Five years ago I knew almost nothing about Freemasonry except that it is believed to be often a vehicle for corrupt fixes between businesses and the various arms of government, which I suspect is very probably true. But what Freemasons did, or believed in, I had really very little idea. Writing my book on Alexander Burnes required me to learn a great deal, because the Burnes family were not just very active Freemasons but had a profound international influence on the organization.
My conclusion about Freemasonry is that it became widely established as part of the spirit of rational enquiry that informed the eighteenth century enlightenment. It had the same motivation as Unitarianism, which thrived around the same time – it was striving towards a form of Deism that allowed people to move towards a belief in God while abandoning the obvious irrational mumbo-jumbo of Christian miracles and the divinity of Christ. There are obvious parallels with the French revolutionary cult of the Supreme Being. It was therefore very friendly to other monotheistic religions and looked to provide a kind of lowest common denominator religious synthesis. The whole project was then dressed up in a great deal of “secret” ritual borrowed from crafts guilds. That Freemasonry was so successful in aristocratic and educated circles was simple because it was they who also propelled the Enlightenment.
As time went on, for most members it became just a club to make good business contacts – the commitment of “brothers” to help each other in a secret society including a lot of the wealthy was originally well-intended but obviously bound to become a conduit of corruption. Most members would probably, from about 1820 on, have been very surprised by my analysis of its intellectual and religious origins. They probably still would be today. It’s just a club for most.
But what I was surprised to find, and of this I am certain, is that Freemasonry’s insistence that all members were equal, of whatever colour and creed, played a very important role as a counterweight to the increasing nineteenth century British Empire philosophy of racial superiority and religious and cultural arrogance. Freemasonry actively helped turn the tide among the governing classes and directly impacted the increasing anti-colonial beliefs of the British governing classes from the 1920’s on. A very high proportion indeed of British colonial administrators and officers were Freemasons.
We have a caricature view of Rudyard Kipling now; he was by no means the apostle of Imperialism he has somehow become in popular belief. I know his soldier’s dialect writing is annoying. I find it helps to speak it out loud. But although it is sentimental, his poem The Mother Lodge does contain the germ of a very real truth about the impact of Freemasonry on the British view of race in India. We’d say ’twas ‘ighly curious, An’ we’d all ride ‘ome to bed,
With Mo’ammed, God, an’ Shiva, Changin’ pickets in our ‘ead. The same was true in Egypt, at least. Remember many lodges operated on a far higher social level than the one described in this poem, and those too were mixed.
I appreciate this posting is going to annoy pretty well everyone. Oh well. No, I am not a Mason.
Humour me and read it out loud:
The Mother Lodge
There was Rundle, Station Master,
An’ Beazeley of the Rail,
An’ ‘Ackman, Commissariat,
An’ Donkin’ o’ the Jail;
An’ Blake, Conductor-Sargent,
Our Master twice was ‘e,
With ‘im that kept the Europe-shop,
Old Framjee Eduljee.
Outside — “Sergeant! Sir! Salute! Salaam!”
Inside — “Brother”, an’ it doesn’t do no ‘arm.
We met upon the Level an’ we parted on the Square,
An’ I was Junior Deacon in my Mother-Lodge out there!
We’d Bola Nath, Accountant,
An’ Saul the Aden Jew,
An’ Din Mohammed, draughtsman
Of the Survey Office too;
There was Babu Chuckerbutty,
An’ Amir Singh the Sikh,
An’ Castro from the fittin’-sheds,
The Roman Catholick!
We ‘adn’t good regalia,
An’ our Lodge was old an’ bare,
But we knew the Ancient Landmarks,
An’ we kep’ ’em to a hair;
An’ lookin’ on it backwards
It often strikes me thus,
There ain’t such things as infidels,
Excep’, per’aps, it’s us.
For monthly, after Labour,
We’d all sit down and smoke
(We dursn’t give no banquits,
Lest a Brother’s caste were broke),
An’ man on man got talkin’
Religion an’ the rest,
An’ every man comparin’
Of the God ‘e knew the best.
