December 15, 2025 • 34 mins
WB Ted Cross, Past Master of the Arizona Lodge of Research, returns to explore "The Masonic Mind." We’ll learn what truly sets Freemasonry apart from other social groups, fraternal orders, and community organizations. Bro. Cross offers a psychological lens, examining the underlying mechanisms, rituals, and philosophical tenets that contribute to Freemasonry's enduring appeal, its impact on individual psychology, and how it fosters a distinct sense of brotherhood and personal growth.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Commons. Opinions and views shared during this program are
of those individual Freemasons and do not reflect the official
position of a Grand Launch, Concordant Body, a Pendant Body,
a Masonic authority, or Craftsman Online dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hey, welcome back to the Craftsman Online Podcast, the only
Masonic podcast endorsed by the Graham Lodge of New York.
I'm your host Wright worship of Brother Michael Arsa, and
we are still pushing to hit some members here on Patreon.
Want to thank all of our recent subscribers as we
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to hit twenty new subscribers, so you can join us
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(00:51):
ad free episodes and access to the full back catalog
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free seven day trial and see if Patreon's a good
fit for you. In the notes for this episode, I
love getting returning guests. He's the past Master of the
Arizona Lodge of Research and he's joining us to explore
the Masonic mind. You'll remember our conversation with him earlier
(01:14):
this year on the Science of Happiness, which touched on
what makes freemasonry a unique experience for men. Let's get
him back on worshipful brother Ted Cross. Welcome back to
the crasp but Online podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Thanks for having me appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I'm sure I've shared this with you. I've shared this
with our listener. We record this and then I edit this,
and then months, sometimes weeks later, it gets released. And
that's when I actually get to listen to the episode
when I'm out running or working out, and so I'm
like really listening to that one, and I was like, oh,
that was so fascinating. So we're going to make sure
(01:48):
that the link to listen to that episode is in there.
But mainly, Brother Ted goes inside of our minds and
kind of helps us understand feelings and how we can
associate the most freemasonry and this experience that we enjoy
with being a Mason. So let's get back to kind
of that mode there you were talking about in your
psychological assessment, like some of the core differences between Freemasons
(02:11):
or Freemasonry versus let's say, like the Rotary Club and
Elks Lodge, maybe a hobby club or some other group.
What is different about the craft experience.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Well, first, I'll say that it has a lot of
similarities that do lead to happiness and flourishing. And that's
kind of what we covered last time, which was Martin Seligman,
the father of positive psychology, talks about this perma model
positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement, and you can
really see that a lot of those sort of features
(02:43):
are also inside of lots of different types of clubs.
You can get together and create meeting, you can have
positive relationships, you can find positive emotions and activities that
create those inside of lots and lots of different types
of organizations. But I think that freemasonry some real differentiators,
and I think that's what we should delve into today,
(03:03):
which is it's not just that it's a club. It's
a club centered around rituals and symbols. And yes, other
groups might have some rituals and symbols, but I would
say in freemasonry it's so central that sometimes we even
say that's what masonry is, is that ritual and symbols.
We're practicing masonry or we're laboring together in the quarry
(03:27):
on these rituals and so why is that so important?
Other organizations have sort of got rid of those, and
you even see this sort of in the Scottish Rite.
Different jurisdictions sometimes some are heavily ritualized and maybe the
Northern Masonic is more lightly ritualized in different ways, like
(03:48):
they're showing more of a modern take on those older
rituals right of the degrees. Yeah, So the question is like,
why is that important to have inside of an organization
and what makes Masonry effective in our mission of making
good good men better through that process?
Speaker 2 (04:09):
This is where I feel like we don't help ourselves
with the conspiracy wing nuts when we talk about ritual
just that word. If you're outside of Freemason you're reading,
you're like, what is rich? Are they sacrificing? No? No, no, no,
it's it's part of the degree process. We refer to
it as our ritual. Also inside that ritual are all
the symbols within freemasonry. And that also, you know, spent
(04:29):
enough time on the internet, they'll have you convinced that
we were doing all kinds of crazy things. Let's examine
this from a psychological standpoint, because I want to get
into that point we talked a lot about the lodge,
but there's also the symbolism of like what the lodge represents,
and how does all of this come together and shape
the individual's experience when it comes to being a Freemason.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
I think it's important first to understand that Freemasonry is
a treasure trove of symbols and ideas and philosophies that
come from all over the place. So many Masons want
to point to one particular place that Freemasonry originated, But
the answer is it's Enlightenment invention that was sort of
(05:13):
picking and choosing from the junkyard of history, trying to
gather in all those good ideas, and comes through the
idea of the Enlightenment. And so they're pulling ideas from
everywhere and weaving it into our system of degrees and
our philosophies that are powering those degrees, and the symbols
that are inside of those degrees. So you can find
(05:35):
the Masonic symbols all over the place that aren't in
Masonic organizations. Of course, many of us have seen early
Christian depictions that have squares and compasses in them, for instance,
and those kinds of things. But the question is why
do they choose those ones and how do they get
(05:55):
into our degree system? And I would argue that it
has something to do with our collective unconscious minds, that
we have this idea that is evolutionarily, as we have evolved,
certain ideas have stuck around with us, and that's why
we find similar features across religions, similar features across different cultures.
(06:21):
Different values and morality systems often tend to share large
portions with each other. And many theorists argue that that's
because over time we sort of kept the things that
work and those have emerged sort of organically over thousands
and thousands of years. So Carl Youton would call that, well,
(06:41):
that's our collective unconscious that's our collective sort of evolutionary
residue that is with all of us. And then biologically,
as we have evolved, the first part of our brain
was that reptilian primitive brain, which often is what's powering
sort of your unconscious mind. And then later we evolve
(07:03):
to be more rational, right, And that's one of the
things we think is that we're rationalised modern humans that
were really more irrational than we want to believe. And
you know, there's a lot of science behind that.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I'm laughing because you we are. That's the funny part
we air. I'm also laughing because I can't believe it
has taken us this long in two episodes to get
to this question, which is like the central part of freemasonry.
