Burning Taper's 500th post: And so it goes

This is my 500th post on Burning Taper.

I had noticed it was getting close a week or so ago. There's supposed to be something magickal about numbers that end in zero, especially if they begin with a five, like 50 and 500 and 5000, like they're milestones or somehow related to the Law of Fives. So I'd been thinking of writing some special self-celebratory post, or maybe a deep and meaningful "look to the past, look to the future" introspective article, or something equally ludicrous.

But it's just a number, and this is just a blog. Hitting the Big Five Oh Oh isn't that big of a whoop to me — any semi-literate simian with ten fingers and a keyboard could write this blog (and some days does!) — and it's even less of a woo hoo! to you, so let's just treat it like any other post and talk about something strange.

Someone in England today began an online petition to force British Freemasons to out themselves, to register with the government that they are a Mason. Petition-signing will go on for one year.

Here's the actual text of the e-petition, which has, as I'm writing this Friday afternoon, exactly one signer, the creator of the petition, S. Warriner.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to establish an open register of freemasons as a first step towards making them an open society in line with other societies in a free democracy.

It was recognised 200 years ago that secret societies were subversive to the government and centres of sedition. Secret societies are the antithesis of what a free democracy is about. It is understood the freemasons have now developed into a cult which may use its secret membership to develop and promote its business interests to the detriment of non members. Secret membership makes it possible to take over business and property of non freemasons by a form of insider trading using fifth column tactics before the non freemasons become aware of what is happening.

I swear to Elvis, I don't know which breed of anti-Mason is more insane, the religious anti's in the U.S. or the political anti's in the U.K.

Read — and sign if you want to — the petition here.

Image: The Widow's Son

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