organizations. Your your shirt there, you're wearing a grotto shirt and the grotto. Their primary fundraising is for children that can't afford dental care.
Speaker 2:Yeah, miles for special smiles.
Speaker 1:There you go and the Shriners, obviously the Children's Hospital. We're very dedicated to protecting children, to lifting children up and giving them the support they need, whether they have parents or not, and so this ceremony in particular was I believe these were orphans or I could be wrong, but I believe they're orphans and the ceremony is. The ants are present at the ceremony. If you show the other, I showed you like eight or a few other pictures from this exact ceremony and the aunt is there as well as his family. This is a ceremony where the lodge is essentially taking this kid under their wing and saying he's going to be under our protection. And that white veil he's not allowed to wear a white apron because he's not a Mason, right? But the white certainly symbolizes their desire to keep his purity intact. And that picture and that story they made up. That this is an official ceremony to make a kid a man's bride is pretty offensive. I don't know how to think any Mason that sees that would want to say who the hell said that.
Speaker 2:I'd love to meet him in person. I actually heard another explanation for this. I think it's not in opposition, but in addition to what you said. Yeah, and so that there is in certain parts of the world.
Speaker 2:Of course we don't do it here in the United States because it's just kind of like a quiet understanding, like a quiet understanding, but uh, actually it's in our obligation now that I'm sitting here thinking about it, but that this young man or any of the young people that are in that line following behind him, are actually the kids of other masons and so the the purpose of this ceremony is is that, should that father die, whoever the the father of this young man is, should that father die, the lodge will then take that young man under their wing and raise him as one of their own, and so they'll teach the lessons, they'll make sure that he's taken care of financially, that he gets all the teachings that he needs from an older male, because, let's face it, I mean, as men, we need lessons from older males.
Speaker 2:We need to have some of the wisdom to be imparted upon us. If you keep wisdom to yourself, you're cheating the next generation. So this was in addition to what you said. As far as them being orphans, I think I read a different explanation of this ceremony, that this is stating should this boy's father die, we've got him, and that father now knows that. He knows that this young man will be taken care of in the case of his death.
Speaker 1:So yeah, then that's essentially the same meaning. Yeah, Whether the parents are there or not, is that the child is under the protection of the lodge now?
Speaker 2:Which, honestly, is a beautiful thing if you sit there and think about it. Now, in our obligation we talk about, you know, master masons, their widows and orphans that we're going to take care of them. In our obligation, you know, master masons, their widows and orphans, that we're going to take care of them. Uh, in our obligation, um so, but to put kind of an exclamation point on that, on that, what we, what we oblige ourselves to, or what we obligate ourselves to, uh, that's a beautiful thing. I mean the fact that we're saying that, yeah, we are going to take care of the next generation, to make sure they have everything they have. And I've talked about it before here on the podcast. My job as a father is to give my kids the highest springboard possible so that way they can reach the stars if they want to yeah doing that for ones you're not blood related to, that is a beautiful thing yeah, because it takes a community to raise a child.
Speaker 1:At least in the old times that's how we thought. And uh, I know we've gotten away from that more in western culture in modern times. But I think, um, there's something beautiful in, like you said, caring about kids that aren't yours. We've gotten away from that more in Western culture and modern times. But I think there there's something beautiful in, like you said, caring about kids that aren't yours. Yeah, because it's the right thing to do because they realize how many and you're willing to, you know, provide help.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you realize how many times I've had a kid run up to me, like in a Lowe's or a grocery store, and like, just like, latch onto me and I have no idea who this kid is? So I'm looking down like it's not me, like you know, but but either way, just the kid. The kid lost his mother, you know.
Speaker 2:So it's okay, let's find your mom you know, or let's find your dad or your grandma or whoever you're here with. But, um, yeah, the the fact people want to take something, especially with, like, the veil over the head. I could see where it would be weird, but that being a a badge of purity and innocence. That's why brides wear veils they're supposed to at least but of course, in the date of only fans, you're not going to find that no so I'm convinced that 90 of women should not wear white to their wedding.
Speaker 1:If you know, you know so well, I can guarantee you that's not a wedding ceremony um, that guy's not going to be marrying a child. That's fake news. 100 all the way all right.
