Masonry (or
Freemasonry) is the oldest fraternity in the world.
No one knows just how old it is because the actual
origins have been lost in time. Probably, it arose
from the guilds of stonemasons who built the castles
and cathedrals of the Middle Ages. Possibly, they
were influenced by the Knights Templar, a group of
Christian warrior monks formed in 1118 to help
protect pilgrims making trips to the Holy Land.
In 1717, Masonry
created a formal organization in England when the
first Grand Lodge was formed. A Grand Lodge is the
administrative body in charge of Masonry in some
geographical area. In the United States , there is a
Grand Lodge in each state and the District of
Columbia . In Canada , there is a Grand Lodge in
each province. Local organizations of Masons are
called lodges. There are lodges in most towns, and
large cities usually have several. There are about
13,200 lodges in the United States . In a time when
travel was by horseback and sailing ship, Masonry
spread with amazing speed. By 1731, when Benjamin
Franklin joined the fraternity, there were already
several lodges in the Colonies, and Masonry spread
rapidly as America expanded west. In addition to
Franklin , many of the Founding Fathers -- men such
as George Washington, Paul Revere, Joseph Warren,
and John Hancock -- were Masons. Masons and Masonry
played an important part in the Revolutionary War
and an even more important part in the
Constitutional Convention and the debates
surrounding the ratification of the Bill of Rights.
Many of those debates were held in Masonic lodges.
What is a Mason?
That is not a
surprising question. Even though Masons (Freemasons)
are members of the largest and oldest fraternity in
the world, and even though almost everyone has a
father or grandfather or uncle who was a Mason, many
people are not quite certain just who Masons are.
The answer is simple.
A Mason (or Freemason) is a member of a fraternity
known as Masonry (or Freemasonry). A fraternity is a
group of men (just as a sorority is a group of
women) who join together because: There are things
they want to do in the world; There are things they
want to do "inside their own minds;" They enjoy
being together with men they like and respect.
A Mason is a man who
has decided that he likes to feel good about himself
and others. He cares about the future as well as the
past, and does what he can, both alone and with
others, to make the future good for everyone.
Many men over many
generations have answered the question, "What is a
Mason?" One of the most eloquent was written by the
Reverend Joseph Fort Newton, an internationally
honored minister of the first half of the 20th
Century and Grand Chaplain, Grand Lodge of Iowa,
1911-1913.
What is a Lodge?
The word "lodge" means
both a group of Masons meeting in some place and the
room or building in which they meet. Masonic
buildings are also sometimes called "temples"
because much of the symbolism Masonry uses to teach
its lessons comes from the building of King Solomon’
s Temple in the Holy Land. The term "lodge" itself
comes from the structures which the stonemasons
built against the sides of the cathedrals during
construction. In winter, when building had to stop,
they lived in these lodges and worked at carving
stone.
While there is some variation in detail from state
to state and country to country.
If you’ve ever watched C-SPAN’s coverage of the
House of Commons in London , you'll notice that the
layout is about the same. Since Masonry came to
America from England , we still use the English
floor plan and English titles for the officers. The
Worshipful Master of the Lodge sits in the East.
"Worshipful" is an English term of respect which
means the same thing as "Honorable." He is called
the Master of the lodge for the same reason that the
leader of an orchestra is called the "Concert
Master." It is simply an older term for "Leader." In
other organizations, he would be called "President."
The Senior and Junior Wardens are the First and
Second Vice-Presidents. The Deacons are messengers,
and the Stewards have charge of refreshments. Every
lodge has an altar holding a "Volume of the Sacred
Law." In the United States and Canada , that is
almost always a Bible.
What goes on in a Lodge?
The Lodge is the
center of activities for masons. Masonry teaches
that each person has a responsibility to make things
better in the world. Most individuals will not be
the ones to find a cure for cancer, or eliminate
poverty, or help create world peace, but every man
and woman and child can do something to help others
and to make things a little better. Masonry is
deeply involved with helping people -- it spends
more than $1.4 million dollars every day in the
United States , just to make life a little easier
and the great majority of that help goes to people
who are not Masons. Some of these charities are vast
projects, like the Crippled Children’ s Hospitals
and Burns Institutes built by the Shriner’ s. Also,
Scottish Rite Masons maintain a nationwide network
of over 100 Childhood Language Disorders Clinics,
Centers, and Programs. Each helps children afflicted
by such conditions as aphasia, dyslexia, stuttering,
and related learning or speech disorders.
