The Hindu swastika means in rough translation, “I have value”. It is still found on Hindu Temples. This makes for some confusion for those who don’t know the history of the swastika.

Rudyard Kipling used this ancient Hindu symbol to emboss his books. A British author who had spent considerable time in India, he felt so strongly about this symbol he had it placed on the inside cover of his books with his signature under it and encased in a circle. It was kind of like his logo, before such things were popular.

Kipling Swastika with signature

Then in the 20th century the Nazi party decided the symbol, slightly modified would be ideal for their new political party. This has forever tainted this fine Hindu symbol in the public eye to this day. Few even notice the slight differences that are distinctive only when someone is observant.

Kipling was a man of his times but in many ways way ahead of his times as well. At a time when many British abroad were of the high status society who did not involve themselves with the lesser cast, particularly in India where casts were well defined, joining a group which “met on the level” and implied equality between members was not always popular. Kipling was a Freemason.

What are Freemasons? They are a fraternal group, who volunteer for charities while holding each other to high moral standards. Kipling often found cleaver ways to put Masonic ideals and symbols into his many books. He enjoyed the membership greatly it is believed.

As a Freemason, he would have known more than most about the importance of symbols. So when I purchased a small set of his older books and saw the symbol I was very surprised to say the least. I as stunned that he would put his name under the symbol in his books. I was also relieved to find out how all the history of the symbol evolved and how he repudiated the use of his “logo” for any future productions of his work.

Freemason’s Ben Franklin with author Rudyard Kipling books in background.

The insert above shows the books I purchased and my first notice of the history of the swastika. The two books on the right, newer publications do not reflect the symbol. Both later books were gifts from my great grandmother in my youth. She felt that I should at 7 start reading better literature than Tarzan.

I am reviewing this history to reflect the public perception of a symbol which should not be shrouded in such negativity, when it was for centuries so positive. Sometimes good things or even groups can be mislabeled or even demonized. Not all of them deserve such historical memories.

This is true for groups as well. Some gain a reputation over time in the public eye that uninformed people blindly follow. Opus Dei has enjoyed both notoriety and ill public perception ever since Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code. For that matter, The Roman Catholic Church also suffered some stigma but eventually the public seems to have concluded that the book really was fiction, despite the sudden interest in all of the places the book referred to in the many locations for the main character, later played by Tom Hanks in the movie by the same name.

Freemasonry has over the years been subjected to harsh and deceptive treatment too. The Roman Catholic Church (RCC) forbid its members from joining for years. More than one Papal Bull was proclaimed with this message. Yet until the Knights of Columbus was created good RCC members joined as they wished and were welcomed.

This is the central point. Freemasonry has a history of not fighting back when confronted with public criticism. The usual path is to let the issue die. Time will heal all things, particularly when replies in public usually are manipulated into further lies. This was the usual pattern for Freemasonry for the first couple of hundred years, though upon reflection with some of the issues many today think this pattern should be discarded.

It seems that any group, even countries if they are around long enough find some peaks and some valleys in the eye of various observers. Sweden wasn’t always neutral for instance, but at one time put forth an army that tramped all over northern Europe.

The RCC has in its past many things which can be seen as both good and bad. The missionaries are seen by Catholics as good, while Native American’s don’t appreciate Columbus Day or the missionary impact on their culture. There is for some the image of Mother Teresa contrasted with the Holy Inquisition responsible for killing thousands and torturing many more! Few things made by man that have any length of history behind them are without this contrast. So it is with volunteer groups and nonprofit groups as well, but on a lesser scale.

Author Allen E. Roberts writes in his book, House Undivided that Freemasons on both sides of the American Civil War fought and died. On some occasions after the day’s battle was done the two sides would gather to conduct a Masonic funeral. This was done on more than one occasion.

Also related in Robert’s book was the well known story about the Grand Master of Iowa Freemasons, Thomas   H. Benton, JR. When Benton found himself as the occupation commander of Little Rock, Arkansas during the American Civil War he is said to have placed a guard of Union troops about the home of Albert Pike, a Confederate general, so that the general’s well known Masonic library would not be destroyed. Albert Pike later became famous for Morals and Dogma, a lengthy and somewhat scholarly book on Masonic rituals in the Southern branch of the Scottish Rite.

