[Tfug] Semi-off-topic...a good quote of mine made the AZ Star...

Tue Sep 16 09:53:03 MST 2008

However you feel about the freemasons, there is a lodge in Santa Fe worth a
visit if you're ever there.  As I get really bored with tourist areas and
hate shopping, when I travel I try to look around for the weird, and Santa
Fe's principal weird is this Scottish Rite masonic lodge.  I always thought
masons were all secretive and you couldn't just waltz in and walk around but
I was wrong (when I asked one of the mason poobahs about this, he kind of
found that an odd assumption).

http://www.dataswamp.net/colin/scottish_rite_lodge-santa_fe.jpg

This is right downtown.  If you're ever there, wander around awhile, and
you'll see it.  Can't miss it, really.

Anyway so you walk in and there's a big lobby and everyone's quite friendly,
and they have really old historical masonic stuff like blankets with
embroidered masonic symbols hanging there, along with a statue of Albert
Pike.  I was surprised at the size of the building.

But it feels even more like a church when you go into the auditorium, which
has a lot of stained glass.  I was raised Catholic (my grandfather would
shit a brick if he found out I was wandering around a masonic lodge - old
school Catholics and freemasons do not mix), so I'm used to lots of stained
glass, generally depicting saints, but of course the freemasons are into
symbols - freemasonry being basically a system of symbols, things standing
for other things:

http://www.dataswamp.net/colin/santa_fe_lodge--stained_glass.jpg
http://www.dataswamp.net/colin/santa_fe_lodge--stained_glass+artwork.jpg
http://www.dataswamp.net/colin/stained_glass.jpg

This last one is included for critics of freemasonry who see a Baphomet in
every star.  I trust they will enjoy this one.  Also - BUSTED!  Most
Rosicrucians downplay or deny their connection to freemasonry, but HAH!  The
rose cross, I have always felt, is one of the more compelling symbols used
in esoteric hermetic trilateralist one world banker conspiracy fez
enthusiast "fans of fiat currency" groups.

http://www.dataswamp.net/colin/rosecross.jpg

This auditorium is cavernous and very church like, except the seats are like
movie seats rather than pews.  The building could easily be repurposed as a
Catholic or Episopalian church if they ever wanted to do that.

In the front of the auditorium is one of the most bizarre and impressive
setups I've ever seen: a stage, with flat scenery "standee" type things,
several layers deep.  So when you look at it, it looks three dimensional.
When I was there, it was set up to resemble a forest.  To the left of the
stage they have something that looks a lot like the Wizard of Oz - a big
industrial age series of gears and levers by which they can move the scenery
back and forth.  Almost steampunk.  Apparently this whole "scenery system"
was headed for Chicago or something and the train got stuck, or something
along those lines, and the local freemasons bought it.  Now, these stage
props are used to confer degrees through the use of plays (freemasons and
freemason uh, buffs, will recall the whole Hiram Abiff story with the acacia
tree and all that).

http://www.dataswamp.net/colin/stage_background_props-scottish_rite_lodge-santa_fe.jpg
http://www.dataswamp.net/colin/santa_fe_lodge--set_machinery.jpg
http://www.dataswamp.net/colin/santa_fe_lodge--set_machinery2.jpg
http://www.dataswamp.net/colin/santa_fe_lodge--stage.jpg

The picture quality on this last one is pretty bad because I had no tripod
with me at the time and it was really dark in there.  But you can see, it's
quite ornate.  Beautiful, even.

The ceiling consists of an arrangement of constellations of stars which
light up, which gives quite a pleasing pagan vibe - the stained glass,
constellations, stage, and Wizard of Oz levers fulfilled my quest for the
weird in a way which, for example, "THE THING" on Route 10 did not.

http://www.dataswamp.net/colin/santa_fe_lodge--constellation.jpg

One of the master masons gave us a really great restaurant recommendation,
but we were instructed to tell them the freemasons sent us, which we did.
I've been interested in the psychology of conspiracy theories for some time
and I've read books and watched videos about the supposed diabolical roots
of freemasonry, and it's always a hoot (especially Juri Lina's "The
Lightbringers: The Emissaries of Jahbulon" - if you can find it online, it's
a lot of fun).

