Interesting Facts About Freemasonry - Part Two

Today, after all these centuries, the same rule applies. A petitioner now must be at least twenty-one years of age; he must not permit any man, Mason or otherwise, to talk him into petitioning for the Degrees. The whole matter is one for him himself to choose and decide. Freemasonry supports no propaganda; it carries on no missionary enterprise; it has no salesmen; it offers no inducement.

In the early periods of the Craft when a bishop somewhere decided to erect a cathedral he would begin by organizing what was called a "foundation," and once this was done his next step was to secure pledges for a sufficient amount of money. After these funds were in sight, the Foundation selected a Master Mason to act as superintendent, and he in turn sent out word for craftsmen and set a scale of wages. From that time until this, Freemasons have never been mealy-mouthed about money; they have always believed in it; and the whole subject is one of the major themes in the rituals of lodges of Ancient Craft Freemasonry at this time, and comes under the head of "the wages of a Master Mason."

If a man were to object to this on the ground that modern Freemasonry is devoted to idealistic purposes and therefore should leave money out of its philosophy, he would not know whereof he speaks. There is no necessary contradiction between things material and things idealistic. The food which a man places before his family, the roof over their heads, the clothing which he furnishes, and the medicines which he purchases when they are ill, all these are material things, as money is, but they prove that he is possessed of love and affection, which in themselves are not material things.

For such reasons there is no contradiction between this philosophy of wages that Freemasonry teaches and the fact that it itself pays no wages to anybody except to one or two lodge or Grand Lodge officers who must devote the whole of their days to the Craft. A Mason may devote the spare time of his life to his lodge, and yet never receive any pay for his time. He is never paid for being a Mason, or for being a lodge officer, or for his work on lodge and Grand Lodge Committees; and he will be fortunate if after many years of service he is not out of pocket for the years he has served.  Freemasonry attracts men to it as a magnet attracts metal filings. There is much talk about the "mystery of Freemasonry," especially by non-Masons, but the greatest mystery of all is this hold which it has on its own members.

If a non-Mason were to walk into a lodge room for the first time, and when it was not in use, he would find it to be distinctive because each and every detail of its fittings and its ornaments are designed exclusively for Masonic purposes, but at the same time he would see instantly that it is a very simple room, almost a bare one. There are no secret passages in it, no hidden stairs, no caves of darkness, none of the abracadabra which goes with occultism, magic, or mystery-mongering, and could not be because Freemasonry has no similarity to mystery-mongering nor any connection with any of its forms. The business and ritual of a Lodge are plain, wholesome, homely, sane, human, and unafraid of daylight.

If the same non-Mason were to visit a regular meeting of the lodge [imagining such a thing to be possible] he might find only a small number of members present, and these would carry through certain set ceremonies and a fixed Order of Business. From this, and from the simplicity of the room, he easily could come to the conclusion that Freemasonry is not very large or exciting, that nothing much appears to be going on in it, and he might begin to wonder how it has continued for so many centuries and where could lie the secret of its wide influence.

There is a saying that "Freemasonry is largely invisible." The whole of it is never found in any one place, or in any one time, or comprised by any one thing that it does. Much of it belongs to the inner life of a member, especially to his heart and his mind. Its charities may be published or reported, but usually they are not. When its spirit of benevolence and philanthropy makes an impress on a community it does so without proclamations or the ringing of bells. A Mason may encounter its friendship and fraternalism wherever he may be, at work or at home, and they will never be obtrusive.

The practices and teachings of the lodge may at first glance appear to be bare and of an almost childish simplicity, but each one of them, or even one of the elements of which they are composed, will, when a man works his own way into one of them, begin to open out, to grow increasingly large, until at last they seem to fill the sky; they are inexhaustible. Large books have been written about a single symbol or a single law. One Mason may make the ritual his own specialty [many do] ; as the years pass he will find it always enlarging itself in his mind because in it are depths beneath depths and a limitless world of meanings; in all probability no Mason in history has understood it completely or followed it out to its last horizon.

