The recent publication of “The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown seems to have stirred an interest in freemasonry in the online world. A search on #freemasonry on Twitter reveals a mix of curiosity, ignorance and, sadly, bigotry. These are balanced by tweets by freemasons who enjoy what they do and are proud of the organisation they are part of.
Over on YouTube the irrational conspiracy theories go into top gear, with outlandish (and, crucially – unsupported) claims that freemasonry is, among other things:
- a religion.
- a satanic cult.
- part of the “New World Order” – whatever that is.
- a secretive network of highly-placed politicians, bankers and businessmen bent on obtaining personal wealth and privilege.
- ruled by space lizards ( I kid you not).
There’s more, but I won’t bore you. What amazes me is that there is a market for this stuff, that people are happy to get information not from the organisation itself or from impartial academic sources, but from bigoted and intolerant rants that merely repeat myths, rehash hoaxes and misquote from alleged masonic authorities.
Over in the mainstream media freemasonry has been getting fairer coverage recently, but there is still the odd local newspaper that runs stories like “Is your local councillor a freemason?”, as though being biased against freemasons is fine. Such bias is not acceptable when used against other lawful groups in society. Replace the word “freemason” in that headline with “Jew” or “homosexual” and you’ll appreciate how antiquated and offensive some attitudes towards freemasonry are.
Society needs villains to heap its own insecurities onto. Once racism and homophobia were considered acceptable ways of doing that but they, along with other prejudices, were outlawed or deemed socially unacceptable.
My point here is that that society needs to grow up a little and take an unbiased view of freemasonry, not allowing prejudice and that nasty urge to want a scapegoat for its own insecurities to get in the way of rational, evidence-based enquiry. After that, you may find freemasonry is not your thing. You may find it pointless, silly, even. Whatever, but you won’t pre-judge it and assume that rumours put about by people with very biased agendas amount to facts.
This plea to give us a fair hearing is no good though without one more thing though and that is understanding. It’s pretty well accepted that people can be suspicious of that which they don’t understand. Freemasonry, over the years, has not helped itself by being coy about what it does, so that void of public understanding is filled by rumour, myth and some pretty virulent prejudice. Nowadays, though we have open days and websites and will drone on about our interesting lifestyle if you let us.
So let me try and clear up what Freemasonry is, what it does and why. In doing so, I must stress that these opinions are my own and not those of any masonic body. It also reflects my experiences as a mason in the English constitution. This is worth saying because much of the anti-masonic material on the net is directed at American-style masonry, and in particular, one branch of it, the Scottish Rite.
So, what is freemasonry?
It’s an organisation that teaches men how to be better men. That word “better” is worth exploring. It encompasses moral, intellectual and spiritual self-improvement and does not include empowerment, or material enrichment. Charity is not, you might be surprised to hear, one of our goals. Rather, charity is an expression of the moral development cultivated by masonic teaching.
“Teaches men how to be better men” – that’s an old-fashioned concept isn’t it?
Yes it is, and because people are incredulous that that really is our goal, they assume we must be lying and that it is just a smokescreen for some other, entirely immoral enterprise.
I sometimes shake my head in dismay when I see the vitriolic bile aimed at freemasonry claiming that we are trying to corrupt the world, when actually we are trying to do precisely the opposite - cultivating integrity – quietly, privately, by working at an individual level to make better men.
What happens in a lodge meeting?
After the usual businees of any club or association – reading minutes, correspondance, votes etc., if a candidate is available one of three degree ceremonies will be performed. A degree is a sort of play in which the candidate (a person joining freemasonry) is taught moral lessons. This is done by means of lectures recited to him by heart, explanations of symbolic paintings called tracing boards and small dramas which add more impact to the lessons. The first of these degrees is called initiation, the second passing and the third raising. The degrees use the tools of mediaeval stonemasons as allegorical symbols and Old Testament stories surrounding the building of King Solomon’s temple to teach kindness to others, the value of intellectual growth and contemplation of our own mortality as a motivator to do good works.
