Like our ancient brethren, I’ve been working six days a week for quite a while, and the little bit of free time I’ve had has been devoted to household chores, family time, and exercising. Those of you who follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and more recently on Google Plus know that I try to get several bicycle rides in every week, ranging from 5 to 25 miles. When my family finally dragged me away for a week’s vacation at Cape Cod (Massachusetts), I brought my SUV-bike: a 1995 GT Outpost non-suspension mountain bike that I outfitted with kevlar-lined, puncture resistant street tires. I love my road bike, but I hate fixing flats.

The Cape has some fantastic bike paths, built upon old railroad lines. Unfortunately, once you’ve gone from one end to the other, the scenery gets a bit dull. Despite the traffic (Cape Cod is a popular vacation spot in the northeastern US), I wanted to take some detours to make the rides more interesting. With no actual goal in mind, I decided to cycle to the handful of lodges in the area of the Cape near where we were staying.

The first on the list was Pilgrim Lodge in Harwich. No, there’s no lodge number; apparently back in the old days Massachusetts had a Grand Lodge of Ancients and a Grand Lodge of Moderns, and when the two merged, everybody agreed to drop the numbers so as to avoid the “Older is better” game that we Masons love to play. You can’t see it from this side, but the first floor of the building is rented by a liquor store. I only mention it because lodges in many parts of the US are so dry that they don’t even allow people in the liquor industry to be members.

The next day I went to Mt. Horeb lodge in Dennis. As you can see, this is a full-service lodge, having an OES chapter and a Shrine hangout. Nothing was happening on the morning that I was there.

Okay, I didn’t actually bike the 100 mile round trip up to Provincetown to see King Hiram’s Lodge. We just happened to be there as part of a family outing. I do recommend that you look at the pictures of this old, historic lodge.

This is St. Martin’s lodge in Chatham. I made a special trip to get here, simply because I figured this to be the easternmost lodge in Massachusetts. The name is interesting; we  often see lodges named after St. John (one or the other), so I often wonder how a lodge ends up being named after one of the more obscure saints.

The final lodge I managed to visit that week was Universal Lodge in Orleans. Located near Nauset Beach, this lodge had the coolest marker out in front.

  Sharp-eyed readers will spot that this isn’t a lodge. I just posted it because Massachusetts has got to be the only place where you will find a traffic rotary (sometimes called a roundabout) on a bike path. Unlike the other traffic circles in this state, at least there weren’t three dozen cyclists blocking the way and blaring their horns. But it was a pretty busy place every time I passed by.

I’m not a hard-core cyclist; each lodge was within 15 miles of Dennisport, so each day I cycled about 30 miles over the course of a few hours. I ended up having gone about 130 miles, and I got to see some of the sights that I might have otherwise missed in just taking a jaunt in the car — especially with all the vacation traffic. Plus, I got some healthy exercise, and felt less guilty about eating the vacation junk food that I don’t normally eat at home. A quick online search finds that there are a few dozen motorcycle clubs for Freemasons. Does anyone know about one for bicyclists?

That’s right, I’m talking about Hawaiian Shirt Night. It wouldn’t be summer in New England if a lodge didn’t have a Hawaiian Shirt Night. That is, except for those lodges that have Hawaiian Shirt Nights during the winter.

We didn’t have a luau for dinner, but we did have hot dogs, burgers, and barbecued chicken.

Maybe the purpose of the  shirts is to hide the barbecue sauce and ketchup?

Mostly, that is.

Over the last ten years I’ve moved from novice initiate to the Master of the lodge – for which I had to undergo another secret ceremony during which I was imbued with the secrets of the Oriental Chair. Along the way I was appointed to several committees on our Grand Lodge – the governing body at the state level in the US – and was even appointed to a term as a minor Grand Lodge officer. During this time, I made a point to dismiss the twisted ideas of the conspiracists, who we often denigrated as the “Antis.” I’m now embarrassed to admit that I actually taunted them for their beliefs at times. However, I’m also willing to admit that the scales (or should I say, the hoodwink) has fallen from my eyes. In a perverse twist on the state toward which Masons avowedly strive, I can now say that I have been enlightened. I have discovered proof that there actually is a Masonic/Illuminati conspiracy, whose purpose is to pass messages from faction to faction via the mass media. However, unlike the hundreds, nay, thousands of conspiracy theorists who continue to post ridiculous theories on their websites and forums, I actually am a Freemason, and therefore, I actually have information to which they do not — nor ever will — understand.

