Idealization - Two approaches to freemasonry

Freemasonry: A Very Short Introduction - Andreas Önnerfors 2017

Idealization
Two approaches to freemasonry

This book examines how and why, since its inception in Britain, men (and women) have organized themselves socially and voluntarily within freemasonry over the course of three centuries, despite very divergent cultural and political settings worldwide. There is no single definition or form of freemasonry, which is why contemporary scholars prefer to speak of ’freemasonries’. Indeed, the brotherhood and its history are surrounded by an abundance of facts and fictions and sources, which this book aims to clarify, enabling the reader to navigate this complex subject matter. The common view of freemasonry tends to fall into one of two main camps: idealization or distrust.

Take for instance Pierre Bezukhov, the hero of Tolstoy’s world-famous novel War and Peace (1869): in the middle of Pierre’s restless soul-searching he encounters a wise old man. The stranger tells Pierre that his life is a ’regrettable delusion’ and that joining freemasonry promises purification. Conscience and reason will guide the seeker to perfection. In the Russian capital, St Petersburg at the time, Pierre isolates himself reading devotional literature and starts to ’believe in the possibility of the brotherhood of men united in the aim of supporting one another in the path of virtue’. Finally he is recruited into the local lodge (the smallest organizational unit of freemasonry). To become a freemason, Pierre has to be initiated through a ritual (just as millions like him in reality have been) and is exposed to questions and tests.

In Tolstoy’s novel, the candidate is blindfolded and led by a guide to a room of reflection furnished with signs of death and mortality like a skull and a coffin. Here an officer of the lodge questions Pierre about his intentions to join freemasonry and he replies that he desires regeneration. Asked about his conception of the brotherhood, Pierre responds, ’I imagine that freemasonry is the fraternity and equality of men who have virtuous aims’. The officer reveals the aims of the masonic order (tradition of mystery, self-purification and self-perfection, improvement of mankind) and presents a catalogue of its major virtues (discretion, obedience, morality, love of humanity, courage, generosity, and the love of death). Last but not least, Pierre is told that freemasonry informs its members not only in words but also by other means, and that symbols are used to communicate something ’not cognizable by the senses’. Finally, Pierre is guided to the doorsteps of the lodge, which is also the name of the physical meeting place of freemasons throughout the world. Here, an intricate ritual of initiation unfolds at the end of which Pierre takes an oath of allegiance and is ultimately allowed to see the light—the blindfold is released.

I have started with this account for a good reason. The way into the brotherhood, which Tolstoy describes, is one of the unique features of freemasonry as a Western initiatory society and a ritual community with its own secret symbolism and methods, performed as a walk from darkness to light. We do not know how Tolstoy received knowledge about freemasonry, but the parts in War and Peace that describe Russian freemasonry at the time are quite accurate when compared with contemporary sources. There have been millions of men and a sizeable number of women who have become freemasons worldwide over the last three centuries, all in a similar manner to Pierre. The motives for joining are of course always individual. In Pierre’s fictional case, freemasonry promised guidance in his dissatisfied life that would lead towards improvement and perfection. The masonic lodge is the place where this ideal of moral refinement is offered to the individual candidate and where it is experienced in fraternity.

But Tolstoy also hints at a larger purpose of freemasonry (we might call it cosmopolitan and philanthropic): to develop a charitable responsibility for humanity as a whole. How this is achieved in the best way has been a cause of division within freemasonry for at least two centuries. Should freemasonry take an active role in shaping the society in which it is embedded? Or should its sole influence be confined to its individual members, who in their larger society act as individuals who are united by shared values and refined morality? This touches upon another aspect of freemasonry present since its inception, namely its views on the interrelation of politics and society, and this eventually caused an internal schism in freemasonry in the second half of the 19th century.

In a key scene of War and Peace, Pierre develops a political agenda for freemasonry. He is immediately accused by his lodge brothers of having crossed a boundary that places him in line with the infamous Bavarian ’Illuminati’ (1776—85). The Order of Illuminati is a secret and later prohibited masonic-like society in late 18th-century Germany that pushed for societal reforms, which from today’s perspective appear fairly moderate. Still, the ’Illuminati’ to this day fire popular imagination. And the prominence placed on secrecy, opacity, and confidentiality in freemasonry mean that it was from the start at odds with authorities, secular as well as sacred. Its organizational form is open to abuse. Freemasonry was eventually outlawed in Russia in 1822 exactly for these reasons—the peak moment of a trend that had started in Europe with repeated papal condemnations in the 1700s and the rise of the idea of conspiracy in conservative and reactionary politics following the French Revolution (see Figure 1).

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1. Poster of the French anti-masonic movie Forces Occultes (1943).