Quest Magazine

Co-Masonry Revealed

Printed in the Fall 2024 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Rees, Julian, "Co-Masonry Revealed" Quest 112:4, pg 28-32

By Julian Rees

Julian Rees What would you say if you knew there was a worldwide pursuit of nonreligious, secular spirituality over three hundred years old? It is called Freemasonry, a pursuit that has been wrongly characterized in many ways: as a rich men’s social club, as an excuse to dress up in elaborate regalia, as a sinister movement whose aim is worldwide domination, as a charitable foundation whose primary aim is the relief of distress, as a men-only organization acting as a refuge from marital encumbrances, and many more.

The truth is quite different. While it is true that worldwide, Freemasonry is largely an all-male pursuit, there is a vibrant branch, existing since 1893, of liberal, nondogmatic, bigender Freemasonry firmly grounded in a spiritual path, the pursuit of self-knowledge, liberty of conscience, the perfection of humankind, equality of men and women, and the erection of an edifice dedicated to the perfection of humanity, harmony and balance, tolerance, and equality.

Paramount amongst these values is self-knowledge. One of the simplest but most important symbols is the point within a circle. Self-knowledge is represented here by access to the still, small point in the interior of each human being.

circle point

Freemasonry at its richest form of expression is an esoteric pursuit, engaging both men and women in the International Order of Freemasonry for Men and Women Le Droit Humain, whose supreme council is in Paris but which is found in many countries.

This Order started in 1893 when Marie (or Maria) Deraismes (1828‒94), an ardent feminist and proponent of women in Freemasonry, was initiated into a Masonic Lodge in the town of Le Pec near Paris by male Freemasons sympathetic to her cause.

The world of Freemasonry was scandalized at this innovation and refused to accept it. But the founders persevered and initiated even more women, and in this they were supported and energized by Georges Martin. Together with prominent Theosophist Annie Besant, they founded the New Masonic Order. Besant founded the British arm of the Order, and C.W. Leadbeater, another Theosophist, also became a member.

In this Order, a person aspiring to be a Freemason is initiated using a ceremonial with echoes of the ancient Mystery traditions, such as the Mithraic and Eleusinian. Today in our tradition we define Freemasonry as “an initiatory system containing the keys to the ancient mysteries, which are experienced through a series of mystery dramas designed to open up and deepen awareness and understanding.” These mystery dramas are codified in three degrees:

1. The first degree, that of initiation, which is a complex allegory of death of the self in order to be re-born; renewal; acquisition of spiritual light; paths leading to self-knowledge.

2. The second degree, that of passing, incorporating an allegory of the passage through life, and development of the intellectual faculties, while emphasizing the intellect of the heart (intuition) over that of the brain.

3. The third degree, that of raising, is an allegory of death and the human aspiration to triumph over death to be reborn. It is a development of aspects of the first degree.

All three degrees make use of symbolism. The tradition is based on that of stonemasons, from whose symbols allegories are devised. For Freemasons, an allegory is a form of nonverbal communication. To pick a simple example, we have the first degree Freemason, who is called an Entered Apprentice, engaged in allegorically sculpting a rough cuboid stone to make of it a perfect, smooth, six-sided cube. The allegory, which the candidate is personally invited to decode, is that of the perfection of one’s own character. One will meet with many such allegories on this journey.

The First Degree


Tracing Board for 1st Degree.

But first let us begin at the beginning. Once an aspirant has met socially with many members of the lodge, she or he will be balloted for in an open lodge meeting. (Henceforth in this article, the pronoun he should be taken to mean either she or he.) If the ballot is in his favor, he will come to the lodge on an appointed day when he will be prepared for the ceremony of initiation. This preparation consists of disarranging his clothing, removing all money and metallic objects such as jewelry, removing one shoe, placing a blindfold over his eyes, and placing a rope with a running noose about his neck. This allegory is manifold: the candidate comes spiritually devoid of light; he needs to direct his attention inwardly; he comes without material encumbrances; he is submissive; he is disoriented; he places his trust in those around him; they place their trust in him.

At the door of the lodge, the candidate is met with two dangers: one if he tries to rush forward, the other if he is reticent and holds back. This allegory teaches him to persevere steadily. Once inside the lodge, after the Master recites a prayer invoking divine aid, the candidate is led round to be verbally examined by two of the senior officers of the Lodge: the Senior Warden and the Junior Warden. During this perambulation, he is presented to the elementals of earth, air, fire, and water:

Ho! Elementals of the Earth, who guard the right side of the Second Portal. Behold! A blinded child of mortality, seeking Immortality, approacheth. Earth to Earth he gives you of your own. As he thus recognises you, so shall you henceforth always recognise him as one of the Brethren. Open your ranks, that he may come near to the Warden of your Gate.

Finally the candidate is verbally examined by the Master. He then kneels at an altar placed near the center of the lodge and swears a vow of fidelity to Freemasonry and to the lodge in particular.

The culmination of the ceremony of initiation is the presentation of the working tools, which in this degree are the twenty-four-inch gauge, the common gavel, and the chisel. Apart from their operative uses, the allegorical uses are explained to the aspirant. The common gavel represents the driving force of humanity; the chisel passively receives the blows of the gavel but is in itself capable of very fine, creative work; the gauge not only measures the work, but in a figurative sense measures the other two, by allegorically tempering the blows of the gavel and encouraging the chisel to be more assertive.

A summary of this degree might say that the aspirant gives up physical, material freedom in order to attain for a different, greater freedom as a Freemason.

Each degree in Freemasonry uses what is called a tracing board as a means of displaying some of the allegories in a visual form and to encourage meditation on them. The first-degree tracing board shows the sun and moon and seven stars. Beneath those is what is called the Blazing Star, emblematic of the divine presence. Beneath that is Jacob’s Ladder, a conduit between the terrestrial and the celestial, displaying emblems of faith, hope, and charity. The ladder rests on the Bible or another holy book, itself resting on an altar. On the Bible are displayed the square and compasses, and on the front of the altar is the point within a circle mentioned earlier. The three pillars, of the Ionic, Doric, and Corinthian orders, represent wisdom, strength, and beauty respectively. The rough-hewn stone and the polished stone are shown, as are the working tools, the gavel, chisel, and twenty-four-inch gauge, as well as a square, level, and plumb rule, emblematic of morality, equality, and truth. The whole stands on a white and black checkered pavement, representing light and darkness, good and evil, joy and sorrow, fortune and misfortune, life and death.

As mentioned earlier, the second degree deals with the passage through life, the aspirant increasing and developing intellectually and morally. After entering the lodge, the Apprentice passes five stages, named the senses, the arts, natural science, benefactors of humanity, and service:

1. The senses are touch, hearing, sight, taste, and smell.

2. The arts mentioned are architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry.

3. The natural sciences are mathematics, geometry, philosophy, biology, and sociology.

4. Benefactors of humanity are sages, artists, scientists, inventors, and legislators.

5. Service. The aspirant is exhorted to adopt the maxim the highest ideal of life is to serve.

Three working tools are presented to the newly created Fellow Craftsman: the square, level, and plumb rule, emblems of morality, equality, and truth respectively.

