Episode #200: Mormons & Freemasonry W/Ben Schaffer

0:26 The. You're listening to the Mormon Renegade podcast. Mr. Schaefer, how you doing? I'm doing great. It's good to be back on with the Mormon renegade. Dude, it's always good to have you on, man. We, we, you know, there's been these conversations, but also private conversations we've had that have been pretty good. And some of those private ones, there's been times I've been like, yeah, should have had a microphone handy. So we can share that, right? Except, except for. Except for the part where we drop the bad language. Right? We can keep that one off. I'll do some fancy editing.

1:09 We'll be all right. Yeah, I always like to say that, you know, I don't think God is is offended by 4 letter words or I would say I don't think he gives a about four letter words nearly as much as God cares about whether or not we do justice, love one another, fulfill his commandments. People sometimes I think they use that as a proxy for real morality. They might about what language? People use no tempo. I get it. Well, dude, this subject here is one that I have been fascinated to do for quite a while. And Full disclosure, I did talk to Cheryl Bruno once a little bit about it, but didn't go terribly in depth. And the other thing is, and she did a fantastic job, but. Well, and she, she's very knowledgeable, but she's not a Mason because.

2:00 Right, she's not a Mason. Right, right, right. In fact, little plug, shameless plug for her book right Methodist. That's that's one of the better books about Mormonism and Masonry that is available. Is the book method infinite? So, yeah, man, I have been super, super excited for this episode and, and really can't wait to, to dig in here because like you were saying, she's not a Mason, you're a Mason. And I'm really looking forward to it because I think for so long there's this been, there's been this idea that if you're a Mason, you can't be a Mormon and vice versa. And that's really not correct at all. Of course. Now, I will admit, I don't know a lot of Mormon fundamentalist Masons. It would be nice to have more company, though. So I hope that a lot of people who are listening, if they're interested in Masonry, that they'll reach out to their local lodge.

2:51 There's a lot of great benefits to Masonry that I hope we can get into. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, dude, take it away. What do you got? So there's a there's a couple of big controversies here. I think that's a good place to start. People talk a lot about Mormonism and Masonry and you hear things like, oh, the temple ceremonies are just Masonic ceremonies or, or the Mormons just ripped that off. People will often say of Joseph Smith, oh, he plagiarized the temple by using Masonry to make this new thing that he called the temple ceremonies. And I want to disabuse everybody of those ideas. It's not true that type of anti Mormon, that whole thread of anti Mormonism is actually just a continuation of old prejudices that were anti Masonic in the 1st place. You know, anytime.

3:48 And I think partly it comes from the fact that anytime something seems secret to somebody, any time someone doesn't know what's going on, they can allow their imagination to run wild because they don't know the truth, they don't know the reality. They can make up anything they want and it'll sound plausible to the uninformed. And and that is that is that is probably one of the biggest problems there is that a lot of the same publishing houses, the same ministries, I guess that are publishing anti Mormon literature also are the exact same ones with the exact same arguments that publish anti Masonic literature. So really Mormons and Masons have common cause here because we're both victims of the same kind of misinformation campaigns.

4:35 So. Help me out. Where did this, where did, did this kind of animosity between the two kick in? Because, you know, look, Masonry has a Freemasonry has a rich history in America, right? The, the founding fathers were, were all Freemasons. Joseph Smith was a Freemason. Brigham Young was a Mason, right? I think he he wore the pin on his lapel or a necklace or something. Right, you were, you were a square on a compass. And, and don't forget even the beehive, which is of course a major symbol of Mormonism and, and it's symbolism as representing community and industry and the harmony that should exist amongst brethren is a Masonic symbol that was was used for a long time. And so when it was adopted by Mormons, it was adopted directly from this same cultural context that was already well known to people.

5:31 Like you said, Masonry actually was also very, very common. That's another thing to that people have to understand is that especially in the 1800's, the American culture was so deeply steeped in Masonry. Masonry was so common, so nearly universal as to be one of the basic cultural touchstones of the entire era. And, and it still exists even just in basic common phrases that people say like, Hey, let me level with you. That's a Masonic term. It means I'm going to meet you on as an equal or the square deal, like you just said, right? Whether or, or even a square meal is a Masonic term it. And So what are they doing?

6:14 They're, they're drawing from these symbols that were used in stone masonry or architecture, such as a level. I mean, if anybody's ever built anything, you've used a level. And in many cases, you'll also end up using a square so that you can make the work at proper 90° angle, so it all fits together and things like that, right? All of those symbols are symbols used by Freemasonry, of course, but the difference is, is that instead of just using them as tools of architecture, they're considered to be symbolic. And so that's really the the two different kinds of masonry. Most of everybody knows that if a bricklayer builds a house, it's they're called a Mason, a brick Mason or a stone Mason that makes something out of stone.

6:59 But a symbolic Mason or a Freemason means the symbolic philosophical use of those terms. So instead of using a level to level the building that you're building so that you can make sure everything lines up correctly, you're using the level symbolically to mean that you meet people as. Equals you treat people. With common human dignity. So for example, when our Founding fathers were saying things like we should have equality or equal rights, those are Masonic terms.

7:40 And, and as Masons, they would have just recognized that as basic philosophical language to express an idea, right? Including just ideas about human rights and, and things like that. So, so, yeah, when we look at Freemasonry and you understand that it has the long cultural heritage that honestly answers a lot of the questions about why people make these these accusations against it, for one thing, because, yeah, Freemasonry kind of became political at times. Now, Freemasonry prides itself on not being partisan. OK, but Freemasonry definitely is political in the grander sense that Freemasonry does have a name. It does have a goal, a political goal of advancing human rights. And so for centuries, the only institution in the world for centuries that used systems like voting, that allowed people to vote, was Freemasonry.

8:38 It's the world's oldest fraternity and it was one of the first institutions where people would be equals. It wasn't the king and the peasants or the nobility and the commoners. It was everybody who's a Freemason is treating each other as equals. And therefore how do you make a decision amongst equals? You can't just defer to the king or the leader person. You have to say, well, we're going to decide amongst ourselves what we're going to do. And thus voting was kind of brought back into the world. Now everybody knows that the ancient Greeks had voting at one point or whatever, right? But the concept of democracy, the concept of human rights, the concepts of equality, none of those things really existed anymore in the world for for millennia really, there was no society that actually used any of those tools. And so Freemasonry started saying, hey, you know, the same way that we treat other Masons from these other guilds, and we treat each other as fellow masters of our work, masters of our art, and architects, the same way that we treat each other as equals.

9:39 Maybe we should all treat each other as equals. Right. And once they started doing that, there became this political thing. And this is where I think anti masonry starts coming in. Is that any institution that prided itself on being the best, being the one true faith, or the one true King or the one true anything like that, who had a divine right to be above Other people started viewing these Freemason guilds throughout Europe as a threat because they were bringing out these radical ideas of human rights, equality, fair play, voting, term limits.

10:19 Term limits comes from Masonry, for example. I am what's called a past Master. So I was made the Master of my lodge. It is like, you know, the highest office within your lodge. But guess what? We have currently have in our lodge a term limit of one year. You get to be in charge, but you only get to be in charge for one year, and then you step down and you're just equal with everybody else again. Nice. So all of those things. And so it became political. So getting back to like, where did some of this real conflict come in? It goes all the way back to the Knights Templar, who have a historic connection to Freemasonry. Now, that's not the same thing as saying we are the Knights Templar.

11:02 The Knights Templar did things that we don't do and things like that. But there were a lot of major connections there. And when the Knights Templar were wiped out by papal decree and declared heretics, Masonry since that time, not immediately, but since that time has had an increasingly tense relationship with the Catholic Church. And even today, unfortunately, I, I know some good Catholic Masons, but unfortunately the Catholic Church did reaffirm, I want to say within the last decade or two, that they consider being a Freemason to be living in a state of sin. And that you cannot be in full fellowship and you cannot be a Catholic priest, for example, and be active in Freemasonry. Is that because it threatens the the power of the papal seat? Is is that what we're looking at? I.

11:55 Mean, I, I mean, as a, as a Mason, I can only speak from my point of view, right? Of course, I know a lot of Catholics. I'll, I'll do my best to represent them fairly. But from my point of view, I don't think we're threatening anybody. But we do have one belief, I guess you could say we're, we're very non dogmatic, but we do have certain values I think. And in Freemasonry we believe in this equality and freedom of religion that I think they equate with the heresy of saying that if all men are equal, then being a Catholic or not being a Catholic is considered equivalent. They see that as heresy against their claims to being the one true Apostolic and Catholic in universal faith because Masons accept men of every creed and denomination and belief and political persuasion in the world to become Masons and then to be treated as equals within the organization of Masonry.

12:50 Now, that doesn't mean that I think that everyone's religion is just as valid as mine. So I don't see why that's necessarily a threat. But I do think that is a source of the historic threat that the Catholic Church found in Masonry, particularly in some of some of the what are called appendant bodies in the in the Scottish Rite. For example, one of the things that we are taught that we strive for in the Scottish Rite degrees of Free Masonry, that would be the 4th through the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite. We do talk about defending the rights of freedom of religion and defending rights of conscience and, and insisting upon an absolute separation between church and state as values that we're trying to put forward as that in that organization.

13:41 Now, again, that's not core Masonry. That's what's called the pendant body. You think like an auxiliary organization. It's like being a member of the Sunday school instead of just a member of the church, so to speak. Right. So it's, it's ancillary, but it's still within the body of regular Freemasonry. And yeah, we talk about those things as ideals that we want. And I think that, you know, for the Pope, who is it was also, by the way, a head of state, the idea of separation of church and state is not something historically they're fully comfortable with. Sure. Racism. Well, yeah, I mean, I don't think there's there's any doubt that that the idea of the divine right of kings, right, that, you know, that it goes from God to the king. And and don't forget, like we as Americans, we kind of scoff at that.

14:28 We don't really believe in that. But there's a, there's a strong historical basis for viewing that as a very bad idea from, from a lot of countries that are monarchists and things like that, right. If you've ever read or watched, I suppose The Three Musketeers, the Musketeers are good guys and they are protecting the divine right of the king. And the bad guy in the story is Cardinal Richelieu. And Cardinal Richelieu was a French cardinal who heretical to the Catholic Church, was a Freemason and insisted upon a separation of Church and state. That he, the Cardinal Richelieu, thought that the Catholic Church should not impose upon the crown and the crown should not impose upon the Church. And this was considered heretical by both of them because the Catholic Church wanted to control the French crown and all the, and a bunch of the other heads of state in Europe at the time. And the king of France wanted to be able to say, I as king, I am head of church and state.

