New Greg, the Seed Man, who was a Freemason for 20 years
He loves the river, wildflowers, Reseda, and answering questions about the secret society he wrote four books about
Greg Stewart, much like many of our guests, is such a sweet man. A native Angeleno, mostly in the Valley, he was extremely close to the epicenter of the Northridge Quake in ’94, but because he worked at the phone company he had to come in (with a hard hat) to work the next day.
Along the way he became part of the Freemasons, worked on their website and wrote four books about the so-called secret society.
Now he loves nature, planting seeds, and being cool to the LA River. We talk about all of these things in the full podcast below. Just click the play button or keep scrolling for a few of the highlights.
Tony Pierce: How long have you and your wife been married?
Greg Stewart: 20 years.
She knows who you are.
Yeah, well, this is a new thing. Plant Greg is a new person. I don’t even know where this guy came from.
Please tell me the back pages of High Times.
Horticulture is really scary before you get into it, but once you do— like before I came over here today I was separating out some seeds that I had pulled. I want to try to grow some Yerba Santa, which is a plant that grows in the hills around here that would be great in the basin.
But I don’t want to buy them because I’m cheap and I want to try and see if can grow them from seed. So I separated them out from these flowers that that I ethically sourced.
It’s a cool thing. You should try it.
How long have you lived in Reseda?
We’ve been here almost as long as we’ve been married: 20 years.
Where did you meet your bride?
We actually worked together at Verizon, which had become that from GTE. We worked doing Yellow Page ads way back in the day.
I tell the kids about the Yellow Pages in the backseat of my Uber and they look at me like I’m crazy.
I tried to explain Thomas Guide to my kids the other day.
They’re like what?
So do you remember where you took her on your first date?
Gosh, our first date was probably just like a stroll through the neighborhood that she lived in at the time in the neighborhood of Claremont.
It was a long distance love affair.
Greg, you’re a Freemason!
I am.
Have you seen the Simpsons episode where Homer becomes a Freemason … I mean a “Stonecutter”?
I have.
What percentage of that is accurate? First of all, do you guys all sing?
I mean, from a tinfoil hat perspective, [he says sarcastically] all of it was legit.
From my stance, now. None of it.
That episode was a fun tongue-in-cheek take on what people think secret societies are. The funny thing is 10 years ago, secret societies, Freemasons, would have been the Boogeyman.
Now, it can’t hold a candle to any of the crazy shit that’s happening in this country [like Q’anon]. So now this is like a Civil War reenactment society. It’s like, “oh, how quaint.”
Is is Freemasonry a secret society?
The running joke would be is that it’s not a secret society, it’s a society with secrets.
So a “secret society” implies that it’s up to some weird, nefarious shit, maybe, because it’s secret.
Really, it was a private club that really gate-kept its membership. So it was a private club that you had to ask to belong to, you had pay dues for, just like a country club, or the Jonathan Club, or the Oddfellows.
So mostly dudes, right?
Yes. So with Freemasonry in particular, it was an all-male post-collegiate fraternity, which is a fancy way of pigeonholing it from probably 50 years ago? Even before that.
So all the well-heeled guys in a town would have probably been Freemasons.
In particular is the old Scottish Rite temple on Wilshire, this giant monstrosity of an office building, that’s not an office building. And at one point in time was like the crown jewel of LA, as Masonic temples went, because it was huge.
It’s got all these really cool statues out front. If you go inside, it’s even cooler: they got really nice stained glass, and the space is ginormous, you can fill it with bands.
The group’s original purpose… should we be suspicious of the original purpose of the Masons?
No, I would bet you $1 there are probably more people that you know who were either members of it, or part of it, or just had some ancillary connection.
I hate that I remember all these facts, but at its height, Freemasonry, like circa 1960: four percent of the population were Freemasons. So like, 4 million people.
The root of my question is, these are men who are college grads with a few bucks, these aren’t poor people, right? They either want to get around City Hall red tape to do things that they want to do.
Or they want to be in cahoots with other businesses to maybe adjust prices behind closed doors. I’m not saying like, truly nefarious things. But, if you and I owned rival hardware stores, but you’re my mason brother, then we’d be like, “pssst, nails are going up next month.”
So I would imagine that that conversation could happen, and probably has happened, but again, no differently than it would happen at the Elks Lodge.
So my second suspicion is, these are just lonely guys that want to get out of the house. They’re not bowlers. They’re not hunters. And so I’d say they probably just like to drink at these places?
No. So the difference in Freemasonry is that, unlike the Elks or the Eagles, or the American Legion, Freemasonry had a basis in… that in order to be a member, you had to espouse a belief in God.
