What Masons Do

Lodges have regular meetings throughout the year. Most meet once a month for a business meeting, where communications are read, bills are paid, new members are voted on, and the members catch up on each other's lives. Often, guest speakers are invited, or a member will give a presentation on the ritual, history, philosophy, or symbols of Freemasonry.

Other special meetings are held to initiate new members and perform the various ceremonies to advance them to full membership. And because the primary goal of Freemasonry is fraternalism, a meal is usually served before or after the meeting, either in the lodge building or at a nearby restaurant.

Modern Freemasonry started out by gathering in taverns over a nice dinner, and Masons have spent 300 years obsessing on the importance of the culinary arts. Their feasts are called Festive Boards (from the days when board meant "table"), and a tradition of many of these gatherings is a series of ceremonial toasts.

Still, the mission of the Masonic lodge is to make new Masons, and that is done by conferring degrees.

The three degrees

REMEMBER

The ceremonies a new member must go through are called degrees. There are three of them - Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason - and they are based upon the levels of membership in the old medieval craft guilds. The ceremonies are based upon rituals that are centuries old - rituals that were used by those guilds.

Today, modern Freemasons have retained much of these degree ceremonies, including lots of fancy, old-fashioned language. They share these characteristics:

Lodges, blue lodges, craft lodges, and more

The lodge is the most basic unit of Freemasonry. It is a term used for the individual chapter, for a collected group of Masons who meet together, for the room they meet in, and sometimes even for the building in which they gather. Several individual lodges can share facilities and meet at different times in the same lodge room. This is, in fact, the norm in larger cities. In smaller communities, or in the case of a very prosperous lodge, just one lodge may occupy the building.

In this book, I sometimes refer to the blue lodge. (I explain why it's "blue" in Chapter 7.) Other terms you'll see are symbolic lodge, craft lodge, and Ancient Craft Masonry. These are all various terms to describe the first, most essential starting point in the world of Freemasonry: the local, neighborhood lodge that confers the first three degrees of Masonry - the Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason degrees.

Masons sometimes refer to Freemasonry as the Craft, because its origins are the medieval craft guilds. They most definitely are not referring to witchcraft.

Freemasonry has many different branches of membership and study. These branches or groups are called appendant or concordant bodies, and I talk a lot more about them in Part III. You may have had a relative or a friend who said he was a 32nd-degree Mason or even a 33rd-degree Mason. Those additional degrees do exist, and they're confusing, so I explain them in Part IV as well. But the truth is that there is no degree in what is referred to as Ancient Craft Masonry higher or more important than the three degrees a man receives in a Masonic lodge. These other degrees may have higher numbers than the first three conferred in a lodge, but they're simply different, additional ceremonies, and are in no way meant to be construed as more important or superior to becoming a Master Mason.

The public ceremonies of Freemasons

Most of the ceremonies of the Masons go on inside the confines of the lodge, but there are two special Masonic events that you may have seen in public. These public ceremonies are symbolic of beginning and ending.

Cornerstone ceremonies

Because of their heritage as builders of cathedrals and other public structures, the Freemasons have historically performed a special ceremony at the laying of cornerstones for new buildings, upon request. In modern times, these events are barely noticed by the public, but in previous centuries, the laying of a cornerstone for a new building was a very big, festive celebration. In the case of a courthouse, city hall, or other major government building, parades were often held, speeches were given, and the Freemasons would symbolically lay the cornerstone.

In the Masonic cornerstone ceremony, the stone is checked using ancient tools to be certain it is square, plumb (straight), and level, because a building constructed on a poor foundation will not be strong. Next, the cornerstone is consecrated with corn (or grain), wine, and oil - all of which are Masonic symbols of prosperity, health, and peace. Finally, the stone is symbolically tapped in place with a gavel.

Funeral services

The first way many people come into contact with Freemasonry these days is at the funeral of a friend or relative who was a Freemason. Masons perform a solemn memorial service for their members, when the family requests it. The words of the ceremony provide a brief glimpse into the beliefs of the fraternity; it's a moving and deeply meaningful service. Many men, myself included, have sought membership in a lodge after seeing the funeral service performed for a loved one.

Real men wear aprons!

Yes, it's true: Grown men wearing little rectangular aprons are de rigueur fashion for the properly dressed Freemason. The aprons are symbolic of those worn by ancient stonemasons to protect their clothing and to carry their tools. Although aprons worn by many Masons are made of simple white cloth, they're traditionally supposed to be made of white lambskin, as an emblem of innocence. Some Masonic aprons are very ornate. They may be decorated to denote an officer's position, a place of honor such as a former Master of a lodge, or just simply a cool design. The Mason's apron is the first gift given to him upon his initiation into the lodge, and it is to be kept clean and spotless throughout the Mason's life as a symbol of the purity of his thoughts and actions.

REMEMBER

Masons wear their aprons in a specific manner, according to the degree they have attained. Nobody - with the exception of an uninitiated candidate - gets into a lodge without an apron.

A "secret society"

Masons like to say that Freemasonry is not a secret society; rather, it is a society with secrets. A better way to put it is that what goes on in a lodge room during its ceremonies is private.

For a lot of years, fathers, grandfathers, and neighbors baffled young men who were interested in joining the fraternity by refusing to discuss anything about it, out of a fundamental misunderstanding about Masonic "secrecy." They figured they weren't allowed to tell anything about it. "Join and you'll see," was their standard answer. Fortunately, that perception is changing, and Freemasons are not so squeamish these days about talking about Masonry.

The secrets that a Mason may not discuss are the grips (handshakes), passwords, and signs (gestures) that are modes of recognition, and some details of the Masonic degree ritual ceremonies. Undoubtedly, there are still old-school Masons out there who will read something in this book and believe that I should be driven to the state line in a trunk for daring to talk about it, but they should chat with their Grand Lodge before calling to check my measurements.

Just knowing the modes of recognition won't get you into a Masonic lodge. If you're interested in becoming a Mason, don't let some big mouth in a book or on the Internet ruin the ritual experience for you by blurting out all the surprises. If you aren't interested in joining and you just want to be able to gloat about knowing some secret information, there is no shortage of books and Web sites that tell them all. You can leap into a gathering of Masons screaming "A-ha!" and blurt out a password if you like, but the real secret of Freemasonry has to be experienced, not explained, which is why your little stunt will be ignored.

So is it a charity? A church? A social club?

Masonry is as diverse as its members, and so it can seem like something very different depending on whom you talk to or the lodge you visit or join.

Some Masons concentrate on the many charities the fraternity participates in. Some are consumed by the history or the philosophy or the symbolism of the fraternity. Others consider it to be primarily a place to go to play cards or cook a monthly breakfast, in order to be with old friends and make new ones. Still others enjoy performing the ritual ceremonies and make a lifelong passion of taking dramatic parts in it.

For men who become lodge officers or members of committees, Masonry is a personal development course, where they learn leadership skills, public speaking, and more. Men from every walk of life have the opportunity to do things in a lodge, often things that their job or their social or economic status would rarely have offered them. And then some men just like high-sounding titles, badges, ribbons, tuxedos, and spiffy accoutrements. The point is that there is something in Freemasonry for every man, whatever his interests may be.

Are [Fill in the Blank] Freemasons, Too?

Because Freemasons are an eclectic mix of men from all walks of life, other Masonic organizations have developed over the years to enlarge upon the lodge experience. They all require someone to be a member of a lodge as a third-degree Master Mason before that person can join them. They are collectively known as appendant bodies, and the list is almost endless.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Freemasons For Dummies by Christopher Hodapp Excerpted by permission.
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