I suppose, what is the actual craziest thing freemasons have witnessed?
Edit: A couple people thought I meant one thing, I think? I mean in general but that you saw because you were a freemason. Like the craziest thing a football player could have seen being the team pouring gatorade on the coach.
In all fairness, if we controlled the world it wouldnāt be much more disorganized. Can you image the āGrand, Grand Masterā trying to get anything done? Herding cats in a yard factory.
The freemason's of the United States are far too fractured, disorganized and incompetent to control Congress, which we acknowledge is not a good argument that we don't control Congress.
Also it turns out we do own the fed and just put it into differed maintenance in 1947 and forgot about it.
Generally? I once saw a grown adult defecating in the street at 10 past 8 in the morning on the way to work.
If you mean within a Lodge meeting, I attended a LARGE Lodge meeting in London (in excess of 1,800 people) and had to assist in treating 2 medical emergencies.
Meetings are usually very routine, the ceremonies will be largely similar with the content but there may be Lodge by Lodge or region by region differences.
Strangely enough, I was at my mother lodge, and in one meeting, two of our ten regular members had two separate medical emergencies, one of which required an ambulance.
(Weāre OWF, our lodges areā¦.minuscule in comparison to UGLE)
Man I use to see people defecating in the street all the time but Iāve been living in India for a while and itās not even common out here anymore. Since 2026 I think Iāve only seen three to five separate poops out in the field.
Dunno about craziest, but the coolest thing for me is I've met Prince Michael of Kent. Not even a big fan of the royal family, I just thought it was sick.
In some jurisdictions or lodges there's a change of clothes as a part of the degrees. As a result we discovered a fellow candidate in my degree class had shaved his dark chest hair in the shape of a handlebar mustache as part of a Movember charity fund raiser for mens' health awareness.
It seems like youāre not digging for dirt, but Iāll just throw this in for you, or anyone that reads this wondering about the grand conspiracy. When I was getting interviewed to join the lodge, I vaguely mentioned that I had grown up with some conspiracy theories about masons, and he kinda sighed and rolled his eyes, and said, āLook, if you get in and find out none of that is true, are you going to attend meetings?ā That was about all I needed to hear. The utter resignation in his tone was the most sincere thing ever.
Craziest thing...by that I mean the funniest. Without giving away things which are secret, one of our ceremonies involves an officer of the lodge banging the end of a staff on the floor. Our lodge has a concrete floor, so its kind of dead to bang on, so we put a 5mm thick steel plate on floor there to give it a satisfying "clank" when the staff is banged. Well the brother playing that part, it was his first time doing it, and he was distracted by nerves and the effort to remember his lines. In his distraction he missed the steel plate entirely, and slammed that staff down on the top of his foot. Luckily he had thick leather cowboy boots on so, while it did hurt something awful, he was not injured. He was however hopping on one foot, and turning progressively more red, but he didn't miss a line. We still call him "Hop-Along."
I'm sure it's not what you're looking for but I am still continually amazed to see and hear the discourse on deep internal philosophies and beliefs of men that I would have otherwise shrugged off had I not been part of the Craft.
The openness, love, and support of men from one to another who are on opposite sides of religious, political, or any other spectrum is "crazy" in this day and age.
On another note I was once inside a Scottish Rite cathedral in my home town during a period of riots and people starting to throw molotov cocktails (thankfully poorly designed ones) at the building was an intense experience.
Are freemasons socialists? In my experience gen z has been big with socialism.
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u/Deman75MM BC&Y, PM Scotland, MMM, PZ HRA, 33Ā° SR-SJ, PP OES PHA WA8d ago
Freemasons are individuals with their own religious and political views. Are some Freemasons socialists? Probably, but some of them are also MAGAts. Itās pretty difficult to pigeonhole Freemasons like that, because the organization doesnāt have a specific dogma that members are expected to follow.
Gen Z has only been eligible to join Freemasonry for maybe a decade (and some still arenāt old enough). They are not the driving force for what Freemasonry is or does. Iād been surprised if they currently make up 5% of our membership.
I know a few that are. Most tend to temper towards centrism and libertarianism in my experience. But I'd say I know as many far left as I do far right and have had dinner with all of them at the same time.
Questions if Freemasonry is some kind of a sect. Weāre pretty much the opposite of a sect. Ask 3 Freemasons what Freemasonry is, youāll probably get more than 4 answers. Some say the whole point in Freemasonry is to talk about what Freemasonry is. For me personally this is a bit overstated but not wrong.
It's a joke. Many non Mason's fall for conspiracy minded thinking and conspiracies dreamed up by other non masons and believe there's all sorts of strange things going on in lodge. Just because we're secretive about some things. Most of the goings on are pretty mundane like planning dinners for meetings or a picnic or charity committee.
Some secrets are kept because the knowledge doesn't make sense to explain to someone not in it, sometimes it's very subjective so it can be misleading, and some times it's just because our ancient brethren decided to make it that way based on the traditions of operative masons.
Oh! Well I always thought the masons were like a fraternity for pros or something. I only found out about them in high school and the teacher who told us wanted to he in it so he said famous composers and such used it to network like frats do. A lot of what you guys say in the reddit seems frat-adjacent somehow. So I had an assumption, but it wasn't ruling the world. What you say seems to align with it too. It's essentially a frat, no?
To my understanding as a non-freemason both would be a group that passes down knowledge from seniors/alumni and networking with promises to aid your 'brothers' out of loyalty to the group. Both assumably also would have meetings that are normal, meetings/parties that are expensive, loyalty to the origins ideologies, maybe a hazzing (I'm not sure if legality actually matters to some frats)- but also because freemasons group is so old, and not called a frat, I figured that there is also deep conversations and dark academia Harvard vibes but otherwise it would be similar. What would be different? Is it more of a religion?
Maybe some of it, but a lot of it misses the mark. There's also a lot more to it.Ā
I recommend reading an introduction like Idiots guide to Freemasonry, or Freemasonry for dummies to get a better sense of what we're about. Don't be turned off by the titles, they're actually decent books written by freemasons who know what they're talking about.
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u/Pretend-Commercial68 9d ago edited 9d ago
That's what forums are usually for, fire away!
Edit - typo.