It didn’t dictate it, though you could argue some lodges would actually, some places, some states would lean more towards a Judeo-Christian God.
If you walked in as a Muslim, they might be kind of like —
What about a Jew?
So that’s Judeo-Christian, so that would be okay. But a Muslim, maybe not. Or a Buddhist? Maybe not. It depended upon which Lodge and where.
Why would you kick a Buddhist out? They’re the best.
So I’m not saying all of them, everywhere. Actually, the last time I was really involved, one of the fellows was there in his Buddhist robes.
Another one that was was prohibited were Catholics because the Catholic Church said that Freemasonry was wrong.
What did the Pope not like about the Freemasons?
So the Pope’s thinking if I remember correctly, it’s an encyclical called Humanum Genus. It essentially said that Freemasonry was a religion.
And, I could argue that it probably is based on the definition of religion, it’s not a faith, but but their religious aspects of it.
The Pope was like, “this is competition. I don’t want it?” You can’t serve two masters, sort of thing?
Yeah, I think that was sort of the rationale. Since then I think the Catholic Church has sort of taken a lighter stance.
How long were you a Mason, because it sounds like you don’t go anymore?
Yeah, I am not active. Have not been active for a while, so —
We know this because you’re not paying dues?
I paid up at least through last year, I got to pay this year’s but — I leaned into them heavily for probably the last 20 years.
Interesting: you moved to Reseda 20 years ago. So Reseda radicalized you?
No, now I just feel like my own personal take with it has grown. So in the time that I was a Freemason, I hosted a podcast: Masonic Central. If anybody wants a website — I worked on theirs. I’ve written four books on the topic.
Is the USC Shrine Auditorium… is that Freemasons?
Yes.
There’s that statue with the guy with the fez there.
The red fez.
Did you have a fez?
I did not. I never became a Shriner and never wanted to become a Shriner.
Shriners are —
Freemasons. Yeah. So Shriners Hospital is a leg of Freemasonry. So in order to be a Shriner, you have to be a Freemason. In order to get the red hat, you’ve got to get the white apron.
Oh, so you had an apron?
Yep. And so Scottish Rite was another group. Scottish Rite also had funny hats.
There’s nothing better than a fez, though.
Funny hats are great.
How about the little cars that they would ride in at parades?
That was a club within Shriners. One of the things Shriners would do is a lot of charity for children, which phenomenal. They would even drive around in those little red cars.
So the Dead Kennedys album cover with the guys in the red hats and little cars —
What was that was called?
God. I just watched a Dead Kennedys video the other day… was it Frankenchrist? [Yes].
See, we’re too young. Isn’t that nice to know?
Either that or we’re too old and the dementia is already hitting.
No, no. Because that’s like 1980. We shouldn’t have been listening to Dead Kennedys in 1980.
I actually had the album with the poster in it.
So those are Shriners on that cover. It was a big organization in the height of Americana. It was influential.
Even if you look back politically, one of the early political parties was the Anti-Masonic party, which was formed because of something that happened with Freemasons, that society got really pissed off at Freemasons.
They thought Masons killed a guy who was trying to expose them. And so this anti-Masonic party sprung up and probably lasted for about 50 years until near the Civil War, then everybody forgot about it.
But at the time, the Masons was almost decimated, because it was like totally corrupt to be a Freemason in the early 1800s.
But prior to that Benjamin Franklin was a Freemason, George Washington…
Other than you, who is the most famous Mason alive today? Bonus points if they are living in LA.
This is gonna be a weird one. It’s not regular Freemasonry, but he’s still a Freemason if memory serves correctly.
Please say Obama.
No, Shaquille O’Neal though.
What?!
I want to say the Shaq is a Freemason.
That’s even better than Obama!
I would have to validate it to confirm it. But yeah.
So Shaq is in one of these Black ones. What did you call them?
Prince Hall. I believe he is a Prince Hall Freemason.
Is that a guy’s name?
Prince Hall was a freed slave back in New England that was made a mason by a cohort of Irish Freemasons. I’m probably totally butchering this, someone else could probably tell a story better.
He was a free Black slave made a mason and he founded this organization of Prince Hall Freemasonry thereafter so other freed African American individuals could become Masons at a time when no one else could. This is like late-1700s.
This just scratches the surface. Hear the whole conversation here:
Follow Greg on Twitter, IG, his Planting Natives site, and the Freemason site he ran for years.
How great was Greg? When you stoke us, you’re saying — “Tony these people are fascinating. Thank you for having Greg tell us about Freemasons!
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