So man on man got talkin’,
An’ not a Brother stirred
Till mornin’ waked the parrots
An’ that dam’ brain-fever-bird;
We’d say ’twas ‘ighly curious,
An’ we’d all ride ‘ome to bed,
With Mo’ammed, God, an’ Shiva
Changin’ pickets in our ‘ead.
Full oft on Guv’ment service
This rovin’ foot ‘ath pressed,
An’ bore fraternal greetin’s
To the Lodges east an’ west,
Accordin’ as commanded
From Kohat to Singapore,
But I wish that I might see them
In my Mother-Lodge once more!
I wish that I might see them,
My Brethren black an’ brown,
With the trichies smellin’ pleasant
An’ the hog-darn passin’ down;
An’ the old khansamah snorin’
On the bottle-khana floor,
Like a Master in good standing
With my Mother-Lodge once more!
Outside — “Sergeant! Sir! Salute! Salaam!”
Inside — “Brother”, an’ it doesn’t do no ‘arm.
We met upon the Level an’ we parted on the Square,
An’ I was Junior Deacon in my Mother-Lodge out there!
I might add in clarity that I honour the various peoples who struggled against the Empire, and who still struggle against Empires today. I by no means denigrate their achievement. But there is no doubt at all that the demise of most of the British Empire (sadly it hasn’t all gone yet) was hastened by the fact that the majority of the British governing classes had come themselves to believe the colonies should be free, certainly by 1945 and arguably sooner.
Unfortunately since about 1975 public opinion has been moulded into a rigid neo-conservative mindset, and neo-imperialism increasingly looks like the old variety. If you didn’t live through it, it must be hard now to believe that the British “elite” once held quite left wing opinions, and of course some ideologically motivated would wish to deny it as not fitting their model of society. But it was so,
Although I don’t know with certainty, Kipling could well have been a Freemason. Read his novel, the Man Who Would be King. In the land of the blind the one eyed man is King.
Incidentally, there are loads of similar “secret societies” or even “societies with secrets” ranging from the Buffalos, the Woodsmen and of course the Hibernians, which is religiously based.
If it keeps them off the streets, in a club, where is the harm. It is forbidden to talk business in a Masonic Hall but on the golf course that is a different matter. Business can be sown up any golf course whether the players are or are not members of any of the aformentioned organisations.
Incidentally there was one Lodge which met in the afternoons because the members worked at night. It was full of actors, singers, magicians and other artistes as well people who worked for the Press and Television. Meetings were open to all, if the were members of the organisation.
Nevermind
In the USA there are mixed Lodges and even female only ones as well as associated organisations. Not sure about the UK or elsewhere.
Er, yes it is difficult to believe. In fact I don’t. Your grand sounding statement is an establishment perspective designed to rewrite history.
Your “left wing” is not left wing at all. Your “left wing” means, at best, gently liberal.
You dismiss, or are ignorant of, the huge radical left wing throughout Europe in the first half of the last century. The left wing which forced elites to change:
The syndicalists of Britain and Ireland shot down by the British army. Striking Welsh miners bayonetted by the British army. Liverpool run by strike committees as navy guns trained on the city. Jam packer women strikes of South London beaten by Police. Soldier mutinies in Portsmouth, Southampton and Etaples…The French army mutinies. The Italian army mutinies. The German revolution. The Russian revolution…etc, etc, et bloody cetera.
These were left wing. The struggle of working class people. The capitulations of your “elites” was in no way “left wing”.
The Knights Templars learnt many things in their time living in Palestine, they went native so to speak. When the Pope gave the King of France permission to kill them and use their vast wealth to fight a war they fled and took with them the secrets of the Kabbal. The Scots, like the St Clairs, fled to Scotland, Robert the Bruce was king at the time and the Pope didn’t like him much anyway.
