TRESTLEBOARD

March 2001

Calendar of Events

Stated Meetings

* further details forthcoming

Courtesy of http://www.msu.edu/~benyouss/fmason3.htm

Upon the organization of the first Grand Lodge in London, 1717, Freemasonry, as already stated, became a fraternity wholly Speculative. In 1723 that Grand Lodge published a volume of laws, rules, and regulations called the Book of Constitutions which made it clear that a Mason must believe in God but that he was also free to belong to any religion or church of his choice consistent with such a belief. The paragraph in which that provision was made is probably the most influential and famous single piece of writing in the whole literature and history of the Fraternity:

Since Freemasonry is a Fraternity, all matters of theology, creeds, doctrines, and ecclesiastical organizations lie outside its province, so that it never pronounces upon any of them or takes sides with one against the other. In its lodges around the world are men of many religions, and as Rudyard Kipling wrote in one of his most famous Masonic poems, men of many religions may sit down together in the same lodge. Freemasonry makes war on no church, nor does it champion any church, and if some should chance to make war on it, it would let it pass by and would not retaliate. In all the Landmarks, Constitutions, general laws, rules and regulations of all the regular and duly constituted Grand Lodges there is no mention of any church. A member of any Ancient Craft Lodge who might seek to introduce religious controversy into his lodge would stand in danger of being immediately suspended or expelled.

The people of the Middle Ages were confronted by a very difficult problem, as far as skilled work was concerned. On the one hand, there were no public schools, no printed books, no scientific manuals, no trade schools, and no factories in which things could be made by machinery. On the other hand, almost all of the trades and crafts called for highly specialized skill; many of them used raw materials dangerous to handle. In processing those materials they often employed chemicals, fire, etc., hazardous if not understood. Their tools often times were tricky, dangerous, and only an expert could make them or keep them in condition. An untrained man might finally produce something but it was not safe to use because it might turn out to be poisonous, or go to pieces, or fall down.

A workman had to be educated and trained and yet there were no schools or books; how to do it? The people of the Middle Ages solved the problem by organizing all men in each craft, trade, art, or profession into gilds. Each gild had a complete monopoly of its own kind of work. It had local organizations but these observed general rules and practices common to them all. To enter any one of the crafts, to become a carpenter, weaver, leather worker, carver, pharmacist, etc., etc., a youth had to enter a gild as an apprentice without pay, and thereafter prove himself willing to be trained and educated by his master and other master workmen; and he was not permitted to become free to work for himself until after that long apprenticeship, and the apprenticeship itself was not declared ended until he could successfully meet a test to prove his skill.

Freemasons had more reason for demanding a long and rigorous apprenticeship than other crafts because their work was especially hazardous. Stone itself was dangerous to manage not only because it was a large mass with much dead weight but also because when being worked, chips and splinters might go a long distance on all sides. If an arch or pillar was not perfectly constructed it might collapse. The workmen themselves oftentimes were on top of walls, or high up in a tower, or perched on an arch, or wooden scaffoldings. Their tools were many, and frequently were complex, or difficult to use. And the erection of such a building as a cathedral required many kinds of arts and skills.

Because it was for these and many other similar reasons dangerous for an unskilled man to work, the crafts insisted that their own members should keep their own skills, arts, and processes strictly to themselves. These were called trade secrets, and a gild member could be expelled for betraying them.

Freemasonry had its own "trade secrets." It also had in common with the other crafts another form of secrecy which grew out of trade secrets. This may be described as privacy. Since the trade secrets were confined to members only, none but members were permitted to belong to their organization, to have a vote or a voice, or to hold office, or to sit in their meetings. What went on was necessarily private to the members if the trade secrets were to be preserved.

Modern society is full of private circles. A family is one. A club is one. The members of such a circle enjoy among themselves a form of social fellowship which has been knit together because the members of the circle are intimately acquainted and associated in some activity. The local members of a gild were similarly knit together. They and their families might live together in the same quarter of a town, and they were all associated closely, over long years, in their social affairs as much as in their work. A stranger who might intrude was not welcome because he could easily disrupt the filaments which bound the members and their families together. This was social privacy.

The freemasonic lodges of the present day have the same reasons for secrecy, although the form of it, and the details, may differ much from five hundred or a thousand years ago. Such lodges employ many rites, symbols, emblems, and signs, none of them intelligible to any man who has not been initiated, and educated and trained in their meanings. Nearly all non-Masons who undertake to interpret such things end up with notions wildly absurd. Freemasons have much which they must hold in privacy, and for obvious reasons, and they have much among themselves, much that can be described only as a private circle.

By a secret society is meant an organization of men which seeks to keep its own existence dark, which refuse to divulge the names of its members, or its meetings places, or its purposes. It is an underground organization. If this be a correct definition of "secret society" Freemasonry is almost the exact opposite. It does not conceal its existence, but meets in rooms or buildings of its own, which are in the center of cities and towns. It makes no secret of its membership, because those members may walk openly along a public street to a church service, a funeral, or to some such public ceremony as the laying of a corner stone. Each year every Grand Lodge publishes a printed volume of its proceedings. As for the ideals and purposes of Freemasonry, they have been openly stated in more than 20,000 printed books during the past two centuries. There is nothing dark or malign in those secrets; on the contrary they are nearly all secrets of training and teaching, and therefore are secrets of light.

One of the corollaries of that secrecy is that which Freemasons know as non-solicitation. During the long period of Operative Freemasonry it could never have occurred to any Master Mason to go about among parents with eligible sons to petition them to have those sons for admittance to the Masonic Craft. Such a youth had to come of his own free will and accord; he had to have his father or guardian behind him; and he had to have a certain number of qualifications.

Today, after all these centuries, the same rule applies. A petitioner now must be at least twenty-one (in Ohio nineteen, Ed.) years of age; he must not permit any man, Mason or otherwise, to talk him into petitioning for 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. (To be continued next month, Ed.)