Many people have heard of Freemasonry, but few have any idea what it is, what it does, or why it exists. Freemasonry is not a religion, but rather a spiritual self-help society whose declared purpose is to help members become better citizens, and it has a strong track record of doing just that since it began in Scotland in the 15th century.
Freemasonry For Beginners explores the objectives and teaching methods of Freemasonry and describes its influence on society in the past, present, and future. It recounts the origins of the movement in Scotland and its spread to North America and the rest of the world. Not least of all, it shows how Masonic teachings have helped so many members over the centuries learn the skills to become leaders in society, science, and the arts.
Many people have heard of Freemasonry, but few have any idea what it is, what it does, or why it exists. Freemasonry is not a religion, but rather a spiritual self-help society whose declared purpose is to help members become better citizens, and it has a strong track record of doing just that since it began in Scotland in the 15th century.
Freemasonry For Beginners explores the objectives and teaching methods of Freemasonry and describes its influence on society in the past, present, and future. It recounts the origins of the movement in Scotland and its spread to North America and the rest of the world. Not least of all, it shows how Masonic teachings have helped so many members over the centuries learn the skills to become leaders in society, science, and the arts.
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Overview
Many people have heard of Freemasonry, but few have any idea what it is, what it does, or why it exists. Freemasonry is not a religion, but rather a spiritual self-help society whose declared purpose is to help members become better citizens, and it has a strong track record of doing just that since it began in Scotland in the 15th century.
Freemasonry For Beginners explores the objectives and teaching methods of Freemasonry and describes its influence on society in the past, present, and future. It recounts the origins of the movement in Scotland and its spread to North America and the rest of the world. Not least of all, it shows how Masonic teachings have helped so many members over the centuries learn the skills to become leaders in society, science, and the arts.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781939994578 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | For Beginners |
| Publication date: | 01/31/2017 |
| Series: | For Beginners |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 176 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Sarah Becan is a comics artist, author, illustrator, and designer based in Chicago. Currently the creative director at fathead design, Sarah has a strong focus on art and design for the cuisine and hospitality industries, with a particular interest in food illustration. Visit her online at www.sarahbecan.com.
Read an Excerpt
Freemasonry for Beginners
By Robert Lomas, SARAH BECAN
For Beginners LLC
Copyright © 2017 Robert LomasAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-939994-57-8
CHAPTER 1
THE ORIGINS OF FREEMASONRY
Freemasonry has two separate histories. It has a ritual history that begins in the Masonic Year of Light, or Anno Lucis (A.L.). According to ritual myths, Freemasonry began with Adam, was passed down the lines of the patriarchs to the builders of Solomon's Temple, and continued down to the present day. The Masonic calendar begins in the year 4000 B.C.E., said to be the year Adam was created, and is known as the year 1 A.L. The Masonic calendar is 4,000 years longer than the Christian calendar of Anno Domini (A.D.) In other words, the year 2016 A.D. (or C.E.) is 6016 A.L. in the Masonic Calendar.
It begins with the names, date, and place where the masters of the first Free-masonic Lodge began to use the ritual history as a teaching aid to help them and their members develop an understanding of themselves and the world in which they lived. It proceeds to tell the story of how Freemasonry was spread and by whom.
The teaching method of Freemasonry is based on a simple idea. It is generally easier to grasp a concept if the facts are explained to you as a memorable story and then you then act out the story to help learn its lessons. Thus, the teaching principle adopted by the first Freemasons is summarized in the adage,
Freemasonry involves members in its stories so they can understand the deep morals contained in them and appreciate the meaning of ancient symbols that predate written language.
The first Freemasons stumbled upon two powerful concepts. The first was that symbols can convey feelings and insights that are beyond the ability of language to capture but that may contain Truth. The second was that a story tells far more than a list of facts does. But what is the extra information that a story conveys?
When we tell a story about someone, we relate a series of episodes from their life that describes how they developed as a person in response to things that happened to them. What separates a story from a list of events is all the connections we instinctively feel between the sequence of events. If we believe there is a purpose to life, then we will search for connections between actions and their consequences.