This is the same book from which many anti-Masonic crusaders have lifted out of context sentences and portions of content for the purpose of misrepresenting Freemasons into some kind of “new world order”. To blunt, it is simply not true that a bunch of volunteers in a group based on the Bible story of King Solomon are trying to take over the world.

Freemasonry, like other human institutions before and likely after has had her moments of ungentlemanly conduct, or at least some of its members have. The famous member of the American Revolution, Benedict Arnold in betraying his Masonic brother George Washington to the British and then fighting with them has forever been remembered poorly by Americans.

Masons are very careful as a group not to be the one to, “Cast the first stone”. The charge of ever Mason is to make himself a better man. The rituals of the three degrees, which are for the uninitiated easy to find in this information age guide and trust that a man will find himself worthy of study and reflection and be a friend to neighbor and society. Freemasons are as the saying goes today, into coexistence and social harmony.

I personally find that a group which makes as its central theme that all good men who believe in a Supreme Being should congregate and assemble in common with one another without any regard for politics or religion a very good and worthy function which I am very proud to associate with. Joining this fraternity was one of the best decision of my life.

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SWOT

For the purposes of the Empowered Volunteer, SWOT analysis is NOT going to require someone with an MBA or other high level training. Good people who want to improve their group are all that are needed for success.

From Wikipedia we can get an idea of what SWOT is:

SWOT analysis (alternatively SWOT Matrix) is a structured planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture. A SWOT analysis can be carried out for a product, place, industry or person. It involves specifying the objective of the business venture or project and identifying the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieving that objective.

Volunteer groups Strengths can be assessed. What makes this group attractive? Be sure to include all things in the initial list or information gathering. Include perspectives from all stakeholders!

Volunteer groups Weaknesses can also be assessed. A weakness can be relative, that is for some it may be less a weakness than for others. Ensure you do all sides and all stakeholders.

Volunteer groups Opportunities can be assessed as well. This is likely to be a running list that is continually updated. It can tax some people’s creativity to come up with opportunities. Others can rattle off a list. Get the list created before worrying about an analysis or if the individual entries are worthy. List reduction can be done later, after initial conception. Also, never lose the initial list. Future empowered volunteers or group leaders who usually rotate yearly may be able to work an opportunity that the previously engaged volunteers could not.

Volunteer groups Threats are usually the easiest to list. Simply ask those who don’t want to join your group “why”? The value of listing threats for volunteer groups is only as good as the data gathered. It will become apparent when you start the list that there are some threats which hold more merit than others. In other words, some threats are a bigger issue than others or they apply to more potential volunteers than others. List them all, sort  later.

If you do a search for SWOT you will find many templates and help, some for free. If you find one that is to your liking, it can be used in most cases. Just keep in mind that a business SWOT is much more in-depth that the one you will be creating.

For this part of the Empowered Volunteer recruiting effort employing SWOT, you will need to be a bit more creative than just setting up target populations and prospecting times. If you have someone in your group who has a business degree or even an MBA or MSM (Masters of Science in Management) they will very likely be potential help in the gathering of data and its analysis. However, most of the data gathering is common sense and the analysis is mostly a matter of sorting and tabulating the individual groupings in a meaningful way. Simply count the various groupings and line them up, more or less.

Using college classes to complete a SWOT. If you have ready access to a professors class who is able and willing to take this project from start to finish and provide an analysis, I would suggest you engage them. They gain the experience and you get an outside view with potentially less internal contamination from the internal members. If they have the ability and are willing to do other types of assessments it would not hurt. The more relative data the better.

When I was doing my graduate studies in management we often had to search far and wide for businesses who would let us study them. Each class required another business for our study and even though we were often in groups of 5 or so, that added up to a bunch of competition in the area for businesses friendly to being studied. Many business leaders did not see the value from their side while being very careful what business data they would be willing to provide. But for graduate studies in management, real businesses were required. You had to get into a group who found a business willing to be studied to pass the class. Thus some nearby college classes may be looking for a group to study.

