RRCG members speak out: Brother Scott Brumley

Why I stand firmly behind The Rose Cross of Gold, by Brother Scott Brumley

When I was a child I had very highly evolved ideas of ethics and morality. There were certain things you did, and certain things you did not do.

Who taught me these values? My parents? Super-hero cartoons? In any case it led me to become the bully-basher. If there was a bully I was able to find him with my super bully-detection skills (or more commonly known as “smart ass comments”) and he would often challenge me to duel of sorts (mostly a fist fight at recess). These ideals served me very well into my adult life. But then there came a time of questioning, when people around me entered into unethical business practices just to earn a quick buck. Should I take that path just for prestige and money?

Now enters Freemasonry. I had very little idea what it was about, but I started to study it between my first and second degrees. I was encouraged by a group of friends that were Masons who also suffered from highly evolved ideas of ethics and morality. I took the degrees very seriously. As I went through them I started to learn more about Masonry. I read Albert Pike, Waite, Mackey, and many others. It soon became apparent that I had been a Mason long before I had even heard of Freemasonry. So my ideals where cemented and renewed. You could say I was born again. But Freemasonry was not anything like the Freemasonry I had learned about from my elders. Freemasonry was declining in membership and many practices going on in the lodges were suspect.

Now enters the beginnings of the Rose Cross of Gold. On several occasions a visiting Grand Master asked for our help in staving off the decline of Freemasonry. A small group of us decided to help. We orchestrated a marketing campaign to find out what attracted new brothers to the lodges and kept them coming back.

What did new brothers want? Coincidentally it was the same thing that brought us to Freemasonry and kept us together — Brotherhood, Liberty, Justice, Equality, to name a few. We took action, preparing information to present to the Grand Lodge here in Georgia. To say we were meet with hostility would be a gross understatement. After several years of trying with the Grand Lodge many members of the newly started Rose Cross of Gold were falsely led by their brethren of the blue lodges into a trap reminiscent of the meeting with Long Shanks in the movie Braveheart.

Eventually we broke free of this useless cycle of watching the Grand Lodge trying to bury us while smearing our good names. We cut ourselves down from the nooses we had been hanged with. The Rose Cross of Gold was reborn that day. Perhaps not so ironically this Masonic death and funeral allowed our brothers of the Rose Cross of Gold to rebound, releasing the Phoenix within the ashes of Freemasonry.

In the last several months I have seen the Brothers of the Rose Cross of Gold reach out to Blue Lodges that were in fear of losing their lodge buildings, I have seen their membership swell with good men, and I have seen a regular meeting of Masons that are glad to be there.

Gentlemen: Freemasonry has been reborn in the United States of America.

— Brother Scott Brumley


Image: Phoenix Rising

Rite of Rose Cross of Gold | United Grand Lodge of America
Grand Lodge of Georgia | Freemasonry