Lasting Effect

As I think back to the day I was to be initiated into the world of Freemasonry, I remember only the beautiful sky from my back room window. I can't recall what I had done the whole day, if I did anything, but I remember it was such a gorgeous day. The light from the sun shined so differently compared to any other day. I did not know what I would be experiencing that night, nor the lasting effect or impression it would have on me for the rest of my life. I was experiencing a combination of excitement, curiosity, nerves, and maybe a bit of fear, but it didn't consume me. I wasn't feeling any butterflies in my stomach to tell me not to do it. Above all these emotions, I felt comfort. A voice inside my head whispering to me that I should do this and that it was ok to do this.

My father was in freemasonry for a few years before I joined. Before that, we never knew what the fraternity was about, but after my father joined, I noticed how he changed for the better. He improved himself in many ways, and I wanted to improve myself. We did some research and learned that freemasonry was not a secret society. If it was, you would have never heard of it. It is a society of secrets. My father and I had no real desire to find out what the secret was, we just knew that we wanted to be masons.

My mother and I used to joke about what the freemasons do during their lodge nights. "Oh, they just run around naked!" was one of the popular jokes we would say. When we researched little info about the fraternity, there were a few rumors that said the freemasons worshiped some demonic deity. These ideas sure left me a little skeptical, and the idea that this could actually happen did pop up in my mind a few times the night before my initiation, but I was assured by many of the brothers in the lodge that there was nothing contained in the degrees that would be traumatic as that. They could not confirm nor deny any of these "Ideas". But one of the older brothers did warn me about one thing... To wear clean underwear...