Ancient Order Freemasonry vs. Free and Accepted and Prince Hall Masonry.

ahhh those clandestine groups...provides an "out" so to speak....actually i am aware of clandestine locations and meetings often these are populated by "official" freemasons who are performing appendent or otherwise functions. NOW we are getting somewhere. Ay chance the clandestine's feel that they are the "real steel"???? Any chance they are performing rituals of a more ancient or perhaps more devious nature???

Originally posted by partycrasher
ahhh those clandestine groups...provides an "out" so to speak....

*shrug*

There's no trademark on the word Mason. If you wanted to invite your friends over for beer every Tuesday night and call yourself Masons, you could, and nobody would stop you.

Or if you wanted to troll college campuses to create your own fraternity, and charge outrageous dues and keep all the money for yourself, and call your group Masonic, there's nothing any other Mason could do to stop you. The most we can do is ignore you, offer "real" Masonry as an alternative, and have strength in those numbers, along with tradition hundreds of years old, unbroken.

actually i am aware of clandestine locations and meetings often these are populated by "official" freemasons who are performing appendent or otherwise functions.

That would be highly unlikely. Where I come from it would be a Masonic offense for a member of a regular lodge to "hold Masonic communication" with a clandestine lodge or its members. Basically, a Mason caught doing so would be booted out.

Ay chance the clandestine's feel that they are the "real steel"????

Define real? Could there be one group with only 20 members that ACTUALLY dates back to the Temple of Solomon? Unlikely, but I suppose anything is possible.

Any chance they are performing rituals of a more ancient or perhaps more devious nature???

Oh, plenty of chance of it being more devious. Just look at P2 in Italy... mob-run. But that's why you can't judge Masonry as a whole, or Masonry as an institution—because there is no one thing that is Masonry.

reply to post by partycrasher

actually i am aware of clandestine locations and meetings often these are populated by "official" freemasons who are performing appendent or otherwise functions.

No.

If you are aware of clandestine Masons, then any Mason in attendance would also be clandestine. No "regular" Mason will ever sit in a Lodge with a clandestine Mason, and any appendent bodies are included in that.

As far as whether or not clandestine Masons feel they are the real steel, I would imagine they do feel that way. Why wouldn't they? Or, why would they join something if they didn't feel that way? But of course, I wouldn't know, because I have never been to one of their meetings.

NOT to ignore or cancel out my previous post.

Because of these clandestine activities...
How many people think they are "real" masons because they belong to these clandestine groups and as such within that group provide this info as fact???

How would a "real" mason know if these "other" masons do exercise racism, satanism or anything that one or the other would consider to be non masonic???

Do you see my point?

I do not wish to be arrogant but will the real masons please stand up.............and they all stand and point fingers at the others and say nay?

I do not think so.

reply to post by partycrasher


I see that you are trying to make a point, but I'm not grasping it?

Do Marines think they are the toughest branch of the military? Yes. Do the Army Rangers? Yes. Do the Seals? Yes. Are they all wrong or all right?

For all I know, there are a Billion clandestine Masons, and they all think I am a dummy for being a "regular" Mason. Doesn't really matter does it, because I am a Free and Accepted Mason, and I am true to the obligation I took as such. I will never be a part of those clandestine Lodges, nor their appendent bodies, and I will never know what kinds of things they are up to, and I don't really care.

For that matter, I will never be a Marine, or a Ranger, or a Seal, but it doesn't matter because I am the toughest man on the planet. OK, OK, maybe not, but I could claim to be, and it wouldn't make all of them right or wrong.

Originally posted by partycrasher
How many people think they are "real" masons because they belong to these clandestine groups and as such within that group provide this info as fact???

Quite a few. I've had a number of new members to my lodge who had been conned into joining a clandestine lodge and didn't know better until later. They resigned their membership in their old lodge and joined ours.

How would a "real" mason know if these "other" masons do exercise racism, satanism or anything that one or the other would consider to be non masonic???

Why would it be the responsibility of regular Masonry to police irregular Masonry? If I don't like the KKK, I don't join the KKK. If I don't like racists, I don't hang out with racists. If I hear that someone killed someone else, and I can prove it, I call the cops. Not my Grand Master.

Do you see my point?