Some services are less
noticeable, like helping a widow pay her electric
bill or buying coats and shoes for disadvantaged
children. And there is just about anything you can
think of in-between, but with projects large or
small, the Masons of a lodge try to help make the
world a better place. The lodge gives them a way to
combine with others to do even more good.
Masonry does things
"inside" the individual Mason. "Grow or die" is a
great law of all nature. Most people feel a need for
continued growth as individuals. They feel they are
not as honest or as charitable or as compassionate
or as loving or as trusting or as well-informed as
they ought to be. Masonry reminds its members over
and over again of the importance of these qualities
and education. It lets men associate with other men
of honor and integrity who believe that things like
honesty, compassion, love, trust, and knowledge are
important. In some ways, Masonry is a support group
for men who are trying to make the right decisions.
It is easier to practice these virtues when you know
that those around you think they are important, too,
and will not laugh at you. That is a major reason
that Masons enjoy being together.
Masons enjoy each
others company. It is good to spend time with people
you can trust completely, and most Masons find that
in their lodge. While much of lodge activity is
spent in works of charity or in lessons in
self-development, much is also spent in fellowship.
Lodges have picnics, camping trips, and many events
for the whole family. Simply put, a lodge is a place
to spend time with friends.
For members only, two
basic kinds of meetings take place in a lodge. The
most common is a simple business meeting. To open
and close the meeting, there is a ceremony whose
purpose is to remind us of the virtues by which we
are supposed to live. Then there is a reading of the
minutes; voting on petitions (applications of men
who want to join the fraternity); planning for
charitable functions, family events, and other lodge
activities; and sharing information about members
(called "Brothers," as in most fraternities) who are
ill or have some sort of need. The other kind of
meeting is one in which people join the fraternity
-- one at which the "degrees" are performed.
But every lodge serves
more than its own members. Frequently, there are
meetings open to the public. Examples are Ladies
Nights, "Brother Bring a Friend Nights," public
installations of officers, cornerstone laying
ceremonies, and other special meetings supporting
community events and dealing with topics of local
interest.
What is a degree?
A degree is a stage or
level of membership. It is also the ceremony by
which a man attains that level of membership. There
are three, called Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft,
and Master Mason. As you can see, the names are
taken from the craft guilds. In the Middle Ages,
when a person wanted to join a craft, such as the
gold smiths or the carpenters or the stonemasons, he
was first apprenticed. As an apprentice, he learned
the tools and skills of the trade. When he had
proved his skills, he became a "Fellow of the Craft"
(today we would say "Journeyman"), and when he had
exceptional ability, he was known as a Master of the
Craft.
The degrees are plays
in which the candidate participates. Each degree
uses symbols to teach, just as plays did in the
Middle Ages and as many theatrical productions do
today. (We will talk about symbols a little later.)
The Masonic degrees
teach the great lessons of life -- the importance of
honor and integrity, of being a person on whom
others can rely, of being both trusting and
trustworthy, of realizing that you have a spiritual
nature as well as a physical or animal nature, of
the importance of self-control, of knowing how to
love and be loved, of knowing how to keep
confidential what others tell you so that they can
"open up" without fear.
Why is
Masonry so "secretive"?
It really is not
"secretive," although it sometimes has that
reputation. Masons certainly do not make a secret of
the fact that they are members of the fraternity. We
wear rings, lapel pins, and tie clasps with Masonic
emblems like the Square and Compasses, the best
known of Masonic signs which, logically, recall the
fraternity’ s early symbolic roots in stonemasonry.
Masonic buildings are clearly marked, and are
usually listed in the phone book. Lodge activities
are not secret -- picnics and other events are even
listed in the newspapers, especially in smaller
towns. Many lodges have answering machines which
give the upcoming lodge activities. But there are
some Masonic secrets, and they fall into two
categories.
The first are the ways
in which a man can identify himself as a Mason --
grips and passwords. We keep those private for
obvious reasons. It is not at all unknown for
unscrupulous people to try to pass themselves off as
Masons in order to get assistance under false
pretences.
The second group is
harder to describe, but they are the ones Masons
usually mean if we talk about "Masonic secrets."
They are secrets because they literally can not be
talked about, can not be put into words. They are
the changes that happen to a man when he really
accepts responsibility for his own life and, at the
same time, truly decides that his real happiness is
in helping others.
It is a wonderful
feeling, but it is something you simply can not
explain to another person. That is why we sometimes
say that Masonic secrets cannot (rather than "may
not") be told. Try telling someone exactly what you
feel when you see a beautiful sunset, or when you
hear music, like the national anthem, which suddenly
stirs old memories, and you will understand what we
mean.
