Freemasonry

• 1. Introduction

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  Freemasonry traces its origins to medieval guilds of stonemasons, and it is considered the oldest existing secular fraternal organisation. Its documents and traditions reach back to the 14th century. The word itself is sometimes spelled Free-Masonry, and its members are known as Free-Masons, Freemasons, or Masons.

  A scholar of Western esotericism, Jan A. M. Snoek, once observed that the best way to characterise Freemasonry is in terms of what it is not, rather than what it is. That is a strange thing to say about an organisation with millions of members. Estimates of worldwide membership in the early 21st century ranged from about two million to more than six million.

  So what holds together a fraternity with no single governing body, no worldwide Grand Lodge, and jurisdictions that do not always recognise one another as legitimate? How does a craft of working stonemasons become a network of aristocrats, revolutionaries, and royalty? And why has it drawn more than 600 Papal pronouncements, bans by Fascists and Communists alike, and centuries of conspiracy theory? The answers begin in a single small room called a Lodge.

• 2. Inside The Lodge

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  The Tyler stands outside the door of a working Lodge, the outer guard who may be paid to secure its privacy. He is one of a small set of officers every Masonic Lodge keeps. Each Lodge has a Master, two Wardens, a treasurer, and a secretary, with other offices varying between jurisdictions. Almost all of these officers are elected or appointed annually.

  Much of what happens inside resembles the business of any small organisation. Lodges approve minutes, elect new members, appoint officers, review bills and annual accounts, and organise social and charitable events. Yet some Lodges, Rites, and jurisdictions treat an opened Lodge as a sacred space where profane business is strictly forbidden. In those traditions, administration is handled before the Lodge is opened, in a separate business meeting, or by special committees.

  The bulk of Masonic ritual consists of degree ceremonies, the heart of every meeting. There are also lectures on Masonic history or ritual, philosophical discussions, and the reading of Masonic papers, called a Piece of Architecture or Planche in some jurisdictions. A member may prove proficiency to the Lodge to obtain a new degree, an act also called a wage increase. At the close, the Lodge may hold a formal dinner called the Agape or festive board, sometimes with toasting and song.

  These private Lodges are the foundational and most autonomous units of the fraternity. They hold the exclusive authority to elect their own candidates, sometimes with sole rights over residents living near their premises. Non-local Lodges also exist, formed around a hobby, sport, Masonic research, business, profession, regiment, or college. Because each jurisdiction is independent and sets its own rules, the wording of ritual, the number of officers, and the layout of the room all vary, leaving little consistency across the craft.

• 3. Degrees And Symbols

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  Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason are the three grades that Freemasonry inherited directly from medieval craft guilds. In separate ceremonies, a candidate is first initiated, then passed, then raised through these degrees. At each, he takes new obligations and is entrusted with grips, signs, and words that signify to other Masons which degrees he has taken. Though nominally secret, these symbols are readily found in public sources, including those published by Masonic organisations themselves.

  The allegorical ceremonies revolve around the construction of the Temple of Solomon and the artistry and death of its chief architect, Hiram Abiff. Many versions of these rituals exist, with different lodge layouts and versions of the Hiramic legend, yet each remains recognisable to any Freemason from any jurisdiction. In some places the themes of each degree are illustrated by tracing boards, painted depictions exhibited according to the degree being worked.

  Freemasonry describes itself as a beautiful system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols. The symbolism draws mainly from the tools of stonemasons, the square and compasses, the level and plumb rule, the trowel, and the rough and smooth ashlars. Moral lessons are attached to each tool, though the assignment is by no means consistent.

  The idea of Masonic brotherhood probably descends from a 16th-century legal definition of a brother as one who has taken an oath of mutual support to another. Masons swear at each degree to support and protect their brethren. In most Lodges the obligation is taken on a Volume of Sacred Law, usually the Bible in the Anglo-American tradition. Once the Craft degrees are conferred, a Mason may join Concordant bodies offering further degrees. The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite holds a system of 33 degrees, while in America the York Rite administers the Royal Arch, Cryptic Masonry, and Knights Templar.

• 4. From Guild To Grand Lodge

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  The Regius Poem, dating to about 1425, sits at the head of a series of documents Masonic historians call the Old Charges. Addressed to operative masons' lodges, they relate the craft to a mythologised history, the duties of its grades, and how oaths of fidelity were to be taken. The 15th century also saw the first evidence of ceremonial regalia.

