As historian at a Freemasons lodge in Asheville, Mark Bennett wants to make something clear. Despite the impression given by books like author Dan Brown's “The Da Vinci Code” and “The Lost Symbol” and movies like “National Treasure,” the Masons are not a clandestine group. “We're not a secret society,” Bennett says. “We're a society with a few secrets.” A once closed group whose members populated the power-elite from town hall to the White House, Masons are opening their doors to the public in increasing numbers in an effort to dispel myths and boost lagging membership. The Masonic Service Association of North America say membership levels are the lowest in 80 years, despite a bigger share of the public's consciousness thanks to the popular books and movies. There are fewer Masons today — by nearly a million — than there were in 1941 as the country came out of the Great Depression. The fraternity has an estimated 3 million members worldwide, said Richard Fletcher, the association's executive secretary. It had more than 4 million members in the U.S. alone in 1959. Today it has about 1.5 million, he said.
