The Shriners are fez-wearing Freemasons made up of Master Masons, 32nd Degree Scottish Rite Masons, and Knights Templar York Rite Masons. They are well known in the United States for their colourful parades and charitable works. I first came across the Shriners through a light-hearted parody of them by comedians Laurel and Hardy in the 1933 movie Sons of the Desert.
Shriners – or Shrine Masons – were founded in 1872 and today have about 300,000 members around the world – though predominantly north America. Their website explains the very distinctive logo of the organisation:
“The symbol represents the 300,000 Shriners who are the backbone of the Shrine. The two claws represent the two divisions of the Shrine, the fraternity, Shriners International and the charity, Shriners Hospitals for Children, joined in the middle by the head of a sphinx which is representative of the Imperial Council of Shriners International, the governing body of the Shrine. The star that hangs between the claws represents the stars of the Shrine, the thousand’s of children we assist every year.”
Founded in the 1870s by two Freemasons who were watching some kind of theatrical Arabesque in New York after a masonic gathering at the Knickerbocker Cottage (a favourite Masonic haunt of the time) and decided to form an exotic sounding organisation called the Ancient Arabian Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (AAONMS – not the catchiest acronym ever).
Members are allocated to Shrine Centers – or Temples – and engage in a distinct set of rituals which includes using the Arabic greeting for ‘hello’ to each other. As an accepted society within the Masons, you have to be a fully fledged Freemason – and a Master Mason at that – to be able to join. It’s not possible to be a Shriner and not a Mason. This is like a subset within the Masons – not a venn diagram overlap. Officers within the Shriners are called a ‘Divan’ and the top dog is called a ‘Potentate’ assisted by a ‘Chief Rabban’.
Expect to see them on parades in dinky cars and replete with the fez when they meet for their Imperial Council Session. The Shriners Hospitals for Children have a budget of over three quarters of a billion dollars and were originally set up during the polio epidemics of the early twentieth century. They now cater for a range of childhood disorders.
AAONMS= A MASON
Indeed – couldn’t disagree. They’re a subset of the Masons basically.