15:23 And so that's the source of the conflicts from the novel that we know of, The Three Musketeers. That's fascinating. So I want to go back to, into the history a little bit because there's some things that I'll be honest, look, I'm learning with the audience here, but I, I want to go back to what the common understanding is of, of, of the history. When is you talked about the Freemasons are there, I mean, excuse me, the Templars, the Templars, excuse me, is there actual documented connection between the Templars and Freemasonry? Or is there enough there for you to look at and make some reasonable connections right? Right. So I would say that there's enough of a there there that it is a very reasonable belief that Freemasonry intended itself to be a continuation of the mysteries and the ideas and even the organization to some extent the the institutional authority of the Knights Templar being continued in Freemasonry. However, I use the word belief in there for a reason. Historians are not going to make a direct equivalency, and I wouldn't either.

16:33 I don't think philosoph, I don't think it's fair to make a direct equivalency that we just are the Knights Templar. But here's here's what it comes down to the Freemason guilds, which we have documentary, documentary evidence that is actual written documents still in existence that go back at least into the 1300s. We have artifact examples of Freemasonry similar to what we're doing now as a symbolic teachings and practices regarding architecture and mathematics and things like that. Though we definitely goes no, goes back to even before the establishment of the Knights Templar, probably the 9th century at least. Besides the fact that, I mean, if you go all the way back into ancient Egypt, like ancient ancient Egypt, they're using the plum, the square and the level tools of architecture as symbolic and sacred symbolism even back like I'm saying like 4000 years or something.

17:30 So all of those but but does that make them Freemasons? Not exactly OK right? Because right now what is Freemasonry? Right now? It is a fraternity open to good men of all races, creeds and religions who want to promote unity, meet upon an equality and build brotherhood and like help their community and stuff like that. What were they doing back in the ancient days? Might have similar symbols but not be the same thing at all, right? Not only might it not have been a fraternal organization, they might have been considered more religious symbols. They might have been a lot of other things like the Knights Templar were essentially like a a priesthood in a lot of ways, which Freemasonry does not claim to be in any way.

18:13 There's no authority of office that serves a Sacramento purpose or a priesthood type purpose anywhere in Freemasonry. So, for example, in Freemasonry now, one of the things we insist upon explaining to people is that Freemasonry is not a religion and it doesn't conflict with your religion because it does. Its purpose is not to bring you to God. There's no Masonic ceremony in which you are placed into a different relationship to deity than what is that comes about in your own faith, Right. And we're not dogmatic. We don't have a, a set of doctrines or dogmas or beliefs or catechisms that you have to adhere to a particular interpretation of.

18:55 But we are trying to use religious symbols, use scriptural stories, use ancient legends and histories to try to point out moral lessons. So when we talk about the Knights Templar information, we're not saying, oh, yeah, we are a continuation of a priesthood of Catholic crusaders. Not at all. What we're trying to do is say, look, these ancient Catholic crusaders, they had some ideas and some of those ideas are valuable ideas. So let's learn from their experience, their, their successes and their failures and try to use that as a lesson that teaches us how to be better men. Because we can see the examples of men who've gone before us and what they did right and what they did wrong.

19:38 And how can we build upon a foundation of our own history in a way that makes us better men, that helps us to understand our culture, helps us to understand our history. But that's not the same thing as being one of them, right? Like, like I love history. We and I know you do you, for example, even wrote a book about our founding fathers and you've, you've, you've, you've written on these, these men. But does that make you one of the founding fathers? Not exactly right. You know about them. You treasure what they've taught you. You perpetuate some of their ideals. That it doesn't make you a founding father. It makes you a patriot, maybe, but not a founding father.

20:19 So I'm not a, I'm not a Templar. But I Freemason, I do try to learn from the good truths that they had and carry them on. Gotcha. So maybe maybe a good way of putting that too that you guys are the the beneficiaries or or the the the keepers of some of that that knowledge that they had passed out. And, and a lot of that knowledge and traditions surprises people. They keep thinking, oh, the Freemasons, they they have secrets, right? People talk about secrecy in Freemasonry, but most of the Masons secrets, so-called aren't really secrets.

20:59 They're things like middle school math. OK, well, Freemasonry, Freemasonry uses as a symbol a lot of the tools and ideas that you learn about in basic geometry. OK, so the secret of pie or the secret of, of the golden ratio, the secret of, of the Pythagorean theorem, they're not secrets in the sense that nobody knows about them. They're secrets in the idea that by looking at the beauty of the world and the beauty and simplicity of mathematics, we, we tell each other as members of the fraternity that we should see in the works of God that there is a God. We should find hope and understanding and faith maybe, and these virtuous ideals by using these things as symbols or ways of understanding the world.

21:55 So, yeah, again, it's not that, it's not that the, the math itself is a secret. It's that there is something more to be found there than the banality of just numbers on a page. There's a truth, a deeper truth to find within it symbolically. Now the fun thing about this is that as I said earlier, Masons are non dogmatic. So we don't say the Pythagorean theorem means XY and Z and that's the only right interpretation. And you have to believe in that dogmatically. What we do is we take things like the Pythagorean theorem or one of the one of the problems of Euclid. The 42nd problem with Euclid is the Pythagorean theorem and we actually use that as a Masonic symbol. So in one of the degrees we say, look to this example of the 42nd problem of 42nd problem of Euclid as a as a symbol.

22:44 And it's like, well, what does that mean? Why? Why are we looking at this as a symbol? Well, I can only tell you what it means to me. And what it means to me is that there is order in the universe. To me that points to the Masonic idea that God is the great architect of the universe. That in something as simple as math, we can see something that goes far beyond numbers on a page and gives us hope that there is a God that that God is a God of order, a God of that's that can be understood, a God that creates a world that has meaning and order to it. Right now, like I said, there are Masons of all kinds of different religions.

23:30 I'm the, I'm one of the only Mormon fundamentalist Masons that I've ever met. So I draw different lessons maybe than other Masons do. Most Masons are Christian, most of them are not Mormon. But there are, there are Muslim Masons that I know. There are Hindu Masons that I know. And they will look at it and they'll say, oh, this reminds me of something from my faith and maybe take a slightly different interpretation. And in Masonry, that's considered totally valid because nobody is over or above anybody else. We're all meeting in exact quality. So what are we going to? So, so for example, these types of discussions in our meetings about something like the 42nd problem of Euclid, it's not going to be somebody saying this is the dogma, you should obey it.

24:18 It's going to be a bunch of us sitting around saying, you know, this reminds me something about something in my own faith or this reminds me of something that I read about in science or, you know, cutting edge, weird, fun stuff. Just because we like this, like quantum mechanics. How how is it that the uncertainty principle can mean something to us? And we'll debate it and we'll all have our own different points of view. And then we'll all commit to one basic set of values, which is the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. That regardless of our differences in faith that we're going to meet on an equality and we're going to find value in each other and we're going to support each other and try to build community together, right? So that, that's kind of why it's a fraternity, I think is that it's, it's seeking for a particular ideal of community, which is bringing men together who it might otherwise never have met and making them equals so that they can build something together.

25:17 I mean, symbolically, maybe build something, maybe even literally if they're working stone Masons, build something together. That's a benefit to everybody. And so there are men in my lodge who I never would have been friends with if it wasn't for Freemasonry, because we travel in totally different circles, different, different careers, different religions, different all kinds of things. But now that we're in the same Masonic Lodge together, we can build up our communities here in Utah County, where I live, by doing charitable works and promoting certain things and having that common cause. Where we're, you know, we're pulling together to build up our community in a way that we never would have otherwise. Because we're in completely different religions, different races, different religions, different social circles, different careers.

26:05 But now, as fellow Masons, we're all pulling together, essentially. Gotcha. OK, so let me ask this question and follow up. You, you mentioned you're not dogmatic, right? Right. Which really is the only way that a group like the Masons could work because you're going to have far too many guys with different religions to unless you want the fist fight. Right. We're not all going to, we're not going to all agree on anything, not even that Jesus is real or that Jesus is God. They'll be Hindus. We'll be like, Oh, well, I don't think about Christianity much, you know, and things like that, right? Right. But would you say that a belief in God, whatever that God is, is a is kind of a prerequisite? Yeah.

26:49 So they generally say that no atheist can be made in Mason. Now, that's not to say that we define it for people, what that means, what God means. But, you know, just put my cards on the table here because I'm really not convinced that secrecy about this is helpful. I think it's better to tell people details that frankly aren't that secret anyway. Is that in the beginning of Freemasonry, the very beginning, if, if you ever try to become a Freemason, one of the first things that they're going to ask you is in whom you put your trust. What is the basis for your faith? And if you say I don't believe in anything, I don't even believe in a certain world.

27:29 I don't believe that the sun will necessarily rise tomorrow. I don't believe in anything, then you're not going to be made of Mason. But if you can express some belief in a God or some belief in even just the beauty and order that are demonstrated by the natural world, I mean, it's pretty loose definition, then yes, you can be made of Mason. But so basically it, you have to express your belief in God. Now, some people are pagans or who knows what, right? And they're still welcome to be Masons. But I, I think traditionally there's two reasons why atheists can be made Masons. And one of them is extremely archaic and has nothing to do with modern atheists. And so I'll tell you that one first.

28:11 The term atheist meaning without God didn't originally mean people who reject belief in a in a God. It meant people who are too ignorant and illiterate to know about God. So the original definition of the term atheist as used in like the 141516 hundreds wasn't about the philosophical assertion that you reject gods. It was about being so illiterate that you didn't even know about God. And so and and Masonry did not accept illiterates into its ranks. Freemasonry was meant for people who could understand deeper, higher order thinking, right? And that that's part was part of the point because what are we trying to do originally before it was just before it was even primarily symbolic.