Another may study the fraternity as he would study history, philosophy, theology, law in a university; there are more such students than might be believed. Another may make Masonic law his own field; if he does he will never come to the end of it. Another may devote himself largely to Masonic charity and relief; if he does he is likely to find himself absorbed by it, and will be giving hours and days of his own time to it. Yet another may find his own forte in such of the social arts as music and entertainment, all of which are rich, wide, multifarious. Alongside of all these special activities, and keeping pace with them, has been the vast growth of Masonic literature, in which it is estimated that some 200,000 books have been published in many languages during the past two centuries, and not including Masonic newspapers and magazines.

Freemasonry therefore is a world, and not a monthly meeting, a fact signalized by the lodge room itself which symbolizes the world of mankind, and has the sky for its ceiling. Because there is thus in all strict fact and sober truth such a thing as the Masonic world it is not difficult to see why Freemasons always describe admittance into that world as initiation, a word which means "born into." A newly made Mason is one who has been "born" into the world of Freemasonry. Henceforth he is a citizen of it, and since he is, it is impossible to describe his status in any single term, as that he has become a member, or a dues payer, or what not, because there comes a time when every member sees for himself that always there is "much more." There is literally no end to it.

A new member, once the lodge has approved his petition, makes his way into that world gradually, not all at once spectacularly or dramatically, but in three steps, each of which is sufficient to occupy his mind, usually for from two to four weeks. These steps are called degrees. A degree is an organization of ceremonies and rites, each of which is relatively independent of the others; and no man can become a member of the lodge until he has passed through the three of them. Masons themselves look upon these degrees with a certain solemn reverence; they have an inalienable dignity; and if in some one lodge anything were done to embarrass a candidate, the lodge would be in danger of having its charter removed. There is nothing whatever in them that is similar to a college hazing; still less are they similar to ordeals with which primitive folk still initiate their youth into tribal secrets.

The three degrees of Ancient Craft Freemasonry, composed as they are of ceremonies and rites, are, when taken together, that which Freemasons mean by their ritual. This ritual is almost wonderful beyond words; only a Homer or a Shakespeare could do it justice. A man who studies it until he has learned it "by heart" has a treasure for himself which literally is beyond price. More than one man has risen to eminence in American public life because he learned the art of public address through years of practice in it, or has become a great orator because the ritual taught him a golden vocabulary and initiated him into the secrets of language. If the ritual is taken solely as literature, then it stands on a par with such masterpieces as Homer's Iliad, Dante's Divine Comedy, and Shakespeare's plays. If it is studied from its aspect as something for the mind to think through, it ranks with the philosophical systems of Plato and Aristotle.

If any non-Mason, greatly daring, decides to petition for membership in the Masonic Fraternity he is not to expect a hazing, or any highjinks; he is to take off his shoes, he is to bow his head, and, as the Prophet Samuel said, to stand upon his feet and be a man.  No Freemason now, or at any time during the past thousand years, has ever apologized in advance to any petitioner for what he will find. What such a petitioner will find, among other things, will be references, uttered with awe, to the G.A.O.T.U.. This is not a Gypsy charm, nor a cabbalistic anagram. The letters stand for the name Great Architect of the Universe. This name itself is one used by Freemasons with all humility for the Being who is throughout the world called by the name of the Divine.

the Divine stands in the midst of Freemasonry; therefore a petitioner need not fear lest, upon entering it, his spirit will ever be treated with indignity or assaulted by impiety. No non-Mason who may chance to knock at the door of a lodge can have his petition received, still less voted on, unless he has first proved himself to possess certain qualifications.

All the mystification which have been woven about the subject can be dispelled at a stroke, by asking a single question, which also is a simple one: Qualified for what? It is obvious that Shakespeare was qualified to write the greatest plays ever penned; but he may not have been qualified for membership in the iron monger's gild. Albert Einstein was qualified to discover the theory of relativity, but possibly was not qualified for work in a factory. A lad who is qualified to enter a liberal arts college, may not be qualified for a school in medicine or in law.  Qualified for what? Freemasonry's own answer to that question is, qualified to be a Mason, qualified to be the member of a lodge, and to perform his duties therein.

