the importance of being secret

Music: Peter Gabriel: Two (1978)

A short, 1,500 word article that shall appear this fall in the Scottish Rite Journal. I suspect it will be heavily edited because the audience will expect less of a scholarly tone (and because I usually write for other academics, I need help un-learning some academese). The longer, 12,000 word essay upon which it is based will appear in Rhetoric & Public Affairs this winter. Finally, a revised and modified re-vamp of the R&PA version will be reprinted in the Masonic scholarly journal, Heredom, sometime next year.

Over the past year at my home lodge in Austin, Texas, we have entertained over a dozen of young men in their twenties interested in learning more about the Craft. These young men are sometimes friends of brothers, however, the majority of them came to our lodge because of an Internet search for local lodges inspired by a genuine curiosity about the Masonic Mysteries. Unquestionably, Dan Brown's wildly successful mystery novel, The Da Vinci Code, the film version of that novel, and the publicity the fraternity has received as a consequence, are responsible for the recent, renewed interest in Masonry among the general public. The young men who appear at our door sometimes speak of a passed relative who was a brother, however, more frequently they mention an interest in the secrets that a beloved grandfather "took to his grave," or express excitement over the spiritual and moral teaching exclusive to our brotherhood. In other words, it seems that the same sense of mystery that inflames readers of The Da Vinci Code to continue turning pages is also that sense of mystery that goads potential Entered Apprentices through our lodge doors. For this reason, as well as others I shall suggest, the recent efforts to downplay the secrecy central to the Craft in the popular media may be doing more harm than good.

Owing to the public interest inspired by the entertainment industries, a new commercial market for Masonry has emerged in the past few years: Christopher Hodapp's Freemasonry for Dummies, S. Brent Morris' The Complete Idiot's Guide to Freemasonry, and John K. Young and Barb Kari's The Everything Freemasons Book have been published for a general audience, and the History Channel produced and aired a number of programs that were either directly about or concerned with Freemasonry. During the week that The Da Vinci Code film debuted in the United States in April, 2006, the American Broadcasting Company aired a tour of the House of the Temple and interviewed a number of Masonic leaders for their Good Morning America program. From a historical vantage, all of these recent forms of publicity are noticeably different from the ways the fraternity has responded to public scrutiny in the past: they are characteristically invitational and, sometimes, dismissive of fraternal secrecy. For example, in his interview with Charles Gibson for ABC, Richard E. Fletcher denied Freemasonry was a secret society. "There are parts [of Masonry] that are private. . . . if you're talking about what goes on behind closed doors and all those secret things. They're not secret. They're private." Similarly, in his Freemasons for Dummies book, Hodapp stresses that a better way to describe our secrecy is as follows: "what goes on in a lodge room during its ceremonies is private."

The problem with these newer forms of publicity is that they downplay the central function of secrecy to our community in the language of privacy. Of course, many of the ways of identifying fellow Masons have been published in books and on the Internet, and blow-by-blow accounts of each degree are relatively easy to find; these are not only what I mean by "secrets." Masonic secrecy also refers to the endlessly deferred mystery of Masonic understanding: in the early degrees one is told the meaning of a given symbol, however, successive degrees teach the light-seeker that there are yet more meanings to be revealed, many of which can be specific to each individual Mason. Furthermore, I submit secrecy is not simply a content or a "what," but also a form or a "how." For example, when a candidate first takes the obligation, it concerns a secret that he does not yet know. His solemn agreement is literally a blind one, signifying his faith in a community of strangers and his ability to trust others who have made the same promise. Making an obligation in ignorance is, in fact, the basis of our democracy and the rule of law: as U.S. citizens, in blindly promising to abide by the laws of this country irrespective of race, religious orientation, gender, and so on, we are made equal. Furthermore, by promising to keep the secrets of Freemasonry, a brother becomes accountable to others, subjecting himself to the judgment of those who have gone before him. The bond between men forged by the obligation requires secrecy for the mortar of trust and faith. The dynamic of secrecy and revelation makes a brother; privacy does not.

Perhaps even more disturbing than the disavowal of secrecy among certain Masons in the public eye is the recent trend to devalue the secrets themselves. To a television audience of millions Fletcher told Gibson that "the handshakes---if you want to go in that direction---the handshakes are a throwback to our early days when Freemasonry was related to actual builders in stone," as if today these are somehow not important. The devaluation of secret content also includes summary dismissals of some of our most venerated Masonic philosophers. In his Freemasonry for Dummies, Christopher Hodapp writes that "Albert Mackey, Manley Hall, Arthur Edward Waite, and Albert Pike" have "filled reams of paper with scholarly observations of Freemasonry," which amounts, apparently, to so much "Masonic mumbo-jumbo." He continues the "works of these men were filled with fabulous tales and beliefs and cultures and cryptic theories of the deepest and earliest origins of Freemasonry. In short, they wrote a lot of crap." Today it seems complete openness---to the point of being flip, in fact---about one's life and a willingness to be surveilled, signified by the popularity of YouTube.com and MySpace.com, has almost become an imperative. Should we worry, then, that the contemporary lust for publicity has infiltrated our fraternity? Should we worry that some of our most respected and gifted Masonic leaders are explaining away, and sometimes dismissing wholesale, the Mystery tradition of our Craft?

Of the many young men who have shown an interest in petitioning Austin Lodge 12 in the past year, one quality is constant: curiosity. Curiosity about the Masonic Mysteries is the fuel that drives Masonic study and continued interest in our centuries-long teachings. These young men are not simply interested in fellowship, or in a generational legacy, or in participating in our valuable charity work; they are also interested in learning more about our symbols, our teachings, and our secrets. They are interested in "more light," which is---as any Mason who has studied our philosophical works quickly learns---inexhaustible. Curiosity is an important quality for a good Mason, but if we keep explaining away our secrets or dismissing our Masonic forbears as worthless and our traditions as "throwbacks," and if we abide these with a posture of complete openness and transparency, the Craft may continue to receive petitions, but they will not necessarily be from curious men hungry for Masonic knowledge.

Today our world is characterized by a lust and zeal for publicity, and Freemasonry has been, from its inception, an exclusive, secret society. The pressure to divest Freemasonry of its secrets is thus only equaled by the demands made of the fraternity after the Morgan Affair in 1826. Hence, it is time again for us to reconsider the underlying assumption of many recent attempts to promote Freemasonry. Some of us believe that the health of our fraternity is measured by the size of our membership. Unquestionably, this belief has lead to the disavowal and devaluation of Masonic secrecy and secrets in mass media promotions. Others of us believe, however, that a stronger fraternity is made by curious Masons thirsty for the Mysteries and our long tradition of contemplative scholarship. This less popular belief requires more public circumspection about our history and teachings. Nevertheless---and regardless of one's stance on the divide between quantity and quality---I suspect that most of us would agree that a good Mason respects the fraternity and keeps his word.