28:58 This was a this was a career path, right? If people were going to become a master Mason, it meant that you were an architect. You understood the principles of architecture well enough to build buildings that aren't going to fall down on anybody. Right. So as an importion, so as a profession, there's certain professional standards you've got to be literate before we're going to be able to teach you the orders of math necessary to build buildings properly so they don't fall down. But the other reason that's expressed more often now as to why you can't be an atheist and be a Mason was the idea that if you promised us in our mutual society, you promised this mutual support of brotherhood, but you didn't believe that there was anyone to hold you accountable, to keep your oath, then what was the point of promising that you would treat one another as brothers? You could be some kind of turncoat, A faithless friend, if you didn't have some belief that you would be held to such promises.

29:58 Now that does lead me into the next thing I kind of want to get into if I just don't mind jumping to it too much, which is similarities between Mormonism and Masonry. That makes people upset and makes the anti Masons concerned is that Masons take oaths, right? So the idea that you have to believe in God to hold you to your oath, well that only really comes about because at each stage of Masonry, at each degree they're called, right? Each ceremony a Mason is going to take an oath, and that oath is not anything scary or weird in my opinion. There are symbolic elements to everything we teach and do, but these oaths are mostly things like I promise to be honest.

30:42 I promise to be good and true and faithful. I promise not to cheat wrong or defraud my fellow brothers in this lodge. I promise we promise brotherly love, relief and truth, things like that. And without again, without dogmatically defining how you have to understand that, but simply that you believe in a God and you believe that you're taking this oath to uphold these virtues. And so each degree has has some kind of promise you make like that. But those promises, importantly, since I want, since we need to bring this back to how does this relate to Mormonism? Importantly, those promises aren't promises you make to God. They're not covenants with God that put you in a covering relationship with God. They are promises you make to your brethren in the lodge so that you can trust one another.

31:36 So, so there's a very different purpose. It's not a Sacramento purpose. The purpose of those oaths is, is, is also not intended to interfere in any way with your promises to God. So there's, there's a little bit in Utah Masonry, by the way, every state and every sovereign country in the world pretty much has their own Grand Lodge. It's a separate, that's the highest possible organization. So each where you go throughout the world, Freemasonry can vary slightly. It all comes from the same common historical source, same common historical traditions. But there'll be some differences in wording in these ceremonies or, or, or methods and things like that. But in Utah at least, there is this little preamble.

32:18 Before a man takes an oath in one of these degrees, he is told by the Master of the lodge who's going to be the one who's repeating this oath or promise with him, says to him, this little disclaimer, I guess you could call it that I'll reset for you, He says. Before proceeding any further in the ceremonies of this degree, it will be necessary for you to take upon yourself a solemn and binding obligation which, as Worshipful Master of this Lodge, I'm free to inform you, conflicts with none of those exalted duties you owe to God, your country, your neighbor, your family, or yourself. It pertains to Freemasonry only. With this assurance on right, and he says, and with this assurance on my part, are you willing to proceed and take upon yourself such a solemn, binding obligation as all Brothers and fellows have done who have gone this way before you, Right. Because everyone takes the same, same oaths and promises. So, so yeah, the idea is it's not meant to replace religion. It's not meant to conflict with religion. This is why I even know Catholic Masons, in spite of the fact the Catholic Church isn't keen on Masonry is because, yeah, it's not meant to conflict.

33:35 And so, so yeah, this, this history of how does Masonry affect Mormonism? It's probably a a good place to go next. Before we go there, before we go there, I I got some more questions about Masonry in particular. You bet there there seems to be different rights and orders to Masonry, right? Yeah. So what, what, what would be the difference between, let's say, the York right to the Scottish right to like the Shriners? I think the Shriners are somehow mixed in there, right? I mean, what, what, what are we? What are we looking at here? Right, so most masonry is what's called Blue Lodge Masonry, which is the 1st 3° of Masonry.

34:21 The first three degrees are what are is what happens in the regular lodge. That's probably somewhere in your town where it says Lodge of Freemasons #82 or whatever. Those lodges only do 3 ceremonies, 3 basic degrees, and those are the most important ones. It's the foundation that all of Freemasonry has in common. Those three degrees are an Entered Apprentice, of course, named after the apprentices who first learned, tried to become apprentices to learn how to do stonemasonry, fellow crafts, which is also called sometimes journeyman. And that of course, is still echoed in, you know, professional societies today. If you become a journeyman electrician, for example, or something.

35:06 So the second level is journeyman or fellowcraft, which means that they're gained, they've gained proficiency. And then the third degree is called the master Mason degree, which basically is the master level where you are supposed to know what you're talking about. Now, don't, don't get me wrong, Masons haven't necessarily mastered all symbolic knowledge or mastered all of our history when they become a master Mason. But those, those are what the three degrees are called. And then at that point you're considered what's a full Mason. When you're one of The Apprentice or the fellow craft, then you really only attend the lodge that you're learning from.

35:47 But when you become a Master Mason, once you've done the first three degrees, then you can traveled in Masonry and that means you can visit other lodges anywhere in the world and say, I'm a Master Mason And they will say, oh, well then you're a brother, come on in. You know, things like that. So that's how one of the reasons why you can get that mutual support or that that international community of men that you have in the fraternity is when you get to that Master Mason degree. So but then after that, then what if people are like, Hey, this is so much fun. I really enjoyed this. And they're active in that they can do, I guess, extracurricular activities. These would be the appendant bodies. So there's the Scottish Rite, the York Rite, you mentioned the shrine. There's also a bunch of other much more obscure ones. There's like tons of them.

36:32 I mean, maybe thousands that I wouldn't even know the names of that are various obscure appendant bodies or Masonic affiliated organizations even they could call them like organizations that aren't strictly Freemasonry but they're composed of Freemasons who are also doing this other project or some such. But the main ones really are the Scottish Rite, the York Rite, and to some extent the Shrine. So what's the difference? The Scottish Rite and the York Rite are both ancient traditions perpetuated by Master Masons that go back at least several centuries, and we don't know about before that with there's not a lot of documentary history before about 1800 on those. But those pendant bodies, basically they go back and they give more small construction, more history, more ideas that kind of expand on the lessons that you learn in the 1st 3° of Masonry.

37:32 And the first three are found in in the York and the Scottish Rite bin. Yeah, they're, they're, they're the same. And at least in at least in the United States, they're the same right now where if you you go through the 1st 3° and that's just in common, that's in common. You have to do the first 3° before you can join the shrine. You got to do the first 3° before you can join Scottish or York writer anything else because they're basically follow up extracurricular activities explaining those three degrees. So here's one of the other misconceptions that people have is people say, oh, are you a 32nd degree Mason? And they assume that 32nd it is much higher than third, but technically it's not. In Freemasonry there are three degrees, The Apprentice, the fellow Craft, and the Master, and the Master Mason degree is the highest of all degrees. If you go into the Scottish Rite, for example, and do the 4th through the 32nd degree, you are just reiterating lessons and expanding upon knowledge and and symbolic ideas of the first three degrees.

38:34 So still the third degree, the Master's degree, is still considered higher than any of the degrees in the Scottish Rite. And even though they have higher numbers, they're not higher in, I guess, authority. Got you. OK. No, that makes sense. And then the York right is organized a little bit differently. The Scottish Rite, which originally came from Scottish Freemasons, right? That's why it's called that. And then York is also in the north part of England. So there's, there's a lot of similarity. They're basically trying to carry on various mystery traditions, mystical ideas. But really that sounds more magical than most Masons view it.

39:18 It's more like historical traditions of symbolic ideas, philosophical ideas, mathematical ideas from throughout the world. So in the Scottish Rite, I love the Scottish Rite. By the way, I'm a 32nd degree Scottish Rite for Mason. In the Scottish Rite, there are degrees that try to bring lessons out of many different religions and ideas from throughout the world. It goes all the way back to talking about the Mithradic mysteries and the Greek mysteries. It it references the Sufi traditions. It references Gnostic traditions and ideas, and it mentions the Hermetics, It mentions the, you know, so basically all kinds of religions, all kinds of ideas throughout time, Jewish Kabbalah, all kinds of symbolic systems are drawn upon to teach these lessons. But once again, they're not trying to pretend to be Muslim or Jewish or Christian priests.

40:19 We're not pretending to do any of that in Masonry. We're trying to say, look at these beautiful ideas and systems of morality and symbolism and what can we learn from them essentially. So it's much more academic in a lot of ways than religious in that sense. Of course, at the same time, because it's ceremonial, a lot of Masons, including myself, have found that it's, it's very affecting. I mean, it's very emotional. It's very beautiful. It's not. So when I say it could be slightly more academic, I'm what I'm trying to say is it's not Sacramento. It's not meant to substitute for your faith or put you into communion with God or, or angels or anything like that.

41:02 But it is supposed to be meaningful. And in it, I have found that it does enrich my faith. It does deepen my appreciation for all things sacred, and it deepens my appreciation for all of these other religious traditions throughout the world too, and that they all have beauty and knowledge and truth in them. Even if I'd, even if I'm not going to become a Muslim over it, I'm going to see now, now. But now I can look at Sufism and instead of just seeing a bunch of weird Muslims dancing around, I go, Oh my goodness. I remember I learned some of the symbolic lessons upon which they based their ideas and I now I can see that there's a common thread of beauty in it, things like that. So that's kind of the, the Scottish Rite is much more about all religions and all traditions. The York Rite is much more Christian. I'm also a Yorkite Mason.

41:58 The York Rite expands on these historical and symbolic lessons of the 1st 3°, but does so in a way that kind of says look how Judaism led to Christianity. And so one of the some of the some of the highest degrees of the the highest degrees of the York right are actual Templar degrees. The Knights Templar, that connection, right? Again, not being a true Templar, but carrying on their tradition, they actually get knighted and they call themselves the Order of the Knights Templar at the highest level of some of the highest levels of the York right. And at that point, what's, what's 1 of the oaths? I'll tell you one of the oaths at the highest levels of the York right, is that you will defend the Christian faith.

42:47 So they're a little bit more specifically Christian. So I do know some Jewish York, right, Templars, but it's pretty rare generally to, to get to the highest levels of the York right. Pretty much everyone there is going to express and maybe they don't belong to a traditional Christian faith. Some of them are even Mormons, right, which isn't a traditional Christian denomination in that sense. But Mormons will say, well, I believe in Jesus Christ. That's my definition of Christian because we're not dogmatic. We're not holding that over anybody. So I can say I will defend the Christian faith and IA Jewish friend of mine who became a Templar said that he didn't mind taking the oath because he said I will defend the Christian faith and the Muslim faith and the Jewish faith and the Hindu faith in any faith because I want to defend people's right to freedom of religion is the way he interpreted that oath.