Speaker 2:Number two we are working our way down the list. Number two we actually have a show map this time this is happening. Number two albert pike and his mention of lucifer in both morals and dogma and something else he is credited as saying. Now, chris, you've read morals and dogma, you've been through the Scottish right, so if you could shine some light upon the name Lightbringer, if you will.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what Lucifer translates to is Lightbringer, and the reference I believe in morals and dogma is to the Morning Star. Um, I believe in morals and dogma is to the morning star, which is the first light of the day. Um is brought from the morning star and the name of that star is Lucifer, because it literally means morning star or light bringer. So you know, the fact that he mentions that and and morals and dogma, by the way, is a very in-depth look at all the major religions of the world, by the way, is a very in-depth look at all the major religions of the world. And so the fact that Lucifer's mentioned it in one line of all that mess that he wrote and taking so far out of context to mean that it's satanic, oh, it's insane, it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 2:Well, keep in mind Albert Pike. Wasn't he fluent in Latin?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, he was a very intelligent man.
Speaker 2:He was fluent in multiple, multiple languages, if I remember right yeah, I'm not surprised.
Speaker 1:Um now, you know the bible pretty well. You were raised and you have been active as a christian. How many times is lucifer actually mentioned by name lucifer in the bible? So this is something that came later. Don't believe that that Albert Pike was intending to say that you should worship Lucifer.
Speaker 2:By the way, in the King James Version of the Bible it is mentioned one time.
Speaker 1:The name. Lucifer is mentioned.
Speaker 2:The name Lucifer is mentioned one time. That would be Isaiah 14, 12. Fun fact about the book Isaiah out of all the scriptures, whenever they found the book Isaiah in the I believe it was the Dead Sea Scrolls. That was the only book in the Bible that was word-for-word perfect. It was absolutely perfect, so they had the translation of Isaiah.
Speaker 2:that made it throughout all the years, all the generations, and then they found the Dead Sea Scrolls and Dead Sea Scrolls or Copper Scrolls, one of the two. But they found these old scrolls that were in like a vase, like a pottery vase in a cave. And so, and they opened it up, and the book of Isaiah was the only one that was word for word, perfect.
Speaker 2:But Isaiah 14 states how art thou fallen from heaven, oh Lucifer, son of the morning, how art thou cut down to the ground which didst weaken the nations? So that's the only time the word Lucifer Now I can look it up on and see what the other translations have um for the word lucifer, um, some uh. In other translations this passage might use different terms, like morning star or day star, but at the end of the day the later christian interpretations have associated it with satan or the devil.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but originally most cultures would have a reference to lucifer, would have meant the first light of the day, or the light bringer, or the morning star.
Speaker 2:Now the famous quote that everybody quotes To you this is allegedly Albert Pike. To you, sovereign Grand Inspectors General, 33rd Degree, masons. We say this that you may repeat it to the brethren of the 32nd, 31st and 30th degrees the Masonic religion should be, by all of us, initiates of the high degrees maintained in the purity of the Luciferian doctrine. Now, chris pop quiz, do you know where that comes from? No, we did a podcast on it that never aired. That is the taxal hoax.
Speaker 2:So this quote is attributed to Albert Pike, which was overheard by Diana Vaughn Right and then reported by Leo Taxel. Okay, let's unpackage this a little bit. One, diana Vaughn was never a real person.
Speaker 1:No. And how would a woman be getting access to fraternal secret rituals?
Speaker 2:Because she was like his assistant or mistress, or plucked his ear hairs, I don't know what she did for him, but either way.
Speaker 1:So so let's unpackage this and we're going to release the podcast on the taxal hoax, or yeah, let's do it even redo the taxal hoax, because that was an interesting conversation you mean, while you're sober this month, just knock it in real quick before we okay, yep while you're sober this month.
Speaker 2:Just knock it in real quick. Yep, okay, yep, while I'm sober this month. So either way, basically with the TLDR for you boomers, that's the too long, didn't read version. The Taxel hoax is that was a very long drum, roll my gosh. So, either way, what the Leo Taxel hoax was is you have this gentleman named Leo Taxel not his real name, by the way who was a Freemason, and I don't even think he was a Master Mason, I think he was an EA.
Speaker 2:I think he got initiated, but he didn't even give back his Senate Apprentice. So he was an EA that was part of the French Freethinkers Society, and so he goes off and he's writing all this stuff about the Catholic church I mean, he is just dog in the Catholic church, like you wouldn't believe all of a sudden has a change of heart. Jesus has spoken upon me. And so he ends up writing stuff against Freemasonry and he comes up and he plays this 12 year prank on the Catholic church, where they pay for him, they pay for all of his workings, they, you know he talks about all kinds of things.
