And now the madness begins.Increased scrutiny of Freemasons and Masonic buildings because of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol will unquestionably have major effects on the fraternity, but the unintended ones will be unfortunate, costly and even dangerous. In the insanity of Dan Brown mania, there will be those who think we have great gobs of treasure, or secret talismans of occult power, or any number of other idiotic flights of imagination hidden in our lodges.
Case in point: eight men have been arrested in a break in and burglary of a Masonic temple last night in Lawrence, Kansas. See the article here.
If your lodge doesn't have an alarm system, exterior lighting and other safeguards, now is the time to invest in them. And I shudder when I think of the loons who will be touring Masonic landmarks mentioned in The Lost Symbol (Brown is actually putting street addresses in his novel!) like the House of the Temple and the George Washington Masonic Memorial.