The Second Degree


	Tracing Board for 2nd Degree.

The second degree tracing board directly reflects part of the Solomonic legend. It depicts the entrance to King Solomon’s Temple, flanked by two pillars, terrestrial and celestial. Within the Temple is a winding staircase comprising three, five, and seven or more steps: three denoting the Master of the Lodge and the two Wardens; five denoting the five senses and also the five noble orders of architecture, which are the Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite; and seven denoting the liberal arts and sciences, namely grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.

This staircase leads, on the upper level, to the middle chamber of the Temple, where the Fellow Craftsmen went to receive their wages, and is allegorically the halfway point towards unity with the Divine. Indeed, above the open door of the Middle Chamber we can clearly see the Tetragrammaton, the biblical four-lettered name of God: yod, heh, waw, heh (יהוה).

The staircase turns through an angle of ninety degrees, which is important on two levels. Ninety degrees is of course a square angle, and the square is an ever-present symbol in Freemasonry. Moreoever, turning through ninety degrees as the Craftsman ascends allows him to view the surrounding objects from different angles, underscoring one principal aspect of Freemasonry: to decode the allegory of a given symbol, we need to regard that symbol from different angles, physically and figuratively.

The Third Degree


Tracing Board for 3rd Degree.

The third degree is often regarded as the true initiation. At its core, it deals with emergence from darkness to light, from life through death to rebirth, from ignorance to knowledge, from chaos to order, from despair to hope and joy. It also deals with strong bonds of true fraternity, interdependency, and love.

When the aspirant—now a Fellow Craft Freemason—is admitted to the third degree, all is in darkness. Unlike the first degree, where the aspirant was the only one in darkness due to his blindfold, here all the brethren are in darkness, except for a very faint light in the east at the Master’s pedestal. This is to emphasize that all the brethren need to take part in the ceremony to come; the Fellow Craftsman will need all the energy, all the support that he can get.

Under the care and protection of the Deacon, the Fellow Craft now perambulates the lodge in the same way as in the two preceding degrees. When that has been accomplished, he finds himself standing in the west, facing the glimmering light across the floor of the lodge. He needs to progress towards the light, literally as well as symbolically. But at his feet he may be able to see that he is standing on the brink of a grave. In order to approach light, therefore, he has to traverse the very negation of light and life, namely the ultimate symbol of death. Should he not succeed in negotiating this perilous path, the light will not be attainable. The grave over which he steps is not the grave destined to contain his own dead body, but rather the one where his own lower self now lies buried, and over which he has to walk before attaining the heights toward which he is now well advanced. Self-sacrifice and self-negation are essential before the candidate can be raised to a higher plane.

The Deacon instructs the candidate to step over the grave with three steps, from one side to the other and back again. After this, still under the guidance of the Deacon, he approaches the Master and the glimmering light; he kneels and swears a further vow, after which the Master creates, receives, and constitutes him a Master Mason. He then raises the candidate up to a standing position. Remember that all is still in nearly total darkness.

A little drama is then enacted, recounting the death of Hiram Abiff, in Masonic lore the principal architect of King Solomon’s Temple, in which three disenchanted craftsmen seek to obtain the secrets of the third degree from Hiram, threatening him with death if he refuses to communicate them. Hiram exhorts them to work hard at their task of building so that in time they may earn the right to those secrets, but it is to no avail, and Hiram is slain. The newly made Master Mason in this ceremony is made to play the part of Hiram, and when he “dies,” he is laid down onto the emblem of the grave which he earlier traversed on his journey towards light. A Masonic writer, Colin Dyer, once wrote:

As the Master was present in the lodge, his light remained, as the spiritual and moral teaching which he gave would still be with a Brother at the time of death, although those grand luminaries, the sun and moon, would no longer be of use to him. By the help of this teaching, he would triumph over death and succeed to life eternal, symbolised not only by the raising itself, but by the restoration of general light to the lodge.

Two attempts, summarizing the signs and words of the first two degrees, fail to raise Hiram from his death, but the Master of the Lodge tries a third way, which is successful. The Master now addresses the new Master Mason:

Let me now beg you to observe that the Light of a Master Mason is but darkness—visible; the darkness symbolises that mysterious veil which the eye of human reason cannot penetrate unless assisted by the Light which is from above.

These words, originally written during the Age of Enlightenment, are interesting in that, although human reason was regarded by the Enlightenment as practically sacrosanct, due observance is still paid to the power of the Divine in assisting us to penetrate the veil separating us from knowledge of our own true nature: as a divine spirit which happens to inhabit a human body.

The Master continues:

Guide your reflections to that most interesting of all human studies, the inner meaning of life, the knowledge of yourself . . . continue to listen to the voice of nature, which bears witness that even in this perishable frame resides a vital and immortal principle.

The culmination of the degree is the communication by the Master to the new Master Mason of the five points of fellowship: fraternity, support, keeping another’s wants in mind;, respecting confidences, and defending another’s character. These are accomplished by an intimate embrace.

It will be remembered that in the second degree the Fellow Craft passes into the middle chamber of King Solomon’s Temple to receive his wages. From there, having been raised to the degree of Master Mason, he proceeds to the Sanctum Sanctorum, where he symbolically stands face to face with God. Therefore in the third degree tracing board, we see the porch to the Sanctum Sanctorum, the dormer window which gives it light, and the checkered pavement of the first degree.

At the top of the board we see a sprig of acacia, which was said to mark the initial burial place of Hiram Abiff, the working tools of the third degree, which are the skirret, pencil, and compasses. We see skull and crossbones as emblems of mortality, and a plumb rule, a level, and a heavy maul, which are said to be the implements with which Hiram was slain.

Whether by accident or design, the legend and symbolism of Freemasonry owes much to the ancient Mysteries, chief amongst them the Eleusinian and Mithraic. In the Eleusinian Mystery tradition, neophytes were initiated in stages, part of which consisted in wandering in the dark, confused and disoriented. Their subsequent purification parallels the removal of money and valuables from the Masonic aspirant before his initiation. Eleusinian initiates reported that the experience transformed them and removed the fear of death. The Eleusinian initiate was also promised benefits in the afterlife.

In the Mithraic tradition, the Mithraeum bears remarkable similarity to the Masonic Temple; both are earthly representations of the cosmos through which souls pass in their process of reincarnation or evolution. Both temples have vaulted ceilings lined with stars. The space is windowless, closed to the outside, or with strategic openings. The Mithraic temple, like the Masonic Temple, is a timeless place where mysteries are performed, members of the community are initiated, earthly matters are deliberated, and, ultimately, brotherhood among the brethren is forged. Both spaces are rectangular in form.