Speaker 2:The Palladian order was a big thing that they had a frog that spit fire, and so that was their direct communication to speak to Satan. And so what ends up happening is there's a bishop in the town that he came from. Was it North or South Carolina? North or South Carolina, I couldn't tell you. It's one of the Carolinas, but either way, there's this Catholic bishop that he ends up writing to the Vatican and he's like hey, I've been in the lodge that he's talking about, where they have this frog that speaks to the devil, and it's not there.
Speaker 2:So fast forward. What ends up happening is Leo Taxel creates this whole mythos of Freemasonry. And again, it's all fake when Diana Vaughn is the central character that plays from this and that's where this quote came from. It came from Diana Vaughn, not a real person, who heard it from Albert Pike she was never around him and then written by Leo Taxel, not his real name. So it's this whole entire fabrication. Jimmy Akin on YouTube does a whole hour and a half breakdown of the taxel hoax and he's a devout catholic and he flat out is like no, this is just false.
Speaker 1:And he, he, did tell the truths in the end yeah, where they auctioned off a typewriter he did publicly say hey, I made all this up yeah.
Speaker 2:and then guess what? As soon as he got done with that, he went right back to dogging the Catholic Church. So he played a 12-year prank that we're still suffering for today. So this quote of, if you ever hear it, that Masonry or the Masonic religion is a Luciferian doctrine and that's the authority of Albert Pike, you know Albert Pike was a central authority in Freemasonry. First off, Albert Pike's opinion in Freemasonry doesn't hold any more weight than mine does or Chris's does or anybody's does.
Speaker 2:No he is just a person that is in Freemasonry. He is not somebody that oh, they are official teachings that we have to teach and all this. No, he's just a dude in Freemasonry. And then, secondly, he never said this. This is completely fabricated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then, secondly, he never said this. This was completely fabricated. Yeah, so there you go. Another one that's super easy to verify, isn't true?
Speaker 2:that doesn't stop the people from saying it they're just not educated.
Speaker 1:We gotta alleviate their ignorance. For them, number one.
Speaker 2:We made it to the end and we have extras if you have time. But we have extras if you have time. But we have number one, other orders that are not Masonic but yet they use Masonic symbolism.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is a big problem and it really does confuse the public. I think about our fraternity. So I know that it's all BS, especially the Illuminati, because after my installation I put all the pictures online. I have a photo of it. I don't know if I've shown it to you. The Illuminati did a recruitment post where they're like join and get rich and whatever, and the photo they used was from my installation. So it's me and Tim Verdun shaking hands, nice. And I sent it to Tim and I'm like dude, we're in the Illuminati. He's like that needs to be taken down. He was so mad. I'm like no, it's funny because now we have proof that all they're doing is grabbing Masonic photos and using them to try to like, make money and get some, get membership or whatever for their organization.
Speaker 2:It is funny, but could I at least get the bankroll that they allegedly have?
Speaker 1:Yeah, supposedly you can get rich in the Illuminati right, yeah, that's what I'm screaming.
Speaker 2:Let's do that. Meanwhile I'm getting poorer because I'm pouring my own personal money into the lodge, but yeah, so I mean, you have all kinds of things Like you have. You know, they always bring up the Paladin Order, or they always bring up 99th degree masons and all this other stuff.
Speaker 2:So I want to be clear in saying this in standard masonry, standard recognized masonry, there are 32 degrees that you could achieve right off the bat. Ok, you got the first three degrees of masonry, which, by the way, once you get to that third degree of master mason, you are as high up as a mason can go. Yeah, we don't want any other degrees as any better than the master mason. Right, if you, if you go through the scottish rite and you get all the way up to the 32nd degree, that does not mean that you are higher than one. That is a third degree master mason. You are all equals, you're all on the level as the pun goes. So, right, that is it. And then you can get a 33rd degree bestowed upon you. Okay, that is a a uh, it's by recommendation only so you can get a 33rd degree bestowed upon you. Okay, that is a. It's by recommendation only, so you can get a 33rd degree bestowed upon you.
Speaker 2:But I think there's only like 4,000 33rd degrees across the entire world. There's only a couple hundred here in the United States. Now, we know one we've had him on the podcast before, yes, but there aren't many that are here in the United States. So whenever you get into these online debates with people, they always say the same thing Well, you're not high up enough. Well, unless you're a 33rd degree Mason. It's like, bro, you have no chance of ever meeting a 33rd degree Mason because they're all old, they stay off the Internet and they don't get into debates with you. Silly people.
