History of Blue Lodge
Masonry
A
Symbolic Lodge, in which the first three degrees of Freemasonry are conferred,
the Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason, is so called from the
color of its decorations. Freemasonry is an oath-bound fraternal and
benevolent association of men whose purpose is to nurture sound moral and
social virtues among its members and mankind. Its origins go back to
17th-century England when guilds of working stonemasons began accepting
honorary members, many of whom were gentlemen architects or amateur scholars
interested in the new rational philosophy of science and the
Enlightenment. A separate "speculative" fraternity of
Freemasons, using the guild system of degrees and secret passwords, and the
stonemason's tools as symbols, was officially organized as the Grand Lodge of
England in 1717. A Masonic Lodge in America is first mentioned in
Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette in 1731. By the mid-18th
century Freemasonry had gained wide acceptance in America.
Although
much of Freemasonry's ritual symbolism is drawn from Biblical references, it
has no religious affiliation or requirement except in a belief in a Supreme
Being. For 18th century Americans, removed from the European center of
learning, Freemasonry served as a vehicle for the popularization and spread of
new ideas. Enlightenment concepts of equality, religious tolerance, and
natural laws were incorporated into Freemasonry's moral system. These
radical ideas helped form American arguments for independence and democracy;
many of the leaders of the American Revolution were Freemasons.
Today,
additional information has surfaced that links early Freemasonry to Templarism
and the Crusades of the Middle Ages. The thesis for this even earlier
origin of Freemasonry can be found in (here)
in John Robinson's book "Born in Blood".
Freemasonry
today remains the oldest and most successful of all fraternal organizations
and has served as a model for many subsequent groups.
Entered
Apprentice Degree
Let us begin by defining
the term "Entered Apprentice." As an Entered Apprentice Mason,
the first step in your journey to the Sublime Degree of Master Mason has been
taken. We are sure
that you found your initiation an experience you will never forget. A
degree in Masonry is not an isolated experience once had and then done with,
but is an ever enduring privilege. You
can sit in an Entered Apprentice Lodge to observe, to participate in, and to
study its ceremonies.
Your possession of the
degree is a life-long possession which you can continue to enjoy and to enter
into as long as you live. As
an Entered Apprentice Mason you therefore are a learner, or beginner, in
Speculative Masonry. You
have taken the first step in the mastery of our art. Certain things are
expected of you.
First
, you are expected to show a certain humility. As a learner, you must
have guides and teachers, and you must be willing to have them lead you.
Second,
you must learn the catechism of the Degree, so as to prove your proficiency in
open Lodge. The purpose of learning the lecture is for you to master it
so thoroughly that its lesson will remain with you for life.
Third
, you must study and improve yourself in Masonry in all other possible
ways. Your Lodge will not be content merely to receive your dues; it
requires that you become a real and active member.
Fourth,
you will learn the rules and regulations that govern an Entered Apprentice
Mason.
As you stood in the
northeast corner of the Lodge, you were taught a certain lesson concerning a
cornerstone. From
that lesson, you should know that you are a cornerstone of the Craft. It is our hope and prayer that you will
prove to be a solid foundation as you proceed to the Fellow Craft Degree and
then to the Master Mason Degree. Our
great Fraternity depends on new members like you to conduct its work in the
years to come.
Fellow Craft
Degree
You
are now a Fellow Craft Mason.
This
means that you passed through its ceremonies, assumed its obligations, are
registered as such in the books of the Lodge, and can sit in either a Lodge of
Entered Apprentices or of Fellow Crafts, but not in a Lodge of Master Masons.
Doubtless
you recognized in the Fellow Craft Degree a call for learning, an urge to
study. Truly, here is a great Degree -- one to muse upon and to study; one to
see many, many times and still not come to the end of its stirring teachings.
There
are two great ideas embodied in the Fellow Craft Degree. They are not the only
two ideas in it, to be sure; but if you understand these, they will lead you
into an understanding of the others. But
before we turn to these two main ideas, exactly what is a Fellow Craft?
Fellow Craft
is one of a large number of terms which have a technical meaning peculiar to
Freemasonry and is seldom or never found elsewhere. In
the dictionary sense it is not difficult to define. A "craft" was an
organization of the skilled workmen in some trade or calling, for example,
masons, carpenters, painters, sculptors, barbers, etc. A
"fellow" meant one who held full membership in such a craft, was
obligated to the same duties, and allowed the same privileges. Since the
skilled crafts are no longer organized as they once were, the term is no
longer in use with its original sense. It is more difficult to give it
the larger meaning as it is found in Freemasonry, but we may be assisted to
that end by noting that with us it possesses two quite separate and distinct
meanings, one of which we may call the Operative meaning, the other the
Speculative.
We
can first consider the OPERATIVE meaning.
In its
operative period, Freemasons were skilled workmen engaged in some branch of
the building trade, or art of architecture; as such, like all other skilled
workmen, they had an organized craft of their own. The
general form in which this craft was organized was called a "guild."
A Lodge was a local, and usually temporary organization within the guild.
This guild had officers,
laws, rules, regulations, and customs of its own, rigorously binding on all
members equally. It divided its membership into two grades, the lower of
which was composed of apprentices. The Operative Freemasons recruited their membership from
qualified lads of twelve to fifteen years of age. When such a boy proved
acceptable to the members, he was required to swear to be obedient, upon which
he was bound over to some Master Mason; after a time, if he proved worthy, his
name was formally entered in the books of the Lodge, thereby giving him his
title of Entered Apprentice. For about seven years this boy lived with
his master, gave his master implicit obedience in all things, and toiled much
but received no pay except his board, lodging, and clothing.