For years I have read claims that there are branches of the Freemasons that are in league with the Zionists and the reformed (or more likely, never disbanded) Illuminati. I, myself, used to find such claims too outlandish, too ridiculous to believe, but I now see that this is how the Freemasons managed to keep their efforts concealed: they were hiding in plain sight the entire time. The methods that they use to pass messages is encoded in the icons of pop culture, and the messages themselves are passed along symbolically. This keeps the uninitiated from suspecting, let alone interpreting the signals being passed from group to group.

Are all Masons in on this? Of course not, and this is what makes most of the Antis seem so ridiculous. Not even the CIA can keep secrets; certainly the bunch of semi-retired engineers, office clerks, and web designers who make up most Freemason lodges could not do any better. No, only a small handful of illuminated ones are in on the secrets being passed on, and it is now my understanding that they are in government, finance, and more importantly, the mass media. Why the media? Because it is through pop music that these illuminated Freemasons are using symbols and allegory to pass secret messages along to the far-flung reaches of their empire.

I’m sure it goes without saying that it was in the early days of rock and roll that these Illuminated Freemasons realized the power of the media. Early experiments with the British “invasion” bands, such as the Beatles, were rife with hidden messages, and even the occasional researcher can easily turn up dozens of such references. Unfortunately, many of the messages became muddied during the late 1970s with the advent of disco. That was when the Freemasons decided to broadcast those messages through a very small number of channels, and in the late 1980s, it became obvious that they had hand-picked an unknown pop singer named Madonna Louise Ciccone.

Urged to keep her first name as an ironic jibe to their enemies in the Church, Madonna’s career skyrocketed as other media moguls were given their marching orders. Indeed, the most blatant message broadcast was her 1989 video “Express Yourself.” Revisiting that video, it’s now difficult to believe that we completely missed the message, deflected, as it were, by the outrageous costumes and stage antics of the ironically nick-named Material Girl. But hindsight is always 20/20, and it’s important to note that the real message was that Madonna, herself, was to be the messenger, and that those people “in the know” should take note. Indeed, her stage antics were interspersed with a riff on German filmaker Fritz Lang’s silent film “Metropolis,” which is a very obvious sign that the Illuminated Freemasons were in the planning stages of their New World Order.

Pop icons, however, exist at the whim of the public, and eventually Madonna would have to be retired. This was effected in 2003 when she symbolically passed the torch to upcoming singer Britney Spears. Now, I know that some conspiracy researchers take issue with this, but it’s quite obvious when one examines the facts. As you can see by the picture of them on stage at the MTV Music Video Awards, Madonna was dressed in black, symbolizing her death (i.e., retirement), while Britney is dressed in (“Like a Virgin”) virginal white. Even her name gives away the plan: Britney refers, of course, to Britain, the home of modern Freemasonry. Spears are, of course, are shafts tipped with metal or stone barbs. It’s interesting to note that in Masonic lodges, there are several minor officers that carry items called “staffs” or “wands”, but those staffs are always topped by emblems of pointed metal, making those tools essentially identical to spears. Furthermore, the officers carrying those staffs have an express purpose within the secret lodge rituals: to carry messages from one higher-ranking officer to another.  Clearly, Britney Spears was hand-picked in order to make it clear that she was the new messenger from the higher ranking Illuminated Freemasons in Britain..

However, the case of Britney Spears points up how the conspiracy theorists often get things wrong. Generally, they seem to think that the Freemasons have unlimited, almost God-like control over all circumstances; however, it’s obvious that those who picked Ms. Spears made a mistake. A former Disney child actor (And don’t forget that Walt Disney, himself, was a high-ranking Illuminated Freemason) one would have thought that Britney Spears should have been able to handle the sudden leap into the public eye, but it seems that her private life suddenly went into a downward spiral. There’s no need to recount the reports of drug and alcohol abuse; they were simply the human failings of a very human person who was unable to handle the huge responsibility thrust upon her. Because the inability to handle celebrity is almost legend in the film and music industries, it’s impossible to know how many other messengers there may have been — or have been lost — over the decades.

