Ancient Free and Accepted Masonry

Just one of the many charitable contributions local Masons have made over the years. Lawrence Cripps, Osage Lodge 303 AF&AM hands Denise Nelson, R5 Health Services Coordinator a check from Osage Lodge for $500 and a check from the Masonic Home of Missouri's Creating a Partnership program for $1,559. The checks will go for school supplies for students unable to purchase them themselves. From left: Will Bishop, David Phillips, Gary Jones, Lawrence Cripps, Dawn Jones, Robin Daniels, Denise Nelson, Margaret McLaughlin, Tracy Barmann, Kora Anderson, Beverly Harbit and Diann Marti.

I'm a Freemason. I joined a few years ago and have been grateful for the many friends I've met since then. I had my doubts about joining. There is a lot of mis-information out there about Masons and their secrets.

I was talking to a friend, Dave Bishop, about joining. I was considering it but hadn't made up my mind to do so yet, and he suggested a question I should ask myself. Consider the people you know are Masons -- Do you think they are upstanding citizens? Do they behave in a worthy manner? Do you trust them? Do they compare well to other people you know and trust?

Now, he said, consider all the things you've heard about Freemasonry -- It's a Satanic cult. They're conspiring to take over the world. They have strange, unChristian rituals. They take blood oaths to kill people who reveal the secrets, and so on.

Now look at the people you know are Masons. Would they partake in something like the conspiracy theorists maintain Freemasonry is? The answer to me was obvious. The people I knew were Masons were without a doubt some of the best people I know. Sort of like the people in Lions, another organization I belong to.

Masonry does have a lot of ritual. The ritual is not supposed to be divulged to outsiders. That's about it as far as the secrets go, that and some recognition gestures. It might sound suspicious but if you consider the history of Freemasonry it isn't all that hard to figure out where it comes from.

"Free" Masonry is about 300 years old. That's it. While stonemasons have been around since prehistory, they were what Freemasons call 'operative' masons. They actually worked in stone and mortar. Sometime around 1600 stonemasons started allowing some who were not actually workers in stone to join the lodges, or craft guilds, of masons. These were called 'accepted' Masons. (At this point you might notice that I sometimes capitalize the word masons and sometimes I don't. When referring to workers in stone I won't capitalize, when referring to the group known as Freemasons I will, just to help sort out which is which."

Down through the ages masonry changed into Masonry. Freemasons let non-masons into the lodge and the non-operative Masons became 'accepted' Masons. So now it is generally referred to a Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons or AF&AM.

This part of the history is unclear. Someone once described the situation thusly: At the beginning of the 1600s masons were craft workers, at the end of the 1600 they had somehow changed into Freemasons. How it came about, no one is sure.

Masons became known as 'Free' because they were allowed to cross borders to work on projects outside their own country. Travel to other countries in those days was usually reserved for the gentry, workers were generally tethered to a town or even an estate.

The secrecy of the ritual is because in the old days when Masons were masons the ritual was how apprentice masons learned the craft of working in stone and conducting business. Stonemasons, like a large percentage of the population were mostly illiterate. At lodge meetings the apprentice would hear each officer of the lodge tell what it was they did, and why they did it. After awhile the apprentice would begin to take part and would repeat the ritual, being corrected when a mistake was made and, by that, learning to one day take over governance of the lodge.

Since stonemasons wanted to keep the work, and the pay that went with it, to themselves they kept the ritual and recognition signs secret. Someone wanting to get a job working on a building needed to show that he had learned his craft and the way to do that was to give a sign, something a non-mason wouldn't know.

Today the secrecy isn't about trying to keep non-masons from stealing work from stonemasons, it's about a Mason keeping his word, Masons pledge not to reveal the information and it's sort of a character test. By keeping your word you prove you are worthy of being trusted with information other Masons may reveal to you, like they are having problems in business or in their personal life. If you don't keep your word why should anyone believe you would keep their private afflictions private? Would you trust someone you knew couldn't keep their mouth shut with your problems?

No one who finds out the secrets can benefit from them, there is no financial incentive at all. So why keep the ritual secret? In a word, tradition. It helps to remind modern Masons of why they joined the lodge and helps keep the craft alive. And that is a good thing, both for Masons and for society.