Speaker 1:It's true, the 33rd degree is an honorary degree that the Scottish right confers or prefers on someone for a lifetime of work, so you don't get that when you're 20 or 30. That's something that really is probably going to be generally people that are much older. And you know, that's the only degree I haven't gotten in the fraternity, other than some of the. You know I wasn't a member of't gotten in the fraternity other than some of the. Uh, you know I wasn't a member of dmla so I didn't get some of those degrees and you're not gonna get it with what's coming up in march what's that?
Speaker 1:your trial, my guy oh, my trial, right, how could I forget? Uh, yes, very looking forward to that too soon. I I bought my plane ticket. Sad part about that is my birthday is on the 28th, so I literally got to spend my birthday flying down there for this trial, which is not making me happy, but whatever, yeah, you know, I think people might not be aware of the golden dawn. Might not be aware of the golden dawn. Um, uh, you might not be aware of andrew levay, who made the, uh, the satanic church. Is it andrew or anton anton levay? Sorry, yeah, I assume it's andrew and anton is short of that, but no anton levay, that's a weird dude.
Speaker 1:He basically started like the uh, the opposite of christianity. Right, it's like the Church of Satan or whatever. I don't know what he called it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's called the Church of Satan. But whenever you actually get into occultism because I've studied occultism pretty heavily Whenever you get into it, the forward facing of that that Anton LaVve did it was basically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was basically just counterculture. I mean, that's basically all it was is he was trying to get a rise out of people.
Speaker 2:Right there's nothing serious about it at the end of the day, what lave was? He was a psychopath. This guy was a psychopath that used masonic symbolism to create something called sex magic. Okay, so like this guy was just basically coming up with new ways to get laid and say, oh no, you can have sex with me and speak with Satan, and it's like well that's.
Speaker 1:It's actually part of a whole bunch of esoteric traditions that go way back the sex part, because which is?
Speaker 2:fine, but we're not first century Sparta. No, like you're not dealing with the oracles of Delphi. You get some chick hopped up on whatever drug. They have her hopped up on and then all the deformed priests have sex with her. That's not what we're doing.
Speaker 1:No, we don't even have women to have sex with in our fraternity.
Speaker 2:Oh, dudes, which is weird.
Speaker 1:I guess we have those goats. That's why we have the goats.
Speaker 2:I don't know the goats. Oh, that's why we have the goats. I don't know.
Speaker 1:The goats, oh God, yeah. No, there are other organizations that use Masonic symbols for their benefit, but they are not Masonic and the general public wouldn't know the difference. In fact, some Masons sadly can't tell the difference, which is really sad. But it's not just them the Klu Klux Klan created by Masons. A lot of their ritual work is Masonic in nature. It's a fact. Um then, I don't think they use like Masonic imagery as much, but I definitely think they use a lot of the structure Um. And then you've got like the um. Uh, what's the church in Utah?
Speaker 2:Um, Latter-day Saints. Latter-day Saints, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what are they called Mormons? Mormons, yes.
Speaker 2:They actually have the squaring compass on their pajamas.
Speaker 1:The Mormons were founded by Masons, yeah, so you do a little research on that. It's pretty fascinating. So there is a lot of Masonic imagery in that particular faith because they started by people that were Masons.
Speaker 2:Well, it even goes further than that and I'm pretty sure we'll get into it whenever we cover Born in Blood, but even the pirates in the Caribbean in the you know 15, 1600s, you know, and of course all of us know, the story of like Blackbeard and Not Jack the Ripper, no gosh I can't remember this guy's name, I'll have to go back and play Assassin's Creed for it, but but either way, yeah.
Speaker 2:So a lot of their symbolism, you know, like the skull, the Jolly Roger the Jolly Roger is a skull and crossbones yeah, so a lot of their and even still, like pirates are very educated. They spoke multiple languages. They were very educated whenever it came to battle tactics. That's why they were as successful as they were and they were, and they were directly going against the crown. So whenever you look at what they did, a lot of what they did used Masonic symbolism.
Speaker 1:They had the Pirate's Code right, yeah, the.
Speaker 2:Pirate's Code. Yeah, and even still, their initiation and their rituals and everything were very similar to Mason's. And even still, I believe it's the charge, if I'm not mistaken, that says that as a master mason, you are now a friend to pirates and corsairs really so yeah, there's a. Well, you would know you're a gold carrion member. I don't remember those words, but could be oh, hold on, now I gotta look it up, I'll learn my old head, but yeah, I mean born in blood, that's I.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to get into that because it does talk about how the Templars had a massive naval fleet that disappeared and there is a logical track of thought that could take you from the Templars' naval fleet to generations later, these guys living in the Caribbean with that fleet, living under a similar code, that are not fans of the crown.