Before the messages themselves could be reliably transmitted, it would be imperative to find another messenger — one that would be believable for those on the receiving end. Fortunately, the Illuminated Freemasonic cabal anticipated the need for this and had already begun grooming the next messenger: Stefani Germanotta.

While it almost goes without saying that Lady Gaga became the next messenger, it’s worth noting that she was aware of the fact that she was being groomed for the position. I haven’t figured out if the constant barrage of Illuminati symbolism in her music and videos is a “hidden in plain sight” ruse, or if she is deliberately throwing the messages in our collective faces as a display of power. Either way, there is no question that Gaga has been carefully groomed to deliver the symbolic messages for the foreseeable future. For example, her early videos were rife with Gaga making odd hand signals, easily recognizable to any initiated Freemason. However, what could not possibly be a coincidence is her making liberal use of “All Seeing Eye” symbology, ranging from wearing of dark glasses, to covering one eye, to (most importantly) the “V” sign framing one eye in various scenes. Signs regarding “The eye of Horus” or “The All Seeing Eye” are recognizable to even non-Masons; such posing goes beyond the obvious and well into the blatant. Gaga is not doing this by accident, and it is my opinion that she is intentionally signalling that not only is she the new messenger, but that she’s aware of being the messenger, and intends to carry out that office in any manner possible. Whether this is to put some level of confidence back into those on the receiving end (who had presumably been left hanging since the dark days of Britney Spears), or to signal that plans have been moved into a higher gear, or possibly, a more public arena remains to be seen.

However, this is yet another case of how the initiated conspiracy theorists get things wrong. For instance, one popular conspiracy theorist writes often on his interpretations of pop music, and frequently expresses the opinion that the artists are conveying the message that they are caught in a prison and forced to do the bidding of their Illuminated Freemason overlords. Nothing could be further from the reality, which is that most of the pop cultural icons are, indeed, pleased to have been enriched financially, and have taken full advantage of the perks offered to them. This probably offers up a clue as to why Gaga herself throws so much symbolism into her videos: she’s flaunting her wealth and power.

The question arises that if Gaga is so blatant, how could there be any certainty that she is the messenger of a secret cabal? However, the chain that links Gaga to previous messengers is simply undeniable.

• While the backstory varies somewhat, the publicly given acknowledgement of Stefani Germanotta’s stage name is that a music producer friend of hers remarked that she reminded him of the old Queen song “Radio Gaga,” and a typo or a bad autocorrect changed that title to Lady Gaga. She liked the name, and took it as a stage moniker.
• Gaga (as she is now called) has posed with Masonic backdrops.
• Gaga’s latest music single is entitled “Born This Way,” the title being a nod to her having been groomed for several years for this office. The backbeat to this song is somewhat reminiscent of a major single from a previous messenger, Madonna. If you listen closely, you can hear echoes of the 1989 tune “Express Yourself.”
• The video to “Express Yourself” had a number of references to German Filmmaker Fritz Lang’s 1927 film “Metropolis.”
• Gaga’s actual last name is Germanotta
• Madonna, herself, retired from the office and moved to Britain (!) where she became known for studying the Kaballah, which itself is closely linked with the other esoteric studies associated with the Freemasons and the Illuminati, and shows signs of a Zionist tie-in.
• Part of the lyrics in “Born This Way” are “Don’t be a drag, just be a queen,” a reference to the band which gave Gaga her stage name.
• The band Queen (a reference to Britain, the home of Illuminated Freemasonry) wrote the song “Radio Gaga” in 1985, at least a year before Stefani/Gaga was born. “Radio Gaga” contains not just references, but actual clips of the original movie “Metropolis.”
• The front man for Queen had the stage name of Freddie Mercury.

And in Roman mythology, who was Mercury? None other than the messenger of the gods.

Could anyone possibly need more proof than this?

Edit: After this was published, TechSource (a computer & technical news blog) wrote that Gaga’s computer operating system of choice is a laptop running Ubuntu Linux. What’s the message behind this announcement?

