"Secret History of Freemasons"; Ritual Weirdness

[IanEye]

I have rituals in terms of smoking marijuana. I always use wooden matches as opposed to a lighter for one thing. Perhaps that is stupid, I don't know.

I always let the sulphur head of the match burn off before I put the flame to the cannabis. I prefer this to inhaling butane from a lighter.

Smoking marijuana for me is very ritualistic, it is rarely something I do in an "offhand" way.....

[FourthBase]

Again, realize that I'm looking at a hierarchy/spectrum of rituals and aware that not all rituals are alike. Many are innocuous, especially the more personal, the more ad hoc, the cognizantly superstitious. Qualitative differences in rituals can reflect a quantitative amount of self-control and control forfeiture. While there is some basic overlap between the phenomena...a baseball pitcher's pre-game ritual or a stoner's vaguely spiritual but fundamentally practical bong procedure is not in the same realm of ritual, the same intensity of theater and dissolution, as a symbologically death-obsessed group ritual like a Catholic mass or a Freemason initiation or a heavy metal concert. They are like different kind of psycho-social matter, one particulate and the other a wave. If spread as mimetic phenomena, in their extremes, one kind leads to widely adopted procedures of farming devised over time because they made sense along the way and seemed to please the rain gods, and the other leads to the ritual sacrifice of a human being at the top of a mud pyramid.

[theeKultleeder]

A family dinner, the Superbowl and rock concerts are all rituals.

Oh, right. Yeah, not really. Very low intensity rituals, if anything. Loosely designed and loosely executed.

Well, the sports rituals in the US are full of pageantry and costumes. Just imagine for a moment that you didn't grow up with the Rose Bowl Parade and big guys playing games in gladiator costumes. Take a step out side of yourself for a moment and look at it with fresh eyes... and answer...

Who looks more ridiculous?

[FourthBase]

Well, the sports rituals in the US are full of pageantry and costumes.

Yep, I'm not saying sports don't give a shiver of dread. I was talking about something different I guess, the rituals people perform when watching sports, not the Super Bowl or Rose Bowl itself, which are definitely ritualized. But still, there's a difference between the rituals which become "sports law", i.e., the rules of the game, a sport being just a bunch of primates trying to one-up each other, the rules then leading to a costume each part of which is designed to be useful for the sport, and all this leading to a huge crowd of other primates watching and rooting for one team or the other, or maybe just aesthetically rooting for a good game, with a mascot which encourages "ritualistic" ad hoc chants, with people bringing all shapes and manner of signage, changing from game to game...there's a qualitative and qualitative difference between a massive standup routine of rituals like that and a strictly uniform ceremony which intends to propagate a basic understanding of life via an imaginary deity and symbols of murdered saints and martyrs.

[theeKultleeder]

Hmmm. Okay. But therein lies the key... rituals are effective!

I don't like group rituals in particular, especially within a hierarchical group, but in my "chaos magician" days I designed my own rituals that were usually very successful in their intended results.

[FourthBase]

Hmmm. Okay. But therein lies the key... rituals are effective!

No. Which rituals are effective for what. Therein lies my whole point.

If you wanted to call procedures for going about something the most effective or fair way, a set of instructions handed down through the generations like how to farm land or when to pass a joint, if you want to call that a ritual in the very broad sense of the term, then fine. Rituals can be effective, and good or at least harmless. Otherwise? Not so much.

I don't like group rituals in particular, especially within a hierarchical group, but in my "chaos magician" days I designed my own rituals that were usually very successful in their intended results.

WTF?

[theeKultleeder]

This:

a massive standup routine of rituals like that and a strictly uniform ceremony which intends to propagate a basic understanding of life via an imaginary deity and symbols of murdered saints and martyrs.

is one of the most powerful psycho-social organizing mechanisms ever. You can see it in Communist states (where dialectical materialism is the "religion") with their banners and parades. You can see it in the distinctive marching styles and costumery of the world's militaries. You can see it on Veterans Day, when the "martyrs" are mourned and remembered.

The key mechanisms of ritual are all around us. They are patterning agents that can program a mass mind.

My comment about designing one's own rituals is a hint that you can design your own patterns and de-program yourself.

[AlicetheKurious]

Somebody just pm'd me last night that they were leaving the board because they felt it was going downhill.

If this thread is anything to go by, they just might be right.

See above posts. Look at thread title. I rest my case.

[FourthBase]

How about not designing a ritual at all, and just combating programming by trying to figure shit out and call out stupid shit and unjust shit on the fly? Read on the side of the box containing life: "Rituals not required!"

[FourthBase]

Somebody just pm'd me last night that they were leaving the board because they felt it was going downhill.