Mithraea often contained shallow depressions, where a coffin containing the body of the symbolically deceased brother was situated. Both Masonic and Mithraic initiations are preceded by the symbolic death of the aspirant, to be reborn leaving his profane life behind. In any case, to be initiated in either tradition, moral integrity is a must.

Another point in common between the two brotherhoods is the importance given to the gesture of shaking hands. An initiate into the mysteries of Mithras is known by the Greek term syndexios, meaning one who has exchanged the handshake. This gesture represents agreement and fraternity.

In Mithraism, the initiate undertakes not to communicate the mysteries that have been revealed during an initiation—it is Mithras himself who is the guarantor of the promises. The meaning of initiation, in both traditions, lies not in a set of actions, gestures and words, but in the experience itself, in the transformative effect of the ceremony on the aspirant.

Freemasonry remains to this day the greatest representative of a tradition, based on equality and fraternity, that binds its members together in a chain that stretches from the past and reaches into the future.

Julian Rees is a member of the International Order of Freemasonry for Men and Women, formerly known as Co-Masonry. He is the author of a number of works on Freemasonry, chief among them being More Light: Today’s Freemasonry for Men and Women and Tracing Boards of the Three Degrees in Craft Freemasonry Explained.

Freemasonry for Men and Women: Liberty, Equality, and the Restoration of Women to Ancient Masonry

Printed in the Fall 2024 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Chounramany, Noy, "Freemasonry for Men and Women: Liberty, Equality, and the Restoration of Women to Ancient Masonry" Quest 112:4, pg 20-22

By Noy Chounramany

If Masonry is really anything, it is a presentment by symbol and by legend of the great fundamental truths of human life and human evolution.

—Annie Besant 33°

Noy Chounramany Although the better-known traditions of Freemasonry prescribe that only men may become Freemasons, in reality women have been a part of Masonry and the ancient Mysteries since time immemorial and have an ancient and equitable right to become Freemasons. The involvement of women was vital to the success of the ncient Mysteries, to which Freemasonry has often been speculatively linked. Moreover, women were employed as operative stonemasons throughout history and were admitted as members of Masonic lodges before the establishment of the first Grand Lodges of Freemasonry.

Operative Stonemasons to Speculative Freemasons

Masonry teaches us to master ourselves. That is something we can do and must do to succeed. We are here to transform ourselves from rough into perfect ashlars.

—Louis Goaziou 33°

The traditions and documents of the medieval operative stonemasons serve as the direct foundation for speculative Freemasonry. To distinguish between the two, operative stonemasons work with stone and build physical structures, whereas speculative Freemasons figuratively build temples of their ideal selves by working to embody morals, ethics, and philosophical idioms that are illustrated by the imagery, symbols, and tools of operative stonemasonry.


	The Baal’s Bridge Square, dated 1507.

Through historical documents and relics, we know that medieval operative stonemasons upheld a culture of inner reflection and self-work. Lodge constitutions of operative stonemasons obliged their members to follow certain moral and ethical guidelines, and some even encouraged the pursuit of the seven classical liberal arts and sciences (grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). The Baal’s Bridge Square (dated 1507) is a Masonic relic that was discovered beneath the foundation stones of Baal’s Bridge in Limerick, Ireland. This brass square was brought to light in 1830 during a reconstruction of the bridge and contains the following engraved inscription: “I Will Strive to Live with Love & Care, Upon the Level, by the Square.”

During the seventeenth century, stonemasons began to admit those who were not part of the craft into their lodges. John Boswell, third Laird of Auchinleck, is the first documented nonstonemason to have attended a meeting of stonemasons on June 8, 1600, at the Lodge of Edinburgh held at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, Scotland. The first known admission and initiation of nonstonemasons into a Masonic Lodge occurred on July 3, 1634: Lord William Alexander, Sir Anthony Alexander, and Sir Alexander Strachan of Thornton were admitted and initiated into the Lodge of Edinburgh (Mary’s Chapel) No. 1, located in Edinburgh, Scotland.

As these and other such members were not operative stonemasons, they came to be known as Accepted Masons, who speculate upon the symbols and teachings of ancient Masonry.

Experts are split on the precise origin and meaning of the Masonic usage of the word free of the compound word “Freemason.” Some say that it is derived from the idea that stonemasons were free citizens, not being enslaved or in servitude, while others opine that it stems from the social norm that allowed stonemasons to freely travel from town to town and country to country in the pursuit and practice of their trade. There are others who propose that free is a reference to the technique of stonemasons building with free-standing stones. It has also been proposed that Freemason etymologically originates from the French frère (brother): hence frèremaçon (brother mason). As each symbol of Freemasonry may hold many meanings and interpretations, perhaps the free in Freemason refers to all of these points and more.

Women Builders

The skilled crafts and trades of history did not prohibit women from training or employment. Dr. Zahi Hawass, world-renowned Egyptologist and former minister of antiquities in Egypt, has been quoted as saying, “We now know with certainty that the pyramids were built by Egyptian men and women.”

Women also worked in the crafts and trades throughout medieval Europe. There are many historical examples of women being commissioned as painters, sculptors, glass makers, cartwrights, and shipwrights. In addition, women were trained and employed in textiles, carpentry, and stonemasonry. For example, a woman from Norwich, England, known as Gunnilda the Mason is mentioned in the 1256 Calendar for Close Rolls of the reign of Henry III. Operative stonemasonry honored women with the title of “Dame” and were authorized to oversee construction work and supervise craftsmen, as is documented in the records of the Corpus Christi Guild at York and in the Lodge Minutes of Mary’s Chapel in Edinburgh.

Women in the Masonic Old Charges

The medieval documents of operative stonemasons are collectively known as the Masonic Old Charges. These Old Charges have been cited to form the “landmarks,” guidelines, and traditions establishing the constitutions, bylaws, and regularity of speculative Freemasonry. Significantly, several of the Masonic Old Charges mention the inclusion of women.

The Regius Poem, also known as the Halliwell Manuscript, is the oldest extant Masonic Old Charge. It is dated to approximately 1390‒1450 and makes several references to women:

In that honest craft to be perfect,
And so each one shall teach the other,
And love together as sister and brother.
The tenth article is for to know,
Among the craft, to high and low,
There shall no master supplant another,
But be together as sister and brother.
That no craving be made to thee,
Nor to thy fellows in no degree,
To man or to woman, whoever he be,
Pay them well and truly, for that will we.

Both the Harleian Manuscript No. 1942 (dated 1660‒70) and the Lodge of Hope Manuscript (dated 1680) obligate and charge apprentices to respect, obey, and serve Dames. The controversial York Manuscript No. 4 (dated 1693) specifically mentions the Masonic obligation of women: “The one of the elders takeing the Booke and that hee or shee that is to bee made mason shall lay their hands thereon and the charge shall bee given.”

Although some allege that this excerpt is no more than a scribal error, York No. 4 certainly exhibits a consistency with the many Masonic Old Charges that mention the inclusion of women.