It's the part that I love talking about. I love
when we get brothers and guests that come on the
podcast and talk about the brotherhood that exists within Freemasonry. Personally,
(07:40):
I feel like I'm never a stranger and I'm never
alone whenever I walk into a Masonic lodge. It doesn't
matter if it's another lodge here in my home district
or if I'm in another state or another part of
the country. If I walk into a Masonic lodge, I'm
amongst brothers and there's that instant bond. That's how I
feel like internally. I'd like to get your examination of that,
the importance of that feeling of belonging that comes, and
(08:02):
maybe some of the deeper elements that kind of create
these connections.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, there is a real brotherhood I think in Freemasonry,
and of course there's sort of practical reasons why that's important.
We talked about relationships and having positive relationships in our
last episode and how that increases longevity, health, and happiness,
but also provides psychological safety. When you have people that
(08:29):
you can trust and talk to when things happen in
your life as they do, you have something to rely on.
They've even done studies to show that people rebound from
illness faster that actually give people like a muted flu
virus and see if they're sort of in a community
whether or not they heal faster, and the answer is yes,
(08:50):
they actually do, and so it's a protective thing. They
also have found that folks who experienced trauma that have
better community connect or close relationships also tend to fare
better and be able to go through their trauma rather
than sort of really falling into depression. Not that you
won't get depressed, but that you can rebound a little
(09:12):
bit more easily because of those relationships you have. So brotherhood,
it really is important. I think our rituals and our
symbols create a common language for us to share with
each other. So if we think about Robert Utnam's idea
of social capital, and there's two kinds. There's bonding social
capital and there's bridging social capital. Bonding is the glue,
(09:35):
the social glue, So how do you bond to each other?
And that creates in group cohesion, so a very strong
in group and group identity. And then bridging social capital
is like the WD fourty of social capital. It's the
how do we make sure that things are smooth across
different groups. So freemasonry is interesting because it brings people
(09:59):
from disparate backgrounds together and it says, let's do adopt
this common degree work, rituals, symbols, and narrative to bond
us together, but as bonding together people from different walks
of life. So it builds both bonding and bridging. The
problem with for instance, in my religious tradition that I
(10:20):
come out of has tons of bonding culture. There's rituals,
there's things. But even though we say we are friendly
to outsiders, we're a little bit not as open as
we probably should be to outsiders. Where freemasonry can say
we're going to take people from various faith traditions, philosophical
(10:41):
and otherwise and bring them together and we're not asking
you to sort of commit to anything that is so
radical philosophically right. The morals that we will talk about,
the four Cardinal virtues in a minute. These things are
kind of basic, but let's join together on those. And
I'm not going to ask you particularly your theology or
(11:01):
your dogma as you believe in. We're going to leave
that out and we're going to try to go to
some common ground.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
At the time of us recording this episode, it's September,
so I just got back from vacation. By the time
it airs, I think it's scheduled for a release in December,
so listeners is going to be like, where'd you go
on vacation? Anyways, So during that I was having a
conversation in a cigar lounge with a couple guys not Masons.
We were talking about freemasonry, and one of them was like, oh,
(11:26):
I hear there's a lot of religion in freemasonry. And
he was a very religious and spiritual person, and I'm like, yeah,
it's woven into our degree work, but it's not necessarily
what freemasonry is all about. And so we started having
that conversation of you know, your acceptance of faith being challenged.
That's something that we mentioned in the New York Ritual
and the First Degree, and we were having a really
(11:49):
interesting conversation about just the different traditions and the cultures
that are out there. And I realized during this conversation
that my friend was really kind of just staying focused
on very into Christianity, where I was talking about Buddhism
and some of the other Eastern principles and philosophies. And
it was just fascinating because I would have never been
(12:11):
exposed to any of these other ideas or thoughts if
I hadn't met these other unique cool men in masonry.
That we kind of come together, as you say, with
the concept of being like minded. And I feel like
this is one of the I don't want to make
this like a pitch session here, but it's one of
the things we don't talk a lot about in the craft.
That does kind of go back to your Science of
(12:32):
Happiness episode that you talked about, that there is this
longing to belong and being connected as human beings. We
have that just burning in us. Some of us it
burns a little hotter than others, i'd say, but regardless,
that's one of the things the brotherhood. We don't talk
a lot about that in freemasonry, although I think for
(12:53):
those that do come to visit a lodge it's visibly
on display. You can tell that these guys are friends,
that they hang out outside of the lodge, that they
know each other's families, They know what matters and what's
meaningful to these other men in their lives because they're
Masons and they have spent time together.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
A couple of years ago, my wife ended up having
to go with ice. You she went septic and she
was one death's doorstep, And you know, I called my
lodge members and asked them, would you guys say a
special prayer and stated meeting for us? You know, when
they that was really meaningful to me because I knew
(13:30):
that they were thinking about me. Now, can you get
that with your religious group and others? Sure, but it's
a bit different for guys. Sometimes we don't make friends
as much. There's lots of research that shows that married
couples who retire if the woman happens to die first,
which isn't statistically often men often bear poorly because their
(13:52):
social connections are gone because it's a woman who actually
does all these things and sort of coordinates a lot
of these things, which is I don't know, if it's
nature and nurture, it's probably more socialized than we want
to admit, uh, sort of these these gender roles, but
I think freemasonry can provide sort of a historic and
safe organization for men to build friendships and show vulnerability
(14:16):
in a way that is that feels like these guys
aren't going to put my news on blast.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Agree and also worshipful a first. We have never had
a brother drop news on blasts on the podcast yet,
So congratulations, that's yours, No, that's your honor. I want
(14:58):
to talk a little bit about with you, brother Ted
on the idea of making a good man better, because
we talked a lot about like the individual and as
I shared previously with you, because I was like, oh, yes,
another Arizona. So I grew up in Yuma, which is well,
at the time, it was a tiny town. It's gotten
a little bit bigger over the years. But there's not
a lot of diversity in Yuma, Arizona. Not that there's
(15:19):
anything wrong with it. I'm sure it's like any other
small town anywhere across the US. What's really interesting that
I find in Framemason when we talk about that group
dynamic is we do talk a lot about making a
good man better. You know, there's a lot of personal development,
personal growth that goes into it, and it's heavily the
backbone for us is that ethical framework that definitely exists
(15:40):
in all of our Masonic ritual But can you touch
on kind of the power of the group and being
around others and that exposure that helps with self help
or character building within the individual the benefit of being
in that group dynamic.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
So Aristotle would say that character cannot be formed outside
of a community, so it's not an individual pursuit. And
his idea of a sort of reaching your tellos or
your mature right state, your in state, your reason to
exist was to be a good member of society, right.
