Letter It and Begin—F.O.R.E.

Mr. Freemasonry for Dummies has gone and done it. Chris Hodapp has spilled the truth. The shocking secret about Freemasonry has been revealed! No, I don’t mean in those Dummies books of his. I mean in a recent post on his web site where he linked to this picture:

It is a golf cart upon which rests a mysterious shiny pyramid with an all-seeing eye. Chris has revealed the hitherto secret connection between Freemasonry and golf. Seeing is believing, after all. Unless it’s been Photoshopped. And even then, some people will still believe it.

How can all this be just a coincidence? Look at the evidence!
• Masonic Lodges are blue. Golf courses have a green. Which is kind of like blue.
• Masonic Lodges have a letter ‘G’. You know what THAT means. Golf!
• Masonry loves the number three. A golf course has 18 holes. That’s 3 times 7 (another Masonic number) minus 3. And that’s not even considering a par three hole.
• Golf courses have a sand trap. The Shriners (who are all Masons) have a hot sands ceremony.
• There’s a golf tournament called ‘The Masters.’ Lodges have Worshipful Masters.
• Golf was invented in Scotland—the country that brought you Roslin Chapel which, as we all know, was where Masonry was invented by the Templars fleeing from France (or something like that).
• Make a bad swing or other mistake on the golf course, and you’ll hear complaining. Make a mistake in the ritual at a Lodge meeting, and you’ll hear Past Masters... well, you know the rest.
• Masonry has secret words that mean nothing in the outside world. Golf has something called a mashie niblick.
• Arnold Palmer is a Mason.

I could go on, but what more proof does one need?

The sad thing, it is proof to some people. There are those out there who take a bunch of things that may have some commonality—no matter how contrived—and somehow fashion it into definitive statements about Freemasonry. Thus we read silliness about ‘the Masonic dollar bill’ and ‘Masonic street patterns’ and how Freemasonry runs professions or even countries because some people involved happen to be Masons. Or were 200 years ago.

Tom Acu Accou However-it’s-Spelled once connected Freemasonry with the Wizard of Oz in a wonderful post that bears reading again and again.

If one really wants to, one can connect anything with anything else.

Masons do have one thing, however. The truth. And about all Freemasons can do is coherently express it to strike down misbeliefs. The ill-informed can be educated. Those who deliberately convolute logic to find nefariousness in a fraternity populated by an awful lot of senior citisens—well, they don’t want to be confused with the facts. They want to believe in their own little fantasy.

Now, about that “proof” that Kevin Bacon’s a Mason because there’s a game about Six Degrees...