Perhaps the most incontrovertible fact confirming the originally accepted inclusion of women in Masonry is in the case of Mary Bannister of Barking, England. The 1713 member rolls of the London Company of Masons document Bannister as paying dues and being admitted for a seven-year apprenticeship.

The mounting evidence is clear: Masonry was gender-inclusive before it became a gender-exclusive institution; the exclusion of women from Freemasonry was an innovation to the established traditions of ancient Masonry. In the nineteenth century, Albert Mackey 33° (secretary general of the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States) stated in his famous Encyclopedia of Freemasonry: “The law which excludes women from initiation into Freemasonry is not contained in the precise words in any of the Old Constitutions . . . But in the Charges compiled by Anderson and Desaguliers, and published in 1723, the word woman is for the first time introduced and the law is made explicit.”

Women and the Ancient Mysteries

The Co-Masonic Order is distinguished from the rest of the Masonic world by the admission of women on equal terms with men. In this, it is introducing no innovation into the body of Masonry, but rather restoring one of the ancient landmarks which was forgotten during the confusion of the Mysteries with the operative Masonry of the Middle Ages. In both Egypt and Greece, as we have seen, women were admitted to the Mysteries and were able to penetrate into the inmost sanctuaries as well as men.

—C.W. Leadbeater 33°

Within lore and mythos, Freemasonry has been described as both a safekeeper of ancient wisdom and a lineage bearer of the ancient Mysteries. When we look to the past, we discover many parallels and similarities between the rituals, symbols, and secrets of Freemasonry with those of indigenous systems all over the world. For example, some of the traditional postures and gestures associated with Freemasonry are mirrored in artistic portrayals of ancient deities, kings, queens, priests, and priestesses. The square, compasses, and skirret (measure) are prominent symbols of Freemasonry which are also associated with the ancient Chinese primordial consort deities Fuxi and Nuwa, who are credited with the creation of humans and imparting various arts and sciences to humanity. As with the various pillars of Freemasonry, ancient Egyptian columns often held intrinsic meanings and were often presented as symbolical expressions, for example: obelisks alluding to the deities Ra or Aten and the djed pillar referring to the Osirian myth. Humanity’s oldest known megaliths have been unearthed at the Anatolian Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe and feature round ceremonial and ritual structures incorporating megalithic T-shaped pillars decoratively carved with symbolical images: prominent twin pillars positioned at the center of each temple-like structure, being then enclosed by circular walls built around evenly spaced outer pillars.

Women often held prominent positions in many of the ancient Mystery traditions and religious cults. Ancient Mesopotamia had institutionalized priestesses of varying authority, with some holding great wealth and ownership of land. Ancient Egyptian cults had high temple priestesses and female servants of the gods. The Greco-Roman Mysteries had women initiates and priestesses and were open to participants of all social classes and genders. Furthermore, the famed Oracle of Delphi and the Phrygian Sibyl were esteemed positions held exclusively by women.

Co-Freemasonry: Freemasonry for Men and Women

Mixed gender Freemasonry is not a new cult, but a humanist philosophy that hopes to introduce its values in society. Human rights, peace between all the nations on earth, freedom, equality, fraternity: these are the precepts of mixed gender Freemasonry with which we hope to brighten justice, tolerance, and solidarity.

—Georges Martin 33°

During the nineteenth century, several Freemasons began lobbying the established Masonic Grand Lodges for the restoration of women to ancient Masonry. Leading this charge was the accomplished French politician and Freemason Dr. Georges Martin (1844–1916). Before serving as senator of Seine, France, in 1885–91, he was known as “Doctor of the Poor” for his inclination to waive the bills of his financially burdened patients. In French politics, Martin invested himself into causes such as creating the Paris department of health, reopening various charity offices, and supporting the equality, rights, and suffrage of women. His Masonic journey began as he was initiated into Freemasonry on March 21, 1879, by the Lodge “Union and Beneficence” (Union et Bienfaisance) under the jurisdiction of the Central Grand Lodge (restructured as the Grande Loge de France, 1894). Martin then advanced to the thirty-third degree of the Scottish Rite as a member of Lodge “Scottish Jerusalem” (La Jerusalem Écossaise) under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Council of France. In 1880, twelve lodges of the Supreme Council of France declared independence and restructured themselves as the Grande Loge Symbolique Écossaise (“Symbolic Scottish [Rite] Grand Lodge”), counting Georges Martin as a prominent cofounder.

Through the efforts of several members of the Grande Loge Symbolique Écossaise—Martin most significantly—the Lodge “Free Thinkers” (Les Libres Penseurs) amended their rules and bylaws to allow the prerogative to initiate women. Author, playwright, and women’s rights activist Marie Adélaïde Deraismes (1828– 94) was considered, proposed, and approved to be admitted as a new member of the Lodge. Deraismes and fourteen other women were then regularly initiated into Freemasonry on January 14, 1882. On this occasion, Deraismes was quoted as saying: “If the feeble support that I may be able to render you cannot be effective, that fact in itself is small and of little import, but it well has another importance. The door that you have opened to me will not be closed upon me and all the legion that follows me.”

Unfortunately, the initiation of these women caused a great uproar across the Masonic landscape, leading to the revocation of all allowances to admit women into Freemasonry and the temporary closure of the French lodge. As a consequence, Deraismes instantly became a Freemason without a Masonic community or lodge.

Despite the hurdles, Martin continued to lobby the Masonic world for the equal inclusion of women. Stonewalled for over ten years, he eventually collaborated with Marie Deraismes and others to form La Respectable Loge Le Droit Humain (“The Respectable Lodge, the Human Right”), becoming the world’s first mixed-gender Freemasonic Lodge on March 14, 1893. With growing membership and momentum, on April 4, 1893, the Grande Loge Symbolique Écossaise Mixte de France Le Droit Humain (“Symbolic Scottish [Rite] Mixed Grand Lodge of France, the Human Right”) was founded as the world’s first mixed-gender Freemasonic Grand Lodge, affirming the equality of men and women and the absolute freedom of conscience (French laïcité). Now known as the International Order of Freemasonry for Men and Women Le Droit Humain, the Order is nondogmatic and gender-inclusive, and works seamlessly from the first to the thirty-third degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

Mixed-gender Freemasonry arrived in the U.S. on October 18, 1903, with the Masonic initiation of French emigrant Louis Goaziou into the Mixed Order of Le Droit Humain. The following days mark the first organized U.S. initiations of women into Freemasonry and the founding of the country’s first mixed-gender Freemasonic Lodge: Alpha Lodge No. 301 (established October 25, 1903 in Charleroi, Pennsylvania). Installed as the first presiding Master of Alpha Lodge, Goaziou (1864–1937) was a Pennsylvanian coal miner turned social reformer and worker’s rights activist. He established a printshop and worked as the chief editor of several social, political, and labor newspapers and pamphlets promoting the freedom, equality, and general welfare of all members of society. Through his selfless work and efforts to grow mixed-gender Freemasonry in the U.S., in 1908 Goaziou was elected as the first president of the American Federation of the International Order of Freemasonry for Men and Women Le Droit Humain (formerly known as the American Federation of Human Rights, Le Droit Humain).