43:44 And that's valid because open people can have a valid their own valid interpretation, I guess is the point. Gotcha. So those are two of the most, those are the two most ancient and most important dependent bodies. We've also mentioned the shrine a couple times. I'm going to mention that the shrine isn't considered a super ancient thing. It was, it was a more modern invention, perhaps the shrine. It was originally only open as a social club to 32nd degree. Masons of the Scottish Rite would then also join the Shrine Club. The Shrine and the Grotto are organizations that kind of draw upon symbolic ideas from the Middle East without actually having a truly ancient origin.

44:34 Whereas like the Scottish Rite and New York Rite, they claim to continue mysteries that reach back through antiquity all the way to the building of King Solomon's temple, right? Whereas the Shrine says we're a social club and we draw on symbolism, but we were totally invented later on in the 1800s. Gotcha. And, and, and they're also famous for being more of a social club and more of a charity to the Shriners Hospitals were founded on the on the principle of providing medical care to children at no cost. And still to this day, if your child needs assistance at the Shriners Hospital, there's one in Salt Lake City. And there's, there are various places throughout the country. If you have a child with, there's specialists at this point right now, there's specialists in burn victims and, and scoliosis and a couple of other like specific kinds of things that are, are childhood diseases. But if if you have a child who needs a specialist in any of those fields, the Shriners hospitals throughout the throughout the world treat children and they never ever build a patient or their family.

45:41 Wow holy cow. So. And are they just self funded by like? By the nations from the shrine clubs, from the Masons want to support them, Yeah. Interesting. So would you say each one of these groups are a monolith unto themselves or do you do you see that they're widely, I mean, what, what is the structure like? Because there is like a Grand National Lodge, right? Well, well, not. There isn't a national lodge in the United States. There are state Grand Lodges. So Utah has its own Grand Lodge, and that's as high as it goes. And so does Colorado, and so does Missouri has its own Grand Lodge, and that is as high as it goes.

46:21 But these dependent bodies are in full communion, I guess full recognition is what we call it with their respective grand lodges. And I would say that there's going to be a lot of overlap because the type of the type of guy who wants to become a Mason is a certain type of guy. And then there's a smaller subset of that. There's the type of guy who's like, I want to do the extra stuff. And then there's a smaller subset of that is like, I want to do it. All right. So, yeah, I, I, I found especially in Utah, but in some other places too, I'm sure it's also the case that people who do one, some of them are like, oh, I want to do all of them. But there's a lot of people who only do 1 or some of them don't do any of these dependent bodies. They just do the three degrees.

47:06 In fact, the Worshipful Master, that's the highest office in, in my regular lodge that where we meet up in Provo, he's actually not a member of any appendant body. He's just a master Mason. And so he hasn't done the Scottish Rite of the York right, or any of those or the, or the shrine or any, anything else. He's just done those 3 ceremonies with us in our lodge in Provo. And now he's, he's the head honcho. But you know, that's The funny thing too about being the high Rama Lama or what are they rubble up dub what? What's the what's the darn one I'm trying to think of that was making fun of Masonry? I'm a llama or something. Grand Poobah. That's what it was.

47:47 Grand Poobah. You know, again, what does that really mean? I have a friend who said, you know, let's not let, don't let any of that go to your heads. All we're really saying is is that you get to take the lead in organizing on the fun you're going to have with your friend group for one year, and then we're going to let somebody else take a turn. It's all right. So even though we call him the Worshipful Master, it sounds so grand, right? What does it really mean? It means he's in charge of organizing a lot of the fun stuff that our group of. Friends, he gets to pick out the sandwiches. He gets to pick out the sandwiches this year and make sure that the stuff arrives on time, you know, and whatever. Gotcha, gotcha. All right now, now we can get back to the Mormons and Mason stuff, but I wanted to get some background on that before we we just dove in. I felt like that was helpful to be able to kind of crime thing, so to speak.

48:35 Yeah. And it's it's tricky that I can't give more specific answers on a lot of that history. Because no and I don't. It's lost in antiquity, nobody even knows the full story. Right. By the time we know about Freemasons lodges existing and doing these degrees, it was already fully formed for centuries. Centuries before the 1st documentary. Evidence that we still have. So, you know, who knows how far back it goes. And traditionally it goes back at least as far as the workers who were building King Solomon's temple in the Old Testament. And that's where a lot of the the legends come from that are discussed in Freemasonry is referencing the idea that we were the Freemasons or the architects who helped build the ancient temple and built the churches and temples ever since.

49:26 And so there's a probably a good segue to what's the connection with Mormonism. Well, Mormonism also does temples, talks about temples, believes in temples. Well, Freemasonry often will talk about building temples. And so some people, again, non Mormons, non believers, anti Mormons will often say Joseph Smith was ripping off ideas he was plagiarizing. Basically what they're trying to say is, is that he was in this culture, of course, in the 1800s where there were so many Masons. I mean, Oh my goodness, I think I, I, I was AI was an Arizona Mason too. As an aside, when the Arizona Grand Lodge was established and they started establishing lodges in Arizona and I think it was still just the Arizona Territory at the time, the the population of Arizona was like 70% male because it was the Wild West.

50:27 They were going out there to make their money and and break the Wild West, and one out of every four men in the entire territory was already a Freemason. Holy cow. So when I say that it's 25%, it's like like right now in society, you could say to somebody like, hey, what do you think of The Avengers? And they know you're talking about Marvel movies, right? More larger proportion of people in the 1800s were Freemasons than people today have seen a Marvel movie. Wow. OK. Holy cow. So this was a major, major touchstone of anybody who was engaged at any level in society in America during that century. Who so?

51:14 More so, Masonry was to the early United States what an Eagle Scout was to the Mormon Church years ago. Yeah, I was going to say not Even so much anymore. It was more common than being an Eagle Scout by a long shot. And and so it became in in American culture at the time, Freemasonry was a coming of age thing that a lot of men did. I mean, a lot lot of men, especially if they want to be engaged in public life in any way. I mean, they're sure there were people who didn't really engage with their neighbors, but if if you wanted to be engaged in your community, most men became Masons.

51:55 And so just to give you an idea, this is the soup from which Mormonism emerges, right? This is the culture from which Mormonism emerges. Alvin Hiram just Smith Senior. They were already Freemasons by the time before Mormonism was established, and so were tons of other people around them. Tons. Now, Joseph Smith doesn't actually end up becoming a Mason until Nauvoo, which is interesting to point out, but that he would have been at least passingly familiar with Masonic terms and ideas because everyone was. Everyone was familiar with them whether they were Mason or not. It was just a major cultural major cultural touchstone of the entire era.

52:44 So some people will say Joseph Smith must have come up with the idea of temples because you have Freemasons talking about building King Solomon's temple. And here you've got a guy, Joseph Smith, saying, I want to restore ancient Israel to its former glory. I want to restore the fullness of the gospel. I want to restore the biblical community. And what did the biblical community do? They went to the temple, right? And so, yeah, I mean, some people will see that as plagiarism. I don't see that as plagiarism any more than it's plagiarism for Joseph Smith to have believed in the Bible or believed in Jesus Christ, right?

53:24 People don't say that Mormons plagiarized Christianity by believing in Jesus at all, right? They they say, no, I we understand you come from that thing. Well, same thing. Mormonism came out of Freemasonry to a large extent, to some extent. And just there's a few quotes from Joseph Smith to this effect. He saw the restoration as restoring all light, all truth, all knowledge from the past. And what was Freemasonry? What is Freemasonry still trying to do? What is it claiming to do? It's claiming to be a continuation of all kinds of knowledge, ideas from the past, be a continuation of that history. So of course, Joseph Smith wants to continue that history.

54:06 Right. Or restore that history to its former. Right. And didn't he also have some interesting things to say about what Masonry was or is like? That's one of those quotes. That this is where this is where things go off the rails a little bit like. Because I can't. I can't. I've never been able to like, look, I'm not a historian by profession. And typically when I do my research, because I'm not a historian, I tend to like to see things said three times by different people. Right, so you can different respect. And and I can't find 3 on this right, but it's the one about, you know, this is what the Masons were, this is what it is. A lot of that becomes tradition.

54:53 A lot of that has just become tradition. This idea that the Masons are a continuation of the ancient Temple ceremonies of ancient Israel. Masonry doesn't exactly claim that either, as much as it does claim Masonry does attempt at least to reconstruct and to to give lessons from ancient religion, right, Lessons from ancient, ancient legends, ancient ideas. But, but let's talk about some similarities and some differences here. Since we're talking about this idea of where did Joe Smith get the idea for a temple? Well, maybe you got the idea for a temple from Masonry. Maybe you got it from the Bible. Well, because Masonry gets it from the Bible anyway, right? So maybe he got the idea in a somewhat Masonic sense, that maybe we should build a temple.

55:37 If people are talking about building temples, why aren't we doing it? Maybe we should build one, right? But the the LDS temple ceremony and the Masonic ceremonies are actually vastly, vastly more different than I expected. To give you some idea of my credentials on this, I was a temple worker in Saint George, in Mesa, and in Taipei, Taiwan for the mainstream Elias Church. I was an ordinance worker. And then when they made some changes during my own tenure and time to the initiatory ordinances, I got interested and started reading books about changes in the past. And I also had my dad, who was sort of a Mormon fundamentalist, even if he was in mainstream, right, he was fundamentalist leaning maybe.

56:25 And when I got my endowments in the Manti Temple, he took me aside in the celestial room and he said, there's a bunch of other things you need to know because what we just did was incomplete. And I need to explain to you that there are penalties that there were a bunch of other these, these, these other things that we're familiar with in in a more original temple ceremony. So I was aware of all those things in the mainstream from mainstream sources. Then I became a more fundamentalist and I became a temple worker in Christchurch and I did those temple ceremonies and only after doing both of those things and that study did I become a Freemason. So I go into my ceremony to become an Entered Apprentice, the beginning of Freemasonry.