In the
Lodge life, he held a place equally subordinate because he could not attend a
Lodge of Master Masons, had no voice or vote, and could not hold office.
All this means that during
his long apprenticeship, he was really a bond servant with many duties, few
rights, and very little freedom.
At
the end of his apprenticeship, he was once more examined in Lodge. If his
record was good, if he could prove his proficiency under test and the members
voted in his favor, he was released from his bonds and made a full member of
the Craft, with the same duties, rights, and privileges as all others.
In the sense that he had thus become a full member, he was called a
"Fellow of the Craft". In the sense that he had mastered the
art and no longer needed a teacher, he was called a "Master Mason."
So far as his grade was
concerned, these two terms meant the same thing. Such was the Operative
meaning of the Fellow Craft.
We come next to the meaning of the term Speculative Masonry.
Operative
Freemasonry began to decline about the time of the Reformation when Lodges
became few in number and small in membership.
After a
time, a few of the Lodges in England began to admit into membership men with
no intention of practicing the trade of Operative Masonry, but were attracted
by the Craft's antiquity and for social reasons.
These
were called SPECULATIVE Masons.
At the
beginning of the 18th century, the Speculatives had so increased their numbers
that at last they gained control, and during the 1st quarter of that century,
they completely transformed the Craft into the SPECULATIVE Fraternity as we
know it today. Although
they adhered as closely as possible to the old customs, they were compelled to
make some radical changes in order to fit the Society for its new purposes.
One of
the most important of these changes was to abandon the old rule of dividing
the members into two grades or degrees, and to adopt the new rule of dividing
it into three grades or degrees.
It was
necessary to find a name for the new degree. Therefore, the degrees of
symbolic Masonry became known as the Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and
Master Mason.
Master
Mason Degree
You have
just been raised to the Sublime Degree of Master Mason. It is indeed a
"sublime" degree, which a man may study for years without
exhausting. In
the First and Second Degrees you were surrounded by the symbols and emblems of
architecture. In the Third Degree you found a different order of
symbolism, cast in the language of the soul --- its life, its tragedy, and its
triumph. To recognize
this is the first step in interpretation of this sublime and historic step on
so-called "Blue Lodge" Masonry.
The
second point is to recognize that the Third Degree has many meanings. It
is not intended to be a lesson complete, finished, or closed. There are many
interpretations of the Degrees. But most essentially, it is a
drama of the immortality of the soul, setting forth the truth that, while a
man withers away and perishes, there is that in him which perishes not.
That this is the meaning
most generally accepted by the Craft is shown by our habits of language. We
say that a man is initiated an Entered Apprentice, passed to the degree of
Fellow Craft, and "raised" a Master Mason. By this it appears
that it is the "raising" that most Masons have found to be the
center of the Master Mason Degree.
Evil in the
form of tragedy is set forth in the drama of the Third Degree.
Here is a good and wise man, a builder, working for others and giving others
work, the highest we know, as it is dedicated wholly to God. Through no fault of his
own he experiences tragedy from friends and fellow Masons. Here is evil
pure and simple, a complete picture of human tragedy. How did the Craft
meet this tragedy? The first step was to
impose the supreme penalty on those who had possessed the will of destruction
and therefore had to be destroyed lest another tragedy follow. The
greatest enemy man has makes war upon the good; to it no quarter can be given.
The next step was to discipline and to pardon those who acted not out of an
evil will, but one of weakness. Forgiveness is possible if a man
condemns the evil he has done, since in spite of his weakness he retains faith
in good.
The
next step was to recover from the wreckage caused by the tragedy whatever
value it had left undestroyed. Confusion
had come upon the Craft; order was restored. Loyal Craftsmen took up the
burdens left by traitors. It is in the nature of such tragedy that the
good suffer for evil and it is one of the prime duties of life that a man
shall toil to undo the harm wrought by sin and crime, else in time the world
would be destroyed by the evils that are done in it.
But what
of the victim of the tragedy? Here is the most profound and difficult lesson
of the drama. It is difficult to understand, difficult to believe
if one has not been truly initiated into the realities of the spiritual life.
Because the victim was a
good man, his goodness rooted in an unvarying faith in God, that which
destroyed him in one sense could not destroy him in another. The spirit in him rose
above the evil; by virtue of it he was "raised" from a dead level to
a living perpendicular.
A number of additional degrees
and related organizations have developed beyond the degree of Master
Mason, Scottish Rite Freemasonry, developed in France and the West
Indies, was first installed in Albany, New York, in 1767. The first
Supreme Council was established in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1801,
followed by the Supreme Council of the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction founded
in New York City in 1813. The Knight Templar degree was conferred in
Boston in 1769 and developed as a part of York Rite Freemasonry. The
Order of the Eastern Star is an adoptive order open to Master Masons and their
female relatives. It was founded by Robert Morris, a Mason who felt it
was important to share the teachings of Masonry with the entire family.
He began organizing groups called Families of the Eastern Star in the 1850's
and the General Grand Chapter was established in 1876. The Ancient
Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine was established in 1872. The
idea by its founders was to establish a fun fraternal order with an Arabic
theme for men who had completed their requirements in the Scottish or York
rite Masonic organizations. (Recently
the Imperial Council amended its charter to allow Master Masons in good
standing to join.)
Prince Hall, a
free black clergyman serving a congregation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was
one of 15 black men initiated into Freemasonry on March 6, 1775 in a British
Army Lodge whose members were stationed in Boston. Prince Hall then
formed a Masonic Lodge of black men, subsequently receiving a charter from the
Grand Lodge of England when he was unable to obtain one from the Provincial
Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. Hall went on to fight in the American
Revolution at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Prince Hall Masonry proceeded
to form its own Grand Lodges and higher degrees.