A part of each of the ceremonies involves passing on “modes of recognition” – words and signs that are used to demonstrate qualification in a particular degree before being allowed to move on to the next. This is thought to have been inherited from illiterate mediaeval stonemasons who did not have certificates to prove their qualifications. These modes of recognition are still used today but only in in the degree ceremonies, but masons promise to keep them secret to demonstrate their ability to keep a promise, an essential part of integrity.
The members of the lodge will work together to conduct ceremonies that should, if done well, have an uplifting intellectual and philosophical impact on the candidate that stays with him through his life, the memories of which act as a moral compass.
The atmosphere in the lodge during these ceremonies is friendly and supportive: not, as anti-masons would have you believe, sinister and malevolent. Although the content of the ceremonies is not revealed to him beforehand (so as not to spoil the impact) at no point is he made to feel intimidated and he is always free to stop if he wants.
After completion of the third degree, at which point he becomes a master mason, the new mason is eligible to become one of the officers of the lodge, ultimately spending a year as Master of his lodge. After the third degree he is also eligible to participate in other masonic orders if he chooses. Among these are Royal Arch and Rose Croix (known as Scottish Rite in the USA)
The rewards of membership are very different from the popular myths. Freemasonry builds character and self-confidence. It encourages teamwork, moral growth and charitable works. These are the goals and the rewards of the degree ceremonies, which, incidentally, are available for anyone to read.
After the formal part of each meeting, most lodges will hold a “Festive Board” – a convivial dinner punctuated by speeches, toasts and sometimes, singing.
“Freemasonry is a secret society”
It is because we operate at an individual level, teaching values, not dogma, to individual men that we function in private. Freemasonry uses a quaint teaching method – ritual – to add impact to the lessons learned. It’s a bit like role play in that soft-skills course your boss sent you on. If the content of those rituals is familiar to the man experiencing them , then that impact will be lessened. So we don’t reveal the content of the ceremony in advance. To that is to be added the principle that the lessons that a man learns in the masonic degrees are, in part, lessons about himself. They are personal. Someone in psychotherapy who has a sudden and profound insight into their motivations that helps them to grow psychologically is unlikely to want to cheapen that insight by shouting it from the rooftops. And those lessons – the real “secrets” of freemasonry can be like that.
In fact, the content of the rituals is available for anyone to buy. We aren’t required to keep our membership secret and our meeting places are not hidden. Lodges have websites and open days. Masons are on Twitter. You can go on tours of masonic halls.
I have known masons who prefer to keep their membership secret but ironically they do so because they work in the public sector where they believe discrimination against freemasons is so rife that their careers will be jeopardised if their membership is known to their employers and colleagues.
During the Second World War, British freemasonry adopted a policy of not revealing membership because of the very real threat of invasion from Nazi Germany which, equating freemasons with Jews, was sending freemasons to concentration camps. The (given that historical context) understandable habit of being coy about our activities stuck after the war, but by the 1990’s a policy of openness had been adopted. Too late though: the void in public understanding of freemasonry was filled by the products of people’s imaginations.
While on the subject of secrecy, it’s worth considering that every day there are meetings of clubs, societies and companies from which you and I are excluded. So the concept of meeting in private is hardly new or unacceptable and, now you know why freemasons do what they do, hopefully you’ll have a better understanding of why we do it in private.
Let’s address some other misconceptions:
Freemasonry is “satanic”, magical or “occult”
There is no content in freemasonry that is “satanic” or “magical”. Because some of the philosophical influences on freemasonry as it evolved were from what has become known as the “Hermetic/Kabbalistic Tradition”, freemasonry borrowed some of the principles and symbolism of this school. Unfortunately, freemasonry doesn’t have a monopoly on them and they have been used by unsavoury occultist figures. It didn’t help either that a self-confessed hoaxer, Leo Taxil, put out literature in fin de siècle Paris, claiming that freemasons worshipped the devil. Amazingly, some not very discriminating anti-masons still perpetuate the Taxil hoax in the 21st century as being true. Their audiences, clearly not well-skilled in critical thinking, laps it up.
Those who claim “satanic” influences have yet to produce, after hundreds of years, any material or documentary evidence to support their claims: something like, for example, a statue or printed ritual referring to “Satan” or “Lucifer”. This isn’t because we are really good at hiding such things. No organisation could remain that watertight for hundreds of years. Sometimes, the truth really is that simple: there is no evidence because there is no link with “satanism”.