A Peculiar System of Morality
Freemasonry describes itself in ritual as "a peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory, and illustrated by symbols." It began when a small group of illiterate individuals recognized that there were two types of things in the world. There were things like stones or hammers that could be explained completely by listing their properties. For a stone, these included such attributes as its roughness, its smoothness, and its squareness or crookedness when used as a building block. For a hammer, weight and balance helped a working Mason to visualize or describe it. But there were also things — such as kings, temples, and symbols — that could be explained only by telling their stories. For this second type of thing, a simple description was not enough. For example, you had to hear a story to explain why Solomon wanted to build a temple, why a temple would need two pillars at its entrance, and why the center of a perfect circle is a magical point.
By good fortune, we know the names two of the individuals who had this insight. They were David Menzies and Matthew Wright, members of a lodge of working stonemasons who, by their study of symbols and stories, first devised the processes of Freemasonry. Their actions were recorded in the minutes of the Burgh Council of Aberdeen, and their insights survive in a wonderful drawing of the symbols they used for teaching. Menzies and Wright recognized that people, symbols, and cultures are not simply things, but are processes that unfold over time. Although they wouldn't have explained it that way, they certainly saw that there are only two types of things — objects and processes. Objects don't change, but processes do. Moreover, processes can change objects.
If you want to change yourself and understand the world in which you live, then you must do more than simply learn facts. You must search for a way of changing and improving yourself. The analogy Menzies and Wright used was that of the most beautiful building in the ancient world, King Solomon's Temple. It was created by shaping many rough stones into highly polished parts of a graceful and beautiful structure.
Here's a little story about how they came to be in this position.
The First Recorded Lodge
The first written reference to a lodge of Masons appears in the records of the Aberdeen Burgh Council on June 27, 1483. According to the entry, the council decided that David Menzies, the master of church work, would be appointed master of the Masons of the Lodge. A later notation in the Aberdeen Burgh Council minutes, from 1493, says that Alexander Stuart, then the Master of the Lodge, was also elected to serve as an Alderman on the council. His Masonic training, it seemed, was helping make him a more effective member of society. The lodge taught prospective members the methods of self-improvement used by the lodge, and they went on to become important members of Aberdeen society.
The Lodge of Aberdeen created drawings of the ancient symbols still employed in Masonic teaching today. The symbols were depicted on a decorated canvas carpet, known as a floorcloth. It was laid in the center of the lodge so the Masons could walk a ritual path of pilgrimage through the symbols. This was a powerful way of studying them. The original floorcloth moved to Orkney in 1786, when William Graham gifted it to Lodge Kirkwall Kilwinning. (Graham's merchant father had acquired it while trading in Aberdeen.) According to carbon dating, the central panel of the cloth dates to 1430–1530; the outer sections date to 1780–1840, the period in which it was given to the Kirkwall Lodge.
To answer that question, we have to go even farther back in time. In 1411, a powerful Scottish noble decided to build an alternative religious center to rival the Abbey of the Holyrood. The Abbey of the Holyrood was said to house a fragment of the True Cross that had been brought to Scotland by Queen Margaret, the mother of King David I. The Holy Rood (Scots for Holy Cross) was owned by the Stuart kings of Scotland and was said to have protected David from a raging stag. This miracle, still symbolized in the entrance to ruins of the abbey, showed the common people that God favored the Stuart line of kings.
William St Clair, Lord Chancellor and High Admiral of Scotland, was the second-most powerful man in the kingdom. Between 1411 and 1446, he set out to build a shrine for his family that would match the power of Holyrood. Hoping it would inspire divine respect from the common people, he employed a man well-versed in the arts of symbolism, storytelling, architecture, and politics. That man was Sir Gilbert Hay, the author of three textbooks: The Book of Armies, which deals with the principles of warfare; The Book of the Order of Knighthood, a manual of knightly chivalry; and The Book of the Governance of Princes, which explains methods of gaining and using political power.
Hay assembled and supervised a large workforce of stonemasons to the south of Edinburgh in the village of Roslin, adjacent to the St Clair Castle. He set them to work carving a wonderfully ornate chapel, which survives to this day. The chapel was based on the layout of Solomon's Temple. Hay insisted that all its symbols were first carved into wood, and he inspected them before they were cut into stones for the building. In this way, the masons who worked for him saw the power of displaying symbols to tell stories in public buildings.