Not really.

I do not wish to be arrogant but will the real masons please stand up.............and they all stand and point fingers at the others and say nay?

I do not think so.

What do you expect US to do as real Masons, that you, yourself, couldn't do as an individual?

reply to post by partycrasher


While I took an obligation not to sit in a lodge with a clandestine mason or talk about the secrets of masonry with them, I feel that they at the very least think they are doing the same thing I set out to do,and they may very well learn the same things in the same way, so I respect them as I would another brother. Not all feel that way. But as I said, there are limitations to what and how we interact. A clandestine lodge may admit women or atheists. Both of those go against regular masonry.

I think that clandestine meetings occur because people want to ACTUALLY get something done (usually something bad) instead of relying on useless, longwinded, impotent meetings and rituals. These would be the ones who would take it upon themselves, a whole new set of rules, oaths and obligations so the other masons did not find out.

Say I was a practitioner secretively of the yezidic faith and I joined a masonic lodge because I was told by a mason confidentialy that other yezidi were in attendence and that is how they initially met.

So the lodge becomes a meeting place for people to covertly discuss meeting later elsewhere to carry on other secretive activities which may not be accepted or understood.

reply to post by partycrasher

So the lodge becomes a meeting place for people to covertly discuss meeting later elsewhere to carry on other secretive activities which may not be accepted or understood.

In which case, those secret, and unaccepted things would have nothing to do with Masonry. If a secret group of plotters meet at Bob Evans restaurant on every other Thursday and plot the destruction of the world, is Bob Evans an evil restaurant?

As far as long-winded, boring, and impotent rituals and meetings, I think you are on to something. The people that feel that way about meetings are really setting themselves up for failure. I'll admit the meetings are all of those things, but since the whole idea of Masonry is to improve one's self, and inner reflection is a big part of that, what better place is there for inner reflection than in a long-winded, boring meeting! Think of it like the perfect time for a little prayer and a little meditation, in a quiet place, among trusted peers, and with the added benefit of some allegory and parable to get you jumpstarted on your journey.

Originally posted by getreadyalready
I'll admit the meetings are all of those things, but since the whole idea of Masonry is to improve one's self, and inner reflection is a big part of that, what better place is there for inner reflection than in a long-winded, boring meeting!

Think of it like the perfect time for a little prayer and a little meditation, in a quiet place, among trusted peers, and with the added benefit of some allegory and parable to get you jumpstarted on your journey.

You're a Past Master, right? I guess you've earned the right to snore during a meeting…

i am going to get off of ats for awhile and let others if they wish to interject.

i got what i wanted out of this and i see why masons say "we dont worship lucifer" for example.

they may not worship lucifer but perhaps some masons do and the non luciferic ones either do not know or again in denial and this is just an example.

Thank You for an entertaining discussion.

reply to post by JoshNorton




Yep! 2008. But I only snore when I'm filling in as the Tiler. Lock the outer door, prop my feet up on the door knob of the inner door, and if anyone pulls on the door, I'm up like a rocket! Learned that little trick when I used to work graveyards at my Dad's convenience stores. I used to pull a chair up to the door, prop my feet on the handle, and when the milkman showed up about 3:30 in the morning, he would open the door, my feet would drop, and I was standing straight up to greet him. I don't think it fooled anybody though.

Originally posted by partycrasher
I think that clandestine meetings occur because people want to ACTUALLY get something done (usually something bad) instead of relying on useless, longwinded, impotent meetings and rituals. These would be the ones who would take it upon themselves, a whole new set of rules, oaths and obligations so the other masons did not find out.

But, as GRA said, that doesn't make their side-group any more Masonic. I could just as easily meet likeminded people while serving jury duty, or riding the bus, or in my kid's PTA.

Bad people will do bad things. They don't need to hang it on an unrelated framework to enable them.

Say I was a practitioner secretively of the yezidic faith and I joined a masonic lodge because I was told by a mason confidentialy that other yezidi were in attendence and that is how they initially met.

So the lodge becomes a meeting place for people to covertly discuss meeting later elsewhere to carry on other secretive activities which may not be accepted or understood.

