Thank you for the book recommendation — I’ll read it soon (hoepfully)
Out of genuine curiosity, may I ask what led you to step away from Freemasonry, IF IT IS OKAY? I mean was it something you encountered personally, a general feeling over time, or insights you gained from the book you mentioned?
I’m asking simply because I’ve been enjoying my journey so far, and I’m genuinely interested in understanding the different reasons why people choose to leave (safety reasons or bored?). For example, was it related to concerns about egregores and their potential influence?
Btw, I have some familiarity with Egregore concept and recall what the Cs have said about it. I think they said something like "you don't create the Egregore, it finds you and feeds off of you."
Thank you.
It was a confluence of different things. I was initiated at the age of 21 in the October. After installation of the next Worshipful Master in Dec, I straight away took the office of Junior Deacon due to my talent for ritual (I presented the Ancient Charge without any prompts from the preceptor at an initiation rehearsal before I even took the office), and talent for delivering speeches at festive boards.
After that, I went straight to Junior Warden, then Senior Warden. I was also chairman of the Masonic Hall management committee, which involved two different lodges.
So I found myself at the age of 23, faced with the prospect of going through the chair, having had little to no real life experience before that. But through my time as a Freemason, I had also been the full-time carer of my disabled mother. This in itself was an enormous responsibility - to this day, the greatest of my life - and it was very difficult.
While all this was going on, I had always been a musician, and I got offered a role in a band that had some ‘industry interest’ and was based a relatively long distance from where I lived.
And then added to this, and most importantly and formatively, I had found this forum and the group. I had experienced a different, and more objective and permanent, form of initiation and I knew that the knowledge I was looking for when I joined Freemasonry was not to be found there.
Of course, no one was forcing me to go through the chair, but I could feel that it was a natural crossroads in my life journey. If I had done it, the next year of my life would have been hectic, I would have been even more involved and committed, and it was becoming clear that I would probably have been expected to take provincial office within a few years. Other things were pulling me in different directions.
I networked here on the forum about it and got some impartial advice. The main thing that stuck with me was when someone asked the question (about Freemasonry), “What’s objective about it?”
Different masons get different things out of it, and so the answer to that could be different for each. But all I need to say is that it helped me make up my mind.
At the next practice, I announced that I wouldn’t be taking the chair the next year, and instead I would be leaving Freemasonry and using the spare time I had to attempt a career in music.