This is a reply to A Widow's Son-

My dear old Dad was a 33rd degree Mason. In his final years he would hint broadly it was a path that was available to me, but only if I asked - a strict non-recruitment policy. What I think it would have meant for him was mainly that I would have been a part of a community of a sort; something which for him had been a difficult thing to achieve in life.

He had retired in Florida in the early Eighties. He found a group of like-minded men who were all from the corporate culture, mostly middle and upper management types, at or near retirement age, who liked the structure and purpose provided by regular meetings and local projects. There was an small "Araby"-themed Temple, with onion domes at the corners, where the Shriners would meet. I don't know the significance of the "Arabian" theme. These days all of that is viewed differently, no doubt, but at the time it seemed to be a way of exoticising the presentation, based on some historical aspect of ther Order.

There were a number of fund-raising events that they put on, to raise money for various local needs. The presence of the Shrine at local parades, with their funny little cars, marching band, and quasi-Arabian get-ups, was something I saw first hand a few times. Dad channeled his thwarted musical aspirations into learning to play a reeded horn in the Shrine Band, and eventually became a director of the band. Shrines would compete with one another in band contests, and also for their service accomplishments. Wives had an auxiliary function, and their own organization within the Shrine. Very old-school, sure; it was a boy's club without question.   

There was an underlying spiritual agreement about God as the master engineer, and beyond that were the "teachings" - histories of the Masonic Order through the ages, to some extent. There were ideals of the equalities of all religions and races in what they believed. Dad told me this much about it; that part was important to him. My impression though was that there was no real system to it all, no esoteric pattern to discern.

My sense of the secret stuff was that there was a lot to memorise, and that the Path of it had to do with an earnest desire to perfect one's self through the service orientation and through one's regard for the Fraternal Order and one's Brother Masons. Dad stressed that a Mason was never destitute if there were Brothers around, and that there was indeed a world-wide netwrork. There was also the aspect of advantage conferred by being a Mason; Masons would do each other favors, and I have no doubt that there are some interesting historical examples of the ways that Masons would "take care" of their own; but I began this post as a positive bit of information, without the conspiracy angles.

I was always interested in the fact of there being a Black Masonic Order, which seems to run parallel to the largely white organisation Dad belonged to. Working as a picture framer, I once framed a wonderful old poster for a black Mason, of a stairway-to-the-heavens depiction of Life's Pathway - very much in the self-improvement model that Dad had described. There was an implicit segregation; Dad knew very little about the Black Masons. (Perhaps Azizi or another member has some history to share.)

I have no doubt that there are nefarious threads to trace in the Masonic history, the secret brotherhood stuff of urban legend - that Presidents and such are all Masons - but that's not where I'm going here. I saw what the organisation did for my Dad, who had struggled in his life to find some sort of meaningful, spiritually-based connection to the world.

Dad confided that in his years as a deacon in the church, he had been a hypocrite, not believing the content of the teachings, and that even within the Masonic Order, there were things he didn't quite follow. But he found something there in the service aspect, and in the milieu community of similar aging men. On a certain level, too, there was a poignant aspect to these old guys walking in parades with their scimitars, colorful sheik-of-Araby garb and a curious self-effacement - a kind of cartoonish last hurrah for potency in the world.

My view is that there is a "teaching", but that it's an anachronistic core to something that gets realised in the practice of being part of something that has a history and a current purpose. The same reason why some folks find the church religions meaningful, or put Raider Nation decals on the rear windows of their cars. But again, I looked for indications of a coherent, esoteric teaching, and found none.