(16:18):
So that's what he's aiming at, flourishing human beings in
flourishing society. And so the behavioral science is starting to
show that. Certainly we know there's experiments, for instance that
on average you weigh close to what your best five
friends weigh. They've even done experiments where they've put a
(16:41):
have This is a professor one of our business schools
the other day was telling us about an experiment she
did where you want to see what influence food choices
for students, and one of the biggest influences was what
is the food that everyone around you at the lunch
table was picking. You'll do that. You might have experienced
this at a restaurant, like oh, they're going to get
(17:05):
the cheesecake. Okay, I'll get the cheesecake. There's these so
the group influences us. And the way I think about
this is, you know, I grow these little bonze eyed
trees over here, and if there's a problem with the
bonseye tree where it's starting to look yellow or something,
I don't go shake the bonze eye tree and say,
(17:25):
what the hell's the matter with you? You start growing correctly.
I look at its environment and I see what is
wrong with the environment that is causing this thing not
to flourish. And so the community that we're planted in
is all the difference.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
It's interesting. Steve Harvey, of all people, the guy who's
the new host of the Family Feud, he has that
same line. He's like, if you have three friends who smoke,
guess what you're going to be the fourth person that smokes.
If you have three friends who are broke, guess what
you're going to be the fourth friend who's broke. It's
so true, like who you associate yourself with it does
affect the person you become, or that it projects to
(18:00):
the person that you're going to become.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
We also know that, for instance, that big Brothers and
Big Sisters is actually the best intervention to keep kids
off drugs. I don't know if we mentioned that last time,
but that's the only one that's one of the only
interventions we have data, right, And that's because there's this
as a role modeling thing, right.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
People get to young kids get to see an adult,
maybe outside their social circle that is modeling different behavior,
maybe than they are experiencing at home, and because of
that they can sort of oh, maybe there's a chance
I could act like that, or I could be like that,
or I could have this kind of potential too.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
I want to talk about the power of going through
our degree works and how that shapes you as a Freemason.
We've seen it in ourselves. We may have noticed it.
It's more noticeable, I think in other people. When you see,
you know, a guy who's interested in joining Freemasonry comes
to positions a lodge, he gets accepted to join the lodge.
Boomy gets his first degree, and it gets that first
(19:01):
dose of like Masonic lessons or teachings, right, what is
the impact or the progressive nature of being a freemason
going through these degrees? How does that structure help build
a man well?
Speaker 3 (19:15):
From a pedagogical or athrocological standpoint, like a learning standpoint,
it is scaffolded, right, So it starts with some basic
lessons in the first degree, and it gets into some
more complicated things about the liberal hearts and sciences, and
the second degree, and then the third degree is about
(19:35):
your own mortality, right and so and so it's this
progression from can you manage your life? Think of the
twenty four inch gauge, you know, common gabbl like how
do you manage yourself just practically? To how do you
how do you cultivate your mind? And then how are
(19:57):
you thinking about your of eternal self immortality? And all
through that is this idea of reflective process and this
idea that you should be rethinking and re examining yourself
all the time with the assumption I think that you're
probably wrong at different points. And similarly, the degrees also
(20:20):
progress from giving you basic knowledge on one symbol to
increasingly elaborating on that symbol. So you're you're you're starting
to see Oh uh, you know, I'm a novice. I
haven't joined the logic. There's a checkerboard I'm walking on.
Well that's not checkerboard. That's called mosaic pavement. Why is
(20:42):
it called that? Okay, So there's a lot of curiosity
and then they build it builds on itself. Oh the
checkered my checkered life, my checkered past. My Oh I'm
standing on white and black at the same time. Hmm. Right,
there's all these ideas that start coming about and building
on each other. From I guess you could even say
it's a hermeneutical progression. When you analyze a text through
(21:07):
herma utics, usually the Bible, for instance, there's the literal interpretation,
allegorical interpretation, and then there's sort of like the esoteric
and spiritual interpretation. And you can go through those three
levels looking at the degree in different ways. I come
out from the psychological often in some of the religious perspectives,
(21:29):
but you might interpret in different ways. But there is
a scaffolded approach. I think those degrees as effect.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
We've talked about the significance and the importance of symbolism,
the ritual, the community of brothers that exists within freemasonry.
Stop me if you've heard this expression before that every
man can be a Freemason, but freemasonry might not be
right for every man in your experience, Brother Ted, has
there been any kind of profiles or maybe if that's
(21:59):
not a great word, like personality traits that you find
that it would be drawn to freemasonry that would be
a good fit. And then on the other end are
those types that are out there, those personality profiles that
just might not be a good fit to join a lodge.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Yeah. I've had a lot of thought on this, particularly
your phrase, you know about freemasonry being for every man,
but maybe not for a particular individual. And someone put
it to me this way, Freemasonry is for everyone, but
not every lodge is I've settled on that as my philosophy. However,
(22:38):
I think you're right. There is something to guarding the
west Gate that we talk about, and this idea of
who is part of that circle that's going to influence you,
as we mentioned before, and so I would say my
opinion is the pre one of the prerequisites to become
a good Freemason is to be areas want to learn
(23:01):
and to change. We're not here to stay the same.
We're here to learn things. And then from a psychological perspective,
you know, the most validated personality model is oceans, which
stands for openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. And those
(23:22):
are the five dimensions of personality. I would say we
have a mix of all kinds of people that come
to the craft, but a lot of them are are
high on openness, Like they're open to new ideas. You
mentioned being able to think about Eastern religious philosophy and
Western religious philosophy and not have your head explode or
(23:43):
you know, get mad at others because they don't think
the way that you think. There's there's that openness. I
would say, I put in my notes last night when
I was preparing for this, probably the ritualists have a
lot of conscientiousness, and then they're very conscient is they
want to make sure things are exact some of the
(24:04):
past masters, I'm I'm just joking. You probably have some
neuroticism in there, right, So there's some other things.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
So I jotted down three things because I was like,
I'm curious if we're going to match up on this.
I think the one quality and this is just in
a random order is to your point, intellectually curious. If
you're if you are an intellectually curious man, you're gonna
enjoy freemason.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Two.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
It's two words I wrote, good heart and also trust.