Yeah, a lot of us go out drinking after lodge. But that's after lodge. Some go to a cigar bar. Real world domination plots probably happen in such smoke-filled rooms. I've got bad lungs, so I guess I'll never know. But again, it really doesn't matter how they met, if they're doing there bad deeds off-grounds, right?

Originally posted by partycrasher
i am going to get off of ats for awhile and let others if they wish to interject.

i got what i wanted out of this and i see why masons say "we dont worship lucifer" for example.

they may not worship lucifer but perhaps some masons do and the non luciferic ones either do not know or again in denial and this is just an example.

I think to be more specific, Masonry as an institution does not endorse in any way the worship of Lucifer.

If an individual Mason chose to do so, who would know?

Likewise, who's to know that your boss isn't Luciferian? What does it have to do with your place of work? If your boss worshiped Lucifer, would it make your workplace Luciferian by default, even if you didn't practice his beliefs, he never brought it up, and you were none the wiser?

reply to post by partycrasher


I am curious, how would one go about finding a group that worships Lucifer? Would you Google it? Would you have to know somebody?

I would think that any group who did would have to be open about that fact, or once people were part of the group, and the got out their song books with nothing but Slayer songs in it, they would know the big picture and some might not stay. They the whole secrecy thing is compromised.

reply to post by network dude


Actually, I would think a group that actually practiced Luciferianism would be alright. It is different than Satanism, and it is mostly rooted in the same Abrahamic Faiths, and the only key difference is that Lucifer is a hero for standing up to God, and that God actually rewarded Lucifer as the Liberator of Mankind and gave him the Earth to rule over. Or something like that, I'm no expert.

Anyway, it seems to me, at surface value, that as long as they still believe in the one, ever-living Creator, and then they also have Lucifer as some kind of hero in their faith similar to Jesus or Gilgamesh or Muhammed, then they could be a Mason with no problem. Still much better than Atheism. I suspect they wouldn't be very popular at Lodge meetings, but I would be interested to know them, and I think I could learn a lot from someone of that faith.

reply to post by getreadyalready


I hear it all the time here, but in real life, you know, outside, I have never seen or heard of Lucifer worship. maybe I don't travel in the right circles or something. It just seems like they would be rather tough to find.
Nowhere near as easy as finding a masonic lodge.

reply to post by network dude


I've never met anyone IRL either that practiced it either. Although when I was in High School a neighboring town had a rash of Satan worship and it ended in a brutal murder and 3 boys, including the class president, and my girlfriends older sister's boyfriend all ended up with Life w/o Parole for the murder. Very sad. (ETA: Google Carl Junction, MO Satanic Murders, my ex-wife's sister is even quoted in some books, and had to be at the trial.)

I do see a lot of Wiccans here, but this is a college town, so we have some weirdos, LOL!

Part of the reason men like Masonry is that they lay down every other title but 'Brother' at the door.

To me, one man's Masonry is as good as anothers, until proven otherwise.

As a group, Satanists aren't really into potluck dinners and toys for tots.

reply to post by partycrasher

I'll make it more clear:

Is the reason why we hear so much from nobody, know nothing masons is because the Ancient Order Masons are the "real" masons?

No.

Is it not true that ancient order masons do not recognize the fm masons as being real masons?

Well, I'm a member of a Ancient Free and Accepted Masons Grand Lodge and we do recognize Free and Accepted ones as well as Prince Hall ones.

Is it also true that ao masons will not "grip" a prince hall mason because they do not recognize them either?

No.

how is this different than racism since ph masonry has been mostly african american?

I'm not going to guess why some Grand Lodges don't recognize PHA, but it is likely that it could have stemmed from racism. That is why the PHA was started in the first place. I know some Grand Lodges have had issue with some hazing accusations leveled against some PHA Lodges so they refuse to acknowledge them as Brothers.

reply to post by partycrasher

No, I don't consider to be more bona fide than the other types. I have sat in PHA Lodges as well as FAM Lodges.

We're trying to establish a PHA Lodge here in Boise and they'd use the Boise Masonic Temple just like the ones under the Grand Lodge AF&AM of Idaho. If they wanted to meet elsewhere they could, but we're extending the hand of friendship and Brotherly Love to assist them.

reply to post by partycrasher

I wouldn't know the mind of a clandestine Mason so you'd have to ask one of them.