All I know my dad was a mason/shriner and when he died 3 years ago Masons conducted part of the funeral-something about a tree and they put a branch in his casket.

or you can realize the square and compass are used emblematically as parables to represent cardinal virtues that all people should strive to have present in their lives and that there is nothing really secret or esoteric at all as any "secrets" of freemasonry can be found online and even on youtube last I bothered to check.

Take the number 9 and multiply it by any other number 9 X 3 = 27 (2+7 = 9) 9 X 27 = 243 (2+4+3 = 9) 9 X 541 = 4869 (4869 4+8+6+9 = 27 2+7 = 9) As far as I know 9 is the only number that you can use in this way, however, whilst it may be an amusing excise it does not contain some profound truth about the universe.

Numbers and symbols can be fascinating, almost hypnotic. It may be that science stripped of it's terminology HLA Molecues etc etc etc and so on, reduces to pattern recognition (geometry) and the numbers merely quantify the geometry

The idea of a secret society is fascinating, but I'll admit the modern implementation turns me off. I don't see a practical use for mystical elitism and other strange, residual cultural artifacts like it now that we're a couple hundred years beyond the so-called Age of Enlightenment.