Speaker 2:So it may not be in ours because it looks like it's out of the UK.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think so.
Speaker 2:Master Mason is informed that he becomes a brother to pirates and corsairs and it's an English ritual. That's awesome. The next time I'm out on a boat and I get hopped up by some pirate who's going to walk over and be like wait, I'm a friend, I'm a friend, I'm a friend Friendly. You see Right here, yeah, friendly.
Speaker 1:Fair enough. There you go. Those are the top 10 things that you're going to hear about Freemasonry. If you talk to, I guess, predominantly Christians who don't like Freemasonry and they don't know why, there you go. It's because they heard those kinds of things about our fraternity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and of course, we have another one that we're probably going to end up covering, and it's the conspiracy theories of Freemasonry outside of the church. So these are the things that Christians have against Freemasonry, and so now you have some tools to either be able to research it on your own, which I would highly encourage you to do Use a little bit of logic and reason, study some history, and a lot of these things can be very easily combated. So the two types of people that I have found in the church that, whenever you talk about Freemasons, is typically the older people that are in the church, and when I say older people, I'm talking like seventies and eighties Whenever you talk to them and you say hey, what are your thoughts on Freemasonry? The older gentleman that I'm speaking about. I asked him at one point I think it was right after I had gotten raised. I said hey, what are your thoughts on Freemasons here in the church?
Speaker 2:He was an elder at my church. I said what are your thoughts? He said I don't know much about them. I've never joined the Freemasons, but I know they're a very respected and respectable organization. Great, that's what we should aim to be, but you have this new movement that's really starting to gain traction of. Oh no, freemasons are evil, and here's why they're evil. No, we're not evil. You know the fact that we have we're a society with secrets. It doesn't necessarily mean that we're evil, that we don't have to blow the lid off and expose everything you know. But at the end of the day you're going to get those two very different dichotomies. And then it was funny me. And then it was funny. I asked another guy at my church, another brother at my church, and I said, hey, um, so what are your thoughts on freemasons? And he stuck out his hand to shake my hand and then he gave me the grip and I was like he's a freemason too that's so rare to happen out in the wild it's.
Speaker 1:It is kind of like oh yeah, and and even still.
Speaker 2:So, you're going to hear people talk about, as you're combating, some of this stuff and I'm speaking to our brothers out there. You're going to hear about, well, the 99th degree mason and all this other stuff. That's complete hot garbage. Uh, that is typically found in the prince hall um affiliation. I'm not going to say all prince halls, but it's in some of the prince halls. For example, here in the state of Florida, I think we have like seven or eight different branches of Prince Hall.
Speaker 1:So it's like every time they have a disagreement.
Speaker 2:They just create a new Prince Hall Grand Lodge here in the state of Florida. But you have some that you've got to pay, like $15,000, and you'll get the 99th degree bestowed upon you. And, of course, if you stack 10 guys in a room, you just made 150K in a weekend just by giving them a piece of paper that you printed off with Microsoft Word and clip it Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm. I'm always shocked when I hear how much they pay for their dues and their degrees.
Speaker 2:It's insane.
Speaker 1:But I guess it makes sense. They take it more seriously, probably, than we do.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it's a, they take it more serious. So there's two metrics of protecting that. So one could be the dues. But if I got to pay $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 for my yearly dues, I'm not going to be a Mason. My budget can't sustain that right now, so I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 2:If I got to pay $15,000 for a degree. I'm not going to do it. I believe the onus should be on the brothers of the lodge. But the brothers of the lodge should be protecting the Westgate At least that's my opinion of it. So yeah, you can have like an RRR lodge. The dues are $152 a year, but you got to come to six meals. Before you ever are given a petition, you have to come to at least six meals and we're very particular on who we allow in there.
Speaker 1:You make them come to six meals first.
Speaker 2:That's our lodge, so that's not anything that's found in formal digest. But yeah, we make them come to six meals. Now we meet two times a month, so, yeah, you come to six meals. We get to know. You get to know if you're a good person or not, what your intentions are. We'll sit down and talk with you throughout the meals, or we'll sit and talk in the library or whatnot. But yeah, so it's six meals at our lodge and then we'll give you a petition if we think that you're worthy and well qualified.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's what three months they got to stick around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, honestly, lakeland has a pretty high recruitment number, so people seem to respect that, which I like it. They didn't do that with me. I mean with me, I think I'd-.