If you're someone that others say, oh he's a good person,
he try, you can trust this person, freemasonry is probably
going to be a good bit. The other one is
one that I came across recently listening to another podcast
when we talk about service to others as freemasons and
the example, and it played out for me several times,
and it does all the time. Or I grew up
(25:15):
in Arizona. So when I see a door that's closed
and there's a woman that's behind me, I open it
for her and I let her walk in front of me,
and then I walk behind and if there's another guy walking,
I leave my arm out so the door stays open
and doesn't slam shut in their face. That's just how
I was right now. I don't do that because I'm
(25:36):
expecting them to say thank you. It's really weird too
when people are like, oh, wow, you know people don't
do that anymore, thanks for doing that, Like that's and
I'm like everybody should be doing that. That's where I
think of like service to others, where it's like, I'm
not doing this to get a thank you from you.
I'm doing this because you're another human and I want
to not see you being suffering in any kind of
(25:58):
way of the word suffering. So yeah, to those points,
I think those would be the three qualities that would
make for a pretty good freemason, if that's something that's
inside of your heart. I got a couple more questions
with you, brother Ted, before we close up this episode.
We've talked a lot about freemasonry, what it does for individuals,
(26:21):
how it brings men from different stripes, different faiths altogether.
When you look at freemasonry as a social organization, and
I think about this all of the time, especially in
this we've always lived in a divided country, but also
one that has a lot of extremism. Now in this
modern era where we don't have trust not only in
(26:43):
our neighbors or our leaders, but also even in technology
or the information that we're given. Where do you see
Freemasonry's role or our strength in the challenges it exists
right now today?
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Well, I think you're right that our civic infrastructure, both
physically and men memphorically is at an all time low.
This is why Robert Putnam, our social capital guy, is
you know, doing his twenty fifth anniversary of his book
and created a film called Join or Die, which is
literally like, if you don't join these kinds of organizations,
(27:17):
your longevity is going to be less. But there's also
this social capital that we need to have that WD
four D across different ideologies and groups to build that
bridging social capital. So I think things like freemasonry can
be sort of really really important. It doesn't mean that
(27:38):
it's just freemasonry, and I don't think that freemasonry is
going to see a you know, nineteen fifties resurgence or
anything like that. But we need more organizations like freemasonry
for different groups. And I am seeing younger men come
to freemasonry, particularly just small sample size and a couple
of lodges I belong to here in Phoenix. I am
(28:00):
shocked at the quality of young men who are approaching
the lodge of their own free will in the court,
if you want to say it that way, and investigating,
whereas people my age forty five and younger, you know,
into their thirties weren't really interested in this, but the SEMs,
(28:22):
the twenty year olds are really searching for meaning and
so free there is a great place to be and
so we have a chance to Maybe it's not scale,
but it's impact on certain individuals who will be part
and parcel and leaders in our communities to be part
of these groups that have enter group contact, as sociologists say,
(28:44):
with different ideas and thus able to pull two different
ideas in their mind, like I said, without their heads exploding,
which is the opposite of extremism.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, I've noticed that too. This new generation that's coming
in are becoming Masons. I'm always kind of scared because
part of me is like, okay, well in twenty years,
these of the people are going to be taking care
of me when I'm retired. But I also like look
to see, like what do they find interesting in it,
because like you, I joined in my mid thirties, so
(29:15):
in my home lodge, I was a young man and
now I'm one of the older guys because DC has
a much different demographic. But it is interesting to see
them coming in because they are intellectually curious, very so,
but they also just have this it's affectious, infectious, and
sometimes it can be a little annoying, but this great
(29:35):
positive optimism, that's their spirit and I find it so
entertaining to be around them when they tell stories, and
I feel so much better being around these guys when
I get a chance to hang out with them that
I like it. It's almost like a honey in a
weird way.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Emotion is contagious, and so it's nice to have some
of these young guys with a positive outlook, which is
really interesting considering some of the sort of financial realities
of the modern world and political realities. It's it's almost
probably a defense mechanism, a coping mechanism to say, well,
i can either you know, sort of acquiesce that we're
(30:13):
on the slow decline or the short decline, depending on
how you look at it, or I'm going to try
to join some of these organizations better myself than the
community and it's helpful to us.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Let's close out with this question, I hope. And I
actually got an email that really touched me a few
weeks ago from now. He's a brother, but he was
an insert gentleman. He found the podcast you listened to
a couple of the episodes. It led him to lock
onto knock on the door of a lodge and he
just took us first degree. I'm sure by the time
that this episode airs he'll be second and probably on
(30:45):
his way to doing his third degree. It makes me
feel good to know that the mission that we have
here at Craftsman Online is to help connect men who
have an interest in freemasonry with our crap. So for
someone who's listening right now that's thinking about it, maybe
I want to join. What psychological aspects should they be
aware of, not just from the potential benefits that we've
(31:07):
talked about some of the commitment that's also required, but
just things that might be off on the side of
the road of their highway of life that you can
share from your point of view.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
I think practically, I would say, find a lodge that
fits you, and it's okay to shop around and take
your time a little bit and investigate multiple lodges. That's
that's okay. To do one that is you seem to
like the brothers in there, and you know you hit
it off with them, that's that's important. And then it's
(31:40):
important to think that and understand that the degree work
is medieval and Renaissance and Enlightenment experiences in a modern
modern day context, which is meant to be jarring because
(32:04):
some people might join and be like, well, this ritual
is strange, or you know, maybe they looked it up
on the Internet or whatever and they're worried about this.
It's meant to teach lessons, and it's it's designed in
a particular way because we've pulled it from the past
and that and that's that shouldn't be scary. That could
be exciting, right, And then I would say that, you know,
(32:26):
there's there's some brothers who come to me who are
highly religious in a certain tradition and are have heard
a lot of bad things about Freemasonry. I've I've only
experienced good things to the degree work and my associations
with Freemasonry, and it's broadened my understanding of what spirituality
(32:47):
is and understanding of my own faith tradition. And so
I don't think that that should be as big of
a concern. But I know that four different, you know, groups,
that can be and sometimes it's useful to you know,
get paired up and talk with the Catholic brother or
the Mormon brother like me, or somebody that you know,
or the Lutheran person or whatever that is that you're
(33:10):
you know, a little bit worried on if you come
from one of those faith traditions, and so it's okay
to sit down and ask questions of someone who's done
it before you and find out about it.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
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I'd write worship O, Brother Michael Arsa until our time
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Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hey, welcome back to the Craftsman Online Podcast, the only
Masonic podcast endorsed by the Graham Lodge of New York.