Some jurisdictions in the US have a “mouth to ear” tradition, in which the ritual is taught by a proven instructor to one person, or a small group. Other states have printed copies of the rituals and ceremonies that are passed out to (or sometimes, purchased by)  a member. Some states have such monitors written in plain English, while others might use a shorthand or some other kind of code in order to disguise the words – as if you couldn’t already get them from some website, or purchased in book form.

Connecticut is one of those states that has a ritual monitor in plain English; that is, if you can call the sometimes tortured grammatical constructions and archaic words and phrases “plain.” They have had this plain English version for at least ten years before I became a Masons, which was almost another ten years ago. The English version grew out of an older version that used two books: one being encoded (really, just using abbreviations), and the other a key; that version had been used for quite some time.

Recently, some people have been suggesting that we might want to go back to using the abbreviated word code. I have found that the people suggesting this are either old-timers who learned that way in the first place, or young, new guys who are geeky about Masonry. The old-timers claim that people will learn ritual better, since they will have to work harder, and the young-timers are usually the kind of geeks who would, given the opportunity, have been taking a Klingon class.

I used to pooh-pooh the idea because I learned ritual using the plain English books, and I think I have done rather well, at least, if you don’t count the fact that I often find myself substituting some of the archaic words with synonyms that roll more readily off the tongue. But the way that I learn these passages isn’t necessarily the best way for everybody, so I concede that the coded books might have some merit.

That’s why I found it interesting to see an article on Lifehacker this past week, which revisited a study in which  schoolchildren were given copies of material to learn; some were given good copies, while others were given copies in hard-to-read fonts. Researchers discovered that the children who had to work harder to read the material had the best retention.

From the BBC News Article:

Researchers found that, on average, those given the harder-to-read fonts actually recalled 14% more.

They believe that presenting information in a way that is hard to digest means a person has to concentrate more, and this leads to “deeper processing” and then “better retrieval” afterwards.

It is an example of the positive effects of what scientists call “disfluency”.

“Disfluency is just a subjective feeling of difficulty associated with any mental task,” explained psychology Prof Daniel Oppenheimer, one of the co-authors of the study.

“So if something is hard to see or hear, it feels disfluent… We’d found that disfluency led people to think harder about things.

[...]

Students given the harder-to-read materials scored higher in their classroom assessments than those in the control group. This was the case across a range of subjects – from English, to Physics to History.

The lead author of the study Connor Diemand-Yauman told the BBC that psychology is revealing all sorts of “counter-intuitive” results in the field of education.

“Everyday psychologists are showing that seemingly insignificant factors can have big effects on how we process and retain information.”

[...]

It’s an interesting idea, and while I’ll concede that there may be some benefit to the idea that learning ritual in code is inherently better, I think that there are too many variables for this to be definitive.  Again, from the article:

“What really matters most when reading is mindfulness… it’s not printing things badly that’s needed, but more thoughtful reading”.

[...]

“Obviously, if you can’t read it at all, you can’t learn it. At some point you may get so annoyed that you give up without trying! Different people probably have different thresholds.

And in my opinion, that is what holds so many members back; they simply get annoyed at trying to read something that they just don’t understand. Will presenting it in code make the archaic usages any more attractive?

I like Charles; he’s young and progressive minded, and he’s the kind of person I have in mind whenever I hear the (sadly clichéed) expression “The future of Masonry.”  Charles has consistently pushed for our Grand Lodge to adopt new technologies in order to reach — and be relevant to — the newer members of our fraternity. He’s bright, and well-spoken, and modest about his achievements.

And he prefers Apple computer products.

Apparently, I have so little going on in my own life right now that I have taken to ribbing friends about their choice of technology, much in the way many people poke fun at one’s favorite sports team, choice of automobile, or taste in literature. This ribbing is further driven by the fact that for the last year, my office and home networks have been plagued by more computer problems than I’ve ever seen; obviously I’m envious of anyone who is actually happy with their computer, and confess to some distrust at anyone who doesn’t have some anger, annoyance, or irritation with their gadgets.

To his credit, Charles has refused to take the troll bait; although for that matter, I don’t particularly think about Apple products except when I hear from him or a few other similarly inclined friends.

