If you poke around even a little on the internet or prowl about certain sections of your local bookstore in search of Masonic secrets, you've probably run into pictures, drawings, even video clips that at first makes your heart race but leaves you disappointed. I will reveal only what I am not bound to not reveal, neither confirming nor denying what you think you have found.
Even if all you have seen and heard were true and you memorized and practiced them, you would not be able to gain admission into a tyled Masonic lodge meeting. Why? Because without actually having experienced the conferral of the degrees and considerable practice, a person will not understand the context or how to actually use the passwords, signs and so forth. To put it like a theatre director might: There are performance subtleties that elude print, picture and modes of transmission other than person to person.
Even Dan Brown, an author quite sympathetic to Freemasonry, makes some big mistakes in The Lost Symbol. One mistake in particular may have been deliberate. He used an elaborate, ghoulish ritual scene that never has had any part in regular Freemasonry. But he's not in the business as a novelist to tell the truth, but rather to spin a good yard.
What are Masonic secrets? Speaking for myself, I will say that there are three categories of Masonic Secrets. First, there are the rituals and conferrals of the various degrees. Think of these secrets as form, formatting or packaging. What is actually packaged, the content, is not anything you can't learn somewhere else, except for the second type of Masonic Secrets. They are the most obvious and most misunderstood and consist solely of the modes of recognition, about which so many anti-Masons seem to know so much. Yet the greatest secrets of all are the insights gained over time from the personal experience of participating in the degrees, studying and learning its symbolism and meeting the many friends you always had but didn't know.
If you're reading this, it's because you're curious about Freemasonry. I have a deal for you: I'm curious as to why so many people visit my blogs and yet never leave a comment or better yet, a question. So, again, I invite your respectful, genuine participation and you'll get an answer.