If this thread is anything to go by, they just might be right.

See above posts. Look at thread title. I rest my case.

What the fuck are you talking about, Alice? No, really, I love how people just snark and run. I see the above posts, dealing with rituals, and how rituals are weird and some rituals are weirder and less harmless than others. And we got to that point in the conversation because the rituals of Freemasons happened to raise the subject of rituals in general, their utility and origin. I got no reply to my original post, I'm the one who started this thread, I don't mind that the discussion went where it has, instead of focusing directly on the History Channel show, because I think thinking about rituals in general is germane to understanding why Freemasonry rituals are so fucking weird.

So again, what the fuck are you talking about, and what the fuck is your "case" that you "rested"? Who the fuck cares about someone leaving the board, I mean, how about you say who it was and why they left? And by "say", I mean, actually describe something, not just a snarky non-thought.

[IanEye]

Somebody just pm'd me last night that they were leaving the board because they felt it was going downhill.

If this thread is anything to go by, they just might be right.

See above posts. Look at thread title. I rest my case.

some threads sink like a stone, others capture individual's imagination and they thrive for a time.

i guess I am "kurious" as to if whoever pm'd you has tried starting threads of their own to prevent the board from "going downhill"...

[FourthBase]

Can anyone actually describe what is supposedly wrong with this thread?

[IanEye]

Can anyone actually describe what is supposedly wrong with this thread?

to be honest, the initial post of yours didn't inspire me too much, but then 8bit mentioned the "Cremaster" thing and I think the DVD "The Order" is kind of cool, so that inspired me to link to some images from that and other similar stuff

but then you seemed cool with the thread "morphing" into a broader thing about the pros and cons of various ritualistic behavior which was more interesting to me, but apparently not to Alice?!?

i had a thought about the ritual of taking LSD in the USA. I was in college in '88 when the Grateful Dead were back on the charts with "Touch of Grey" and it sort of bugged me that a lot of my peers were treating LSD like it was the "Small World After All" ride at Disney World. That is, if you were going to take LSD then the thing to do was to listen to the Grateful Dead and nothing else. This seemed really lame to me and my feelings seem to parallel yours in terms of your repulsion to strict codified rituals.

My solution was to find the best acid I could, wait until i was housesitting for various friend's parents and listen to lots of Duke Ellington while walking around their houses naked, tripping my balls off. Now, many years later when I happen to visit these houses I always feel good remembering that time, it is my own time and not a rehash of some other generations moments.

Was it a ritual? Perhaps.....

P.S. if my ruminations on this cause others to "leave the board", good!

[AlicetheKurious]

Fourthbase wrote:

What the fuck are you talking about, Alice? No, really, I love how people just snark and run.

Well, duh. I didn't "snark and run" -- I pointed out that if anyone thought that the thread title, "The Secret History of the Freemasons", meant that they'd learn anything about "The Secret History of the Freemasons" by reading the actual thread, they'd be sorely disappointed.

Why name it so provocatively, and then turn it into a cozy, but ultimately useless little chatroom for discussing everyone's favorite little rituals?

Wouldn't it be better to rename the thread for clarity, or start another one called, "My Favorite Rituals"? Then, at least people would know what it's about.

Ugh. Never mind.

[FourthBase]

"My Favorite Rituals"? Have you only skimmed this thread?

Ultimately useless? This thread began with my crude reflection on TV program the latter half of which purported to show a Freemason ritual. Objecting to the weirdness of that ritual led to a discussion of rituals, and like I said: It's still germane to the discussion of the OP. Do you think I'm excluding from view or distracting people from the sinister political dot-connecting? I'm not. Let's do that also. But realize that every thread about a particular subject turns into more or less the same a general survey of dot-connecting. This particular thread was not intended as a general discussion of Freemasonry as a criminal entity, but such discussion is welcome. This particular thread was about the way in which that show pulled a classic propaganda bait-and-switch highlighted by hilariously empty punchlines of debunking what were in the first half of the show reasonable suspicions. It was also about my individual reaction to the their rituals' weirdness, something which is not "off topic" or frivolous. The weirdness of a ritual, especially in proportion to its participants' supposed level of intelligence and civilization, is part of what impeaches it as an insane phenomenon, as something to be viewed warily.

Cozy? I'm telling people that rituals in general are stupifying and weird. People are very attached to their rituals, they're not going to like a critical examination of the disservice to rational thought and individuality that rituals inherently pose.

Was that really what your scathing snark was about? That one thread's title did not describe the content of its subsequent posts accurately enough for you? Fine, I'll try to edit it to capture what it's become about.