In that documentary, Lina talks about feeling an oppresive kind of "aura" or
something upon entering a masonic lodge.  I have to say, this lodge was kind
of weird but I didn't feel anything but an air of mystery, which is
something the freemasons playfully cultivate.  Fortunately for those of us
who cannot conceive of ever being a member of the venerable stonecutters,
all of the masonic degrees are available online in s00per sekr1t f0rb1dd3n
g-ph1l3z.  They make for interesting reading, whatever your position on the
masons (although they have nothing on the Ordo Templi Orientis in terms of
outright blasphemy - there is also an OTO camp in Tucson for those who have
developed a tolerance for freemasonry's weirdness and want to get into some
harder stuff).

There's a lot of being bound and blindfolded and carried around and all
sorts of similar horseplay.  But I have to say, without considering the
whole "omg half the founders were freemasons" and the idea of a conspiracy
to RULE THE WORLD like Skeletor or say Cobra Commander, I find freemasonry's
lessons to be fairly in line with my own values.  The degrees are a
blueprint for a certain ideal of "manhood" in the Kipling sense thereof.
It can be reduced to his poem "If" with a bunch of added ceremony and goofy
secretiveness.

Mostly, from what I can tell, Freemasons enjoy barbecues.  Being mostly
white Protestants (and therefore having no Halal/Kashrut concerns), they
seem to be about *hot dogs*.  One thing they can do is barbecue and
Shriners, well, they put on one hell of a circus.  Where they serve hot
dogs.

I should add that next to this Scottish Rite lodge, there was another,
smaller, less visually impressive lodge, and they seemed to have a kind of
inferiority complex.  The octogenarian who was in at the time invited us in,
showed us where the degrees are conferred, with the requisite Boaz and
Jachin columns and checkered floor, and he let me hold (wearing curator's
gloves) what he said was Kit Carson's rifle (after asking me if I was a
pussy about guns, because, he said, a lot of people seem to be pussies about
guns).  I have since learned that this is an old MASONIC TRICK, roughly
equivalent to being sent around from camp to camp looking for a grass
fluffer or left-handed smoke shifter in the boy scouts.  Still, it was an
old and heavy huge bore rifle, and I have a nice photo of myself standing in
front of Boaz and Jachin there, holding this rifle with a big grin on my
face and a nacho-stained t-shirt (hey, you didn't think I'd go to Santa Fe
and not make with the nachos did you?).  He also gave us a free hard-bound
historical retrospective of his Lodge, which I thought was kind of cool, and
then tried to get me to join the freemasons.

Which I appreciated because I'm all about inclusiveness.

http://www.dataswamp.net/colin/montezuma_lodge.jpg

OK but then something really strange happened.

Really strange.  Inexplicable.  When you see the photos you won't be able to
explain it either.  There is simply no rational, logical reason for it.

We got home late and were tired but had "road hypnosis" and couldn't sleep,
so my wife and I played Scrabble.  After only two moves, neither of us could
go.  It was the weirdest thing.  We could either score from there, start
over, or...well, what we wound up doing is suspending the "no proper nouns"
rule.  And look what happened...spontaneously:

http://www.dataswamp.net/colin/scrabblecoindence.jpg

We were horrified.  We shuddered, and forced ourselves to go to bed after
several glasses of absinthe and purloined dilaudid.

The next morning when we awoke, we found, to our horror:

http://www.dataswamp.net/colin/scrabbleg.jpg

*shudder*

   -Quag7

PS: I think the one thing you can say about freemasons, is they don't share
their *source code*.  They are a secretive, closed source group.   And I
don't like my freedom taken away like that.  They *horde* their rituals.
You know when one goes wrong, it's blue screen of death time.  Is
freemasonry ready for the desktop?  I don't think so.
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