The secret is how to die. Since the beginning of time, the secret had always been how to die. The thirty-four-year-old initiate gazed down at the human skull cradled in his palms. The skull was hollow, like a bowl, filled with blood-red wine. Drink it, he told himself. You have nothing to fear...
- At the House of the Temple, 8:33 pm; initiation of Mal'akh as a Freemason in Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol
Dan Brown has done much for Freemasons, one of the oldest yet little-known fraternities in the world. A group of Indians, all members of this furtive, secretive tribe, may just have done far more. Almost 800 years after its obscure origin somewhere in Scotland - some say England - the closed society of Freemasons is slowly opening up. And heralding this change are the 18,414 members of Freemasons India.
On November 21, as Freemasons India installed a new Grand Master during a ceremony in Chennai, the proceedings, for the first time ever in the Masons' hushed history, were thrown open to the world. A TOI-Crest team was there among an incredulous gathering of non-Masons to witness the landmark event.
Though brainstorming on this proposed "demystification" has been happening for a while behind the tightly-shut doors of Masonic halls, the occasion did take Mason watchers across the world by surprise. But Dr Balaram Biswakumar, the Chennai-based neurologist and new Grand Master of Freemasons India, thinks it is time.
http://newageislam.com/freemasons-open-chamber-of-secrets/current-affairs/d/2165
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