  There is no clear mechanism by which local trade organisations became today's Masonic Lodges. The minutes of the Lodge of Edinburgh, Mary's Chapel No. 1, in Scotland show a continuity from an operative lodge in 1598 to a modern speculative Lodge, and it is reputed to be the oldest Masonic Lodge in the world. The term speculative described members who did not practice the physical craft. An alternative theory came in 1803, when the German professor J. G. Buhle proposed that Freemasonry grew out of Rosicrucianism, an idea later taken up by Thomas De Quincey.

  Four existing London Lodges met for a joint dinner on St John's Day, the 24th of June 1717, founding the first Grand Lodge. It was first the Grand Lodge of London and Westminster, later the Grand Lodge of England. Over the following decade most existing English Lodges joined the new regulatory body, and the fraternity began to grow. As aristocrats and artists crowded out the original craftsmen, Freemasonry became fashionable throughout Europe and the American colonies.

  A rival body formed on the 17th of July 1751, calling itself the Antient Grand Lodge of England and coining the term modern as an insult for the Premiere Grand Lodge. The two vied for supremacy until they re-united on the 27th of December 1813 to form the United Grand Lodge of England. The Grand Lodge of Ireland and the Grand Lodge of Scotland had formed in 1725 and 1736, respectively.

• 5. Enlightenment And Power

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  By 1789 there were between 50,000 and 100,000 French Masons, making Freemasonry the most popular of all Enlightenment associations. During the Age of Enlightenment, Freemasons formed an international network of like-minded men, often meeting in secret, who promoted Enlightenment ideals and helped diffuse them across Britain and France. British Freemasonry offered a systematic creed with its own myths, values, and rituals, fostering a communal understanding of liberty and equality drawn from guild sociability.

  Margaret Jacob argues that Masonic lodges probably affected society as a whole, because they reconstituted the polity and established a constitutional form of self-government, complete with constitutions, laws, elections, and representatives. The micro-society inside the lodges became a normative model for society at large. On the Continent this was seen as threatening; a Parisian lodge meeting in the mid-1720s was composed of English Jacobite exiles. In French lodges the initiation line ran, As the means to be enlightened I search for the enlightened, while British lodges took on the duty to initiate the unenlightened.

  Not every historian agrees on the political weight of the craft. Robert Roswell Palmer noted that lodges operated separately and that Masons did not act together politically as a group. Daniel Roche contested the claims of egalitarianism, writing that the real equality of the lodges was elitist, attracting only men of similar social backgrounds. American historians note that Benjamin Franklin and George Washington were leading Masons, though the significance of Freemasonry in the revolution remains a topic of debate.

  Norman Davies has argued that Freemasonry was a powerful force in Europe from about 1700 to the twentieth century, reaching practically every country and spreading to colonies in the New World and Asia. He notes prominent members including Montesquieu, Voltaire, Sir Robert Walpole, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington. Steven Bullock adds that English lodges were headed by the Prince of Wales, Prussian lodges by King Frederick the Great, and French lodges by royal princes. Napoleon, as Emperor of the French, selected his own brother as Grand Master of France.

• 6. A Fraternity Worldwide

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  On the 30th of April 1789, George Washington took his oath of office at his first inauguration upon a Bible belonging to St. John's Lodge No. 1 of New York. The oath was administered by Robert Livingston, Chancellor of the State of New York and the first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of that state. The earliest known American lodges, however, were in Pennsylvania, where the port collector John Moore wrote of attending lodges in 1715, two years before the first Grand Lodge formed in London.

  Prince Hall Freemasonry exists because early American lodges refused to admit African Americans. In 1775, Prince Hall and 14 other African American men were initiated into a British military lodge under a warrant from the Grand Lodge of Ireland, having failed to gain admission from the lodges in Boston. In 1784 they obtained a warrant from the Grand Lodge of England and formed African Lodge, Number 459. When the two English grand lodges united in 1813, all U.S.-based Lodges were stricken from their rolls, and African Lodge retitled itself African Lodge, Number 1, becoming a de facto Grand Lodge. Today most US Grand Lodges recognise their Prince Hall counterparts.