57:07 And I think to myself, you know what? I, I, I've heard that there's similarities. So I bet, I bet you, there's going to be a few things in common at least. I bet you, I bet you, I'm going to be washed and anointed, and then I'm going to go into an environment where we're going to learn about the creation of the Earth, the story of Adam and Eve getting their aprons. Because I was thinking Masonic aprons is a thing, right? Because it's a workman's apron. So that must have something to do with the aprons of Adam and Eve. We're going to learn about all of that. Then we'll probably take some kind of oath or covenant of some kind, learn some symbols, including things that might be symbolic gestures, for example, for those who are familiar with the temple. I figure we're probably in there having something to do with those covenants.

57:52 And then probably there'll be some kind of a veil. We'll go through that veil, and then we'll be rejoined with God symbolically or something like that, right? Those basic elements will probably be there. They're not. None of those things take place in any Masonic ceremony. None. Interesting. And so I was actually shocked at how dissimilar they were after it had been hyped up to me so much that Joseph Smith ripped off Masonry to build the endowment. I was like, they they have, they have a fundamentally completely different purpose. They have completely different content, completely different instructions. Now, do both begin and end with prayer in some way or another? Yes.

58:36 An opening and closing prayer happens. That happens in Mass too. That happens in almost every ceremony where anybody does anything. I mean Congress opens and closes in prayer. I mean every so. Are we? Are we ripping off Congress when we have a temple ceremony in Mormonism? No, right. Just because there's a couple of things in common now. So. So for example, in Freemasonry, there's no talk of Adam and Eve. Their fig leaves are not equated with aprons at any point in any Masonic degree. There's no talk about creation of the world and the oaths that you take the promises like I, like I was saying earlier, none of them create a covenant relationship between you and God. None of them are about that.

59:18 They're about will I be honest with my brethren? Will I treat them with fairness and equality? Will I, will I come to their relief? Will I, will I practice charity? Will I, you know, be a peaceable citizen and support my community? Those are the types of things we're talking about. And there's no veil. There's no approaching God. There's no one who plays the role of a priest or messenger of God. God doesn't play a direct role. We simply refer to religious symbolism. Sure for but but for what purpose? In order to inculcate lessons in morality so that we can talk about things like keep your passions in check, be honest.

1:00:02 Be upright in your several stations before God in man, phrases like and so I and yet, and yet as as much as it was very, very different, I found it deeply enriched my faith because the experience of it is a journey from boy to man. It's a journey from darkness to light that is supposed to help you point, point you along the path of seeking enlightenment, seeking truth, doing good, right. And so as I saw various, you know, basic religious ideas, basic moral ideas presented in this very affecting personal way. It, it demonstrated for me that these these are grand universal truths and it sank them deeper into my heart so that when I go back to church and I do do something for Sacramento purpose.

1:01:02 When I, when I go to the temple and I talk about taking a covenant with relationship with God, I'm, I'm reminded that on a much smaller, more mundane scale in Masonry, I have learned how to keep a brother's confidence. Maybe I can learn to keep God's confidence. I've learned that I can control my passions. So if I go into a temple and I take the oaths that we do in the endowment, I'm reminded that these things are within my power. I can consecrate, I can be chased, I can I can pray and never cease to pray. When I make those covenant relationships with God in an endowment, it is similar in the sense that it's it's something that I know I can do because I've learned through Masonry that I can be a man who takes responsibility for my actions, who can fulfill my promises, things like that. But again, yeah, different purpose. So yeah, those similarities and difference, different purpose, different structure.

1:02:09 I mean, generally different structure. There's an opening and closing prayer. There is a lecture for instruction, instructional purposes. Most eldest people won't know this, but there used to be a lecture for instructional purposes in the enowments, which we still do in Mormon fundamentalism. There's some symbols in common. There's a few symbols in common, most on the nose. So I'm going to get to probably the most controversial thing. The idea of signs, tokens and penalties is a Masonic idea or it's a type of category of symbol in both Mormonism and in Masonry, but it's a type or category of symbol that exists actually throughout all of man's religions and throughout all time. Buddhists, for example, I'll, I'll tell, I'll give you some, I'll give you some Buddhist endowment here because there's no oath of secrecy involved in Buddhist endowments. You will see a lot of like Buddhas doing this. This means cease, cease to be attached, ceased to cease to to do evil, cease to think evil and so forth. This means good things will come to you. And so the Buddhists, many Buddhas, will sit there with their hands like this.

1:03:29 And why do they do that? Because it is AI mean. Heck, it's even an idol that's not very Masonic or very Mormon, right? But this little idol is supposed to teach even the illiterate a lesson that if you will be still, you will know that if you will cease doing evil, you will receive blessings, and so forth. Interesting. So, so this this idea that you're the position of your hands has a meaning. It's not purely Masonic or purely Mormon. Here's another one that you're familiar with. When we say the Pledge of Allegiance, what are you doing with your hands? They're just. Covering your heart. Are you saying no, you do this right?

1:04:10 That is what is that? That is, that is a gesture form of symbolism. Masonry does it, Mormonism does it. We do it for the flag. Buddhism does it. Everyone does it. Every religion does this, but specifically mentioning that makes Masonry sometimes seem more mysterious to people even though, right? So the ID. So if there are, there are some, but not all. I will point out there's some but not all of those gesture type symbols that may have certain parallels but not all, and not the exact same parallels and not the exact same meaning, and certainly not the same usage.

1:04:52 But do we show reverence for the flag in the same way in masonry and in Mormonism? Yes, and in and in a couple of other. There's a couple of parallels there, but that is the full extent of it. Here's the other thing too, that really surprised me. Beyond the general reference to the idea of the of the compass and the square and one or two gesture type symbols, there is nothing left in the LDS temple. Not one thing, not even a symbol, not A and not a not a ceremonial element of any kind that has any parallel between Masonry and Mormonism.

1:05:35 Then the LDS church in there changing of the temple ordinances, which I'm not a big fan of, but I think that it may have been deliberate. They have removed every Masonic reference and element of every kind and so a modern mainstream LDS person who becomes a Mason will see almost 0, maybe negligibly, not 0 because we both both ceremonies mention compass and square. Beyond that, there is near 0 similarity at all. Interesting. Now you and I are more fundamentalists and we have a more original temple ceremony. There's a few more, there's a few more symbols that were will be shared in common.

1:06:18 But again, the mere fact that both both systems use a symbol doesn't mean it's plagiarism, doesn't mean that it's a RIP off or that's illegitimate. The same way it's not illegitimate for me to say I believe in Jesus Christ and for a Catholic to say I believe in Jesus Christ. And that's not one of us ripping off Catholicism or something. It's just my faith. There's a lot there that you said. The the first thing you said is that masonry in in their in their lodges seems to follow a pattern of a boy becoming a man. Yeah. Right now, that's a lot different than the LDS or Mormon temple experience. I don't care which one you go through right? The litter, the liturgy is vastly different. Vastly, in fact, basically, like I said, almost 0 similarity, right?

1:07:09 Maybe, maybe there's maybe there's the general concept of progression, right? Progression is a concept is present in both, certainly. Sure. However, I do think I understand now why, because you were saying that that it was just shy of almost being ubiquitous in those early days being being a Mason, right. But I I think I understand why it was so front and center the West. When I say the West, I mean predominantly Western Europe, America, right the the the West. Yeah, the cultural W Masonry is basically the only major and certainly the most the most ancient mystery school or symbolic tradition in the West. It tries to bring all of the values of the Western civilization, as we call it, into an organization or a system.

1:08:08 It does. And, and look, I love Western thought, right? I think it's done wonders for mankind. However, we have lost some things along the way. And one of those, and it's something I've been studying a lot lately, is rites of passage for a young man, man into into becoming a man, right. What I find interesting is that there's this idea of an adolescent or a teenager does not exist in Judaism and it exists in very few societies outside of of Western society. Now, that can be good. But what happens is, is that we've lost those rites of passage into manhood.

1:08:52 Yeah, right. And and so I think I that's. One of the reasons I love Masonry, right? It provides something that like, I think we're almost genetically disposed to want to seek after that thing that those such a part of our culture for so many centuries that we're missing in the modern world. And it just, it's a bummer not to have it. Oh, yeah. And, and, and those rites of passage were hugely important to society, right? Because what it was is it was investing a young man with this idea of, OK, you may not be ready for marriage yet, but you're old enough, you should start taking responsibility and, and understanding what it means to be a man, right? And so we're going to, we're going to call you a man with a little M, so to speak.

1:09:39 But yet there's still this rite of passage that happens. And in the West for, for, for the average, you know, male, we've lost some of those rites of passage, which I think are hugely important. And I think that's part of the reason today we're seeing the full fruition of that in that, well, if there's no rite of passage, if there's not something that says, hey, you've kind of arrived becomes a little easier to live in your mom's basement and sure, an inordinate amount of time, right? Because there's nothing there to signal to the psyche that, hey, you're on to bigger things now. Well, and you're touching. On something really important to Freemasonry, which is kind of, I think Freemasonry is designed to affect your psyche. That's kind of the idea of symbolic or ritual knowledge is that you, when you do this, it's not even necessarily because you consciously learn something like you think about it book learning in school.

1:10:36 It's that psychologically you've been given this cue. You're a man now be a man. Stand up straight, do the thing, take responsibility, make our civilization great, right? In Freemasonry, you, your, your, your subconscious mind is given that cue that now is the time. Now is the time for you to take your place among men and to make the world a better place. But without that cue, yeah, you get kind of aimless. Like, I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I don't even know if I'm an adult. Am I just pretending? We all have imposter syndrome these days, you know, because we don't know what we are. Right, absolutely. And then the next thing that you brought up that I thought was super, you know, that that I felt deserved some attention here was this idea of of how shared gestures, right those things.

1:11:31 Shared symbolism. Yeah, if if Joseph Smith is what he purports to be and the gospel is what what we believe Joseph said it was, we should expect to see some of those echo through history. If we don't find them, we need to be concerned. Right, that would be a big problem. That would be a big problem if he's not seeing things right. This is part I think. I think this is the difference between a prophet and a seer, right, is that a prophet can talk about things yet to come. A seer can look back and go, Oh, I recognize this right. And I fully expect that that if if Joseph hadn't queued into that or had look, that's the Buddhism and and right Masonry aren't the only places where that's found, right?