You swear oaths to support each other and keep secret evidence of crimes
Wrong. We swear to uphold principles that should be acceptable to everybody. In simple terms, we promise to behave morally and honourably. We don’t promise to obey the commands of any ruler, nor do we promise anything that most sane and well adjusted people would be unhappy about.
We do promise to keep each others lawful secrets. In reality (not a place frequented by most conspiracy theorists) that is most likely to practically express itself in not revealing to someone else that our friend is having trouble with his personal waterworks and needs to see a urologist.
Freemasons are also informed on several occasions that we should not and cannot expect to gain financially or in any other worldly way from our membership. They can be – and are – are expelled for such behaviour. So power and influence are explicitly off the agenda.
It’s elitist, exclusive and you have to invited to join
Elitism – No. A very big part of the ethos of freemasonry is that men from all social backgrounds can put aside their differences and meet on the same level. This is reflected in the makeup of lodges, which generally reflects the social and ethnic mix in the population at large. Incidentally, this is the reason why we wear white gloves – so that one’s hands do not reveal one’s profession.
Exclusiveness – Guilty on that count, but only in the sense that we want exclude men of bad character. We want men of integrity, not the dodgy types that would sell your mother a useless car. Freemasonry’s culture is very inclusive and your accent, class, race or religion don’t matter. True, gender is relevant, but it is not true to say that freemasonry is barred to women: there are two grand lodges in the UK that are for women only. there is also an internation order of Co-Masonry that admits both sexes. Generally speaking in the English-speaking world freemasonry demands that the candidate professes a belief in a supreme being.
You don’t have to be invited: it’s actually the other way around. We like men who see something positive in freemasonry to make the first move. We aren’t allowed to cajole people into joining, so we don’t “recruit” in that sense.
You swear bloody oaths
No we don’t. English freemasonry has for some years now included only a reference to the penalties for failure to uphold the standards expected by our obligations. Effectively, the candidate is told that these were once the penalties and is not told that they apply to him if he fails to keep his obligation. This may vary in other constitutions, but before you say “Aha! So some masons do swear bloody oaths!”, bear in mind that freemasonry is very traditional and loves to keep to the wording of the ceremonial that was used in the era in which it evolved – the 17th and 18th centuries. In those times it was common for someone swearing a legally-binding oath to express the wish that some bloody penalty would be conflicted on him him/her if he/she failed to keep to the terms of that oath. The implication is not and never was that another mason would apply that penalty!
You don’t allow Catholics to join
Not true at all. The Catholic church has declared that anyone joining freemasonry may not receive communion and is in a state of “grave sin”. We don’t exclude applicants because they are Catholics. What would be the point? We don’t even ask an applicant what his religion is as it’s none of our business. We simply ask if he believes in a supreme being.
You use secret handshakes and signs to obtain favours
I have never seen this happen and am confident that none of the masons I have met would ever do this: it goes completely against the whole point of freemasonry, which is cultivating morality, not corrupting it. Trying to do it would be painfully embarrassing as the recipient of such a handshake, were he a mason, would be appalled. It would probably, therefore, be completely counter-productive and get the mason thrown out of his lodge. Such “modes of recognition” only function in the context of a masonic ceremony where they are used to indicate the degree that someone has achieved.
“A high-ranking mason”
The media loves this expression, particularly if the person in question is suspected of being up to no good. It betrays a misunderstanding about the difference between masonic office and degree. Freemasonry has a leadership structure which goes, roughly, master of a lodge, provincial officer (of which there are many), Provincial Grand Master, Grand Lodge Officer (many at a national level), then Grand Master. An officer of Grand rank in a national grand lodge could reasonably be said to be a “high ranking mason”.
Outside “Craft” freemasonry there are other masonic systems whose degrees expand on the material taught in the Craft’s three degrees, but are not superior to them. One of these, the Rose Croix (or Scottish Rite) has thirty-three degrees. Admission to the last of these, the 33rd, is an honour bestowed on those who have given much to the Scottish Rite, usually over a lifetime. A 33rd degree Scottish Rite mason whose has no executive role in a grand lodge (which is quite possible) is not necessarily, therefore, a “high-ranking mason”.