"Secret societies"
became very popular in America in the late 1800s and
early 1900s. There were literally hundreds of them,
and most people belonged to two or three. Many of
them were modeled on Masonry, and made a great point
of having many "secrets." Freemasonry got ranked
with them. But if Masonry is a secret society, it is
the worst-kept secret in the world.
Is Masonry a religion?
The answer to that
question is simple. No.
We do use ritual in meetings, and because there is
always an altar or table with the Volume of the
Sacred Law open if a lodge is meeting, some people
have confused Masonry with a religion, but it is
not. That does not mean that religion plays no part
in Masonry -- it plays a very important part. A
person who wants to become a Mason must have a
belief in God. No atheist can ever become a Mason.
Meetings open with prayer, and a Mason is taught, as
one of the first lessons of Masonry, that one should
pray for divine counsel and guidance before starting
an important undertaking. But that does not make
Masonry a "religion."
Sometimes people
confuse Masonry with a religion because we call some
Masonic buildings "temples." But we use the word in
the same sense that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
called the Supreme Court a "Temple of Justice" and
because a Masonic lodge is a symbol of the Temple of
Solomon. Neither Masonry nor the Supreme Court is a
religion just because its members meet in a
"temple."
In some ways, the
relationship between Masonry and religion is like
the relationship between the Parent-Teacher
Association (the P.T.A.) and education. Members of
the P.T.A. believe in the importance of education.
They support it. They assert that no man or woman
can be a complete and whole individual or live up to
his or her full potential without education. They
encourage students to stay in school and parents to
be involved with the education of their children.
They may give scholarships. They encourage their
members to get involved with and to support their
individual schools.
But there are some
things P.T.A.s do not do. They do not teach. They do
not tell people which school to attend. They do not
try to tell people what they should study or what
their major should be.
In much the same way,
Masons believe in the importance of religion.
Masonry encourages every Mason to be active in the
religion and church of his own choice. Masonry
teaches that without religion a man is alone and
lost, and that without religion, he can never reach
his full potential.
But Freemasonry does
not tell a person which religion he should practice
or how he should practice it. That is between the
individual and God. That is the function of his
house of worship, not his fraternity, and Masonry is
a fraternity, not a religion.
What is a Masonic
Bible?
Bibles are popular
gifts among Masons, frequently given to a man when
he joins the lodge or at other special events. A
Masonic Bible is the same book anyone thinks of as a
Bible (it is usually the King James translation)
with a special page in the front on which to write
the name of the person who is receiving it and the
occasion on which it is given. Sometimes there is a
special index or information section which shows the
person where in the Bible to find the passages which
are quoted in the Masonic ritual.
If Masonry isn't a
religion, why does it use ritual?
Many of us may think
of religion when we think of ritual, but ritual is
used in every aspect of life. It is so much a part
of us that we just do not notice it. Ritual simply
means that some things are done more or less the
same way each time.
Almost all school
assemblies, for example, start with the principal or
some other official calling for the attention of the
group. Then the group is led in the Pledge of
Allegiance. A school choir or the entire group may
sing the school song. That is a ritual.
Almost all business
meetings of every sort call the group to order, have
a reading of the minutes of the last meeting, deal
with old business, then with new business. That is a
ritual. Most groups use Robert’ s Rules of Order to
conduct a meeting. That is probably the best-known
book of ritual in the world.
There are social
rituals which tell us how to meet people (we shake
hands), how to join a conversation (we wait for a
pause, and then speak), how to buy tickets to a
concert (we wait in line and do not push in ahead of
those who were there first). There are literally
hundreds of examples, and they are all rituals.
Masonry uses a ritual
because it is an effective way to teach important
ideas -- the values we have talked about earlier,
and it reminds us where we are, just as the ritual
of a business meeting reminds people where they are
and what they are supposed to be doing.
Masonry’s ritual is
very rich because it is so old. It has developed
over centuries to contain some beautiful language
and ideas expressed in symbols. But there's nothing
unusual in using ritual. All of us do it every day.
Why does Masonry use symbols?
Everyone uses symbols
every day, just as we do ritual. We use them because
they communicate quickly. When you see a stop sign ,
you know what it means, even if you can not read the
word "stop." The circle and line mean "do not" or
"not allowed." In fact, using symbols is probably
the oldest way of communication and the oldest way
of teaching.
Masonry uses symbols
for the same reason. Some form of the "Square and
Compasses" is the most widely used and known symbol
of Masonry. In one way, this symbol is a kind of
trademark for the fraternity, as the "golden arches"
are for McDonald’ s. When you see the Square and
Compasses on a building, you know that Masons meet
there. And like all symbols, they have a meaning.