Theosophy and Co-Freemasonry

For more than a century, the intersection of esoteric, humanistic, and altruistic work of individual Theosophists and Le Droit Humain Freemasons has resulted in a shared history of human solidarity and universal brotherhood. There is perhaps no greater example than that of Annie Besant (1847–1933). In addition to her tremendous social, political, and Theosophical work, Besant is also remembered as one of the greatest historic champions of Le Droit Humain. Travelling to the headquarters of Le Droit Humain in Paris, Annie Besant was initiated into Freemasonry on July 27, 1902. Returning to Great Britain, she labored to form the first mixed-gender Freemasonic Lodge in London: Lodge Human Duty No. 6 (established September 26, 1902). Besant then worked to cofound the British Federation of Le Droit Humain and served as its first Grand Commander. She further helped to establish and grow lodges of Le Droit Humain not only in Great Britain, but also in Ireland, India, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Burma (today’s Myanmar), Ceylon (today’s Sri Lanka), Indonesia, and Malaysia.

Several of the historically preeminent buildings of the Theosophical Society were dedicated by the ceremonies of ancient Masonry. Annie Besant ceremoniously laid the cornerstones of the Adyar Rising Sun of India Co-Masonic Temple in 1909 and the administrative building of the Theosophical Society, Adyar, in Madras (Chennai), India on July 27, 1913. With news media present, Besant also presided over the August 29, 1926 cornerstone laying ceremony of the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in America, being assisted by an entire Masonic assembly, including Le Droit Humain American federation president Edith Armour; TSA president L.W. Rogers; former TSA president A.P. Warrington; Theosophist and Liberal Catholic Church bishop Irving S. Cooper; and Marie Poutz, resident head of the Krotona Institute of Theosophy and American Esoteric School from 1939 to 1951. The entrance archway of the Theosophical Society in America on North Main Street was also dedicated with a Masonic ceremony, conducted by L.W. Rogers in 1940.

Prominent Theosophists who were also members of the International Order of Freemasonry for Men and Women Le Droit Humain include C.W. Leadbeater, James I. Wedgwood, Geoffrey Hodson, and Francesca Arundale. Past international presidents of the Theosophical Society who were members of Le Droit Humain include Besant, George S. Arundale, C. Jinarajadasa, N. Sri Ram, John B.S. Coats, and Radha Burnier. Presidents of the Theosophical Society in America such as A.P. Warrington, L.W. Rogers, Joy Mills, John Algeo, and Betty Bland can also be found within the membership rolls of Le Droit Humain.

Freemasonry for Men and Women Today

As Marie Deraismes prophetically remarked upon her initiation, the International Order of Freemasonry for Men and Women Le Droit Humain, now existing for 131 years, has gender-inclusive lodges, jurisdictions, and federations in over sixty countries with global membership composed of men and women Freemasons fraternally united and working to concretize the principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity for all people.

Sources

Algeo, John. “Blavatsky, Freemasonry, and the Western Mystery Tradition.” Blavatsky Lecture, delivered at the Summer School of the Theosophical Society in England, July 28, 1996.

Chassagnard, Guy. The Old Charges of the Craft: From the Stone Mason to the Free Mason. Figeac, France: Segnat, 2016.

Gordon, John S. Esoteric Egypt. Rochester, Vt.: Bear & Co., 2015.

Historical Committee, Supreme Council of the International Order of Freemasonry for Men and Women Le Droit Humain. An Outline on the Origins and Development of the Order of International Co-Freemasonry Le Droit Humain. Sart-Bernard, Belgium: Mukanda Press, 1993.

Kidd, Karen. Haunted Chambers: The Lives of Early Women Freemasons. New Orleans: Cornerstone, 2009.

Leadbeater, C.W. Glimpses of Masonic History. Adyar, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1926.

Lorente-Bull, Darren. The Other Brotherhood: When Freemasonry Crossed the English Channel. London: Falcon, 2018.

Rees, Julian, and Lorente-Bull, Darren. More Light: Today’s Freemasonry for Men and Women. Purley, England: Hexalpha, 2017.

Tillett, Gregory. “The Esoteric within the Exoteric: Esoteric Schools Within the Theosophical Movement.” Paper presented to the Theosophical History Conference, San Diego, June 1992.

Weisse, John A. The Obelisk and Freemasonry. Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger, 1993.

The website of the International Order of Freemasonry for Men and Women Le Droit Humain American Federation is www.freemasonryformenandwomen.org.

Noy Chounramany, Theosophist and Freemason, writes and speaks on topics such as comparative religion, spirituality, and esotericism. He is currently serving the Theosophical Society in America as a national speaker, central district director, and general secretary of the Canton Study Center. He served as the American Federation president of the International Order of Freemasonry for Men and Women Le Droit Humain from 2021 to 2022 and is currently serving as the local president of the Hopewell Masonic Group of Canton, Ohio.

A Secular Sangha

Printed in the Fall 2024 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Trull, David, "A Secular Sangha" Quest 112:4, pg 17-19

By David Trull

David Trull Every Sunday growing up, I walked to Catholic church with my family. On the way, we passed a Masonic temple. It was made of glittering white stone, and over the entrance hung a strange symbol that often caught my eye: a compass with what looked like a face in the middle. When I asked my parents what went on there, they shrugged. When I pressed further, my Dad said, “Some people say mysterious rituals, but I think it’s mostly just spaghetti dinners and canned-goods drives.”

At the start of summer, our church hosted a carnival, kicked off by a raucous parade. As a little kid, I would join my siblings, who would rush out in bare feet and watch as the cars full of marching bands and pickup trucks decked in streamers blared past.

Our favorite part was the fleet of minicars, piloted by old guys in Vietnam vet or Navy baseball caps. They would zip between the floats and toss out Tootsie Rolls. When I asked who the heck those guys were, my mom told me they were Shriners and were part of the Masonic temple. I wasn’t sure how to reconcile the silly cars and Tootsie Rolls with that imposing edifice.

I later learned that Freemasonry grew out of the crafts guilds formed in the 1500s. While initially intended to facilitate and regulate the practice of stonemasonry, over time it transcended its initial function and became a fraternal order dedicated to service and self-improvement. Members advance through three degrees, which mirror the ranks of a craftsman: Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and Master Mason.

Freemasons keep their rituals and teachings secret, but their public face is one of community service. They often fund and run children’s hospitals and burn units. Although I came across plenty of online chatter about bizarre rituals and schemes for world domination, it seems much of this talk stems from works of fantasy like Dan Brown’s novel The Lost Symbol. There is nothing people love more than a secret society to blame for all the world’s problems, I suppose.

