William Wyl notes that JS saw Freemasonry as holding the "key" of his endowment.
William Wyl, Joseph Smith, the prophet, his family and his friends. A study based on facts and documents (Salt Lake City: Tribune Print, 1886), 146-147
Had he not prostituted the ordinances and secrets of the order by mimicking and burlesquing them in his endowment and proclaiming that he had found among the wondrous secrets of that old white hat, the crowning 'key' lost by the Masons, for long ages,; so that, like his religion, his masonry was the true and only original Jacobs? HIs beastly desires and reckless impudence were even greater than his cunning.