Katy Klein Has a Chat

So I was reading the local paper which is chock full of stories to interest community minded individuals and there was a story on the local Freemasons.  Turns out the Freemasons seemed a little put out by the conspiracy theories in Dan Brown’s latest book and thought they needed to set the record straight about whether they rode goats and secretly controlled the world (not true according to The Leader’s article). They also seem to be having problems recruiting new members which is one problem with your ’secret’ society, very hard to market.

So they had organised an open night at the grand puba masonic lodge and all were welcome to come along. I figured that this chance wouldn’t come up too often so off we went on a Friday night (I know, I know, my social life is sadly lacking).

I have to admit that the open night was pretty interesting. ‘Merv’  was a witty and informative speaker who explained what the Freemasons were all about, the symbology they used and what happens at lodge meetings (apparently a lot of singing and acting out plays to learn about a suitable moral code).  The overall values espoused and their commitment to the community and charitable works was lovely. One sentence in their Freemasonry Victoria newsletter put it as “so that he may live respected and die regretted”. The only Freemason benefits seemed to be 10% off at a certain plumbing company advertised in their newsletter.

I was also impressed by the use of the ceremonial aprons at the meetings. The aprons are less about baking cookies and more about protection of clothing for your working masons, which may be less necessary nowadays. The ceremonial aprons do look marvellous in the photos, although I suspect they would never have been seen in your medieval quarry.

The only disappointing aspect of the evening for me was that women were quite pointedly excluded throughout the night. Quite honestly the fact that women can’t join the Freemasons doesn’t worry me at all since singing and play-acting isn’t really my thing. It was more the fact that the ways in which they left the female attendees out were just unnecessary. They shook hands with my partner but not with me, the information packs were for the male guests and how many male guests were there here tonight? All a tad Grade 6 for me (maybe scared of girl germs?). Which for a society that prides itself on the inclusion of all creeds, faiths and occupations just seemed a little bit false. After all women have been out in the workforce for at least a couple of years now.

I suspect that in there is one good reason that women are excluded though.  Most likely it’s because meetings would never get anywhere because the women would be laughing so hard seeing men wearing aprons and saying that it would be nice if the men could wear them a bit more at home. That and the possibility of women telling each other about the secret handshakes is fairly high.