The Masons and their communal self-improvement efforts came to mind when I read the book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, by Robert Putnam, while living in a Tibetan Buddhist community. Bowling Alone, published in 2000, traces the decline of American social capital since the 1950s (an era of robust civic and social participation). The book describes how Americans once filled their free time with bowling leagues, public clubs like Elks Lodges and the Freemasons, church and charity organizations, and informal gatherings like Sunday dinners or poker nights. It asserts that this civic and neighborhood participation cements social ties, fosters a safe and trusting society, and facilitates generational transfer. To the cosmopolitan eye, church bake sales and Elks Club suppers might appear painfully provincial, but they are the brick and mortar of society, Putnam insists.

I couldn’t help but feel that Putnam had a point. My formative years unfolded over a strange period in history: born early enough to experience the last gasp of the postwar American high, ripe with community and togetherness, and late enough to watch that wave recede from shore. When I was small, our neighborhood was vibrant and active, we knew many of our neighbors, and there was a palpable sense of local pride. By the time I left for college, however, the local church had closed, the parades were no more, the Shriners and their wacky cars had vanished, and people were becoming enamored with novel online communities like Facebook and MySpace. The whole nation felt sadder and more pointless, just a collection of houses, their windows flickering with TV light.

At the time I was reflecting on this, I was introduced to the concepts of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Buddha is the teacher, Dharma the teachings, and Sangha the community of Buddhist practitioners. The rinpoche (meaning precious one, an honorific name for a lama) under whom I studied placed special emphasis on Sangha. Even within a tradition as focused on the individual mind as Buddhism, he said, participation in a community oriented toward enlightenment was critical.

This came as a bit of shock, as I had sought out Buddhism during a somewhat misanthropic stage of my life. I had become fed up with the rat race and had grown pessimistic about the possibilities of friendship and relationships, which seemed to lead only to trouble and disappointment. When I told Rinpoche that I felt I needed less community, not more, he told me that Sangha is the antidote for individualism. Too much focus on the self, even when well-intentioned, engenders suffering. More pain awaited me, he warned, if I sought to make myself an island.

Long story short: I ultimately learned the lesson Rinpoche meant to teach, first through a Buddhist Sangha and then through a circle of new friends. The experience humbled me and showed me the inestimable value of simple togetherness. I could not spend my life alone in meditation or esoteric ritual and expect to find happiness. That was part of it, but I needed others to serve and be served by.

Though they are not Buddhist, I realized that organizations like the Freemasons offer a form of secular Sangha. One of the Mason mottos is, “Making good men better,” as succinct a summary of Sangha as you are likely to find. It leaves room for individual effort (it implies one must be a “good man” to begin with: it does not promise to build one from scratch) yet acknowledges that personal and spiritual growth requires mutual support and a community in which to serve.

While most of the social clubs and community organizations described in Bowling Alone have withered and died, the Masons have demonstrated a particular resilience (they currently have six million members worldwide) that makes me think they will survive (and perhaps thrive) in the years ahead. One reason, I think, is that they incorporate a greater spiritual depth than organizations like the Elks Lodge, but another reason is that they carefully thread the needle between modern and premodern wisdom in two ways.

First, belief in a higher power is a precondition for membership. The applicant does not have to believe in a specific manifestation of God (Jesus or Allah), but the door is closed to atheists. While Freemasonry is modern (or even postmodern) in its flexibility as to the particular form of the higher power, it harks back to an earlier age in insisting that there is something beyond us and the harsh gaze of scientific reductionism. The toughest stretch of my spiritual path came when I realized that I could not live without God. Sure, I could do without the angry, shaming patriarch of my traditional Catholic upbringing and the vanilla prosperity gospel God of the megachurches, but I required something beyond myself, a force driving evolution that offers me a role in its unfolding. The Masons understand that we cannot just “move on” from God.

Second: male-only membership. It feels almost dirty, in these postmodern times, to mention a rule like this. Everything ought to be open to all genders, we profess. While I would almost always agree with this, I think it is wise to recognize the value of single-sex spaces. After all, we observe the polarity of masculine and feminine at work in the unfolding of the universe: how can we deny these forces exist? And if these are polarized powers, perhaps they need space to grow and replenish away from the pressure of their opposite. It is a heartbreaking phenomenon of our time that even a hint of male-oriented spirituality is considered inherently toxic and cancerous, something to snuff out.

While the limitations of the old paradigm are clear, I think we, in our haste, stand to lose much of what was good in the traditional paradigm. The Masons are not afraid to incorporate aspects of the traditional worldview into their modern pursuits while refusing to engage in the destructive “us versus them” arguments so common in the past, and I think this is a sterling example that other spiritual communities should follow. Freemasonry is about becoming better humans, not about feeling better by shoving others out of the circle.

This capacity for integration makes me wonder if the Freemasons, although they have ancient roots, might serve as a model for the type of Sangha we ought to form in this “time between worlds,” as educational theorist Zak Stein calls it. We are bidding farewell to a universe governed by traditional religion and hierarchy and stepping into an uncertain spiritual future. The journey will be painful and the end result unclear. To ease the agony of transition, one of our most urgent tasks is to construct communities of practice in which we can collectively level up.

To be alive now is oftentimes to be lonely. We are either competing against others for scarce resources or fighting for dominance in the space of ideas, struggling for the right to dictate the new paradigm. Much public rhetoric now revolves around crushing the “enemy,” whoever that might be. Self-development often appeals to selfishness (“make tons of money and leave the losers in the dust”) and nets handsome profits for those who peddle it. There is little sense that we are in this thing together, or that we need each other, and the glaring absence of community only exacerbates this feeling. It is unclear where we are meant to go, and whom we should go there with. We need sangha now more than ever.

The Freemason motto is “Ordo ab chao,” Latin for “Order from chaos.” In the beginning, this applied to stonemasons as they laid a foundation and transformed a pile of bricks into a home or a church; now it applies to society. How to bring order from chaos? Service, commitment to self-improvement, and community. While spiritual quests and lofty philosophy hold wild appeal (and the Masons have that too), I’ve come to realize that without Sangha, they are insufficient. To build something that will last, something that will stand, we need the esoteric things, of course, but beforehand, the foundation must be laid, sometimes with things as simple as spaghetti dinners and canned-goods drives.

David Trull has worked as a fireworks salesman, forensic tax researcher, railroad logistician, teacher, songwriter, and musician. He studied philosophy through a Great Books immersion program at Thomas Aquinas College in Ojai, California. A lifelong autodidact, he has advanced his explorations through a self-designed curriculum focused on the intersection of philosophy and theology. Raised in St. Louis, Trull now orbits between Santa Barbara, California, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Masonic Enigma: An Interview with Jay Kinney

Printed in the Fall 2024 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "The Masonic Enigma: An Interview with Jay Kinney" Quest 112:4, pg 10-14

By Richard Smoley

Jay Kinney and I go back a long way. I met him in the mid-eighties, when he had just started a new magazine called Gnosis: Journal of the Western Inner Traditions, which attracted a great deal of attention in occult circles. I began to write regularly for it, and in late 1990, I came on as editor, with Jay as publisher and editor in chief.