The Scottish Rite’s 33rd degree is the pinnacle of freemasonry
In the USA and some other countries, the Scottish Rite is recognised by Craft or Blue Lodge Freemasonry and it is not unusual to think of freemasonry there in terms of a hierarchical structure with the three craft degrees at the bottom and the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite at the top. Two points here: 1. There is no degree higher than the 3rd degree, Master Mason and 2. In other countries, like England, the Scottish Rite is not recognised by Grand Lodge, so that elaborate hierarchy of 33 degrees does not exist as a single system. Personally speaking, I prefer not to use the term “33rd degree mason”, preferring instead “33rd degree Scottish Rite mason”.
Freemasonry is a religion or a cult
Religion? No. Despite what has been claimed, freemasonry puts forward no plan of salvation and has no religious dogma. The freemason is free to interpret the lessons of the degrees as his conscience dictates and they are not treated as religious creeds. Regular freemasonry does demand a belief in a supreme being but there is no distinct masonic god. Anyone who tells you so is a very desperate conspiracy theorist.
Cult? Emphatically not. Personally, I find cults abhorrent and have never found any of the classic traits of cults in freemasonry, like accumulation of money, creepy coercive culture, adulation of a charismatic leader, deprivation of free will and liberty. By contrast, the culture of freemasonry is welcoming, democratic, tolerant and genuinely friendly without the ulterior motives that characterise cults.
“You conduct bizarre ceremonies”
Out of context, ritual can seem odd. Look at the central rites of some of the worlds’ major religions and they can seem pretty odd, disturbing even, too, if viewed out of context. If you appreciate that the symbols we use all have a meaning within specific ceremonies, then they make more sense. Yes, the skull, for example, will appear as a symbol. This isn’t to lend a creepy atmosphere and scare the candidate: it’s to make him think of his own mortality, that we all die some day and that we should make the most of life now. Such symbols are designed to provoke the imagination and stimulate thought. You didn’t realise freemasonry was so philosophical? The philosophical ideas in its ceremonies are central to the learning experience that is freemasonry. We are much more than an eccentric dining club!
“Freemasonry thinks all religions are equally valid”
Freemasonry doesn’t have opinions about the merits of one religion over another, but only asks if a man believes in a supreme being. Discussion of religious or political topics is forbidden in the lodge. This allows men from many monotheistic faiths to meet together in harmony to participate in self-improvement. Originally freemasonry was only for Christians but this restriction was removed in the nineteenth century; an act, in my opinion, of tolerance that was way ahead of its time. If only some of freemasonry’s detractors were as tolerant!
“The Lost Secret is about Freemasonry”
The Lost Secret by Dan Brown is about Scottish Rite freemasonry, one branch of freemasonry. The book and the media flurry around it, gives, in my opinion, the false impression that the Scottish Rite is freemasonry, whereas it is only joined by about a third of US masons. Still it’s great that Brown is generally pretty positive about freemasonry in general and I dare say that his novel represents the best PR for the Craft that it has ever had.
“Freemasonry has 360 degrees”
This a myth put about in recent years on the net that is so laughable I have to question the gullibility of people who take it seriously. I hate to appear to dignify it by responding to the claim, but:
Each masonic degree ceremony can last up to a couple of hours, maybe more in some cases. They are elaborate plays in which the candidate plays a central role. They require the learning of lines and choreography to ensure that everything happens at the right time. The degrees are put on by men who have jobs and families and who have to learn their parts in their own time, then rehearse them several times. Each degree will also have its own props and sometimes furnishings for the lodge room. For a lodge to conduct the three craft degrees a few times over a year is pretty time-consuming, therefore. You can hopefully see then the sheer implausibility of there being a further 327 degrees, presumably above the Scottish Rite’s 33rd. The logistics would be impossible.
That’s 654 hours times, let’s say 10 masons – 6540 man-hours. All to be conducted in utter secrecy. No mason has ever heard of these other 327 degrees by the way, so presumably the ritual books with the words for them don’t exist and the lines have to be memorised. Oh, and somewhere needs to be found for 327 sets of aprons and other paraphernalia associated with each degree. It takes about three months for everyone to learn their roles and rehearse for each degree ceremony, so if you did all 327 back to back, one every three months, it would take 81 years to conduct all of them!