Until yesterday, that is.

Some of you may remember that last year I wrote a post that made light of the similarities between Freemasonry and the GNU/Linux community. I should have remembered that satire is based in reality.

Yesterday, while reading Lifehacker, I ran across a couple of articles about how Apple is introducing a new way to get software, entitled respectively, Why the Mac App Store Sucks, and Why You Might Really Like the Mac App Store In The Long Run. And suddenly, the pictures jumped out at me. Why?

Here’s the logo for the Mac App Store:

Umm… does this look familiar to you?

For reference, here’s a couple of random images from a Google image search.

A Past Master's symbol from some areas of the world.

An older, lesser known version

I mean, of all the possible combinations that the graphic artists could come up with, they riff on the Square and Compasses?

Coincidence? I think not.

Although I’ve long explored the twisted logic of the conspiracy theorists, I don’t have any background with regard to the twisted logic of Apple users. I believe, however, that this bears looking into.

Is it possible to belong to a society that is so secret that you can’t even be sure that you are a member?

Conspiracy theorists have a lot to worry about, what with Lady Gaga using the pop media to send Illuminati signals, and with 33 miners being brought from darkness to light, and all that. Now they have to worry about the link between Freemasons and GNU/Linux.

==========

Toon Credit: http://xkcd.com
A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

Yes, Friendship Lodge is back for another two weekends at the Southington Apple Harvest Festival. Once again we are featuring our fried apple wedges, and despite the damp weather, the crowds are lining up for a taste.

Bello is the Italian adjective for “good” or “nice,” as in having done a good job in making a sandwich form steak marinated in tomato sauce, smothered in roasted peppers and covered with provelone cheese on a fresh grinder roll. Yes, that’s a long definition, but it’s relevant because this weekend is the Southington Italian Festival, and Friendship Lodge once again has a bracciola sandwich booth set up.

I know that we generally don’t equate Freemasonry with any ethnic celebrations, with the possible exception of Scotch-tasting nights, but consider that the members of a lodge are representative of the members of the local community. Southington has a fairly large Italian-American population; once a very rural town, Southington is located between the cities of New Britain and Waterbury, and over the last several decades, many of the Italian-American families moved from those cities and settled in town. Consequently, where the old town records typically featured names like Adams, Smith, or Flanders, it’s now not uncommon to open the local paper and see names like DePaolo, Secondo, or Della Vecchia.

The Italian Festival is only a few years old, and now takes up most of the main street in the downtown area. Last year some of the members of Friendship Lodge decided to enter in order to have the opportunity for some community exposure, and to hopefully make a few dollars for the Trowel Club. Since we were already known for selling the steak and cheese sandwiches at the Apple Harvest Festival, it was very little work to set up a booth for a more Italian-themed treat.

I was away last year, but this year I was biking in the area and stopped by to see what I could do. The answer was “nothing” because the weather was 95°, with 95% humidity; not many people were in the mood to eat anything except some gellato or Italian Ices. I came back later that evening, but the temperature and humidity was still pretty high. It seemed that a lot of people were walking around with their drinks, but the tempting aromas just were not enough to induce people to eat.

The Festival ends today. Hopefully it’s going to be a bit less humid, or else we’re going to be eating beef at the next few dinners after lodge reopens in September.

I noticed a blip in my blog stats the other day. For me, this is significant, because now that I can barely make one or two posts a month, I’m surprised when I get a traffic spike. In this case, I found I was getting hits from the Scottish Rite Journal, specifically from the book review column of the May/June 2010 online version.

Back in July of 2008, Bro. Jim Tresner, the SRJ book reviewer, was arm-twisted persuaded to take a look at some blogs written by Masons. I remember having been a bit put off by his initial attitude about Masons and blogging:

I must admit that I have not been a fan of the Internet phenomenon known as “blogs” (from web logs). For one thing, irrational as I know this is, I simply think the word itself is ugly. It does not “ring with a joyful tune upon the ear.” In fact, it sounds distinctly disrespectful. In addition, I have never been enough of a small-d-democrat to be interested in what the uninformed had to say on any topic. I grudgingly admit that everyone is entitled to have an opinion, but I am less willing to grant they have a right to publicly inflict it on others. One only needs watch the talking heads of celebrity experts on any cable news channel or listen to “talk radio” to see what I mean.