It you decide to work the data gathering internally consider gaining a broader perspective by expanding your potential population. For instance, if you are a Masonic lodge and you want to get some data through interviews and from follow ups for instance, consider expanding your data collection to more than one physical lodge. Perhaps several lodges in an area, called a district in many states. Keep track of the groups sources in case a trend develops in one group but not the others, naturally.

In most instances the bigger your population combined with the more focused your questions will provide the most accurate path for action. You are looking for valid data rather than a small sampling of the senior leadership and supporting group, for instance. If the whole population is polled in some way, even online then a small sample will have less chance of skewing the results.

Beware of the often found die hard past leaders who will profess in loud and passionate terms all the possible paths to increasing memberships or other corrections have been tried before and found to be insufficient to the task. These negative elements seems to be found in most groups and they are more often than not very vocal. If they can lead your team of information gatherers down a destructive path they will. It seems to be their nature. It is best if the volunteer group leader deal with such individuals rather than the empowered volunteer.

It is necessary for this part of the process to just gather the facts and data. Don’t try too much analysis until the complete study is gathered. Initial trends by the members who attend frequently nearly always will diverge somewhat from those that attend the functions more sporadically.

Gather the data anonymously from your group members if at all possible, so that honesty is more likely. Segregate the information into large population groups only, and be very careful to keep those who view the raw data analysis to a small select  and trusted group. This is in case some unlikely negative trend emerges that indicates an issue which is potentially divisive. Have a care that what you unearth in the data can be disseminated indiscriminately if and when the leadership decides to do so.

An example would be the discovery in one of the groups in the area where the population data was gathered shows an individual who’s nature has turned off many prospective volunteers as well as recent members who have backed off their attendance, through the offenders heavy handed ways let’s say. This is not the kind of data you want the entire group to automatically view! It is something that leadership within the individual section should address. It certainly should not be passed around the entire district or other population areas! Praise in public, reproach in private. This is elementary leadership for most junior members of a group, yet often senior leadership completely ignores this maxim.

Unintended consequences often can be detected during this part of the process. Perhaps a particular church actively discourages its members from joining your group. Your group has no political or religious interests and simply supports fund raising. In well directed questions you learn that one of your main fund raising activities involves Halloween hay rides and other themed activities on this particular time of the year. It turns out that the local Christian church doesn’t support that holiday, something many Christians of other denominations fail to realize. So it’s members don’t volunteer rather than face conflict on Sundays by joining. This would be very good information for your group to know.

Freemasons

Keep in mind  as well you are searching for reliable and accurate data for each of the SWOT areas. This becomes a bit more confusing when some individual characteristics of a group might be viewed by some in the study positively while others see the very same thing as negative. An example that is currently being addressed by Freemasons world wide is the value of the initiation ritual requiring the new member to memorize the groups rules through Bible stories, in a very formal manner usually entailing the new member to recite the rules in front of the rest of the assembled membership. This public speaking often is seen as a scary thing for new members. Older members place value on the fact that if the member is not committed then they should join a group where only money is required for membership! This is seen by many Masons as a kind of quality control or at the least a way of gauging the new members seriousness. Opponents see it as a huge time constraint holding good and proper prospects from even attempting to petition for membership.

Most groups will find they have some issues that can be viewed by more than one section of SWOT. This is common when a SWOT analysis is done on a business as well, where this type of analysis was first created and used. Each aspect of an issue should be collected and then evaluate from each angle for merit and application to the group. For instance some churches direct their membership to avoid some volunteer groups based on their individual perceptions of that group. Seldom would this be a positive aspect for an empowered volunteer, but it would be very good information to know! If you are one of the groups involved and the church which holds this position for your group is one of the main churches in your small town, you really have a major issue rather than the lesser issue if this were in a large metropolitan area.