I'm your host Wright worship of Brother Michael Arsa, and
we are still pushing to hit some members here on Patreon.
Want to thank all of our recent subscribers as we
are looking to close the year strong. Our goal was
to hit twenty new subscribers, so you can join us
for just five dollars a month on Patreon. You get
(00:51):
ad free episodes and access to the full back catalog
of our subscriber extra episodes. That's bonus time with some
of our favorite guests. Get the link to start your
free seven day trial and see if Patreon's a good
fit for you. In the notes for this episode, I
love getting returning guests. He's the past Master of the
Arizona Lodge of Research and he's joining us to explore
the Masonic mind. You'll remember our conversation with him earlier
(01:14):
this year on the Science of Happiness, which touched on
what makes freemasonry a unique experience for men. Let's get
him back on worshipful brother Ted Cross. Welcome back to
the crasp but Online podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Thanks for having me appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I'm sure I've shared this with you. I've shared this
with our listener. We record this and then I edit this,
and then months, sometimes weeks later, it gets released. And
that's when I actually get to listen to the episode
when I'm out running or working out, and so I'm
like really listening to that one, and I was like, oh,
that was so fascinating. So we're going to make sure
(01:48):
that the link to listen to that episode is in there.
But mainly, Brother Ted goes inside of our minds and
kind of helps us understand feelings and how we can
associate the most freemasonry and this experience that we enjoy
with being a Mason. So let's get back to kind
of that mode there you were talking about in your
psychological assessment, like some of the core differences between Freemasons
(02:11):
or Freemasonry versus let's say, like the Rotary Club and
Elks Lodge, maybe a hobby club or some other group.
What is different about the craft experience.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Well, first, I'll say that it has a lot of
similarities that do lead to happiness and flourishing. And that's
kind of what we covered last time, which was Martin Seligman,
the father of positive psychology, talks about this perma model
positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement, and you can
really see that a lot of those sort of features
(02:43):
are also inside of lots of different types of clubs.
You can get together and create meeting, you can have
positive relationships, you can find positive emotions and activities that
create those inside of lots and lots of different types
of organizations. But I think that freemasonry some real differentiators,
and I think that's what we should delve into today,
(03:03):
which is it's not just that it's a club. It's
a club centered around rituals and symbols. And yes, other
groups might have some rituals and symbols, but I would
say in freemasonry it's so central that sometimes we even
say that's what masonry is, is that ritual and symbols.
We're practicing masonry or we're laboring together in the quarry
(03:27):
on these rituals and so why is that so important?
Other organizations have sort of got rid of those, and
you even see this sort of in the Scottish Rite.
Different jurisdictions sometimes some are heavily ritualized and maybe the
Northern Masonic is more lightly ritualized in different ways, like
(03:48):
they're showing more of a modern take on those older
rituals right of the degrees. Yeah, So the question is like,
why is that important to have inside of an organization
and what makes Masonry effective in our mission of making
good good men better through that process?
Speaker 2 (04:09):
This is where I feel like we don't help ourselves
with the conspiracy wing nuts when we talk about ritual
just that word. If you're outside of Freemason you're reading,
you're like, what is rich? Are they sacrificing? No? No, no, no,
it's it's part of the degree process. We refer to
it as our ritual. Also inside that ritual are all
the symbols within freemasonry. And that also, you know, spent
(04:29):
enough time on the internet, they'll have you convinced that
we were doing all kinds of crazy things. Let's examine
this from a psychological standpoint, because I want to get
into that point we talked a lot about the lodge,
but there's also the symbolism of like what the lodge represents,
and how does all of this come together and shape
the individual's experience when it comes to being a Freemason.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
I think it's important first to understand that Freemasonry is
a treasure trove of symbols and ideas and philosophies that
come from all over the place. So many Masons want
to point to one particular place that Freemasonry originated, But
the answer is it's Enlightenment invention that was sort of
(05:13):
picking and choosing from the junkyard of history, trying to
gather in all those good ideas, and comes through the
idea of the Enlightenment. And so they're pulling ideas from
everywhere and weaving it into our system of degrees and
our philosophies that are powering those degrees, and the symbols
that are inside of those degrees. So you can find
(05:35):
the Masonic symbols all over the place that aren't in
Masonic organizations. Of course, many of us have seen early
Christian depictions that have squares and compasses in them, for instance,
and those kinds of things. But the question is why
do they choose those ones and how do they get
(05:55):
into our degree system? And I would argue that it
has something to do with our collective unconscious minds, that
we have this idea that is evolutionarily, as we have evolved,
certain ideas have stuck around with us, and that's why
we find similar features across religions, similar features across different cultures.
(06:21):
Different values and morality systems often tend to share large
portions with each other. And many theorists argue that that's
because over time we sort of kept the things that
work and those have emerged sort of organically over thousands
and thousands of years. So Carl Youton would call that, well,
(06:41):
that's our collective unconscious that's our collective sort of evolutionary
residue that is with all of us. And then biologically,
as we have evolved, the first part of our brain
was that reptilian primitive brain, which often is what's powering
sort of your unconscious mind. And then later we evolve
(07:03):
to be more rational, right, And that's one of the
things we think is that we're rationalised modern humans that
were really more irrational than we want to believe. And
you know, there's a lot of science behind that.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I'm laughing because you we are. That's the funny part
we air. I'm also laughing because I can't believe it
has taken us this long in two episodes to get
to this question, which is like the central part of freemasonry.
It's the part that I love talking about. I love
when we get brothers and guests that come on the
podcast and talk about the brotherhood that exists within Freemasonry. Personally,
(07:40):
I feel like I'm never a stranger and I'm never
alone whenever I walk into a Masonic lodge. It doesn't
matter if it's another lodge here in my home district
or if I'm in another state or another part of
the country. If I walk into a Masonic lodge, I'm
amongst brothers and there's that instant bond. That's how I
feel like internally. I'd like to get your examination of that,
the importance of that feeling of belonging that comes, and
(08:02):
maybe some of the deeper elements that kind of create
these connections.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, there is a real brotherhood I think in Freemasonry,
and of course there's sort of practical reasons why that's important.