Among the forty-nine Grand Lodges in the United States there is a certain amount of variation in their formulations of the qualifications required; but the differences are nearly always in phraseology, not in substance. A petitioner must be of lawful age; he must be morally responsible for his own actions; ethically, he must be "under the tongue of good report;" he must come of his own free will and accord; physically he must at least be able to perform the Masonic duties which will be required of him, and have sufficient monetary means to pay his share of expenses; and he must be personally acceptable to the men already in the lodge's membership, because he must be agreeable to them since from then on he will be bound to each of them by the Mystic Tie. 

A non-Mason cannot DEMAND membership but must humbly seek it. In the language of the lodge he is called a petitioner and the form which he signs is called a petition. Even if a lodge is willing to receive his petition, his status remains unchanged until the petition has been balloted on.

The petition itself, along with whatever information may accompany it, must show that the petitioner possesses the required qualifications. This is a fact of the first importance because it means that a man cannot even begin to apply for admittance into the Masonic Fraternity unless he already possesses the reputation for possessing a sound character. Freemasonry is not a reformatory. Its purpose is not to turn bad men into good men, but to make good men better. Also, it tries to make them happier, and does so by surrounding them with friends and fellows, and by opening up vistas and opportunities for many things both fine and great.

Once a man is admitted into a lodge he is not permitted to run loose in it. Freemasonry is a CONSTITUTED fraternity. Above and behind it are the Ancient Landmarks, which neither a lodge nor a Grand Lodge can alter or ignore. A Grand Lodge itself has its own constitution. A lodge has its own installed officers, fixed orders of procedure, and tolerates no violation of peace and harmony. Nothing ever is altered to suit the position, fame, fortune, or personal predilections of a petitioner; he must accept Freemasonry as it is, or let it alone. A lodge itself cannot come into existence unless the Masons who will compose it pledge themselves to abide by the Ancient Landmarks, the constitutions, and the general laws; it cannot decide for itself what Freemasonry is or is not, and could never do so even though its members might vote unanimously to make the attempt. It is as if Freemasonry were to say:

"I am what I am. My members must accept me as I am or not at all. It would be better for me not to exist than for the members here, there, and everywhere to keep altering me to correspond with their own schemes, theories, or whims."

As a result of that which Masons know as "the principle of universality" ["a lodge is permitted to exist wherever it CAN"] lodges are at work in remote countries. How can this be? A Korean cannot converse with an Englishman, nor could a man of Burma understand the language of a man of Michigan. From one of these countries to another there also is an unlimited variety of costumes, customs, traditions, ways of thought, and ways of life. How can lodges which must remain alike take root in the midst of such unlike conditions? What in Freemasonry is translatable?

There are two large answers. One is that it consists in essence of a number of fundamentals which all mankind need, know, and understand, such as brotherliness, charity, good will, fellowship, friendship, character, and the search for the Divine. The other is that it uses rites, symbols, and emblems. A symbol says much without saying anything, and what it says may call for thought or for exposition but does not need to be translated. The level, the square and compasses, lights, the plumb, all such are immediately understood by any normal man anywhere. Gestures, symbols, postures, emblems, signs, it would be incorrect to describe such things as a language; if they were, they would constitute as nearly a universal language as language is capable of. [To this day, white men as well as Indians can make their way across this continent from one American Indian people to another by means of sign language.]

Some years ago, Douglas Malloch, a beloved Masonic poet, began one of his lyrics with two stanzas which ever since have thrilled the blood of Freemasons:

Fine men have walked this way before
Whatever Lodge your Lodge may be,
Whoever stands before the door,
The sacred arch of Masonry,
Stands where the wise, the great, the good
In their own time and place have stood.

You are not Brother just with these,
Your friends and neighbors; you are kin
With Masons down the centuries;
This room that now you enter in
Has felt the tread of many feet,
For here all Masonry you meet.