Gnosis was always a tiny magazine, with a maximum circulation of 16,000. Its full-time staff never consisted of more than four people. Yet it had and continues to have an outsized impact. I have been editor of Quest for sixteen years and have published thirteen books of my own, but when I run into people in the esoteric milieu, the most common thing they still tell me is how much they loved and miss Gnosis.

Gnosis was published between 1985 and 1999, which was a golden age for small magazines. Desktop publishing (though still in its infancy) made it possible to produce a great deal more with slender resources. And many independent distributors were catering to niche markets like ours.

This changed in the late nineties. Book and magazine distributors began to consolidate or go out of business entirely, making what was already a marginal enterprise unsustainable. In those days, Quest was a competitor of Gnosis on newsstands, but it too became unsustainable. Although the magazine was obviously not discontinued, in 1998 its scale was pulled back, and it became what it is now is: a journal for members of the TSA.

In 1999, Gnosis ceased publication, and Jay and I went on to different enterprises. Jay was strongly drawn to Freemasonry, about which we had published an issue in 1996, and he became heavily involved in it. This culminated in (among other things) his 2009 book, The Masonic Myth: Unlocking the Truth about the Symbols, the Secret Rites, and the History of Freemasonry (HarperOne), which remains the best single introduction to the subject.

In the spring of 2024, Jay and I conducted an email interview about his thoughts on Masonry.

Richard Smoley: What were your first impressions of Masonry, going back to childhood?

Jay Kinney: To be honest, I don’t recall being very aware of Masonry at all when I was young. My family lived in Ohio until I turned twelve, and Masonry was pretty widespread there historically, but I didn’t cross paths with it much at all. Though, when my family would go on summer road trips and we drove into small towns, it was common to see signs on the outskirts promoting the local Rotary Club, the Lions Club, the Elks, and the local Masonic lodge. But they were all an equal mystery to me.

It wasn’t until I was in my later teenage years in Illinois and I came across dusty old occult bookshops in Chicago and the TS headquarters out in Wheaton, with its marvelous Olcott Library, that I became more aware of Masonry, which seemed to have some vague relationship to esotericism and ancient myths of temple builders. So that rather intrigued me.

Smoley: What drew you to Masonry at first?

Kinney: I suppose, over the years, it was that it kept popping up in writings by metaphysical authors such as Manly Palmer Hall, Max Heindel, A.E. Waite, and Dion Fortune. They seemed to imply that Masonry was intertwined with the Western esoteric tradition in some fashion, either as an expression of that tradition or as a repository of esoteric lore. And of course I became aware that during Annie Besant’s and Charles Leadbeater’s leadership of the TS, they encouraged a Theosophical variant of the Craft, Co-Masonry, which accepted both men and women as members.

At the same time, there were critics of Masonry who spread murky conspiracy theories about it being some sort of powerful secret society ruling the world from behind the scenes. That struck me as extremely far-fetched, but it also prodded me to seek out reliable sources discussing Masonry in down-to-earth terms. I researched it as best I could and actually met some Masons, both in person, and over the Internet in its early years.

I came away from those contacts with the strong impression that it was a fraternal brotherhood going back centuries that emphasized honesty and charitable works, and that it wasn’t diabolical or scary at all. If anything, it seemed kind of square and stuffy, but it was beginning to attract a younger generation who were taken with the legends of Masons building the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe and who were fascinated by all the symbolism and rituals that were part of it.

Smoley: What led you to decide to become a Mason?

Kinney: As I said before, I met some Masons and was favorably impressed by them. Also, we published an issue of Gnosis on Freemasonry, and doing that brought me into further contacts with Masons and a lot of its history. When Gnosis had one financial crisis too many (one of our major newsstand distributors declared bankruptcy, owing us tens of thousands of dollars), I suddenly had more time on my hands, and I figured that it might be a good time to explore the Craft, and, who knows? I might find an editing niche within its publishing networks that would appreciate my talents and knowledge.

Smoley: Could you say a little about your personal history and journey with Masonry?

Kinney: As it turned out, I discovered that a good number of Masons I met were familiar with Gnosis and had read it regularly. I felt very welcomed and became quite active, both at the local lodge I had joined, and on a more national level. I edited a monthly newsletter for my lodge and wrote research articles for the Scottish Rite Research Society’s newsletter and annual research volume. I served as librarian for the San Francisco Scottish Rite’s extensive archive and also wrote a long historical paper on one of the founders of the Oakland Scottish Rite, Edwin A. Sherman, who was quite a character, to put it mildly. I was honored with an Albert Gallatin Mackey Award for excellence in Masonic research for that paper. I eventually wrote a book on Masonic history and lore, The Masonic Myth, which ruffled some feathers of the old guard, but proved very popular with younger Masons and the curious public.

Smoley: What is your current status as a Mason?

Kinney: I remain a member in good standing of my two Craft lodges, as well as with the York Rite and the Scottish Rite, and was honored with the 33rd degree by the latter. I still attend some meetings and functions, but am not as active as I was in my busiest years.

Smoley: Could you talk about your views of Masonry as a collective institution?

Kinney: Many people do not realize that Masonry is not one big international institution, but a complicated network of local grand lodges (by states and countries), as well as local lodges, side orders, youth groups, affinity groups, and many charitable groups. Some are in close relations with each other, but not all of them necessarily work together or even recognize each other’s validity.

Nevertheless, many Masons enjoy meeting other Masons when they travel around the world, and I think there is a shared sense of brotherhood and fraternity between individual Masons that transcends the differences or formal gaps between some Masonic organizations.

Smoley: What did you feel was most beneficial to you about your involvement with Masonry?

Kinney: There is a passage in the early eighteenth-century Constitutions of the Grand Lodge in London to the effect that Masonry brings together men who might have otherwise remained at a distance. And it has certainly been my experience that I’ve met many Masons and their families who I would not have met or socialized with were it not for Masonry.

I think the thing that has impressed me the most is that Masonry has enabled me to meet all sorts of people from all walks of life, and sometimes with the most differing perspectives and opinions, but to meet them in a context and a frame of mind that has enabled us to get along with each other and share in a sense of friendship and brotherhood.

Smoley: What did you find most frustrating and dissatisfying?

Kinney: I will admit that when I first joined Masonry, I came in with a very idealized view of its members and its values. Masons are taught that, in Masonic parlance, we are all “on the level,” that there is no station higher than that of a Master Mason (of the third degree), and that we are all to treat each other as brothers and equals. And I think that most of the time, that is true.