We talked about relationships and having positive relationships in our
last episode and how that increases longevity, health, and happiness,
but also provides psychological safety. When you have people that
(08:29):
you can trust and talk to when things happen in
your life as they do, you have something to rely on.
They've even done studies to show that people rebound from
illness faster that actually give people like a muted flu
virus and see if they're sort of in a community
whether or not they heal faster, and the answer is yes,
(08:50):
they actually do, and so it's a protective thing. They
also have found that folks who experienced trauma that have
better community connect or close relationships also tend to fare
better and be able to go through their trauma rather
than sort of really falling into depression. Not that you
won't get depressed, but that you can rebound a little
(09:12):
bit more easily because of those relationships you have. So brotherhood,
it really is important. I think our rituals and our
symbols create a common language for us to share with
each other. So if we think about Robert Utnam's idea
of social capital, and there's two kinds. There's bonding social
capital and there's bridging social capital. Bonding is the glue,
(09:35):
the social glue, So how do you bond to each other?
And that creates in group cohesion, so a very strong
in group and group identity. And then bridging social capital
is like the WD fourty of social capital. It's the
how do we make sure that things are smooth across
different groups. So freemasonry is interesting because it brings people
(09:59):
from disparate backgrounds together and it says, let's do adopt
this common degree work, rituals, symbols, and narrative to bond
us together, but as bonding together people from different walks
of life. So it builds both bonding and bridging. The
problem with for instance, in my religious tradition that I
(10:20):
come out of has tons of bonding culture. There's rituals,
there's things. But even though we say we are friendly
to outsiders, we're a little bit not as open as
we probably should be to outsiders. Where freemasonry can say
we're going to take people from various faith traditions, philosophical
(10:41):
and otherwise and bring them together and we're not asking
you to sort of commit to anything that is so
radical philosophically right. The morals that we will talk about,
the four Cardinal virtues in a minute. These things are
kind of basic, but let's join together on those. And
I'm not going to ask you particularly your theology or
(11:01):
your dogma as you believe in. We're going to leave
that out and we're going to try to go to
some common ground.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
At the time of us recording this episode, it's September,
so I just got back from vacation. By the time
it airs, I think it's scheduled for a release in December,
so listeners is going to be like, where'd you go
on vacation? Anyways, So during that I was having a
conversation in a cigar lounge with a couple guys not Masons.
We were talking about freemasonry, and one of them was like, oh,
(11:26):
I hear there's a lot of religion in freemasonry. And
he was a very religious and spiritual person, and I'm like, yeah,
it's woven into our degree work, but it's not necessarily
what freemasonry is all about. And so we started having
that conversation of you know, your acceptance of faith being challenged.
That's something that we mentioned in the New York Ritual
and the First Degree, and we were having a really
(11:49):
interesting conversation about just the different traditions and the cultures
that are out there. And I realized during this conversation
that my friend was really kind of just staying focused
on very into Christianity, where I was talking about Buddhism
and some of the other Eastern principles and philosophies. And
it was just fascinating because I would have never been
(12:11):
exposed to any of these other ideas or thoughts if
I hadn't met these other unique cool men in masonry.
That we kind of come together, as you say, with
the concept of being like minded. And I feel like
this is one of the I don't want to make
this like a pitch session here, but it's one of
the things we don't talk a lot about in the craft.
That does kind of go back to your Science of
(12:32):
Happiness episode that you talked about, that there is this
longing to belong and being connected as human beings. We
have that just burning in us. Some of us it
burns a little hotter than others, i'd say, but regardless,
that's one of the things the brotherhood. We don't talk
a lot about that in freemasonry, although I think for
(12:53):
those that do come to visit a lodge it's visibly
on display. You can tell that these guys are friends,
that they hang out outside of the lodge, that they
know each other's families, They know what matters and what's
meaningful to these other men in their lives because they're
Masons and they have spent time together.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
A couple of years ago, my wife ended up having
to go with ice. You she went septic and she
was one death's doorstep, And you know, I called my
lodge members and asked them, would you guys say a
special prayer and stated meeting for us? You know, when
they that was really meaningful to me because I knew
(13:30):
that they were thinking about me. Now, can you get
that with your religious group and others? Sure, but it's
a bit different for guys. Sometimes we don't make friends
as much. There's lots of research that shows that married
couples who retire if the woman happens to die first,
which isn't statistically often men often bear poorly because their
(13:52):
social connections are gone because it's a woman who actually
does all these things and sort of coordinates a lot
of these things, which is I don't know, if it's
nature and nurture, it's probably more socialized than we want
to admit, uh, sort of these these gender roles, but
I think freemasonry can provide sort of a historic and
safe organization for men to build friendships and show vulnerability
(14:16):
in a way that is that feels like these guys
aren't going to put my news on blast.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Agree and also worshipful a first. We have never had
a brother drop news on blasts on the podcast yet,
So congratulations, that's yours, No, that's your honor. I want
(14:58):
to talk a little bit about with you, brother Ted
on the idea of making a good man better, because
we talked a lot about like the individual and as
I shared previously with you, because I was like, oh, yes,
another Arizona. So I grew up in Yuma, which is well,
at the time, it was a tiny town. It's gotten
a little bit bigger over the years. But there's not
a lot of diversity in Yuma, Arizona. Not that there's
(15:19):
anything wrong with it. I'm sure it's like any other
small town anywhere across the US. What's really interesting that
I find in Framemason when we talk about that group
dynamic is we do talk a lot about making a
good man better. You know, there's a lot of personal development,
personal growth that goes into it, and it's heavily the
backbone for us is that ethical framework that definitely exists
(15:40):
in all of our Masonic ritual But can you touch
on kind of the power of the group and being
around others and that exposure that helps with self help
or character building within the individual the benefit of being
in that group dynamic.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
So Aristotle would say that character cannot be formed outside
of a community, so it's not an individual pursuit. And
his idea of a sort of reaching your tellos or
your mature right state, your in state, your reason to
exist was to be a good member of society, right.