Speaker 1:Well, you were already Mason. Yeah, you were already Mason, so it's different.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, I'm talking about whenever I joined at Turkey Creek.
Speaker 1:Well, here we are, matt. We've given the We've got an agenda. We went through an agenda. We got an agenda. We went through an agenda. It took us about 45 minutes longer than we probably needed to. Nah, but we have more. We have more we want to do. I think we should definitely take a look at our we're going to look at our previous recordings and see, now that we don't care anymore what we might put out, we might rerecord some stuff, because Matt's sober now Could be a whole different vibe. So you're going to be hearing about the Taxo Hoax, for sure coming up. We have a whole bunch of other content planned. We have other top 10 things like this that we want to go through. We're not slowing down, we're speeding up. So if you have any ideas for topics or things you want to hear about, things you like or don't like about the show, email Matt and he will deal with it.
Speaker 2:My email is chris at onthelevelpodcastcom.
Speaker 1:You slum of a biscuit. That is correct. You can email me at chris at onthelevelpodcastcom.
Speaker 2:If I'm being honest with you, I'm super excited for Born in Blood. I'm going to do an old school book report on Born in Blood and the other one. I'm going to do an old school book report On Born in Blood and the other one I'm super excited for, but you're going to have to read the book before we do. It Is Generational Communication. Generational Communication In Freemasonry the Fourth Turning.
Speaker 1:I want to dive into that so hard it hurts. I will read that. I will. I'll be happy to. I'm going to go get it today and I can probably read it in a couple of weeks. We'll get caught up and we'll put that out, because it sounds like that's something that could help a lot of lodges that have intergenerational people attending.
Speaker 2:Well, it especially can help with not giving too much away. You have and I'm just speaking generationally, generationally, from an archetype perspective, right, and you can trace this back over 400 years the boomer archetype and the millennial archetype are destined to do this. I mean, they are destined for it, and so I. You see that currently, in Freemasonry, you see it in the lodge, you see it at it, doesn't matter what level of Freemasonry you want to talk about, you see that, you see it in churches, you see it in politics. So I'm really excited for that, because it'll teach the younger brothers how to communicate with that boomer that you're talking to, or that Gen Xer that you're talking to, and vice versa, for that boomer, it's going to teach you how to talk to the younger generation in a language they can understand, right, because at the end of the day, we don't all talk the same.
Speaker 2:You know, if I were to be talking to you, you know, or if I were to be talking to, uh, say, a boomer and I want to reference, reference a certain item or a certain uh thing, I would say the term necking, and everyone knows what necking is. Your generation probably knows it as parking the car, knows it as parking the car. My generation knows it as making out. So the vernacular and how we speak changes over time, and so that's going to show you how to communicate with those people, not only from a verbiage perspective, but it's going to show you how to communicate them from a personality perspective, because you have that boomer generation which is highly emotional, and they are.
Speaker 2:You have the Gen Xers which are more laissez faire, like, okay, you know, whatever happens happens. But you have the gen xers which are more laissez-faire, like okay, you know, whatever happens happens. But you have the millennials that are very headstrong and say, all right, let's burn this mother to the ground and recreate it the way that it should be. I think you see that in society right now. I think you see that in the lodge right now, um, so so yeah, let's definitely dive into that one, because I think it's really going to benefit a lot of brothers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really helpful. And eventually we're going to have to put your lodge saving plan up that you had created. Well, maybe just add that to the Facebook page. Yeah, that's content for people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let me take some names out of it. That way we don't put some brothers on blast.
Speaker 1:Redact it. Redact it and we'll put it on the website too. We need to get people using our website more, so I think you're going to find on our website I'll put up the marketing reimbursement plan that I had originally created for the state of Florida. I think we want to make it available to everybody in every jurisdiction, so we'll put it out there to try to help you guys and other helpful things. We'll have a whole section on the website for helpful tips for Freemasons. Yeah, exciting times. Thank you so much for taking the time on your Sunday to record my brother. Absolutely Always good to spend some time with you. Yeah, man, looking forward to having a drink again, but a couple more weeks, a couple more weeks, we'll get there, alright.
Speaker 2:On the Limit Podcast.
Speaker 1:We'll get there All right On the Limp Podcast. We are out, out, out, out Out.