William St Clair's motive for building Rosslyn Chapel was to create a mausoleum collegiate church. He hoped it would provide a public focus for the St Clair family and promote him as a potential king for a partitioned Scotland. He intended to split the Stuart kingdom of Scotland into three parts — a third for himself; a third for John MacDonald, the Lord of Isles; and a third for Edward IV of England. The plot failed, and William's empire was broken up to ensure that the St Clair family could never again be strong enough to try to seize the throne of Scotland.
The building had a political purpose and, when it was completed, took on a life of its own in the public mind. The craftsmanship and skill in the use of stories and symbols that went into its construction has stood the test of time. Whatever William St Clair and Gilbert Hay had in mind when they cooperated in the design of the stonework, surely they did not expect it to be a source of mythical inspiration for over half a millennium.
An immediate effect of the failure of William St Clair's coup was that construction at Roslin stopped and the masons were fired. William had accidentally created a workforce of skilled Scots masons by recruiting an international band of stoneworkers for a job that lasted the better part of 40 years. Many of them decided to seek work in Scotland rather than return to the lands their fathers, or even grandfathers, had left four decades before.
If they wanted work in Scotland, Aberdeen was where the action was. St. Nicholas's Kirk was being extended by the Burgh Council. The Masons who moved to Aberdeen from Roslin had worked on a building whose stone-carved fabric provides the earliest evidence of what was to become Masonic ritual and symbolism. The group of former Roslin masons, led by David Menzies, drew these symbols on a ritual floorcloth to teach their meaning.
The newly redundant workers from Roslin were inspired by what they learned from Gilbert Hay's use of symbolism and mythical stories. After seeing him create a building with a powerful presence, they decided to study symbols and allegory themselves. They created a visual aid — now called the Kirkwall Scroll — and started to perform rituals to explain the meaning of the symbols to their apprentices. Their startling success launched a worldwide spiritual self-help movement that has survived for over 600 years.
You can see the symbols they used by examining the Kirkwall Scroll. They based their allegorical stories on the construction of King Solomon's Temple as described in the Bible.
CHAPTER 2THE ORGANIZATION OF FREEMASONRY
From the very beginning, the structure of Freemasonry has been hierarchical. The first lodge had a Master and two Wardens — a Senior Warden and a Junior Warden Over time, more officers were added to the structure, until seven officers were needed to form a lodge.
The lowest-ranking officer is the Outer Guard, who stands outside the lodge door with a drawn sword to prevent any unauthorized entries Next comes the Inner Guard, who stands inside the closed door of the lodge holding a drawn dagger to stop anyone who might force his way past the Outer Guard. The Inner Guard is directed by the Junior Warden. Next up the scale is the Junior Deacon, who carries messages from the Senior Warden to the Junior Warden. Then there is the Senior Deacon, who carries the messages of the Master to the Senior Warden. Together these seven officers form the basic structure of the lodge. In order of seniority, from bottom to top, they are: Outer Guard (or Tyler), Inner Guard, Junior Deacon, Senior Deacon, Junior Warden, Senior Warden, and, above everyone, Worshipful Master.
The Master commands the lodge and issues instructions to the rest of the lodge via the Wardens. The Master wields a small hammer, called a gavel, which he knocks to call for silence at meetings. Each of the Wardens also has a gavel, so when the Master knocks for silence before speaking, each of the Wardens also knocks. The sound of the knocks echoes around the lodge room. Only after the Master and two Wardens all have knocked, and the members of the lodge are silent, does the Master speak.
All officers of the lodge wear a collar, and from the collar hangs a badge to symbolize the wearer's office. For example, the badge for the Master has a set square, the Senior Warden a level, and the Junior Warden a plumb rule. These symbols are usually either made of silver or silver plate.
Rank Structure
Freemasonry's rank structure does not stop with the officers of the lodge. There is also a hierarchy among the ordinary members, with each wearing a different symbolic apron. When a new member is taken in, he or she becomes an Entered Apprentice.