But, you know, people are people, and whatever we might intend, some people just don’t get along, or they rub each other the wrong way. Cliques form. Officers in positions of power, particularly those who have devoted decades of hard work to helping maintain Masonic institutions, can feel underappreciated or like they are carrying more of a load than others. That may even be true. So let me just say that Masonry gives all its members plenty of opportunities to try to be better men, and everyone does what they can.

Furthermore, Masonry dates back to earlier times, when memorization was a much more common skill, and its rituals have been handed down over the centuries in remarkably well-preserved forms. Much of that was passed along by mouth-to-ear transmission: the wording of rituals and lectures was not supposed to be written down. The rules on that have loosened over the years, but still, performing Masonic rituals demands a lot of memorization, which is not everyone’s cup of tea. I found that my own capacity for memorization is pretty limited, as I have a strong visual memory, but oral memory? Not so much. So I found myself limited in the roles I might play in degree rituals or even just the rituals of opening the lodge. That was a bit frustrating.

Smoley: What is your impression of the current direction in which Masonry as a whole is headed?

Kinney: My impression is that Masonry—at least in America—is headed in several different directions at once. On the one hand, based on membership statistics, the Craft has been slowly but surely shrinking since its peak in the 1950s. This has meant that many lodges across the country, especially in sparsely populated areas, have had to sell off their buildings and shut down or merge with other lodges. As our society shifted, and the stable patterns of working fathers and stay at home moms began to change, Masonry, as a men’s fraternal order, became out of step with the times and seemed anachronistic.

But if you hang on long enough, the pendulum begins to swing back, and a new wave of younger men have been attracted to Masonry, often precisely because it seems to be a living monument of the past, from when men came together to give each other mutual support (both moral and emotional). While many social institutions have almost disappeared, Masonry is doing its best to accommodate new generations who have been brought up feeling adrift and with a lack of roots. If the present leadership rises to the challenge, Masonry has the potential to start growing again and find a new role in civil society.

Smoley: One of the most evident aspects of Masonry is its rich symbolism. Could you say something about this in general and how it affected you personally?

Kinney: Symbols are one means by which humans convey ideas and feelings which are often quite deep but hard to express with mere words. One can run into this when trying to understand dreams. The same goes for myths, which are populated with characters or animals who act out stories that seem to convey some truths about existence that are also elusive and many-layered.

Many Masonic symbols are visual reminders of ideas or myths that are shared in Masonic degree rituals, which are compact dramas acted out in the lodge room. Others are a kind of geometric shorthand for lessons that convey certain values and principles. For instance, the workman’s tool of a level can symbolize being balanced in one’s approach to life as well as upholding that all Masons are “on the level” and to be treated equally.

For better or for worse, I would say that symbols as a kind of coded visual language played a larger role in Masonry in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries than at present. But there too, it might be a part of the Masonic heritage that the new generations of Masons may pull out of the storage closet and polish up and use anew.

Smoley: What effect did the Masonic rites have on you?

Kinney: I was lucky to join a lodge whose members took pride in performing the degree rituals with sincerity and considerable skill, so I had the wonderful experience of feeling like I was being initiated into a tradition with a lot of depth and meaning. They had a great impact on me, and they remain alive in my memory to this very day.

Smoley: Could you offer some reflections on Masonic origins and history?

Kinney: I think it is safe to say that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, much of what passed for Masonic history and origins was a mix of legends, hearsay, horn tooting, and speculation. Masonry claimed a lineage going back to the workmen who designed and built Solomon’s Temple, and even those who built the Egyptian Pyramids, but such claims were “traditional” and without any concrete proof. Some legends associated the Masons with the Knights Templar, the famous warrior monks of medieval times who protected pilgrims to the Holy Land and who were associated with the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The evidence for this is extremely slim and circumstantial, but a lot of people will believe what they want to believe.

Luckily, beginning roughly in the mid-1800s, Masonic historians began to be more serious in their research and tried to find actual evidence for their theories. Later historians built upon this, and today we find serious academic scholars paying increasing attention to Freemasonry, both as a historical phenomenon and as a sociological and anthropological subject of interest.

Needless to say, most depictions of Masonry in novels and movies bear little resemblance to actual Freemasonry. I’m sure that some readers will be disappointed to hear that.

Smoley: As you mentioned, some popular theories link the origins of the Masons to the medieval Knights Templar. Could you explain a bit more why you dismiss those theories?

Kinney: Dating back to the 1980s and 1990s, there was a flood of “alternative history” books, including Michael Baigent’s and Richard Leigh’s Temple and the Lodge, Christopher Knight’s and Robert Lomas’s Hiram Key, and John J. Robinson’s Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry, among many others. To one degree or another, many of these books alleged that the Knights Templar, who fell out of favor with the papacy and the French monarchy and were put to the torch or otherwise disbanded, escaped to Scotland, where they survived within the Masonic lodges there.

There are many variations on these themes. One of the most popular is that the privately built Rosslyn Chapel outside of Edinburgh was decorated with secret Templar and Masonic symbols and motifs. An excellent debunking of these claims and many others can be found in books such as The Rosslyn Hoax? by Robert L.D. Cooper, the curator of the Grand Lodge of Scotland Museum and Library in Edinburgh.

Smoley: What would you say are the most common and most harmful errors people at large make about Masonry?

Kinney: I think the number one error is to attribute far more political and esoteric significance to Masonry than it has ever really had. There are many anti-Masonic conspiracy buffs out there, including many sincere Christians, who string together misinterpretations, long-disproved hoaxes, rumors, and fantasies about Masonry and end up convincing themselves that Masons are pawns of some sinister secret order or worse.

The Nazis in the 1930s and 40s were convinced that the Masons were in cahoots with the Jews and the Communists, and 80,000 German Masons were sent off to concentration camps, along with the Gypsies and everyone else that the Nazis deplored. Earlier, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Vatican condemned Freemasonry and considered it a threat to Catholicism. To be honest, there were Masons who did oppose Nazism and who did wish to trim back the political influence of the Vatican, especially in France and Italy. The Grand Orient variant of Masonry, which is predominant in France and Italy, did play a role in promoting democracy and secularism in those societies. It is often confused with the Masonic variants in the English-speaking countries, which have minimized their involvement in politics or religious controversies.

In The Masonic Myth, I share my research into the complicated reasons for the accusations and struggles affecting Masonry, and I must say that Masonry’s penchant for secrecy has done the Craft no favors. If people feel you are keeping secrets from them, it’s not surprising if they conclude that you have something to hide.

Now the case can be made that Masonic initiations have more impact if the candidate doesn’t know what will happen in the ritual ahead of time. That was certainly my experience. But, I think that a lot of the traditional secrecy in Masonry has been overdone. Luckily, the United Grand Lodge of England and various Grand Lodges in the United States have been making efforts to be more open and inviting. I find that encouraging.

At a time when so much of our political landscape has become polarized, with different groups projecting the worst onto each other, I think it is refreshing and helpful to have an organization that emphasizes fraternal good will, fellowship, honesty, and equality.