(16:18):
So that's what he's aiming at, flourishing human beings in
flourishing society. And so the behavioral science is starting to
show that. Certainly we know there's experiments, for instance that
on average you weigh close to what your best five
friends weigh. They've even done experiments where they've put a
(16:41):
have This is a professor one of our business schools
the other day was telling us about an experiment she
did where you want to see what influence food choices
for students, and one of the biggest influences was what
is the food that everyone around you at the lunch
table was picking. You'll do that. You might have experienced
this at a restaurant, like oh, they're going to get
(17:05):
the cheesecake. Okay, I'll get the cheesecake. There's these so
the group influences us. And the way I think about
this is, you know, I grow these little bonze eyed
trees over here, and if there's a problem with the
bonseye tree where it's starting to look yellow or something,
I don't go shake the bonze eye tree and say,
(17:25):
what the hell's the matter with you? You start growing correctly.
I look at its environment and I see what is
wrong with the environment that is causing this thing not
to flourish. And so the community that we're planted in
is all the difference.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
It's interesting. Steve Harvey, of all people, the guy who's
the new host of the Family Feud, he has that
same line. He's like, if you have three friends who smoke,
guess what you're going to be the fourth person that smokes.
If you have three friends who are broke, guess what
you're going to be the fourth friend who's broke. It's
so true, like who you associate yourself with it does
affect the person you become, or that it projects to
(18:00):
the person that you're going to become.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
We also know that, for instance, that big Brothers and
Big Sisters is actually the best intervention to keep kids
off drugs. I don't know if we mentioned that last time,
but that's the only one that's one of the only
interventions we have data, right, And that's because there's this
as a role modeling thing, right.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
People get to young kids get to see an adult,
maybe outside their social circle that is modeling different behavior,
maybe than they are experiencing at home, and because of
that they can sort of oh, maybe there's a chance
I could act like that, or I could be like that,
or I could have this kind of potential too.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
I want to talk about the power of going through
our degree works and how that shapes you as a Freemason.
We've seen it in ourselves. We may have noticed it.
It's more noticeable, I think in other people. When you see,
you know, a guy who's interested in joining Freemasonry comes
to positions a lodge, he gets accepted to join the lodge.
Boomy gets his first degree, and it gets that first
(19:01):
dose of like Masonic lessons or teachings, right, what is
the impact or the progressive nature of being a freemason
going through these degrees? How does that structure help build
a man well?
Speaker 3 (19:15):
From a pedagogical or athrocological standpoint, like a learning standpoint,
it is scaffolded, right, So it starts with some basic
lessons in the first degree, and it gets into some
more complicated things about the liberal hearts and sciences, and
the second degree, and then the third degree is about
(19:35):
your own mortality, right and so and so it's this
progression from can you manage your life? Think of the
twenty four inch gauge, you know, common gabbl like how
do you manage yourself just practically? To how do you
how do you cultivate your mind? And then how are
(19:57):
you thinking about your of eternal self immortality? And all
through that is this idea of reflective process and this
idea that you should be rethinking and re examining yourself
all the time with the assumption I think that you're
probably wrong at different points. And similarly, the degrees also
(20:20):
progress from giving you basic knowledge on one symbol to
increasingly elaborating on that symbol. So you're you're you're starting
to see Oh uh, you know, I'm a novice. I
haven't joined the logic. There's a checkerboard I'm walking on.
Well that's not checkerboard. That's called mosaic pavement. Why is
(20:42):
it called that? Okay, So there's a lot of curiosity
and then they build it builds on itself. Oh the
checkered my checkered life, my checkered past. My Oh I'm
standing on white and black at the same time. Hmm. Right,
there's all these ideas that start coming about and building
on each other. From I guess you could even say
it's a hermeneutical progression. When you analyze a text through
(21:07):
herma utics, usually the Bible, for instance, there's the literal interpretation,
allegorical interpretation, and then there's sort of like the esoteric
and spiritual interpretation. And you can go through those three
levels looking at the degree in different ways. I come
out from the psychological often in some of the religious perspectives,
(21:29):
but you might interpret in different ways. But there is
a scaffolded approach. I think those degrees as effect.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
We've talked about the significance and the importance of symbolism,
the ritual, the community of brothers that exists within freemasonry.
Stop me if you've heard this expression before that every
man can be a Freemason, but freemasonry might not be
right for every man in your experience, Brother Ted, has
there been any kind of profiles or maybe if that's
(21:59):
not a great word, like personality traits that you find
that it would be drawn to freemasonry that would be
a good fit. And then on the other end are
those types that are out there, those personality profiles that
just might not be a good fit to join a lodge.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Yeah. I've had a lot of thought on this, particularly
your phrase, you know about freemasonry being for every man,
but maybe not for a particular individual. And someone put
it to me this way, Freemasonry is for everyone, but
not every lodge is I've settled on that as my philosophy. However,
(22:38):
I think you're right. There is something to guarding the
west Gate that we talk about, and this idea of
who is part of that circle that's going to influence you,
as we mentioned before, and so I would say my
opinion is the pre one of the prerequisites to become
a good Freemason is to be areas want to learn
(23:01):
and to change. We're not here to stay the same.
We're here to learn things. And then from a psychological perspective,
you know, the most validated personality model is oceans, which
stands for openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. And those
(23:22):
are the five dimensions of personality. I would say we
have a mix of all kinds of people that come
to the craft, but a lot of them are are
high on openness, Like they're open to new ideas. You
mentioned being able to think about Eastern religious philosophy and
Western religious philosophy and not have your head explode or
(23:43):
you know, get mad at others because they don't think
the way that you think. There's there's that openness. I
would say, I put in my notes last night when
I was preparing for this, probably the ritualists have a
lot of conscientiousness, and then they're very conscient is they
want to make sure things are exact some of the
(24:04):
past masters, I'm I'm just joking. You probably have some
neuroticism in there, right, So there's some other things.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
So I jotted down three things because I was like,
I'm curious if we're going to match up on this.
I think the one quality and this is just in
a random order is to your point, intellectually curious. If
you're if you are an intellectually curious man, you're gonna
enjoy freemason.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Two.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
It's two words I wrote, good heart and also trust.