1:12:23 No, no, it's been throughout Hinduism and Jainism and Shinto and yeah, everyone, yeah. It's, it's all over the place, right? Even Native Americans, the way they they greet you, certain gestures. Right, and the Kiva ceremonies are actually more similar to masonry than than the Mormon temple submarine is by a longshot. Which is interesting because they grew up in these separate continents. They didn't even know about each other. But literally the Pueblo Kiva and the Masonic ceremony that was participated in by like, Mozart, they didn't talk to each other. But it actually has greater similarities even than they assembled us to some degree. I mean, like there's, yeah, there's huge overlap.

1:13:03 Yeah. And so if, if like some people get freaked out because they're like, well, that's that's there in in Masonry too. And, and as you pointed, you're right. And it's also there with the Native Americans, it's there with the Buddhists and go down the list, right. And if Joseph doesn't cue into that, if he doesn't have revelation about that, where it's through all these different societies, that's a problem. Because that would be a problem. Because again, Joseph Smith did not say I'm here to be an innovator. We are going to innovate a new gospel that never existed. That's not what he said. He said, I'm a restorer. We call it the restoration, right, because we believe that it existed from the beginning and therefore it has to have been ancient. He's just helping us find that that common thread with the ancients that connects us to that covenant of Abraham, right? Connects us to the ancients.

1:13:56 Absolutely. So let let me ask this question then I want to move on to a little bit maybe dispelling or I should say clarifying some things trying to get the answers myself. If if Mormonism, excuse me, if Masonry was this for ubiquitous throughout the. Period of their America right? What happens that it becomes less so, right? What happens to Masonry that it causes it to dwindle? There's a there's a couple of big things, and these are major cultural shifts. And then a couple of specific incidents that occurred.

1:14:37 First of all, it was started a lot of people started viewing this as elitist. OK. I was saying almost any man who was really engaged in a community to become a Mason. Well, yeah, but don't forget the British nobility were a bunch of Freemasons. Even the King of England was a Freemason and a bunch of these politician types and leader, community leader types were all Freemasons. Well, there was a huge backlash in American history in that century against elitism of all kinds. So there was the these political movements, Log Cabin, Log Cabin Whigs and things like that, right, where they were trying to say we don't believe in elitism, we don't believe in that. You have to be highly educated to be important and that sort of thing.

1:15:26 Now, Masonry is fairly, fairly compatible with this type of impulse. In fact, today most Masons do tend to be, again, we're not political, but they tend to be more small town conservative type folks. That's right in most Masonic lives. That's not to say there aren't some flaming liberals and of course a bunch of crazy libertarians like me and a bunch of other things. But but the, that, that's the trend. And so there was a, there's a big trend against elitism and, and Masonry was viewed as a form of elitism. So there was some pushback on that. One of the next things too is, is that one of the things you promised in for Masonry is that you will not give up the secrets of Masonry. Well, as I just pointed out to you, I'm up Mason in good standing. And yet I'm sort of giving away the secrets today. Not because I I don't believe I'm violating my any of those promises because I'm not really giving away what I consider to be secrets.

1:16:18 What I consider to be secrets are things that you can only know for yourself in your own heart. The main secrets of Freemasonry, so-called is the experience that a man has and the practice of brotherly love. That's the secret. The secret of Freemasonry isn't something I can tell you. It's something you have to know in your own heart by loving your brethren and practicing charity. Right. That's what I think the real secrets are. But but pointing out things like OK, middle school math and basic geometry are Masonic secrets. Well, there was a guy named Captain Morgan, and this is called the Morgan Affair that occurred in the 1800s. Is it the guy on the rum bottle? It is not actually the guy on the rum bottle. This guy's an army captain, not a sea captain. So very different level of status there too. But there was a guy named Captain Morgan who lived in somewhere in New England.

1:17:08 I'm trying to remember where. Maybe I should have looked up some more on this so I can tell you about it. But this, this became a big national scandal and a big problem for Freemasonry. This guy named Captain Morgan said, I'm a Freemason and I do want to violate my oath. I'm going to tell everybody every little secret, every little anything. And at this point in the early 1800s, one of the reasons why there isn't as much documentary history on Freemasonry going back into the 1300s and the and 900 AD and maybe even all the way to King Solomon's temple, is that there's a tradition of Masonry not to divulge certain secrets. So this guy, Morgan, Mr. Morgan, Captain Morgan, he says I'm going to divulge every last thing I know. And he publishes something that you can actually look up anytime you want now, which is generally called Duncan's ritual. A guy named Duncan took and had him write down all the ceremonies, all the symbols, everything, and publish in the newspaper.

1:18:08 Well, that is a violation because not because, not because we're I'm ashamed of anything. If you want to read Duncan's ritual, go ahead. But I still think don't read it. Don't read it. Become a Mason instead. Why? Because it's the experience that matters. It's the brotherhood that matters. It's not, it's not the ceremony that is the secret. But there was a lot of people, there was a lot of Masons at that time period and a lot of very angry Masons that he would publish the entire full word for word, every ceremony and symbol in the newspaper. And like I said, at that time, it wasn't written down at all.

1:18:50 It was entirely an oral tradition. Masons didn't have their own little secret books. Even where it was written down. It wasn't written down at all anywhere in the entire world. And he says, I'm going to publish it in the paper. So, so like I said, it wasn't even like a leak. Like we had a secret book in our, our lodge and then they got a copy and put it in the paper. No, nobody ever even wrote this down ever in the history of mankind as far as we know. And then he writes down the entire thing and publishes it. Really pissed off a lot of Masons, as I said. And then out in the midst of this tumult about like, how dare you and all this, you know, the social unrest about it. Like there was like almost like a little bit of a riot and people throwing rocks and that kind of thing. The next thing you know, Mr.

1:19:35 Morgan goes missing and to this day no one knows what happened to him. But it is generally presumed that with as many people who are angry with them, somebody who cared about this probably off the guy, probably. Now. This set off shock waves. This was the biggest scandal of its decade of its time. This was the never forget moment for people who viewed masonry as elitist and possibly dangerous. And now probably, even though we can't prove it, they probably killed somebody over this. And what are they? What are they doing?

1:20:15 And why are they being held accountable? And why haven't we figured out who did it? Now, to this day, like I said, we haven't figured out who did it. But people said, oh, well, powerful people, the deep state, if you will, must be hiding and protecting them because they're all a bunch of elitists. They're all a bunch of Masons. So they actually form a political party. They even ran a presidential candidate called the Anti Masonic Party and it became one of the biggest political parties of its time, not big enough to have ever won the presidency, but it became a very big political movement all across America. The Anti Masonic party and Masons all over the country renounced being Masons and there were tons of people who said don't get involved in it and all that sort of thing. So this created backlash where it was no longer popular to become a Mason. Now this is the weirdest connection so I have to bring it up.

1:21:05 OK. Morgan was married. His wife Lucinda was the poster child of the anti Masonic party and movement. She toured the entire country being an anti Mason, giving speeches about how the Masons murdered my husband and Masonry's evil. Do you know what she does while she's on this big journey all over the country? She gets exposed to something called Mormonism. She then moves to Nauvoo, meets the Prophet Joseph and becomes one of his plural wives during the heyday of the Masonic Lodge of Nauvoo.

1:21:47 Shut up. So she literally goes from being the widow of the most famous anti Mason ever to being the plural wife of one of the most famous Masons ever, Joseph Smith. I was at that time a Mason, right? That's correct. So, you know, and then there's so much excitement in the Nauvoo Lodge too. And this, this was, this was a little bit irregular. Masonry is supposed to teach men one at a time as an apprentice, like a master apprentice relationship and guide them through this whole experience, right? The novel Lodge was a little bit out of order, I'm sorry to say. As a Mason, Joseph Smith becomes a Mason and then everyone in novel wants to become a Mason.

1:22:37 And so the total number of Masons in Illinois, of course, don't forget this is a frontier area. At the time, there wasn't a lot of population period. The total number of Masons in all of Illinois was like 3000 men or something like that. When the novel Lodge gets started and Joseph Smith becomes a Mason within like a year the Nauvoo lodge makes like 3000 more men Masons. They double it just in Nauvoo they. Double it in just the one lodge. They just go crazy and they make everyone a Mason. And this of course, is viewed by Masons throughout Illinois who are already viewing Mormons as a political threat, as now a threat to their fraternity, because now all the Masons are Mormons.

1:23:20 What the heck happened? In one year, you're going to replace all of us and outvote all of us, because don't forget, Masonry is a voting organization. You're going to outvote all of us, but what are you doing right? And so that created some of that tension. You know, another interesting thing is that that's often pointed out is that with Joseph Smith and Hiram and Brigham Young and John Taylor and Wilfred Woodruff and Orson Pratt and Orson Hyde and all these guys becoming Masons and then of course, doing what? Building a temple and in that temple offering ceremonies, people want to say, oh, look at all the conflicts that they would have created. Another, another important rule, Mason raising fraternity, it does not have women members.

1:24:02 It is all male membership. What does Joe Smith do in literally inside the lodge room? He organizes the Relief Society. So this has caused people to speculate for a long time that Masons and Mormons have a lot of tension, a lot of conflict, that that the Relief Society itself was a Masonic organization that was created as an illegitimate organization for women Masons essentially. And yet the crazy thing that blew my mind when I read this book from from Cheryl Bruno, Joe Swick and and Nick Latersky Method Infinite. It's a great book is that they pointed out that almost all of that is later justifications. We we have assumed this conflict and created a new conflict, but it did not actually exist in Nauvoo. The Illinois Masons were not upset about the Relief Society. They did not think that Joseph Smith was an illegitimate Mason. They there wasn't conflict between Masons and Mormons in particular.

1:25:06 There were a lot of Masons actually who were very, very upset after the martyrdom of Joseph and Hiram because they said those were fellow Masons and they were murdered and therefore we should protect them and support them. And now there were some Masons that were in the mob. We found that we've put that together as well. But in general, most of the other Masons were really angry about that. They were saying no, no good Mason would be in a mob. So really there wasn't that conflict. Now there is one other thing that did occur since I'm giving some anecdotes from history. When the Mormons get to Utah or Deseret at the time and they start to form a Grand Lodge of Deseret so that Mormon Masons will continue to be Masons and Mormons.

1:25:51 There are also non Mormons in Utah who are not friendly to Mormons. And don't forget that the Mormon underground period, the rise of Mormon fundamentalism, the persecutions over polygamy and all of that, that was actually a much, that was actually an increased amount of animosity in, in society between Mormons and non Mormons. And so the, there's, there ends up being kind of a race between the Grand Lodge of Deseret and the Grand Lodge of Utah getting formed. The Grand Lodge of Utah wins the race, so to speak, establishes a Grand Lodge of Utah. And then Orson Hyde was very upset about this.