Many of them were masons, having built and maintained a chain of castles across Europe. They continued to meet in secret, keep in touch. When in later times the Free Masons, a friendly society for masons, declined and their membership fell the descendants of the Templars had no difficulty taking over their assets just by being the majority of members.
An interesting family the St Clairs, a very interesting family for those interested in Free Masonry in Scotland.
“In the USA there are mixed Lodges and even female only ones as well as associated organisations. Not sure about the UK or elsewhere.”
Do you know who one of the USA’s founders and the 9th President in Congress Assembled was?
Interesting.
Fred
Ever scrutinised a 1 Dollar bill?
Although I don’t know with certainty, Kipling could well have been a Freemason.
Yes, of course Kipling was a Mason:
http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/kipling.html
Fascinating piece, if you haven’t found it already, Craig…
In ²Something of Myself² Kipling writes: ³In 1885, I was made a Freemason by dispensation (being under age) in The Lodge of Hope and Perseverance 782 E.C. because the Lodge hoped for a good Secretary. They did not get him, but I helped, and got Father to advise me in decorating the bare walls of the Masonic Hall with hangings after the prescription of King Solomon¹s Temple. Here I met Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, members of the Araya and Brahmo Samaj, and a Jewish Tyler, who was a priest and butcher to his little community in the city. So yet another world was opened to me which I needed.² We get a little more detail in a letter Kipling wrote in the London Times, dated March 28, 1935: ³ In reply to your letter I was Secretary for some years of the Lodge of Hope and Perseverance No. 782, English Constitution which included Brethren of at least four different creeds. I was entered by a member of the Brahmo Samaj (a Hindu), passed by a Mohammedan, and raised by an Englishman. Our Tyler was an Indian Jew. We met, of course, on the level and the only difference that anyone would notice was that at our banquets some of the Brethren, who were debarred by caste rules from eating food not ceremoniously prepared, sat over empty plates. I had the good fortune to be able to arrange a series of informal lectures by Brethren of various faiths, on baptismal ceremonies of their religions.²
Kipling also received the Mark Master degree in a Lahore Mark Lodge and affiliated with a Craft Lodge in Allahabad, Bengal. Later, in England he affiliated as an honorary member of the Motherland Lodge, No. 3861 in London. He was also a member of the Authors¹ Lodge, No. 3456, and a founder-member of the Lodge Builders of the Silent Cities, No. 4948, which was connected with the War Graves Commission and which was so named at Kipling¹s suggestion. Another Masonic association was formed when he became Poet Laureate of the famous ³Canongate Kilwinning, No. 2² in Edinburgh, the Lodge of which Robert Burns is said to have served in the same office. Enquiry of Brattleboro Lodge, No. 102, in Vermont, discloses no record of Rudyard Kipling having visited during his residence in the community. Years later, however, he accepted a fellowship in the Philalethes Society, an organization of Masonic writers formed in the United States in 1928. The February 1963 issue of ³The Philalethes², a publication of this Society, recalls that, before the original list of forty Fellows was closed in 1932, Kipling was proposed as the fortieth Fellow. When the Secretary wrote to advise him that they wished to honour the author of ³My Mother Lodge², ³The Man Who Would Be King², ³Kim² and other Masonic stories, Kipling accepted….(snip)
Oooh there’s a mason in our local rotary! There’s a pyramid on the dollar! The Bilderburgs sacrafice children! The British elites were left wing!
I suggest Craig mocking Trowbridge is a lone nutter conspiracy.
“Although I don’t know with certainty, Kipling could well have been a Freemason.” Yes, Kipling was a mason, as was Walter Scott and Robert Burns. Your quote about in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king originated from Desiderus Erasmus though I think William Golding borrowed it in “Lord of the flies”. Golding was probably a mason. He wrote a book called “Darkness Visible” a quote from masonic writings but also the title of a disclosure on freemasonry by Walton Hannah. Golding also won the Nobel prize for literature. Nobel was a mason and there is a strong tradition of awarding all the Nobel prizes predominantly to masons. It’s part of the elitism in not having a level playing field.