I admittedly responded out of irritation:

Recently, a columnist in a local newspaper wrote almost exactly the same thing as Bro. Tresner, adding that she had no desire to read about the dull aspects of other people’s lives, such as, e.g., what they had for breakfast, or to see pictures of their kids, or to hear about their shopping trips. It’s the height of irony that she, herself, has a regular weekly column in which she writes about exactly those topics. It’s fascinating to think that people who get paid for writing their opinions so often have such a low opinion of those who simply give theirs away.

And later, I complained:

I am, however, just a little disappointed to see that some people – and Bro. Tresner is by no means alone – still regard “Masonic blogging” as an inferior medium. I’m all the more mystified because Bro. Tresner, himself, has his own section – “Tresner’s Talks” – on The Sanctum Sanctorum, one of the latest blog/web forums to have been set up in the last year. More interestingly, I’ve seen several discussions in the Sanctum Sanctorum forum decrying certain forms of “internet Masonry.”

A web forum for Masons in which some of the participants have issues with Masons on the internet? Really?

I suspect that the big problem is that Masonry – or, more correctly, Masons – on the internet is still a new concept for the Fraternity, and most of the brothers, many of whom remember a life before television, have not adopted the working tools of the internet. That’s to be expected, of course; new technology that brings about cultural change is often viewed with concern until a large population manages to figure out what to do with it.

Yeah, a couple of years ago I used to get upset about people who dissed bloggers as not being serious writers. Of course, what I’ve since learned is that 3/4 of bloggers can barely string a few sentences together before reposting a Youtube clip. Fortunately, many of those bloggers have moved over to Facebook to play Vampire Mafia Farming Wars.

Anyway, a visit to the SRJ page showed that Bro. Tresner was not reviewing my blog (again); rather, he was reviewing (as he usually does) books. But what I found interesting is that the books had been written by fellow bloggers. So, in addition to the book from Greg Stewart I mentioned last week, here are a few more for you to pick up for your summer reading list.

Bro. Michael A. Halleran, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Freemasonry in the American Civil War
Bro. Halleran blogs as Aude Vide Taci, which is now hosted at Freemason Information.

Bro. Timothy Hogan, 32°, KCCH, The 32 Secret Paths of Solomon: A New Examination of the Qabbalah in Freemasonry
Bro. Hogan can also be found at Freemason Information, as well as at the web forum The Sanctum Sanctorum.

And as if Bro. Hogan weren’t busy enough…

Bros. Loran Frazier, W.B. Robert Herd, Timothy W. Hogan, 32° KCCH, Cliff Porter, 32°, KCCH, Greg Starr, 32°, “Frater Vel” , plus Jason Augustus Newcomb, and Brian Pivik, The New Hermetics Equinox Journal, volume four.
Bro. Porter is also pretty well known around teh intertubez.

Also reviewed in this article:
Bro. S. Brent Morris, Ph.D., 33°, Grand Cross, A Radical in the East, 2nd edition.
Bro. Morris, author of Freemasons for Dummies A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Freemasonry, isn’t a blogger, but he drops in on us frequently.

And because he obviously has a lot of free time on his hands, Bro. Morris again teamed up with one of his cohorts:

Bros. Arturo de Hoyos, 33°, Grand Cross and S. Brent Morris, Ph.D. 33°, Grand Cross, Committed to the Flames: This History and Rituals of a Secret Masonic Rite.

I’m very pleased that Bros. Morris and de Hoyos, members of a secret cabal within our own order, have finally decided to come clean about the secret teaching of our early brethren; their book validates my own theory that operative Freemasons traveled England and parts of Western Europe, using our rituals as teaching aids to pass along the knowledge of how to destroy the zombies that occasionally terrorized the rural villages.While Morris & deHoyos don’t explicitly state this, the title of the book and the comments that Bro. Morris himself wrote at the end of the book review point to a loosening up of the heretofore tight lid on the information.

At any rate, with this latest crop of books now available, there’s plenty of Masonic reading for everyone during the summer months when most lodges take a break.