1:26:33 He, he actually went to England to try to help try to get the Grand Lodge of England to help charter the Grand Lodge of Deseret and things like that. But in the end, one regular Grand Lodge is established as the Grand Lodge of Utah, which still exists today, and therefore I'm a member of. And when that gets established these non Mormons non Mormon Masons from all from all the states around Utah as well as from the eastern States and so forth, when they form that Grand Lodge they decide rather UN masonically. I must say that Mormons shouldn't be members in good standing because they've but not because of direct conflict as much as in my opinion rumors. Which by then had started that Mormon temples were RIP offs of Masonic temples because the anti Mormon literature had already gotten to the Masons and made them concerned that the Mormon temple ceremonies were plagiarized ceremonies for men and women to become secret Masons. Interesting.

1:27:42 And so they decide not to let them in. The other thing too, is the very first lodge, which there's a historic lodge that still does demonstrated degrees here, was the Camp Floyd Lodge. Camp Floyd Lodge was the very first Masonic meeting in the territory of Utah. And of course, what was it made of? Johnson's army. Interesting. And so they weren't big fans of Mormons. They were, they were the Utah War army sent to put down the Mormon rebellion, right. So because of those political conflicts, there's a time period that is far in the past, but there was a time period in early Utah Masonry when Mormons couldn't be Masons in Utah. But it was only ever localized like that. The conflict between Catholics and Masons is like worldwide. The conflict between Mormons and Masons was a very short time period and only in Utah.

1:28:37 And there were Masons that were Mormons throughout the entire history of Mormonism. That never ceased to be a thing. It was just a bit of conflict that happened during that period for the Utah War and and and conflict between Mormons and non Mormons in Utah for the time period there. Holy cow, that is that story about one of Joseph's plural wives. Isn't that the craziest thing that. Is crazy. That's that crap. Crazy it is. Awesome. If you want to look her up, they usually call her Lucinda Morgan Harris because she married a Harris after Morgan. And then they don't normally throw Smith in there because she never used it as a name.

1:29:22 But she's one of the people who did an affidavit and said, yes, I was still to Joseph Smith. So they continue to be Masons. I mean, they went. When does some of that demonization for Masonry as a whole start to let up here in the States? You know, there's still anti Masonic literature out there. There's still probably a lot of people who may even listen to this podcast who might be concerned that Masonry is an evil organization of devil worshippers or who knows what. And that's one of the reasons why I think it's so fun that it really anti Mason literature goes right hand in hand with anti Mormon literature.

1:30:02 It is literally the same ministries that are anti Mormon that are anti Mason. In some cases they literally took the same anti documents that say Mormon temples are evil because and then they say it lies about the temple. Literally were pamphlets that they had already created for anti masonry that said in the Masonic temples they blah blah blah blah blah and it's the same lies. It's literally. And then just switch the name Masonic for Mormon. Yeah, it's, it's cut and paste hate literature, you know. Yeah, so there. And so there's a, there's a a huge, huge overlap in in, in that. And I think that what happened though, too, was in Utah, where most Mormons lived, and there was this conflict between Masons and Mormons for that time period. I think they're developed in that correlation era of Mormonism, that Hebrew era of Mormonism. They're developed this tradition amongst Mormons of saying, oh, the Mormon Masons don't know what they're talking about. We have the true Masonry because we have the temple, and the temple is like Masonry but better. And you know, so that's where that kind of cultural consciousness idea comes from.

1:31:13 But I mean, having done it, I don't think that there's much of A basis to it. It's kind of a justification for the fences, the lines that were drawn during that time period of. Gotcha. OK, I've got to ask about this question because this one I admit has fascinated me. And look, I don't put on my tinfoil hat for too much, however. But there's there's some real conspiracies in the world, right? This one, I'm going to, I'm going to put the hat on for all right, There is a letter and I, I know you're going to know the letter from George Washington to some correspondence back and forth warning specifically about another group trying to influence or infiltrate the Masons. Is that legit?

1:32:01 Did that happen? Is that a thing? Yes, I again, I can only speak for my historical study, right? What I what I think I know, but famous let me famous let me the Illuminati by name. The Illuminati was an organization in Austria that was formed by Masons that wanted to promote scientific enlightenment and Illuminati. The name specifically came from the same place that what we currently call the Enlightenment or the Renaissance, the Enlightenment era of philosophy and science was supposed to be advocating for objective science and things like that.

1:32:42 The Illuminati never they existed for a short period of time as an actual organization in that sense and they, but they never really infiltrated American Mason, not the Illuminati itself now. And there are still organizations that we're warned about today. There's actually a group called the Order of Quetzalcoatl that no Utah Mason may be a member of, but was a Masonic break off organization that we currently consider to be an immoral and clandestine organization. And so there are real conspiracies, things like the owl and key and the skull and bones, those are real organizations.

1:33:23 And in many ways they are break offs, so to speak, of Freemasonry. Because Freemasonry again is doing what it is trying to maintain traditions about brotherhood and unity and, and lessons and symbols that go back into antiquity, into prehistory that we don't even know the full origins of. Well, most of these other organizations are trying to do the same thing. I personally do believe that the the Bohemian Grove Society and their Society of the Owl in California for example, yes, they probably have some Masonic elements to what they do, but I genuinely do believe that they murdered Wilford Woodruff the Prophet. I can't prove it, but I do believe it. OK.

1:34:08 So. So these organizations do exist, but I do not want them equated directly with Freemasonry. Freemasonry is a much bigger thing. Are there Freemasons that have done bad things? Yes, there are. But that doesn't make the organization itself bad. Are there Mormons that have done bad things? Yes there are. Are there Catholics that have done bad things? Yes, there are. But that does not mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater and we we reject Jesus Christ because the Catholic Church did some bad stuff. Well, and look back to that, there were Masons who were in the mob that should. There are Masons in the mob, I'm sure that's true. You know. But that doesn't make Masonry a mob. That doesn't make Masonry look that would. From the way you describe it, during that time period in America, that would be like, well, there was a Christian in the mob. Well, of course there was a Christian in the mob. Because of the ubiquitous Yeah.

1:34:57 It doesn't mean you have to fear all Christians or something. Right. Exactly. It was, it's a, it's an organization that has a predominant amount of the population better members of of well, of course we would expect to see that because look, people suck and people are good, right and. People. Are both right and, and some are good and some stink on ice, right? And they're going to infiltrate every, every, every yeah organization. Well, unlike Justice Scalia died under mysterious circumstances. And that's, that's, that's not, that's very recent history, right?

1:35:37 While he was at like a retreat with, you know, so who knows? Like, sure, the, the courts haven't found proof of foul play, but like he's literally speaking at one of these strange secret society organizations. All of those secret societies take some kind of inspiration from some of the symbols of Free Masonry because these symbols are universal. That doesn't make Free Masonry bad. Now put keeping that tinfoil hat on for a second. I do want to tell you one fun thing that I have heard from very high level Masons. OK, we're talking about people who are on the Supreme Grand Council of the world, Sovereign Grand Inspector Generals of the Scottish Rite. OK, so I, I, I know some of these men. They're good men, by the way, but they are as high a level as you can possibly get, and therefore they would be connected to the conspiracies. And I sat down with one of them names, Rex, Rex Hutchins. He's a member of my own lodge in Arizona and Tucson. And I was at his home, and I was talking to him about Masonic conspiracy theories.

1:36:33 And he said, well, you know, they're real. There is a Masonic conspiracy. And I was like, really? And he's like, yeah, well, you're a Mason. I'm going to tell you there is a real Masonic conspiracy. And I'm like, really? What is it? And he goes, it's called human rights. We started that whole thing. Modern liberal Western democracies, as they're classically called, the liberal democracy, those those concepts of the equality of man and human rights and the ability to vote and that that the just rule can only derive from the consent of the governed, all of those things. A Masonic conspiracy, he said. So if you ever want to say I have rights or you exercise the right to freedom of speech, thank a Mason because that is a Masonic conspiracy. And he showed me a bunch of interesting histories about how, yeah, just like our founding fathers, they were a conspiracy. They were an anti government conspiracy. Our founding fathers, right.

1:37:29 OK, let's face it, they're an anti government conspiracy. And there it was a Masonic conspiracy, but it wasn't. But what was that conspiracy for? It wasn't to worship the devil or destroy anybody's religion or even really to hurt anybody if they didn't have to. That Masonic conspiracy was to secure our rights and our liberty. And that, that is a Masonic conspiracy. And the fact that in this world right now, today, there are so many different republics, there's so many different places across the world where people can vote, where people's rights to privacy and religion are respected, that is a Masonic conspiracy. So yes, Masonic conspiracy conspiracies are real.

1:38:11 But you're welcome, right? They're not so bad. Not the true Masonic conspiracies. They're not that bad. All right, so since since I still have the tinfoil hat on, I I got to know explain to me how, what how what you think went down with Wilford Woodruff. I got no. Oh, right, since I brought that up with the Bohemian Grove, you. You brought it up. You didn't, you know, a lot of people don't know this, but the, the night that Wilfred Woodruff died, he was in the Bohemian Grove. He died in California. Now he's buried in Utah, but they brought him back in a casket. So Wilfred Woodruff in what was it 1897, I think is when he died, wasn't it?

1:38:55 It was maybe 1899, might be 1899. He, of course, has spent the last approximately decade, almost his entire tenure as president of the church, trying to keep the government from seizing all the temples, burning them all down, burning down all of our church buildings, seizing all the essence of the church, which by the way, he had not recovered them. In the Edmunds Tucker Act of 1884, all church assets were seized, including the temples, and we did not own them. Woodford Woodruff was renting space in a federal building which was called the Salt Lake Temple. It was a federal building owned by the Commission, the territorial and then the State Commission for public Schools or something.

1:39:42 So he doesn't own any real estate. The church does not own a single church building. The church does not own any assets. This is why Lorenzo Snow famously asked the people to tithe, because the church has been stripped of every asset. He doesn't own a thing. And Wilfred Woodruff is trying to keep himself and everybody else out of prison. He's trying to reclaim some church assets and just get something like in 1896 one the big push was to try to get an amnesty. That would keep him and the other general authorities from going to prison for polygamy because that was still going on. OK. The manifesto didn't fix that or really change anything much.