“Ever scrutinised a 1 Dollar bill?”
I’ve looked into the supposed masonic symbols.
I’m not convinced.
“In the USA there are mixed Lodges and even female only ones as well as associated organisations. Not sure about the UK or elsewhere.”
https://www.owf.org.uk/
Masons do not liberally join in discussions about masonry and prefer to let the discussion die out rather than fan the flames. Noteworthy has been the absence of regular dissenters. That should bring them out.
Craig
I suspect that the diverse masonic cults are in decline along with the falling living standards. I am probably one of the lucky few who can nowadays afford to have the sleeve of my jacket and trouser leg cut off just for the ceremonial fun. Thus said the Lord to the candidates of this pernicious cult – stay away or borrow a jacket from your beloved neighbour! The various lodges are like football clubs. Some are rich and powerful, like P2 in Italy once was, others poor and insignificant that are probably specially set up to confuse the fools.
Craig – an excellent post which has produced thoughtful and varied comments. I’m grateful to Mark D for his pointer towards some Kipling works that were new to me: two of my favourites are the dramatic monologues, McAndrew’s Hymn (“Predestination in the stride o’ yon connectin’-rod”) and The `Mary Gloster`.
I’ve just checked the index of Christopher Andrews’ 1,032 pp “The Defence of the Realm – The Authorized History of MI5” and find no mention in it of “mason” (apart from Roy) or of “freemason”. That’s a rather good example of “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” Holmes had a relevant observation in “The Norwood Builder”: “You mentioned your name as if I should recognize it, but beyond the obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a Freemason, and an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.”
As a continuation of the absence of dissenters if you switch Habbabreak back on for a few minutes you’ll find Habbabkuk was commenting in his usual prolific and discursive way right up to Craig mentioning that about his masonic discovery – then nothing, silence. Oh well, a bit like Sofia’s magic phrase for getting rid of RD.
Phil,
the designer of the dollar bill for some unknown reason opted for an image of a pyramid rather than a frog. Geddit?
“As a continuation of the absence of dissenters if you switch Habbabreak back on for a few minutes you’ll find Habbabkuk was commenting in his usual prolific and discursive way right up to Craig mentioning that about his masonic discovery – then nothing, silence. Oh well, a bit like Sofia’s magic phrase for getting rid of RD.”
Speaking as someone who doesn’t hide his head under the blankets I’d appreciate it if you didn’t switch it off for the purposes of goading him before switching it back on again.
Lightweight research. Assumes all Freemasons are equal and ignores the paedophile networks that are Freemasons.
“Speaking as someone who doesn’t hide his head under the blankets I’d appreciate it if you didn’t switch it off for the purposes of goading him before switching it back on again.”
It was intended Fred for those who were using Habbabreak to demonstrate a point. I am sure most people do not use Habbabreak all the time. It would be very good if none of us needed a break. I was not goading him just making an observation that since freemasonry has been mentioned he clammed up. I do not know if anything can be read into this, but I can say one thing, Habbabkuk is one of the biggest goaders who squat here.
“the designer of the dollar bill for some unknown reason opted for an image of a pyramid rather than a frog. Geddit?”
When studying history it’s important to see it from the point of view of those at the time not by present day standards.
Today everyone can read and write, symbols aren’t too important though we see their legacy in things like tradesmen’s signs. Then many couldn’t read and write and particularly in America if they could it would be in different languages. People communicated with symbols.
I see the pyramid as a symbol of strength and stability and the eye as the symbol of prudence and wisdom. I don’t know that either is a particularly masonic symbol.
I could be wrong, I can’t know what was going through the mind of the man who designed the dollar bill, that’s my take on it.