The purpose of the data gathering is to sort things into a SWOT analysis that can focus the empowered volunteer and his supporting leadership in a direction which positions them for increased membership. If other issues arise out of a SWOT analysis they can be directed to a committee appointed for deeper investigation and action if needed. If too many issues are detected then the empowered volunteer should hold off on most of his or her efforts until the group is better positioned to receive new members.

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Freemason ball cap

Freemasons, the oldest and largest fraternal organization in the world has a long history.

This group of like minded men have been around so long that way too many stories embellished with questionable circumstances have been circulated. From some of these imaginations we get the movie, National Treasure. So many books, both pro and con have been written about Freemasons that I can’t even think of covering all of the material here in one post. I will try and condense the material into a useful amount so that the reader can at least decide if they have an interest in becoming a member or becoming an empowered volunteer for one of the many groups associated with Freemasonry.

First off, Freemasonry is a fraternal organization.

It is different from civic groups like the Lions Club or the Kiwanis or Rotary International. The difference is more legal than anything. Fraternal groups can have closed memberships requiring votes for entry. Civic groups are much more open, with restrictions being limited to well defined sectors such as the Rotary and the business sectors represented for each section within the local club. Civic groups can’t legally exclude any sectors of the public for instance. There have been a few court cases that have settled this in the past.

Freemasons started in the current incarnation we see today in the year 1717 in England. The past beyond that for the group traditionally included the masons building the great Roman Catholic Churches and buildings going back several hundred years. Some claim masons go back to the times of the Crusades even. However, today’s groups can only trace their current form to the creation of Freemasons in 1717. Before that, so many things were different that the linage is very hard to prove and for our purposes we really don’t care.

Freemasons in the United States are open about their membership and members often openly wear the affiliated symbols openly and proudly. However, Masons are one of the most persecuted of groups in modern times. Freemasons were not welcome under dictatorships or in Germany under the Nazi party. It is a little known fact that masons were included in the rounded up groups sent to the concentration camps.

Jews, gypsies, gays, and masons were all included in the concentration camp round up in Germany prior to and during WWII.

Masons, fearing the hostile government of Germany took to wearing a small lapel pin of a forget me not, a purple flower to distinguish themselves to others in the groups, much like the fish symbol was used by Christians during the time after Jesus in Rome.

Freemasonry today is a wide branch of a tree containing many different sections of groups, all with a Masonic connection. Think of this collections of groups like a high school in the United States. For a member of the school to join associated groups is normal. But you can’t join the base ball group of another school if you don’t live there. You have to stay in your area. It is the same with Freemasons. Once you have petitioned and been fully initiated into the local lodge as a Master Mason, which is also called the third degree of Masonry, you are at the top of the ladder. You can go no higher, only adding other groups.

Like a high school has many clubs and groups, so does the Master Mason confront many potential groups who will happily put him to work for the cause they support. You can’t just skip to the supporting group and skip the process of becoming a mason though, just as you can’t attend a school group without belonging to that school, home schooled children exempted.

Order of the Eastern Star

Once you have joined the local Freemason’s lodge your are usually allowed to consider the other groups as you see fit. Such groups as the Shriners, Tall Cedars of Lebanon, the Order of the Eastern Star are all for adults. The Order of DeMolay is a boys youth group. Rainbow Girls is a youth group for girls. There are other groups associated with masons.

Eastern Star is for ladies as well as men, all the lady has to show is a relationship to a mason.

Shriners

The purpose of Freemasonry in today’s society is stated as, “To make good men better”. This is simple and yet very complicated. The voting process for membership entry is supposed to ensure that only men of high character are allowed to join. There is a group that meets with you and your spouse to ensure she will not be unhappy if you join. Masons promote harmony both in the lodge by banning any conversation regarding religion or politics, but also at home by ensuring that spouses are secure that their men are attending functions which reflect positively on their reputations and that of their respective families.

If you do a search engine request on Freemasonry you will get many replies. Some of them will not be positive. Some will claim that Freemasons are a “secrete” organization which is unChristian. This is simply false. I am a Freemason, I have been in the group in many different states for over 20 years now. I have been in several of the associated groups as well. We do not have any deep dark secretes like the movies show, nor do we do sinister things during our initiations. Lastly, we are completely compatible with most Christian and many other religions.