1:40:23 And so where are all these powerful people going? They're meeting in the Bohemian Grove. And he asks and is granted the chance to give a speech. He gives a private speech, of which we do not have a full record, at the Bohemian Grove. And then he's dead. And that's what we know now. Do we know if he actually died in his sleep that night or if they stoned him on the spot for what he told them? I don't know. But he comes back in a casket on the train and is buried in Salt Lake City. And we don't have any record of what he said there in that meeting. We. Don't when my guess is he was trying to. My guess is is just like he was doing in the 10 years prior. He was doing everything he could to to find the right balance because Wilfred Woodruff was saying to everybody all the time of that whole decade, he was trying to say, look, we have to say something that will satisfy our enemies, but we can't compromise the principles of the gospel. He's trying to do both, right?

1:41:24 Wilfred Woodruff was always trying to say things like, we don't want to practice plural marriage in any way that would be offensive to our neighbors. We will be private about it, for example, right? And Wilford Woodruff actually takes a plural wife as late as I believe that they they claim it was in 1896. So only a few years before his death, he enters a plural ceiling. But he's trying to do so in a way that he doesn't get to church in any more trouble than it's already in. So my guess is, is that he got up there and he said, we want to be friends, we want to have peace, we want amnesty.

1:42:05 We would like our property back. And that they probably asked him something like, yeah, but are you willing to renounce your religion? Are you willing to say that plural marriage is wrong, that it's evil that you will, that you will give up any pretense of being a prophet? And he probably said, no, I am a prophet and the gospel is real and it's true. And they couldn't stand it. That's my guess. Wow. And so, you know, when I think about who's who's a martyr to the faith, Well, Joseph Smith clearly and Hiram were killed in Carthage. They were martyrs, I believe. I believe that Brigham Young was probably poisoned. All the all the evidences that he was probably poisoned.

1:42:45 So I believe he was probably a martyr. Wilfred Woodruff, definitely a martyr. Murder. John Taylor, twice a murderer. He was shot in Carthage and he also died of exposure running from the marshals. Yeah. The first 4 presidents of the church, I believe they were all martyred. Jeez. You know, one of these days I'm going to have to do an episode just on Mormon conspiracies. Just to that's my tinfoil hat, I can't prove it right. This isn't provable for history. This is just two guys with a microphone. Just the. Shit, you know, but. All this episode 2 chubby Mormon guys put on their tinfoil hats.

1:43:27 Right, Please don't call this episode 2 chubby Mormon guys put on their tinfoil hats. But it's not a terrible title. It's it's a good subtitle maybe for this. But again, I don't blame Masonry for that. I don't blame, I don't blame Masonry for Joseph Smith's death, even if there may have been some Masons in the mob. A Masonry is an exalting and a beautiful thing. It was treasured by Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith loved his Masonry. He treasured the opportunity to create the Nauvoo Lodge and be part of it. And he was carrying on a grand family tradition because his father and his brothers and his grandfather, they were all Masons, right? And then and again, these, all these martyrs, all these prophets that were martyred, they were all Masons and they loved the fraternity and they all gained value from it and appreciated it.

1:44:19 And, and so this is one of the reasons why I would, I would like to see more Mormon Masons and, and especially more Mormon fundamentalist Masons so that we can dispel the rumor that there's some kind of conflict here. This isn't, it doesn't conflict with religion. It really exalts the mind of man to find good men of all creeds and opinions that you can talk about deep adult subjects with, about what it means to be a man, about how to live your life right. And, and, and really, let's face it too, in this modern society, how else are you going to make friends now that you're an adult? Right. Masonry gives you this opportunity to make friends with a bunch of people who you will otherwise never meet. And and, and, and close friends, you know, because you can meet and talk about things that matter. Now, I think that maybe Masonry is a little bit more elitist than some men would like.

1:45:17 Maybe not. Maybe it isn't for everybody, but for the type of people who really care about history, who really care about psychology and ideas, like big ideas. I know of no other place in America today where you can go and meet with lodge after lodge, group after group of men who think deeply about what it means to be a man and about life and about how to support their communities, than you can do in Freemasonry. There's just nothing that compares with it. Interesting. So is there anything else you want to cover before I ask my final question here? Well, we've gone over my book, my book recommendation for Method Infinite, and a whole bunch of random history, and I've told you why I love being a Mason. So yeah, I'm probably ready.

1:46:08 Hit me up, OK. We've talked about what what Masonry's legacy is the world, right? Certainly to America. But what does it do for you other than help you make friends, right? What is it that makes makes Ben Shaffer wake up and go? Yeah, I got to go attend some more meetings. Right, because I attend enough meetings as it is, don't I? You know, for one thing, actually, I really look forward to it. It does do something for me that way. It is the friendship. I'm going to start there, that that might be the more basic thing, but everybody needs to get out of the house every once in a while. In part of my past, I was a kindergarten teacher for a couple of years.

1:46:55 And I remember being realizing that it was frustrating living my life day after day, not having adult conversations with other adults. It was a little bit madding to speak kindergartner all the time and I realized, you know what we need? You need other adults in your life and you need to be able to talk about things that matter. So yes, it one of the things that's great for me. Most lodges meet once a month. My lodge meets about once a week, so pretty much every Wednesday night. If you ever want to talk to Benjamin, if you ever want to schedule a podcast interview, sorry, not Wednesday night, some other night. Why? Because every Wednesday night I know that I'm going to get to hang out with a group of, of intelligent, informed, insightful men and talk about something that matters.

1:47:44 And sure, sometimes we're just shooting the breeze and sometimes it's more informal and sometimes it's more of a service thing or dinner, but I have a chance to escape the monotony of life once a week. There's, there's value in that. I think it's great. But again, that is a more basic reason. The friendship, the society, the break from the mundane that that is for me every week. I think one of the reasons why I'm so fired up about it is because I just love symbolic experience. To me, these things matter a lot when you do something like a Masonic ritual or an ordinance in the gospel, or go on a father sons camp out or anything that's like outside that ordinary world where you're entering a sacred space or you're entering A symbolic environment or you're just getting out of town or feeling the grass into your feet.

1:48:40 There's something powerful about that. Most of the time we end up work, home, sleep, eat right. Masonry provides me this whole other arena where I can look at life in such a fresh way with fresh eyes, with greater insights and different ideas. And I guess I'm kind of hooked on that. And so for me, some people, they joined for Masonry, they think, yeah, this really isn't doing anything for me and they stop coming. The retention is actually a big problem in Masonry. A lot of people don't stick around. And so this is one of those situations where you definitely get out of it what you put into it. And and so I would say that the the better example is something like that, like going on a camp out.

1:49:23 There's a lot of people who go on a camp out and they're thinking, why the heck am I not sleeping in my own bed? I got to sleep on the ground. What's what's fun about this, right? But those of us who know what it means to get out there and just live life and feel the wind on your face, Masonry does something like that for me in that symbolic sphere, that philosophical sphere where I get out there and I have to grapple with my life, with ideas, with all kinds of things that otherwise wouldn't come up right. And so I, I guess that there's a quality to time that is different when you're, when you're watching YouTube or Netflix, it, it goes by in a different pace somehow than when you're in the mountains or when you are in a church or when you're doing something that's outside that mundane, mundane world.

1:50:18 And Masonry, because of its symbology and it's, it's ceremonial nature, it does that every single time you go to Masonic meeting. There's what we call an opening and a closing ceremony and you kind of step apart from the world. In fact, I want to give you guys a little bit of a piece of the Masonic ritual. There's something called the closing charge that we say right at the end before we leave. And as the pastmaster of my lodge, traditionally it falls upon me to say these goodbye words to everyone when we leave Lodge I. And it really kind of embodies that. I say, Brethren, you are now to quit the sacred retreat to friendship and virtue, to mix again with the world, but amid its concerns and employments. For forget not those sacred lessons which you have heard so frequently inculcated and forcibly recommended in this lodge.

1:51:12 Be diligent, temperate, prudent, and discreet. Remember that around this altar you have vowed to aid and assist every Brother who shall need your assistance, to remind him in the most tender manner of his of his failings, as well as to vindicate his character whenever wrongfully introduced. Brethren, these principles are to extend further, Do good unto all, dwell in peace, and may the God of love and peace delight to dwell with and bless you. Right. And so we end our meeting with these words. And it sanctifies to some extent, not in a priesthood way, sure, but it sanctifies that we're here for each other.

1:52:00 And that in those meetings, we can talk about the stuff that really matters. The stuff we might not be able to say in front of our wives, the stuff we might not be willing to say in front of the world, the stuff that we might not be able to talk about on a podcast, even. But the difficult things of our lives, the difficult things of our hearts and encourage one another, you know, to be better men through it all. And so, yeah, I think that there's an infinite supply of usefulness to that in my life, and I want to be part of it. So nobody has to make me. I don't have to be like another meeting. I think to myself, hey, I get to go to the thing I like to do. Nice. And I know it's the same for everybody, but for me, I want to do it.

1:52:43 No, I get it. I get it. Well, dude, that was good stuff. I appreciate you coming on and talking about this, kind of giving us an inside peek. I think that was hugely important. And I just felt like it was a subject that as Mormons we get beat up with it, right? And it's important. It's not enough just to defend it. You do have to have somewhat of an understanding of it, I think, in order to come to, to be able to defend your faith when it comes to Masonry, because like it or not, that's one of the things we do get beat up with. That's right. And, and so you can say with confidence if you've listened this far into this thing that you know a Mason and that he told and that he told you and explained to you that what they're saying is a lie. Right.

1:53:30 There's nothing, there's nothing dark, evil or mean about Masonry. There's no, there's nothing to be ashamed of there. It's not a it's not a bad black mark on this character of Joseph Smith that he was a Freemason and, and most of what they're saying against Mormonism and against Masonry, it's it's lies, most of it. Right and. If there's some threat of truth, it's been horrifically distorted, you know? Absolutely. Well dude, that was good stuff. I appreciate it as always. And dude, I look forward to our next one, whenever that is. All right, whatever topic comes up that I actually know about, call on me and I'll do my best.

1:54:11 Awesome, Ben. Thanks so much. Hang out for 5 minutes. Bye everybody. You're listening to the Mormon Renegade podcast.