You have opened a door with this topic. FM is almost something of a Rorschach test. It is endlessly fascinating. In its principles and effects it has some resemblance to religion* and many another ism, namely not only well intended, but also developed at a high level of understanding and human development, but in practice, just as with many a religion or ism (eg socialism / capitalism) over time it may fall short in practice and that may be the fault of its practitioners. Some may suggest that as a hive or a rootstock loses its vitality it is time for the bees to find a new hive / for the plant to be grafted elsewhere. There is an interesting centre for research into FM at Sheffield university. Some consider Francis Bacon to have been a founder, and New England to have been pioneered as a masonic new Atlantis, but as lovely (and masonic) as Vermont still is America as a whole has also not delivered as Bacon may have anticipated, but we are humans.
(* of course what is a religion is a question for another day)
For members of the ‘Scottish Rite’ on that Israeli masonic website I linked to, the following items are available.
Tartan kippahs http://www.designkippah.com/design_kippah.html
and on a government website, details of historic masonic tartans
http://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=1492
Don’t know whether the tartans extend to masonic apron designs though.
😉
My father was a Freemason, an officer in the Grand Lodge of Gibraltar. Masonic rules require members to do all they can to support each other, to look after each other and to keep each others’ lawful secrets.
My father urged me join the ‘club’ on more than one occasion insisting membership was a ‘sure way’ to succeed in business and commerce.
I never did despite fond memories of Masonic charity events and my mother looking glamorous for ‘Ladies Night’ once a year.
Not too many years ago when I drove taxis for a time, I would pick up the ‘staff’, assorted drink-sodden misfits and local worthies from a local masonic lodge, they often took the same oddly circuitous route, instructing me to pause and park for a few minutes across from a busy Indian restaurant, part of a chain with branches in major west of Scotland towns, their reason for this was to wind down the windows and shout abuse at the restaurant staff at the door. “Take us past R—– Street, so we can shout abuse at ‘the Hamiltons'” was the reason they gave, The Hamiltons of course being masonic and West of Scotland racist slang, deriving from Hamilton Accies.
Models of respectability and good citizenship these people.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Builders-Empire-Freemasonry-Imperialism-1717-1927/dp/0807830887
By Jessica Harland-Jacobs
With Look inside available on Amazon
Any connection to the Dunblane Hamilton there Tony M?
I imagine that setup was a masonic nest.
My paternal grandfather was a mason and forbade my father and uncle from having anything to do with it.
@ mary: No. What rhymes with Accies?
Mark, my father too belonged to a secret society which I think was Freemasonry but before we were old enough to know. I can never recall him going to a lodge though I have myself subsequently been to open ladies’ night dinners and heard all the loyal toasts. There was a masonic representative at dad’s funeral. Like I have said, good men join the masons, and it is overtly charitable. However, it is structured in such a way that its brother members, work their ways through the various degrees, not knowing where it leads. For example the jewel, as masonic emblems are known, of a chaplain has an open book with “Holy Bible” written on it. By the time the mason is raised to grand chaplain the book is just an open book with no text. Its angels, as seen on the emblem of the President of the Board of General Purposes, have hairy Pan-like legs and cloven feet. Masonry is not suitable for Christians because of the way it bastardises Christian teachings.
The antient charges and regulations instructs masons, among other things:
“You promise to pay homage to the Grand Master for the time being, and to his Officers when duly installed, and strictly to conform to every Edict of the Grand Lodge.”
Fred,
to enlighten you about about the true and until this revelation, entirely secret purpose behind the design, is the power of the pyramid entangled in the power of the dollar. You may have heard that any pyramid can sharpen razors cf.
http://www.iempowerself.com/84_pyramid_power.html
but you probably have never realised that you can also use a one dollar bill to wrap your razor in it. Voilà, only one day later and your razor is as sharp as a razor. One can also use the dollar bill with the pyramid scheme to sharpen your mind. Should you have no kippah with a tartan pattern (thanks Mary for this info.)at home, just paste it on your forehead and experience the brightening of your mind almost immediately.
Mary Hamilton Academicals (Accies) is a football team. It rhymes with a sland term for people from Pakistan.
sland = slang