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Symbol?

peace out

Premium Member
A buddy of mine is not a mason. But we have been talking about masonry so much now that he is seeing symbols everywhere. He was looking at the layout of A&M Methodist Church in College Station and noticed the below.

s&c.jpg
 

tom268

Registered User
Well, if you start to do that, it really often ends in insanity. For example: In this case, the "square" don't even has a right angle, so every roughly diamond shaped body becomes a masonic symbol. Our symbols are made out of geometrical forms, so are most man made objects. It may be fun, but there are some people out there with serious psychological problems, because they see symbols everywhere.
 

owls84

Moderator
Premium Member
I agree Tom. I often equate this to the power of observation. It is like when I was 19 and went to work for Central Freight Lines and before I began the work there I never saw a Central truck on the road but afterwards they were EVERYWHERE I looked. Same with this instance. When you look for something often you find it. I know he is not a Mason but he is looking for Masonic symbols often like a conspiracy theorist. Probably nothing more than coincidence. I couldn't tell you how many times I drive into a town and see the Lodge and I may have been to that town 100 times but never seen it. Funny stuff.
 

peace out

Premium Member
And FYI, this was just for fun much like the McAlister's Deli picture I posted a while back.

Both I and my friend in question are well aware of simple coincidences.
 

JTM

"Just in case"
Premium Member
Yea. Just looked it up. There was a mason involved in the building of this church. Clearly, it's part of The Conspiracy.
 

jim9361

Registered User
A few years back I went on a work trip to Washington DC with a guy who was a mason. At the time I was interested and had yet to become one. Each day after work we ran out to do quick tourist trips. Through out the entire time I was pointing things out asking, is that a masonic symbol ? I never found one but the rest of the group got a kick out me bugging him to death about it.
 

Bro. Stewart P.M.

Lead Moderator Emeritus
Staff Member
Here is my thought.

I have been in the Quality Control field through several industries and one simple truth there holds true in this discussion slightly modified... If you go about your day on the "look out" for Quality Concerns, you will find them. Things are never as perfect as they appear, ever. I apply this principal in this manner... If you go about your day looking for Masonic Symbolism you will find it. There is always some form of symbol or geometry everywhere.

I am by no means attempting to down play or make light of the image above, just stating a thought.
 

Botex

Premium Member
mch4970, it is well known that there is a Masonic conspiracy among Aggie Methodists, so your graphic should come as no surprise! Here is the bigger picture though - see image below. Starting at the Veterans Park facility (an obvious Pentagram), draw a line to the A&M United Methodist church that you previously referred to. That makes one leg of the compass. The other leg is described by drawing a line from Veterans Park to First United Methodist. Now for the square - connect the three remaining Methodist facilities in Bryan/College Station: St. Lukes, West District Methodist, and the United Methodist Parsonage, with the vertex being on the 3rd hole of the A&M golf course. PS, the third hole represents the Blue Lodge. Shh! Happy winter solstice everybody!

Disclaimer:All in jest!

AggieMethodistConspiracy.jpg
 

BryanMaloney

Premium Member
It looks like "symbol salad" to me. A bunch of different things randomly grabbed and thrown together with no meaning at all.
 

BryanMaloney

Premium Member
It doesn't matter what the original "meanings" of the parts might be. Tossing them into a symbol salad has stripped them of meaning in this context and they are now purely visual elements, each devoid of meaning.
 

jvarnell

Premium Member
Y'all need to read the book "The Clam-Bake Orgy and Other Subliminal Techniques for Manipulating Your Behavior" and you will there are funny people out there really doing stuff like that on purpus because of how it works on the subconcus.
 

Warrior1256

Site Benefactor
Well, if you start to do that, it really often ends in insanity. For example: In this case, the "square" don't even has a right angle, so every roughly diamond shaped body becomes a masonic symbol. Our symbols are made out of geometrical forms, so are most man made objects. It may be fun, but there are some people out there with serious psychological problems, because they see symbols everywhere.
Yeah, you can see symbols EVERYWHERE even when they are not really there. When I see comments about the Masonic symbols in the map of D.C. my reply is you can find these same symbols on the map of ANY large city including here in Louisville if they are what you are looking for.
 

BryanMaloney

Premium Member
The psychological term is "apophenia". It is the trait of inventing patterns out of anything, including random noise. At one time, it was considered prodromal to schizophrenia. It's now known to be far more widespread.
 

dfreybur

Premium Member
The psychological term is "apophenia". It is the trait of inventing patterns out of anything, including random noise. At one time, it was considered prodromal to schizophrenia. It's now known to be far more widespread.

I've seen the word "patternicity" used for this. It's called a "cognitive error" which doesn't take into account the fact that major scientific discoveries have often consisted of seeing a pattern where others did not and trying to describe that pattern with mathematics. The idea of patternicity is there is an evolutionary pressure to detect patterns. If you startle and run but there's no tiger you can still have children. If you don't startle and there is a tiger, you are dinner and the tiger ends up having children.

Symbols mean something different to everyone. There's a temptation to suggest that's a process without limits, but that's not an accurate assessment. When inspected with reason symbols form finite not infinite sets of meaning. When inspected without reason symbols form infinite not finite sets of meaning. Symbols tend to have a range of meaning, often a wide range. But symbols don't mean everything and nothing. If they meant everything and nothing they would not have been useful and would have fallen out of use.
 
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