If you have come across that particular claim, I hope you will feel confident enough now to laugh hysterically, as I did.
Freemasonry is part of the “Illuminati”
This one is quite simple. Freemasonry exists. The “Illuminati” don’t. There was an order in 18th cenury Bavaria called the Illuminati that tried to infiltrate freemasonry and lure away disenchanted masons but there is no plausible evidence that it exists today. Anyway, the malevolent values of the supposed contemporary”Illuminati” as envisaged in the fevered imaginations of the conspiracy theorists are quite opposite to those of freemasonry.
“Freemasonry is a global organisation”
Freemasonry is practised all over the world and its existence in a country is often a good measure of how tolerant and democratic a society is – this isn’t a coincidence as tolerance and democracy are masonic values. But there is no single global organisation: By and large each country, or state in the USA, has its own sovereign Grand Lodge. The structure of freemasonry varies by country too. Some masonic orders exist in some countries but not others. Some grand lodges do not recognise each other as being truly masonic so their members are banned from reciprocal visiting. If freemasonry really were a sinister global organisation devoted to establish a “New World Order” one world government, don’t you think we’d have the sense to organise ourselves a bit better at an international level?
“Freemasonry is Zionist”
This myth appears popular in some islamic countries. It is indeed a myth – freemasonry doesn’t have a corporate view on any religious or political movement. The misunderstanding seems to come from the fact that masonic ceremonial makes use of stories in the Bible’s Old Testament to convey some of its moral lessons. As these stories are about Jewish figures and events in Jewish history the conspiracist myth-makers , never too fussy about facts, turned this coincidence into the assertion that freemasons are somehow associated with Judaism and if that was true, then in this tortured logic, they must be Zionists. This myth bemuses freemasons as much as the one about us being satanists – we are different villains for different cultures.
In “Anglo-Saxon” freemasonry (that generally found in the English-speaking world) freemasons aren’t alllowed to discuss politics or religion in lodges, so that hottest of politico-religious hot topics, Zionism wouldn’t ever be thought of, let alone be discussed.
“You are only part of the outer circle”
Oops! We forgot to put away the “Baphomet” statue and the outer circle guys have spotted it!
A common – and laughable – claim made by New World Order-obsessed anti-masons is that freemasons who object to their absurd claims are ignorant of the existence of a sinister “inner circle” with freemasonry with higher degress that embrace “satansim”. You would think that in 300 years of existence evidence of this inner circle would have leaked out or at least be rumoured to exist among the “outer circle” masons. But it didn’t leak and there are no rumours. No organisation could be that watertight for hundreds of years. The antimasons who make these naïve claims amazingly know more about the structure of freemasonry than men who have been in it for much of their lives!
“Aleister Crowley was a freemason”
Crowley was initiated into a lodge not recognised by the United Grand Lodge of England and went on to rail against freemasonry as he developed his own magical occultic order with values remote from freemasonry’s. To imply that he was some sort of spokesman for freemasonry is therefore disingenuous in the extreme.
“But Albert Pike wrote…”
Albert Pike wrote on a vast range of subjects to do with comparative religion, many well outside the sphere of freemasonry. His books didn’t represent the official teaching of freemasonry. That is contained in the rituals. He is frequently quoted out of context (a lazy and unworthy trick) and it should be noted that he wrote, over a century ago, for one branch of freemasonry in one country: the Southern Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite in the USA, representing about 20% of American masons. Fundamentalists don’t mention (because it damages their case) that he was never a spokesman for freemasonry as a whole, still less that his opinions were personal or that they are not shared by freemasons generally. Indeed, I expect most, if not all masons would disagree with certain of his opinions.
I have done an – admittedly unscientific – poll of masons I know here in the UK and all of them haven’t heard of Pike. My impression is that even if a mason here has heard of him, he has nor contemporary relevance.