I will put it this way, the group that has issues with Freemasonry must base their objections on either false or misleading information in order to compromise Christian values as they view them in some way.

Religions for the most part are happily aligned with the tenants of Freemasonry, since most of the initiation wording comes straight from the Old Testament part of the Bible, specifically the part involving King Solomon in first and second Kings. The idea is to use the symbols from this story as a pattern for building one’s moral character. Very simple, easily remembered rules from Bible stories help teach the new Mason his requirements and expectations.

Freemasons use rules and symbols that are put into a kind of story surrounding the building of Kind Solomon’s temple as an allegory for every mason to build his own personal spiritual temple here on earth. In other words, take the many lessons from the Bible verses that are memorized and make yourself a better person.

Freemasons don’t preach salvation, we only claim that we live on after we die here on earth.

How that is done and the surrounding issues are left to the individual and his church if he attends one. In America, most Freemasons attend a church of their choice. Many attend on a regular basis. However Jews are also welcome along with many from the other major religions of the world.

The key is to believe in a Supreme Being, usually called God.

Many famous people were Freemasons. Here is a site which lists some of them. http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/famous-freemasons.html

Some famous Masons are remembered for behavior which was not very Masonic, meaning not of good character. Likely the most memorable of these was Benedict Arnold, famous for betraying his Commander General George Washington during the Revolutionary War.

Other memorable divisions between Masonic Brothers in American history involved Davy Crockett in his opposition to the Native American policies of President Andrew Jackson and the Korean War division between General Douglas MacArthur and then President Truman firing his general for insubordination.

These high profile episodes reflect and refute the notion that Masons will not enforce laws between themselves. Davy Crockett was so distraught with his treatment by his Brother Mason that he left his home and went to Texas to fight in their revolution, with several Brother Masons also involved and where he seemed to find better treatment as well.

The public perception that Masons will refuse to deal with fellow members as needed when in public office should now be dead from these examples.

The internet is full of stupid sites making so called historical claims that Freemasons do many creative and lowly things. I can tell you from personal experience they are simply not true. There are only a very few things which Freemasonry members promise not to reveal to the public. To that end, in 1723 a book was published which claimed to give out all of the secretes of the fraternity. To this day none of the so called secretes have been changed due to that violation of the authors oath when he published them.

It simply doesn’t matter if someone learns the hand grip or the gesture or whatever. To be a Mason starts in the heart with the right attitude and goes from there. It is not in gestures or hand shakes. So the liars on the internet can continue their negative crusade, but it will not stop good men from continuing their good works on behalf of society and in the name of the Holy Saint’s John.

To be a Mason you need to believe in a Supreme Being, usually called God. This allows the three religions stemming from Abraham of the Bible,including Jewish followers of most variations, Christian followers in most instances, and the followers of Mohammad as well as a few of the other religions of the world that are in alignment with the idea of a supreme being can apply to join Freemasonry.

Many famous Masons, such as Ben Franklin were Deists during the age of enlightenment, meaning that they were not Christian any longer, even if they were raised that way. George Washington was another Deist. Deists were not Christian, rather they believed God was a kind of watchmaker who wound up the universe and then stepped aside to let matters unwind. Since Deists believe in a Supreme Being or God, they too are welcome to join the ranks of Freemasonry. This is mentioned to set the example that very good men such as these were also Freemasons and history has not judged them harshly for either characteristic.

Atheists are not welcome to join Freemasonry.

If you take a look at some of the more famous Freemasons, you should be able to detect the true nature of the group as judged by the overall tone and character of the past members. Many of the more famous members were famous not for being masons but for their contributions to society. I will let you review the list for yourself and come to your own conclusions.

In the future I will write about many of the other Freemason groups and their respective traits.

For now, Freemasonry is a worthy group for the consideration of the empowered volunteer. It has a vast amount of space to enjoy and explore. Enjoy this group if you choose to spend your time in such good company. So mote it be!

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