The archetypal clip art below was taken from a 1928 copy of the long-running Shriners magazine, The Crescent. Shriners are also known for their Crippled Children Hospitals and clown competitions. The famous Laurel and Hardy movie, Sons of the Desert, was a hilarious take-off on Shriners whoring and drinking shenanigans. The Shriners, which at one time could only be joined by Masons who completed 32 degrees of the Scottish Rite, is considered a "fun" Masonic offshoot known for its yearly conventions in which good citizens became party monsters with impunity. The image below is of Babe Ruth receiving a shave in an Omaha Nebraska hotel room in 1922 when the Babe played an exhibition game for the Woodmen of the World, a popular fraternal order that later become an insurance company. The original baseball stars number among the Who's Who of Baseball. The book has more than four hundred images, and contributors who include the great Robert Anton Wilson (who wrote about Adam Weishaupt and The Illuminati a few months before he passed). With designer Sean Tejaratchi (of Craphound fame) our goal was to produce a visually enhanced guide of a time when one out of every three male Americans belonged to a secret society. With all the Dan Brown bestsellers and Nicolas Cage adventure movies this past decade, we've been subjected to a magic carpet ride of literary and filmic exploitation: dull reissues, crackpot conspiracies, and tomes that seem like directives from headquarters to deny involvement in many aspects of American history that freemasons had been delighted to take credit for not too long ago. You might ask, why include the Anti-Masonic material? After all, isn't that the stuff of Papal vendettas, Third Reich anti-Semitism and other forms of tin-hatted lunacy? Perhaps, but whether we like it or not, the first third party in United States was the historically important Anti-Masonic Party, which for a time resulted in the near decimation of American Freemasonry.
Author Craig Heimbichner helped me with it. I finally attempted make sense of all I had collected from both pro- and anti-Masonic perspectives. Fezzes, twilight language, obtuse rituals, bizarre initiations, all of it. I guess you could say that I've had an obsession with things fraternal for decades. In the '90s, my own Knights Templar costume saw action in a pictorial satire for The Nose magazine (a West Coast Spy magazine), which pictured me as conspiratorial Freemason whispering into Bill Clinton's ear in an elevator, and holding its apron on the moon, accompanied by 32-degree Scottish Rite Mason Jay Kinney's pug dog. More recently Knights (or Knight) Templar uniforms were worn by the similarly anti-Islamic mass murderer Anders Brevik and a particularly murderous Mexican drug gang. Later I came to discover the uniform was in fact from the Knights Templar, a Masonic subset that also loved its uniforms, and marching around in them. Damon and Pythias came from ancient Greek mythology, and the added "Knights" referred to medieval anti-Islam crusaders battling for the crown and Christianity. Like a couple other faux-Masonic Orders that referred to themselves as "Knights," the Pythians confused its historical inspiration. The store owner told me the costume was from "Knights of Pythias," a 19th century fraternal order that loved its uniforms, and marching around in them. One of the most exciting secondhand store moments ever: discovering a beautifully preserved 19th century Masonic uniform with dozens of buttons, embroidered crosses, a skull and bones apron, official belt, and pointy "Chapeau" hat topped with white ostrich feathers. A brief look behind Ritual America: Secret Brotherhoods and Their Influence on American Society, a Visual Guide.
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