A viewer asks: “My father was a Freemason and because of this I grew up in a house containing the meeting rooms in which they held their secret meetings. Most of my siblings and I went to a high school exclusively attended by the children of deceased Freemasons. I always regarded them as a rather silly but benevolent group, somewhat like boy scouts for adults. Has my family been harmed in any way by our association with the Freemasons?”

In a sense, this is benign and is historical and cultural silliness, as you put it. It is a pretext for doing good and for feeling good and, as such, it serves a purpose for the membership to come together in a kind of fellowship and sharing of ideals to participate in a common purpose that can have benefits beyond the circle of members itself. There is a dark side to the organization in that it serves as a front for many dark doings. This is not true of all members, but only a minor portion who use the organization as a recruiting tool to attract individuals who are inclined to their way of thinking, who can be screened and then cultivated personally, and groomed to assess their suitability and readiness to become involved in more clandestine activities. This, at extremes, can reach to the depths of satanic worship, and this is the grave risk because there can be many quite dark and evil trappings that corrupt individuals heavily and will cause huge karmic liabilities if they participate. This, fortunately, does not apply to your family members, who were good folk and were not corruptible to be recruited for any darker purposes, so you can breathe easy about this.