I wanted to become a Freemason so I could become a Shriner so I could wear a fez and drive one of those little cars.

Also, to give back. The Shriners paid for all of my medical care when I was born with my heart in backwards. To become a Freemason, one simply needs a penis and a belief in a Supreme Being, which I got, but apparently you have to also be invited and no one ever invited me so I never became a Freemason or a Shriner or got to wear a fez or drive one of those little cars.

At the rare bookstore today, I found a ritual monitor for the Odd Fellows, published in 1909. The Odd Fellows are another secret society, one with a cooler name, I think. It’s a big, faded, ancient, beautifully musty smelling old book. As an object, it’s just neat as shit. I love old books, no matter what they say in them. Physical books will one day be gone, banned probably to protect trees or because of climate change or whatever lie they’ll come up with. It will be some variation of “for our own good”, though.

I have read the Initiation ritual and it’s quite creepy. The candidate is brought into the darkened (candlelit) lodge by a “conductor”. All of the other Odd Fellows are sitting there in the dark. Everybody (except the candidate) recites an ode:

"Brethren of our friendly Order,
honor here asserts her sway;
All within our sacred border
Must her high commands obey.
Join, Odd Fellowship of brothers,
In the song of truth and love;
Leave disputes and strife to others,
We in harmony must move.
Honor to her courts invites us,
Worthy subjects let us prove;
Strong the chain that here unites us,
Linked with Friendship, Truth and Love.
In our hearts enshrined and cherished,
May these feelings ever bloom;
Failing not when life has perished,
Living still beyond the tomb.”

After this, the candidate’s upper torso is bound with a chain and he is blindfolded. The conductor holds one end of the chain, sort of like a leash, and leads him around the lodge, reciting: “Man in darkness and in chains! How mournful the spectacle! Yet ‘tis but the condition of millions of our race, who are void of wisdom, though they know it not. We have a lesson to impart to him; one of great moment and deep solemnity; a faithful exhibition of the vanity of worldly things; of the instability of wealth and power. Of the certain decay of all earthly greatness. Be serious, for our lesson is as melancholy as it is truthful.”

After this, the conductor stops leading the candidate around the lodge, removes the blindfold and says: “Behold death, that silent yet impressive lecturer! To vice confusion, but to virtue peace, it is all which remains on earth of one who was born as you were born, who lived as you now live, and who for many days enjoyed his possessions, his power and his pleasures. But now, alas! nothing is left of him save this sad memorial of man’s mortality. The warm heart which throbbed for other’s woes, or the cold one which held no sympathy, has now mouldered away and joined its kindred dust.”

Sitting before the candidate, who can now see, on a throne-like chair is a real human skeleton.

There’s more, but that’s the gist of it, and all I gotta say is sign me the fuck up!