WHAT'S A
MASON?
That's 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 aren't 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.
(We'll look at some of these things later.)
WHAT'S MASONRY?
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
In 1717, Masonry
created a formal organization in
IF MASONRY STARTED IN
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
WHAT'S 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
If you've ever
watched C-SPAN's coverage of the House of Commons in
Every lodge has
an altar holding a "Volume of the Sacred Law." In the
WHAT GOES ON IN A LODGE?
This is a good
place to repeat what we said earlier about why men become Masons:
- 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.
The Lodge is the
center of these activities.
Masonry
does things in the world.
Masonry teaches
that each person has a responsibility to make things better in the world. Most
individuals won't 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
Some services are
less noticeable, like helping a widow pay her electric bill or buying coats and
shoes for disadvantaged children. And there's 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's easier to practice these virtues
when you know that those around you think they are important, too, and won't
laugh at you. That's a major reason that Masons enjoy being together.
Masons
enjoy each other's company.
It's 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'S A DEGREE?
A degree is a
stage or level of membership. It's 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'll 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 isn't
"secretive," although it sometimes has that reputation. Masons
certainly don't 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 pretenses.
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't be talked about, can't 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's a wonderful feeling,
but it's something you simply can't explain to another person. That's 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'll understand what we mean.
"Secret
societies" became very popular in
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 "
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 don't teach. They
don't tell people which school to attend. They don't 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'S 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's 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's so much a part of us that we just don't 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's
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's a ritual. Most groups use Robert's Rules of
Order to conduct a meeting. That's 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 don't 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's an effective way to teach important ideas -- the values we've
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.</b.
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't
read the word "stop." The circle and line mean "don't" 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.
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
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.
WHAT DOES MASONRY TEACH?
Masonry teaches
some important principles. There's 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 isn't 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 person's 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 doesn't mean we can't 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 person's entrance into heaven -- that's 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's 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 -- doesn't 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.
HOW DOES A MAN BECOME A
MASON?
Some men are
surprised that no one has ever asked them to become a Mason. They may even feel
that the Masons in their town don't think they are "good enough" to
join. But it doesn't work that way. For hundreds of years, Masons have been
forbidden to ask others to join the fraternity. We can talk to friends about
Masonry. We can tell them about what Masonry does. We can tell them why we
enjoy it. But we can't ask, much less pressure, anyone to join.
There's a good
reason for that. It isn't that we're trying to be exclusive. But becoming a
Mason is a very serious thing. Joining Masonry is making a permanent life
commitment to live in certain ways. We've listed most of them above -- to live
with honor and integrity, to be willing to share with and care about others, to
trust each other, and to place ultimate trust in God. No one should be
"talked into" making such a decision.
So, when a man
decides he wants to be a Mason, he asks a Mason for a petition or application.
He fills it out and gives it to the Mason, and that Mason takes it to the local
lodge. The Master of the lodge will appoint a committee to visit with the man
and his family, find out a little about him and why he wants to be a Mason,
tell him and his family about Masonry, and answer their questions. The
committee reports to the lodge, and the lodge votes on the petition. If the
vote is affirmative -- and it usually is -- the lodge will contact the man to
set the date for the Entered Apprentice Degree. When the person has completed
all three degrees, he is a Master Mason and a full member of the fraternity.
SO, WHAT'S A MASON?
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
When is a man a Mason?
When he can
look out over the rivers, the hills, and the far horizon with a profound sense
of his own littleness in the vast scheme of things, and yet have faith, hope,
and courage -- which is the root of every virtue.
When he knows
that down in his heart every man is as noble, as vile, as divine, as diabolic,
and as lonely as himself, and seeks to know, to forgive, and to love his fellow
man.
When he knows
how to sympathize with men in their sorrows, yea, even in their sins -- knowing
that each man fights a hard fight against many odds.
When he has learned how to make friends and to keep them, and above all
how to keep friends with himself.
When he loves
flowers, can hunt birds without a gun, and feels the thrill of an old forgotten
joy when he hears the laugh of a little child.
When he can be happy and high-minded amid the meaner drudgeries of
life.
When
star-crowned trees and the glint of sunlight on flowing waters subdue him like
the thought of one much loved and long dead.
When no voice
of distress reaches his ears in vain, and no hand seeks his aid without
response.
When he finds
good in every faith that helps any man to lay hold of divine things and sees
majestic meanings in life, whatever the name of that faith may be.
When he can
look into a wayside puddle and see something beyond mud, and into the face of
the most forlorn fellow mortal and see something beyond sin.
When he knows how to pray, how to love, how to hope.
When he has
kept faith with himself, with his fellow man, and with his God; in his hand a
sword for evil, in his heart a bit of a song -- glad to live, but not afraid to
die!
Such a man has
found the only real secret of Masonry, and the one which it is trying to give
to all the world.
This document, in
pamphlet form, is available from the
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of "What's A Mason?" write:
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