If you're someone that others say, oh he's a good person,
he try, you can trust this person, freemasonry is probably
going to be a good bit. The other one is
one that I came across recently listening to another podcast
when we talk about service to others as freemasons and
the example, and it played out for me several times,
and it does all the time. Or I grew up
(25:15):
in Arizona. So when I see a door that's closed
and there's a woman that's behind me, I open it
for her and I let her walk in front of me,
and then I walk behind and if there's another guy walking,
I leave my arm out so the door stays open
and doesn't slam shut in their face. That's just how
I was right now. I don't do that because I'm
(25:36):
expecting them to say thank you. It's really weird too
when people are like, oh, wow, you know people don't
do that anymore, thanks for doing that, Like that's and
I'm like everybody should be doing that. That's where I
think of like service to others, where it's like, I'm
not doing this to get a thank you from you.
I'm doing this because you're another human and I want
to not see you being suffering in any kind of
(25:58):
way of the word suffering. So yeah, to those points,
I think those would be the three qualities that would
make for a pretty good freemason, if that's something that's
inside of your heart. I got a couple more questions
with you, brother Ted, before we close up this episode.
We've talked a lot about freemasonry, what it does for individuals,
(26:21):
how it brings men from different stripes, different faiths altogether.
When you look at freemasonry as a social organization, and
I think about this all of the time, especially in
this we've always lived in a divided country, but also
one that has a lot of extremism. Now in this
modern era where we don't have trust not only in
(26:43):
our neighbors or our leaders, but also even in technology
or the information that we're given. Where do you see
Freemasonry's role or our strength in the challenges it exists
right now today?
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Well, I think you're right that our civic infrastructure, both
physically and men memphorically is at an all time low.
This is why Robert Putnam, our social capital guy, is
you know, doing his twenty fifth anniversary of his book
and created a film called Join or Die, which is
literally like, if you don't join these kinds of organizations,
(27:17):
your longevity is going to be less. But there's also
this social capital that we need to have that WD
four D across different ideologies and groups to build that
bridging social capital. So I think things like freemasonry can
be sort of really really important. It doesn't mean that
(27:38):
it's just freemasonry, and I don't think that freemasonry is
going to see a you know, nineteen fifties resurgence or
anything like that. But we need more organizations like freemasonry
for different groups. And I am seeing younger men come
to freemasonry, particularly just small sample size and a couple
of lodges I belong to here in Phoenix. I am
(28:00):
shocked at the quality of young men who are approaching
the lodge of their own free will in the court,
if you want to say it that way, and investigating,
whereas people my age forty five and younger, you know,
into their thirties weren't really interested in this, but the SEMs,
(28:22):
the twenty year olds are really searching for meaning and
so free there is a great place to be and
so we have a chance to Maybe it's not scale,
but it's impact on certain individuals who will be part
and parcel and leaders in our communities to be part
of these groups that have enter group contact, as sociologists say,
(28:44):
with different ideas and thus able to pull two different
ideas in their mind, like I said, without their heads exploding,
which is the opposite of extremism.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, I've noticed that too. This new generation that's coming
in are becoming Masons. I'm always kind of scared because
part of me is like, okay, well in twenty years,
these of the people are going to be taking care
of me when I'm retired. But I also like look
to see, like what do they find interesting in it,
because like you, I joined in my mid thirties, so
(29:15):
in my home lodge, I was a young man and
now I'm one of the older guys because DC has
a much different demographic. But it is interesting to see
them coming in because they are intellectually curious, very so,
but they also just have this it's affectious, infectious, and
sometimes it can be a little annoying, but this great
(29:35):
positive optimism, that's their spirit and I find it so
entertaining to be around them when they tell stories, and
I feel so much better being around these guys when
I get a chance to hang out with them that
I like it. It's almost like a honey in a
weird way.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Emotion is contagious, and so it's nice to have some
of these young guys with a positive outlook, which is
really interesting considering some of the sort of financial realities
of the modern world and political realities. It's it's almost
probably a defense mechanism, a coping mechanism to say, well,
i can either you know, sort of acquiesce that we're
(30:13):
on the slow decline or the short decline, depending on
how you look at it, or I'm going to try
to join some of these organizations better myself than the
community and it's helpful to us.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Let's close out with this question, I hope. And I
actually got an email that really touched me a few
weeks ago from now. He's a brother, but he was
an insert gentleman. He found the podcast you listened to
a couple of the episodes. It led him to lock
onto knock on the door of a lodge and he
just took us first degree. I'm sure by the time
that this episode airs he'll be second and probably on
(30:45):
his way to doing his third degree. It makes me
feel good to know that the mission that we have
here at Craftsman Online is to help connect men who
have an interest in freemasonry with our crap. So for
someone who's listening right now that's thinking about it, maybe
I want to join. What psychological aspects should they be
aware of, not just from the potential benefits that we've
(31:07):
talked about some of the commitment that's also required, but
just things that might be off on the side of
the road of their highway of life that you can
share from your point of view.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
I think practically, I would say, find a lodge that
fits you, and it's okay to shop around and take
your time a little bit and investigate multiple lodges. That's
that's okay. To do one that is you seem to
like the brothers in there, and you know you hit
it off with them, that's that's important. And then it's
(31:40):
important to think that and understand that the degree work
is medieval and Renaissance and Enlightenment experiences in a modern
modern day context, which is meant to be jarring because
(32:04):
some people might join and be like, well, this ritual
is strange, or you know, maybe they looked it up
on the Internet or whatever and they're worried about this.
It's meant to teach lessons, and it's it's designed in
a particular way because we've pulled it from the past
and that and that's that shouldn't be scary. That could
be exciting, right, And then I would say that, you know,
(32:26):
there's there's some brothers who come to me who are
highly religious in a certain tradition and are have heard
a lot of bad things about Freemasonry. I've I've only
experienced good things to the degree work and my associations
with Freemasonry, and it's broadened my understanding of what spirituality
(32:47):
is and understanding of my own faith tradition. And so
I don't think that that should be as big of
a concern. But I know that four different, you know, groups,
that can be and sometimes it's useful to you know,
get paired up and talk with the Catholic brother or
the Mormon brother like me, or somebody that you know,
or the Lutheran person or whatever that is that you're
(33:10):
you know, a little bit worried on if you come
from one of those faith traditions, and so it's okay
to sit down and ask questions of someone who's done
it before you and find out about it.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
You can join us on Patreon for just five dollars
a month, get ad free episodes and access to that
full back catalog of subscriber extra episodes. See if it's
a good fit. Try us out. The link to start
your seven day trial is in the notes for this episode.
I'd write worship O, Brother Michael Arsa until our time
together next week. Let peace and harmony prevail.
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