  The Spanish government outlawed Freemasonry in its overseas empire in the mid-18th century, yet many Freemasons planned and plotted for independence. Leaders with Freemason membership included Simón Bolívar, Grand Master Francisco de Miranda, José de San Martin, and Bernardo O'Higgins. Two Kingston Freemasons, Wellwood and Maxwell Hyslop, financed the campaigns of Bolívar, to whom six Latin American Republics owe their independence. Bolívar himself was a Mason until, after gaining power in Venezuela, he prohibited all secret societies in 1828.

  The largest single jurisdiction by membership is the United Grand Lodge of England, with a combined membership estimated at 175,000. In the United States, 51 Grand Lodges hold a total membership of around 875,000. The Grand Lodge of Ireland claims roughly 19,000 members, and the Grand Orient de France, the largest in Continental Freemasonry, claims over 50,000. The first lodge in China was the Amity Lodge, constituted at Canton in 1767.

• 7. Schisms And Women

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  A resolution declaring that neither colour, race, nor religion could disqualify a man from Masonry was passed by the Grand Orient de France in 1869. It came after the Grand Orient was shocked by the Grand Lodge of Louisiana's discrimination practices, which rejected a body that admitted Black members. The Grand Lodge of Louisiana withdrew recognition in response and influenced other American Grand Lodges to do the same, opening a lasting division.

  The Lausanne Congress of Supreme Councils of 1875 triggered a second rupture, this one theological. Following a report by a Protestant pastor, the Grand Orient de France concluded that Freemasonry, not being a religion, should not require religious belief. It revised its constitution to emphasise absolute liberty of conscience and human solidarity, removing the requirements of belief in God and the immortality of the soul. The United Grand Lodge of England withdrew recognition, and the separation continues today.

  James Anderson composed the first printed constitutions for Freemasons during the 1720s, and they specifically excluded women. As the craft spread, women were added to the Lodges of Adoption by their continental mason husbands, an experiment the French officially abandoned in the early 19th century. Maria Deraismes was initiated into Freemasonry in 1882, then resigned to let her lodge rejoin its Grand Lodge. Having failed to win acceptance from any masonic governing body, she and Georges Martin started a mixed masonic lodge, and Annie Besant later spread the movement to the English-speaking world.

  The United Grand Lodge of England issued a statement in 1999 recognising two women's grand lodges, The Order of Women Freemasons and The Honourable Fraternity of Ancient Freemasons, as regular in all but the participants. In 2018 it released guidance on transgender members stating that a Freemason who after initiation ceases to be a man does not cease to be a Freemason, and that transgender men are allowed to apply.

• 8. Opposition And Suspicion

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  More than 600 Papal pronouncements have been issued against Freemasonry, beginning with Pope Clement XII's In eminenti apostolatus in 1738. The Catholic Church holds the longest history of objection, based on the allegation that Masonry teaches a naturalistic deistic religion in conflict with Church doctrine, along with the practice of blood oaths. The 1917 Code of Canon Law declared that joining Freemasonry entailed automatic excommunication. As recently as 2023, Pope Francis reaffirmed the ban, citing irreconcilability between Catholic doctrine and Freemasonry in a response to Julito Cortes, Bishop of Dumanguete.

  Protestant objections lean toward allegations of mysticism, occultism, and even Satanism. The Free Methodist Church founder B.T. Roberts opposed the society on moral grounds, declaring that the god of the lodge is not the God of the Bible. In 1933 the Orthodox Church of Greece declared that being a Freemason constitutes an act of apostasy. Yet many Bishops of the Church of England have been Freemasons, including Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher.

  Ottoman Caliph Mahmud I outlawed Freemasonry in the Ottoman Empire in 1748, and from that time it was equated with atheism across the Islamic world. The Syrian-Egyptian theologian Muhammad Rashid Rida, who lived from 1865 to 1935, led the opposition through his pan-Islamic journal Al-Manar, spreading ideas that influenced the Muslim Brotherhood and later movements. In 1972, Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto banned Freemasonry in Pakistan and lodge buildings were confiscated.

  Political suppression came from every direction. In 1799, English Freemasonry narrowly avoided a ban under the Unlawful Societies Act, and the 1826 Morgan Affair sparked the short-lived Anti-Masonic Party in the United States. In Nazi Germany, Freemasons were classified as political prisoners, and the forget-me-not flower served as a secret emblem during that persecution. In Italy, Freemasonry was linked to the irregular Propaganda Due, or P2, lodge, which became embroiled in major financial scandals in the 1970s, a reminder that suspicion of the craft has rarely depended on what happens behind the Tyler's guarded door.