They must serve some time learning ritual before they are ready to be promoted to the next rank — or degree, as Masons' say — which is that of Fellowcraft. An Entered Apprentice is not allowed to enter or remain inside a lodge that has been opened to carry out Fellowcraft, or second-degree, rituals. They must leave the lodge room and wait outside while the rituals of the Fellowcraft are being performed. The Outer Guard makes sure that that they do not eavesdrop on the proceedings. A Fellowcraft can enter or remain inside an Entered Apprentice's lodge, but when a Fellowcraft lodge is ritually opened as a Master Mason's Lodge, then the Fellowcrafts have to go outside and wait with the Apprentices.
The apron worn by a Mason makes it easy to recognize their rank. The Fellowcraft's apron, like that of the Apprentice, is plain white and made of lambskin but decorated with two blue rosettes. The Master Mason's apron, which is also made of white lambskin, has a light blue border around the apron and its flap; it has the same two blue rosettes as that of a Fellowcraft, as well as a third blue rosette and two sets of silver tassels. In most systems of Freemasonry, the Worshipful Master wears an apron similar to that of a Master Mason, but the three blue rosettes are replaced with three silver tee-squares. Once a Brother has served as the master of a lodge, he or she is called a Past Master and gets a light blue collar. From this collar hangs a silver symbol showing the proof of the Pythagorean Theorem (a2 + b2 = c2) and a set square.
This is to make sure that each new ritual a Candidate encounters when moving up to the next level has the maximum impact. No lower-ranking Freemason is allowed to take part in a lodge that is opened in a higher degree than the one they hold. As part of the ceremonies of promotion, they are given a special password and handgrip that allow them to enter "a lodge in a higher degree."
Above the lodge, however, there are more levels of hierarchical organization. A group of lodges in a geographical province may join together to form a Provincial Grand Lodge, and all the Provincial Grand Lodges within a country form a Grand Lodge.
Grand and Provincial Grand Lodges
There are no Provincial Grand Lodges in the United States; instead, each state has its own Grand Lodge. In the United Kingdom, however, there are three male Grand Lodges and two female Grand Lodges; all of them have Provincial Grand Lodges underneath them.
The Grand Lodge of Scotland has 32 provincial grand lodges and another 26 District Grand lodges, which look after Scottish Lodges set up in other parts of the world.
The Grand Lodge of England has 48 provinces, 33 overseas districts, and five smaller overseas groups.
The Grand Lodge of Ireland has 13 provinces in Ireland and 12 groups of overseas lodges. The latter include a special group of travelling military lodges, which are associated with Irish regiments wherever they are stationed.
There are a total of 93 Provincial Grand Lodges in the British Isles. Each one has a retinue of officers and ranks. For example, there are 58ranks within an English Provincial Grand Lodge. These range from Provincial Grand Master to Provincial Grand Tyler. Each rank also has what are called Past Officers; these are like Past Masters, who held a rank in previous years.
The overall rank structure opens up a lot of opportunity to be promoted, and each promotion offers the chance to wear a more impressive apron. There is always something new to learn, and by continually undertaking new roles and being promoted to new offices within the Order, Freemasonry gives its members a motive to keep interested and continually learn new things.
BUT WHAT SORT of knowledge does Freemasonry teach its brethren? To understand that, we need to go back to where Freemasonry started and understand what the founding lodges intended to do. Fortunately, we can do that by looking at the symbols they studied and seeing how they are still taught through ritual performances.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Freemasonry for Beginners by Robert Lomas, SARAH BECAN. Copyright © 2017 Robert Lomas. Excerpted by permission of For Beginners LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
FOREWORD by Gordon Echlin,INTRODUCTION,
1. THE ORIGINS OF FREEMASONRY,
2. THE ORGANIZATION OF FREEMASONRY,
3. THE RITUALS OF FREEMASONRY,
4. THE SYMBOLS OF FREEMASONRY,
5. FREEMASONRY AND RELIGION,
6. SCOTTISH ROOTS,
7. THE FIRST GRAND LODGES,
8. THE SPREAD OF FREEMASONRY,
9. THE GROWTH OF FRATERNALISM IN THE UNITED STATES AND BEYOND,
FURTHER READING,
ABOUT THE AUTHOR,
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR,