Freemason Information
Freemasonry is a post-collegiate mostly-all male fraternity dedicated to the social development of the member to form a broader sense of the self and their community.
Just a few words of “wisdom” from Minister Louis Farrakhan about Freemasonry.
“What is the function of the Masons and Shriners today, now that the secret that you were hiding is out? Your function is to help me build what was in the nature of Hiram…”
“Master the 360 degrees of knowledge, not just the 33.”
He does get into the Fez of the Moors…
Great article in the Boston Phoenix on Freemasonry and the “all-seeing eye of rock and roll.”
Below are just a few of the quotes
The Masons of Amicable Lodge have tattoos curling out from under their button-down shirts. They wear giant rings and waist aprons that look like oversize satin envelopes. They wear ties and medals and amulets. They carry staffs. Each month, they gather to practice secret rituals in Porter Square.
“A lot of people become involved in music because they’re looking for something higher — or to get girls, which is something higher,”…”It’s looking for that thing that’s bigger than you — the first time you hear the Ramones on the radio, it’s that spiritual thing.”
[Free]Masonry fills that need
“We’re born, get old, and die, but the rituals remain the same. It’s a time machine. It’s a connection to eternity.”
I really like that analogy, its a great perspective.
Read more in the article How the Boston rock scene grew up, got real jobs, and became – Freemasons?
This tale starts in an email I received on Valentines Day. The email was a resignation, a coup de grâce on a loose affiliation based on a common passion about Freemasonry because of a personal (or privately cultivated) belief that this websites general quality was in deterioration.
I can surmise that most who read this site don’t like reading about the fraternal peccadilloes, the raw data of readers to each piece tells me otherwise. The highest day’s readership was on Monday June 22 of 2009 when I published a piece called “My brother’s keeper. Open Racism in Georgia Freemasonry” which, for the record, pulled close to 1500 views on the day it went up. Does it mean people like controversy? No, but it means Brothers want to know what’s going on across the spectrum of Masonry besides who’s speaking where or recognizing who is relevant to someone.
The complaint in this resignation was a building belief that some writers were taking on a voice of schadenfreude (the pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others). It’s an easy line to see blurred, and not a new complaint about the BeeHive. It’s a reason for a few hurt feelings and split relationships that lead to breaks over creative differences.
Through it all the, higher principal in operation on FmI has been to allow free speech with an open door for named authors or free volunteers to contribute to the dialog. My email is right there on the right… If its not a rant, send it to me, I’ll publish it.
In the 6 years that I’ve published this site I’ve received a whopping total of TWO (2) contributions to rebut something published here. I know that the posts are being debated, I go to the same forums you do and I can see when someone somewhere links back to an article, so I know people are talking about the subject matter. But no does. Its easier not to.
For a fraternity that instructs an initiate to seek out understanding for logic and rhetoric, two counter posts seem to smack of a lack of that study.
Maybe that’s the case. Maybe there is a disdain to speak openly about the elephant in the room or to address the problems “over there” when clearly there is no similar problem here. It smacks of the “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” mantra which the Urban Dictionary quotes Dane Cook defining the aphorism by saying “It happened. It only happened there. And it happened far enough away to have any negative effect on the “the here and now”. And anyone who wasn’t there at the time need not know about it. So stfu about it, and move on. But keep the memories.”
It’s the last part that those who want to keep status quo want you to remember: “…stfu about it, and move on.” For those scratching their heads wondering what stfu means, it means “shut the Fuck up” and their saying that because they don’t like to talk about the negative fraternalism, or their being called to task to defend their affiliations, or what they perceived as being so sacred is more subject to social influences than they care to recognize. Clearly, what happens in Masonry over there affects it over here especially in the era of national news coverage. Maybe if we STFU enough, we won’t have to say anything and then behind closed doors we’ll address the problem.
News flash – that’s not happening and no matter how tight we wrap ourselves in the comforting loops of the imaginatively historic “Mystical Tie“ and ignore the reality of what its binding the sooner it will become a noose that will suffocate out the creative life of what should be a bright and shining jewel of society.
It’s happened to me when a family friend who a few months back asked me about my involvement in Masonry (she is one of about 1400 friends on Facebook so she sees a lot of what I publish). She just happens to be very educated, Jewish, a feminist, and a lesbian, and she asked me what was with all this Masonic stuff since she remembered it from her fathers day as being a racist, anti-Semitic, male chauvinist society? Her question: “How can they [Masons] proclaim such high ideals and still be so upside down about religion, women and race?”
After she asked that question she then asked me “How could I be a part of such an organization given my enlightened liberal nature?”
I came up short. I didn’t really know what to say. Would you? My feeble response was to say that I write about it and still a part of it, to make these issues a thing of the past. Personally, I wanted to make racism a non-issue and to change the perception of the “enlightened” so as to see the fairest of the species in the same way that the rest of society see them – as equals.
What I do (and really why this site exists) is to remind my brothers, as Tim Bryce reminds me, and what I believe to be behind what the BeeHive writes is that “the Emperor has no cloths” and that we need to get our heads out of the sand about it.
So, as was so cavalierly published this morning, the author of the “47th Problem of Euclid” is no longer posting on this website and he has eliminated his past few contributions. His departure is because of a profound discomfort “…with where the website is going…” and a belief that it has “…chosen to ally [the BeeHive] with irregular and clandestine Freemasonry rather than commit to helping fix these problems.” But, I suggest that rather than offer a counter point or rebuttal or any significant material contribution – Euclid has chosen to quit publicly and with a flourish which is easier than adding to the conversation and shaping the dialog.
And that’s the reason why Modern Masonry is in the state it is today. When we believe the quality of something to be low (true or not since it’s all about our personal perception), we separate ourselves from it rather than adding to its material betterment.
This was originally published in January of 2009 on the Masonic Traveler blog.
Freemasonry moves through periods of ups and downs. Like the stock market, there are periods of increases and periods of decreases. Peaks and valleys, plateaus, and depressions, which is normal for any system, especially as nothing remains static, motion is a constant.
Even as Masonry exists in the dimming embers of the post World War II correction period of post war fraternal enthusiasm, I started to ponder another phenomenon that ‘may’ be looming on the horizon, and something completely outside of the corporate body of fraternal control.
It’s no surprise that we are in the midst of an economic downturn. Not quite a depression, at least not to every talking head on the television, but the word has been thrown around, and even our most recent unemployment numbers are inching close to that era of saving your money in your mattress and leaping businessmen from corporate towers. Given the re-visitation to the matter today I’d now consider the state of things as an economic depression for many given the wavering unemployment figures anywhere from 9 to 25%.
In ’09, as today, I stopped to reconsider what this state of things means, from a personal level and from a broader perspective of what it may mean to the fraternity. What I consulted were the numbers from the MSANA, to see what some of the trends were in the last near 100 years. In particular, I was curious to see was what the effects of the Great Depression were in relationship to 
membership levels in America.
In that period, between 1929 and 1939 (the period of the depression, the membership loss amounted to almost 1 million members from 3,295,125 down to 2,482,291 – a total of 821,834.
How that number came about is difficult to assume. What is obvious is that 1929 and 1930 were relatively stable years. but 1931 onward began a domino effect decrease that lasted for a decade. There could be any number of variables in that equation, large attrition from earlier member bubbles (say 50 years earlier +/-), a loss due to changes in society with the post World War I boom, or you could extrapolate that it was the economic hardship with the Great Depression that caused the loss.
Important to add, in no period, prior to or after, was there a similar decrease in numbers, until you reach the 1959 water mark, and then the whole of American Freemasonry enters the spiral of decrease where it remains today. But between 1929 and 1939, with ten years of economic disaster, increasingly fewer jobs, much lower income, and escalating costs – each of these factors in the Depression had to
have some net effect. As mentioned it wasn’t until 1941 that numbers started to tick back up, slowly which you can see it in the graph of American Masonry from the MSANA numbers (1925-2007). There is a definite drop off that takes place that turns around as, conceivably, the economy turns around.
I found an interesting commentary about this period from the Texas State Historic Society as it related to Texas Freemasonry.
As after most wars, Masonic membership showed a dramatic increase after World War I; in Texas it climbed from 94,000 in 1920 to more than 134,000 in 1929. The Great Depression brought an equally dramatic decline, to a low of 95,000 in 1937. A number of local lodges lost their temples, constructed during the prosperous 1920s, and their membership declined by as much as 60 percent. The waning of the depression and the onset of World War II produced the reinstatement of many former members, and after 1945 thousands of new members joined the lodge. Postwar membership reached 245,000 in 1961
The silver lining in this story is that at some point there was a turn around, that the numbers lost were regained, but nearly 25 years later. In fact, in that same article, it says that the loss was only after a significant increase in membership following the end of W. W. II, and the period of gain-loss-gain netted an almost even amount of members. The only real obstacle was the time in which it happened.
But, the numbers in reflection seem to be missing certain aspects of what the numbers reflect today. That difference was in the eras in which the economic crisis took place. In 1929, national membership was at a healthy 3.25 million members. When you start to factor in a 24% loss from the drop in the economy (a Depression), on top of an already steady loss of 20% per decade for the last 4 decades, it means that Freemasonry stands to potentially lose 44% in the next ten years, and which translates into a loss of 652, 717 members. (44% of 1,483,449 members as of 2007).
This would leave North American Masonry with roughly 830,732 members by 2019. Not devastating, but dramatic, but potentially more dramatic if there is a larger drop due to greater attrition (deaths/demits), and if you consider a possible snowball effect: fewer members leading to fewer meetings which leads to fewer lodges which repeats the cycle fewer members and so on… The numbers of loss could continue and grow. And, if the trend since 1959 holds up that there will still be a decrease of roughly 20%, meaning the memberships will continue in a downward trend.
What this all means is open to lots of speculation. The change will start becoming more and more evident as more and more lodges close shop as interest in a particular community wanes or is not nurtured. It seems an inevitable reality to the situation at hand, especially when we start to adjust the lens of its perspective as we read the great debate that just recently took place between the Masonic Line‘s Palmetto Bug and the Beehives Fred Milliken. Does a lodge have dominion over its own building, or is the lodge an instrument of the broader Grand Lodge? The discussion has been relevant in recent judicial decisions regarding break away churches and their mother church, with lower courts ruing with the congregations and upper courts with the denominational organization.
Even the debate over this being a corrective period of membership negates the value of those rank swelling members whose past efforts and dues made it possible for the very lodges we reside in today. Running lean is less a product of managerial ingenuity and more a byproduct of lost marketplace interest. Running lean can work in manufacturing, but in member associations?
Will the numbers (and fraternity) trend the way they did in the 1930’s? Does it necessitate the management our own lodges or to give them over to the parent corporation to manage? What will this economic challenge look like by way of the fraternity? What if it applied a Six Sigma methodology to membership to create a product that meets and exceeds expectations. This is a business measure, but the mystic tie needs to be quantitative in some fashion, right?
A MASON
By BRO. CARL W. MASON
From The Virginia Masonic Journal, Richmond, Va
March, 1916
A Mason’s hand is a hand that helps, That
lifts the fallen one ‘
That comes, in need, with a kindly deed To him
whose strength is gone.
A Mason’s heart is a heart that loves The best that
is good and true;
He stands the friend, his best to lend, Under his
banner blue.
A Mason’s eye is an eye that smiles And his a
cheering voice;
He spreads the light, dispels the night And makes
the world rejoice.
Over the earth in stranger lands,
Where distant peoples dwell,
The eye, the grip, the life, the lip, Of love
unchanging tell.
A CREED
By BRO. HERBERT R. GRASSMAN
From Square & Compass, Denver, Colo.,
June, 1915
Hark ye, Masons, men of love,
Men of faith and men of fame!
Listen to the muffled cries
Of men in bondage, bound in shame!
Oh, what ignorance rules supreme!
Oh, what darkness hides the Light!
Oppose and fight all, things unclean
You are champions of the Right!
God in all His glory rules,
Watching over us with care;
He sends us wisdom, love and truth
With our fellow men to share.
Teach men how to see the Light
Not by word of mouth or pen,
But by deeds so kind and bright
Illuminate life’s path. Amen.
This story comes from the Concord Monitor story – Make Masons prove they shouldn’t pay from February 10th.
New Hampshire Freemasonry wants some relief, tax relief, under the umbrella of being being a charitable organization. The question from the state – how much charity is enough to BE a charity?
The push comes from five state representatives including Concord Democrat Stephen Shurtleff, all Freemasons, want to exempt Masonic temples from property taxes. The Bill is sponsored by Rep Alfred Baldasaro, Rep Stephen Shurtleff, Rep Shawn Jasper, Rep Sherman Packard and Rep Kenneth Weyler.
The test comes from a state Supreme Court ruling on a similar request from the Home Care Association of New Hampshire which sought an exemption from Concord property taxes too. In the ruling Associate Justice Gary Hicks wrote:
“charitable mission must be its dominant or primary purpose; if the dominant or primary purpose of its work is to its members or a limited class of persons, the organization will not meet this requirement, even if the public will derive an incidental benefit from such work.”
The language of the New Hampshire House Bill 396 would add the same exemption to Grange Halls too and reads:
STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
In the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Eleven
AN ACT exempting the land and buildings of Masonic temples or building associations from property taxation.
Be it Enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court convened:
1 Property Tax Exemption; Annual List. Amend RSA 72:23-c, I to read as follows:
I. Every religious, educational, and charitable organization, Grange, Masonic temple or building association, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, the Disabled American Veterans, the American National Red Cross, and any other national veterans association shall annually, on or before April 15, file a list of all real estate and personal property owned by them on which exemption from taxation is claimed, upon a form prescribed and provided by the board of tax and land appeals, with the selectmen or assessors of the place where such real estate and personal property are taxable. If any such organization or corporation shall willfully neglect or refuse to file such list upon request therefor, the selectmen may deny the exemption. If any organization, otherwise qualified to receive an exemption, shall satisfy the selectmen or assessors that they were prevented by accident, mistake, or misfortune from filing an application on or before April 15, the officials may receive the application at a later date and grant an exemption thereunder for that year; but no such application shall be received or exemption granted after the local tax rate has been approved for that year.
2 Granges; Masonic Temples or Building Associations Added. Amend RSA 72:23-h to read as follows:
72:23-h Granges and Masonic Temples or Building Associations. The real estate and personal property owned by Granges or by Masonic temples or building associations which are incorporated in this state shall be exempt from property taxes. If such property is rented for business purposes, the real estate shall not be exempt.
3 Effective Date. This act shall take effect April 1, 2011.
The Bill is presently in the New Hampshire House Municipal and County Government Committee.
On the surface, the change puts Masonic Lodges in good company with the VFW, American Legion, and the Red Cross but as the Concord Monitor reports, unlike these similar organizations New Hampshire Masonry does not implicitly include charity as its reason for being rather it is a by product of its teachings – Not a charity but an organization that teaches Charitable ideas. If memory serves, the Grange is a similar institution, a meeting hall social development organization for the farming community, but non religious, and not entirely charitable conscious.
When queried in an earlier article on the subject, Masons seek tax-exempt status, the Bill Sponsors said of seeking the tax exemption status:
“We represent what is hopefully the best of mankind,…We’re trying to teach how to better men. We refer to God, but we speak of God as the supreme being.”
“The Masons do a lot for charity,” said Shurtleff, a member of the Penacook chapter and a Freemason for more than 25 years. “I can see if a lodge rented out to another agency and generated money from it, it should be taxable. But if money comes only from membership and it works as a charitable entity, I don’t see why it’s not tax-exempt like other organizations.”
The savings in property tax, for one lodge at least would be close to $8,411.
Inherently, I think its a great idea to proclaim lodges and Temple associations as a charity, but with the mandate that there be some proscribed measure of charitable activity like the Red Cross or the VFW or some other activity that benefits society more so than just making charitably conscious members. Occasional donations and scholarships are a stretch to being an institutional charity – but their a good start. Like the Red Cross or the VFW create mission of Relief, one of the three principal tenets of Masonry. And, in the end, that may be what the Bill sponsors are intending to do.
I stumbled across this and thought it an amusing look back at the decade that was. This goes back a ways to 2008, Beyond Belief on Fox News’ Hanity’s America about “The Freemasonry…”
I apologize in advance for the quality, it looks like someone ripped it right off from the television screen.
Definitely interesting mix use of art and Meltzer giving his 2 cents. Pentagrams, owls, and squares and compasses….oh my – barely enough show to hold all the conspiracy theories. Its definitely Beyond Belief!
An interesting piece in Religion dispatches titled “The Quietly Crumbling Wall of Separation.“
The article makes an interesting case for the diminished protection over the free exercise of religion steaming from the 1990 Justice Scalia decision of Emplotment Division v. Smith – an interesting case in which the Court determined that the state could deny unemployment benefits to a person fired for violating a state prohibition on the use of peyote, even though the use of the drug was part of a religious ritual. It said that states have the power to accommodate otherwise illegal acts done in pursuit of religious beliefs, they are not required to do so.
The Religious Dispatches piece says:
“…there are two clauses that protect religious liberty in the First Amendment: the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause. During the same period in which the courts have lowered the bar for protecting the free-exercise principle, they’ve also cut back significantly on protections for the flipside of the coin, the anti-establishment principle.
The combined trends, say many advocates, endanger the lofty constitutional pedestal on which religious liberty has rested. And, if they go unchecked, Americans may one day be forced to re-learn the difficult lessons from centuries of European history that inspired the nation’s founders to protect the “First Freedom” (literally, the first 16 words of the First Amendment) by creating a clear—and unique, at that time, in the annals of human history—institutional separation between religion and the state.”
The challenge with the change said Brent Walker, Executive Director Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, is that “Unfortunately, the clauses have been watered down to suggest religion needs only to be treated the same as other interests,” saying further…
“In fact, often religion should be treated differently—to ensure free exercise by lifting governmentally imposed burdens and prevent establishments by prohibiting government sponsorship of religion. Religion is special and is treated specially by the First Amendment. We must recognize its uniqueness if religious liberty in this country is to be vital over the next decade.”
With agreement from the ACLU to the Southern Baptist Convention dating back to the original Smith decision.
What role do you think region should have when considered by government? Should it be held as something unique, or as one of many exercises of free speech?
Read more on the issue on Religion Dispatches.
a poem by Bro. Rev. J. Gierlow
From The Masonic Mirror,
October, 1872
God dwells in light!
Before the ocean of unmeasured space
Was islanded with stars serenely bright
Reflecting back the radiance of His face,‑
He dwelt above, in Heaven’s immortal bliss,
Thinking into existence that which is.
God dwells in light!
Before He laid the world’s foundation‑ stone
High on the nothing of primeval night,
And in Heaven’s center throned th’ eternal
He dwelt above, beyond the far‑off sky,
With Angels born of His Eternity.
God dwells in light!
And holds within the hollow of His hand
The universe of worlds which gem the night,
Which, through Heaven’s sea, at His divine command.
Freighted with His own smiles now sail at even,
Fearless of storms, around the sun in Heaven.
God dwells in light!
And where He dwells, there spirits also dwell,
Who drink fresh glory from His face so bright,
As stars drink from the sun’s deep golden well
Exhaustless beams, so that they never die,
And thereby show His immortality.
It would seem so.
The article in El Confidencial was refuted in a posting by the Grand Master Ortega of the SL España who denies the story (Thanks to Chirs Hodapp for the comment and link to the blog Worshipful Lodge No. 33 Añaza published today).
In relation to information published in the secular press of Spanish, I say:
Completely untrue that 10,000 French Brothers want to join the Grand Lodge of Spain. As of today, January 31, 2011, the number of French brothers who have applied for membership of the Grand Lodge of Spain that I have the honor to lead is … zero. Again, zero. Indeed, there has been no request to that effect, contrary to what transpired in the secular press. The contents of the article in a digital media does not correspond to reality and can only be understood as a sort of trial balloon launched by someone, I fear that a Mason in lower case, which is still far from certain polish stone to heat up the atmosphere and create an environment conducive to that possibility. But the reality is stubborn and, as I said, there has been no movement of French Brothers to join the Grand Lodge of Spain. In this regard I must reiterate that, in my opinion, every Big East is sovereign and independent, so that should be resolved internally the events that occur within it, and no other Grand Lodge should interfere or meddle in matters that concern them.
The original story reported:
“Sources of the Grand Lodge of Spain consulted by El Confidencial suggest that “what has been, so far, are some contacts of the brothers of France to see if the GLE would open its doors, as the organization in that country has suffered hit hard by the actions of its Grand Master. ”
These sources emphasize that “the crisis in the GLNF is very strong and many members have sent us their intention not to be affiliated with the organization since they are very disappointed by the political manipulation that has been made of the institution. These sources Emphasize That “the crisis in the GLNF is very strong and Many members sat us Have Their intention Not to be Affiliated with the organization Since They Are very disappointed by the Political manipulation That has-been made of the institution. One thing is that you can Masons have in politics is quite another to such an institution serving some interests, which is prohibited. One thing Masons That May Have Another in policy and remove to put Such an institution serving Some Interests, Which is prohibited. Stifani Freemasonry has betrayed. “Stifani Freemasonry has betrayed.”
The betrayal was cited as a letter Stifani sent to French President Nicolas Sarkozy in January, 2009 wrote a letter in which he expressed his (Masonic) support to him and several cabinet members. The letter has since forced François Stifani’s resignation as the organizations President, but not its Grand Master, and the appointment of Monique Legrand, judicial administrator, as the ad hoc administrator of the French National Grand Lodge (GLNF).
Was it merely a testing of the waters? Seems not to be the case.