Book Review/Heather Seggel

Keep It On The Square

“Why don’t those stupid idiots let me in their crappy club for jerks?” That was Homer Simpson, complaining to Marge after discovering that many of his friends and neighbors were members of The Stonecutters, a Springfield secret society clearly based on the Freemasons (the original free-masons literally worked at cutting stone). In “The Craft: How the Freemasons Made the Modern World” (PublicAffairs), author John Dickie tries to gently correct the Brotherhood’s tendency to view themselves as infallible and noble, while also showing how surprisingly ubiquitous they are. “I believe they would be truer to their values if they explored ways to write their story that have a bit less Masonic harmony and a bit more social tension. Freemasonry’s past is as chequered as a Lodge floor,” he writes. That history proves to be juicy and strange.

“The Craft” opens with a scene rife with drama: London jeweler John Coustos is snatched off a Lisbon street and brought before the Holy Office of the Inquisition, where he is subjected to rounds of ghastly torture and ordered to share the secrets of Freemasonry. Held in a dungeon for over a year, he was ultimately released and wrote his heroic tale of resistance … but transcripts discovered later show that he spilled the tea almost immediately. It’s a theatrical introduction to an organization built on pomp and display, but also mired in secrecy. Dickie shares some of the rituals, handshakes, words, and symbols that Masons use (even when Coustos was being shaken down for this information — 1743! — it was readily available in pamphlets), but while this common culture makes it easy for Masons to connect around the world, the Brotherhood has sometimes been secret out of necessity.

Dickie is a professor of Italian Studies, and gives a fair bit of space to the tetchy relationship the country has had with Masonry throughout history. Lodges were an easy target for Catholicism to point fingers at (accusations ranged from ritual Satan worship to Masons excluding women because the members were all homosexual), but Benito Mussolini also used them as a target to unite his followers against. In later years, the Mafia and Masonry intersected in the story of a Lodge that was taken over and converted into easy cover for significant criminal activity, a ploy that largely worked because the defining strengths of the Brotherhood were all quietly set aside. No time for philanthropy or dressing up in sashes, we’ve got money to launder!

The US has a long history with the Craft; George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were early members, and the rituals and symbols are ubiquitous in Washington, D.C. Lodges multiplied here after World War II, but membership has been in decline to some degree since the late 1960s; men’s freedom to congregate relied in part on women staying home. Some Lodges in France are now allowing women to join and seeing a new, younger membership evolve. Men in the States who want to preserve the boys’ club atmosphere are graying and their numbers are dwindling.

For a group whose founding values tout inclusion, Masons were not just sexist but frequently racist. They used a rule requiring members to be “free-born” to exclude Black applicants who were in fact free-born; they ultimately formed their own Lodges. There are still Prince Hall Masons meeting to this day; lodge members can visit other lodges (as would be the case anywhere in the world), but apart from a few exceptions, they are largely not looking to merge membership with whites anymore, preferring to focus on community care, philanthropy and networking.

There is a lot to explore here, some of it rather wild; when you keep your society a secret, people will fabricate a range of theories as to what goes on there. Many of the exposés written about the Craft, or confessions from religious converts claiming to have escaped the Masons, were themselves scams, and profitable ones. I’ll admit to a frisson of excitement when I saw diagrams of three Degrees’ worth of secret handshakes here (there are illustrations throughout, and a collection of color photos as well). “The Craft” is a deep dive into a subject that is more a part of our lives than we notice most of the time. Highly recommended for holiday gift giving, this would be a perfect cold weather read with a scalding pot of tea.

Heather Seggel is a writer living in Northern California. Email heatherlseggel@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2020

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