The Square symbolizes
things of the earth, and it also symbolizes honor,
integrity, truthfulness, and the other ways we
should relate to this world and the people in it.
The Compasses symbolize things of the spirit, and
the importance of a well-developed spiritual life,
and also the importance of self-control -- of
keeping ourselves within bounds. The G stands for
Geometry, the science which the ancients believed
most revealed the glory of God and His works in the
heavens, and it also stands for God, Who must be at
the center of all our thoughts and of all our
efforts.
The meanings of most
of the other Masonic symbols are obvious. For
example, the gavel teaches the importance of
self-control and self-discipline. The hour-glass
teaches us that time is always passing, and we
should not put off important decisions.
The reasons that the
Lodges have been termed “Blue Lodges” is because
blue is emblematic of friendship, a peculiar
characteristic of ancient craft masonry. The color
for borders of aprons, collars and other regalia of
the symbolic lodge is blue.
So, is Masonry education?
Yes. In a very real
sense, education is at the center of Masonry. We
have stressed its importance for a very long time.
Back in the Middle Ages, schools were held in the
lodges of stonemasons. You have to know a lot to
build a cathedral -- geometry, and structural
engineering, and mathematics, just for a start. And
that education was not very widely available. All
the formal schools and colleges trained people for
careers in the church, or in law or medicine. And
you had to be a member of the social upper classes
to go to those schools. Stonemasons did not come
from the aristocracy. And so the lodges had to teach
the necessary skills and information. Freemasonry’ s
dedication to education started there.
It has continued.
Masons started some of the first public schools in
both Europe and America. We supported legislation to
make education universal. In the 1800s Masons as a
group lobbied for the establishment of
state-supported education and federal land-grant
colleges. Today we give millions of dollars in
scholarships each year. We encourage our members to
give volunteer time to their local schools, buy
classroom supplies for teachers, help with literacy
programs, and do everything they can to help assure
that each person, adult or child, has the best
educational opportunities possible.
And Masonry supports
continuing education and intellectual growth for its
members, insisting that learning more about many
things is important for anyone who wants to keep
mentally alert and young.
Masonry teaches some
important principles. There is nothing very
surprising in the list. Masonry teaches that:
Since God is the Creator, all men and women are the
children of God. Because of that, all men and women
are brothers and sisters, entitled to dignity,
respect for their opinions, and consideration of
their feelings.
Each person must take responsibility for his/her own
life and actions. Neither wealth nor poverty,
education nor ignorance, health nor sickness excuses
any person from doing the best he or she can do or
being the best person possible under the
circumstances.
No one has the right
to tell another person what he or she must think or
believe. Each man and woman has an absolute right to
intellectual, spiritual, economic, and political
freedom. This is a right given by God, not by man.
All tyranny, in every form, is illegitimate.
Each person must learn
and practice self-control. Each person must make
sure his spiritual nature triumphs over his animal
nature. Another way to say the same thing is that
even when we are tempted to anger, we must not be
violent. Even when we are tempted to selfishness, we
must be charitable. Even when we want to "write
someone off," we must remember that he or she is a
human and entitled to our respect. Even when we want
to give up, we must go on. Even when we are hated,
we must return love, or, at a minimum, we must not
hate back. It is not easy!
Faith must be in the
center of our lives. We find that faith in our
houses of worship, not in Freemasonry, but Masonry
constantly teaches that a persons faith, whatever it
may be, is central to a good life.
Each person has a
responsibly to be a good citizen, obeying the law.
That does not mean we can not try to change things,
but change must take place in legal ways.
It is important to
work to make this world better for all who live in
it. Masonry teaches the importance of doing good,
not because it assures a persons entrance into
heaven -- that is a question for a religion, not a
fraternity -- but because we have a duty to all
other men and women to make their lives as
fulfilling as they can be.
Honor and integrity
are essential to life. Life without honor and
integrity is without meaning.
What are the
requirements for membership?
The person who wants
to join Masonry must be a man (it is a fraternity),
sound in body and mind, who believes in God, is at
least the minimum age required by Masonry in his
state, and has a good reputation. (Incidentally, the
"sound in body" requirement -- which comes from the
stonemasons of the Middle Ages -- does not mean that
a physically challenged man cannot be a Mason; many
are).
Those are the only
"formal" requirements. But there are others, not so
formal. He should believe in helping others. He
should believe there is more to life than pleasure
and money. He should be willing to respect the
opinions of others, and he should want to grow and
develop as a human being. |