Anti-masons like to quote a reference to “Lucifer” by Pike as evidence that freemasonry is “satanic”. Clearly the fact there there is no reference to “Lucifer”, “Satan” or satanic ideals in masonic ritual, symbols or architecture and that freemasonry teaches morality and good works are not in themselves reason to dismiss this silly claim. But just to debunk it thoroughly, the author John J. Robinson points out that the Christian identification of the name Lucifer (simply the Morning Star and in Pike’s undertanding a metaphor for a vehicle for knowledge – “light”) with Satan is due to a mis-translation in the King James version of the Bible. Rather than rehash it here, read Robinson’s account here, dwelling thoughtfully on the five paragraphs starting “The first problem is that Lucifer is a…”
“JayZ is a freemason”
I’ve seen nothing to prove he is. The pseudo-masonic stuff he does with triangles and all-seeing eyes has more to do with pop culture’s representations of freemasonry rather than what freemasons use themselves. The triangle shape with his hands thing seems just silly to me and is the sort of carrying on that would be likely to prevent someone getting into freemasonry: it’s just embrarrassing! Oh, and by the way, if you are tweeting about this subject, please stop using “freemasonry ” and terms like “luciferian”/”satanic” in the same tweet: it’s a connection that’s wrong, offensive and shows that you prefer to believe unsubstantiated, prejudiced rumours than doing your own research.
The Pyramid and “All-Seeing Eye” are masonic symbols.
No they’re not. Egyptian motifs occasionally appear in the architecture or decor of masonic buildings but not because they have any special masonic significance. Rather, they reflect an interest by the architects/designers (who weren’t necessarily masons) in Egyptian styles. You might as well claim that classical columns are uniquely a symbol of bankers because they sometimes appear at the front of banks. The art in lodge rooms, if any, is often influenced by the content of the degree ceremonies, which reflects Biblical themes, not ancient Egyptian motifs. There was once an “Egyptian” order of freemasonry in Europe long ago that was inspired by ancient Egyptian themes, but it didn’t become part of the mainstream of freemasonry.
The “All-Seeing Eye” was a symbol representing God in religious art before well before freemasonry borrowed it. Look for it, for example, in 18th century southern German church art.
The Owl, beloved of the conspiracy theorists as a symbol of the “Illuminati” doesn’t appear, as far as I know, in freemasonry at all.
You dress up and wear false beards
I saw a History Channel documentary the other day about freemasonry in which an American lodge enacted the 3rd degree for the cameras. As the 3rd degree is a drama, the various characters were dressed up to suit their roles. This included the wearing of false beards.
I’m not familiar with American freemasonry and it would appear that some lodges there do put on costumes to heighten the impact of the degree ceremonies. It’s not something I have seen done in any English or Scottish lodges. If I was asked to wear a false beard I would probably decline on the grounds that it would tickle.
In the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite it is revealed that the true masters of freemasonry and the world are lizards from Sirius
Okaaaaay… All I can say to that is “keep taking the pills”. ROFL. If you believe this sort of stuff, as well as taking the pills, you might go on a Critical Thinking course where you can learn about the importance of evidence and quality, impartial sources.
A plea to common sense
If you are trying to find out about freemasonry, don’t rely on material with biased and intolerant agendas. This, unfortunately, appears to make up the majority of the material about freemasonry on the Internet. If you are getting your information this way, what you are doing is comparable to forming an opinion about a particular racial group by reading the website of a racist organisation opposed to that race: hardly impartial.
If you still believe the anti masonic propaganda that freemasonry is evil or “satanic” and is trying to take over the world, ask yourself the question if that were true, why does freemasonry teach men moral lessons like compassion, charity and honesty? Run the world? Some lodges have trouble organising a barbecue.
The conspiracy theories that are put about on the net are seriously lacking one vital factor that would give them credibility – evidence. That’s important. Pointing out this serious deficit to the conspiracy theorists has, in my experience, resulted in personal attacks instead of rational debate. Are you really going to believe an uninformed YouTube comentator who tries to back their arguments not with rhetoric, logic or evidence, but with ad hominem insults?
Be fussy about your sources of information. Get in touch with a mason or a lodge and ask. You’ll be surprised at how warm the response will be. Or if you are the intellectual type, do some research by reading academic research into freemasonry by respectable historians who aren’t masons, so you know that they won’t be biased.
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