Where is Grand Lodge? In the chapter on the subject of Grand Lodge which is included in each of the many books on Masonic Jurisprudence this question is never asked, but it ought to be because it is always arising among Masons, and in one form or another it is one which a Worshipful Master is always asking himself. The answer is like the Servant in the House in Charles Rann Kennedy's play of that name who when he tries to describe what the builders do, says "it is not easy to describe" and "you must look at it in a certain way." A Grand Lodge has a set of Grand Officers but a Grand Lodge is not where they are because they may live anywhere in its Grand Jurisdiction. It may have its own hall or Temple or permanent headquarters where the Grand Secretary and the Grand Master have offices but the headquarters cannot be a Grand Lodge's where because they are in one city only. It is not where the Grand Communication meets becuse it may meet anywhere in its own Grand Jurisdiction. Even a Grand jurisdiction is not its where in Freemasonry in America because some four or five Grand Lodges have Lodges in other countries. "You must look at it in a certain way," because the secret of the question lies in the fact that a Grand Lodge is many kinds of things at once, and the answer depends on which one of the many a questioner has in mind when he asks his question; but on the whole and in the rough, the answer is that a Grand Lodge is where its Lodges and their members are. It is omnipresent within its own jurisdiction. It has no residence, no post-office address.
When is Grand Lodge? The question also is deceptively illusive, and is passed over by the books on Jurisprudence. A Grand Lodge has a regular Grand Communication once a year (in a few Grand Lodges, two or four times a year) and it may hold Called (or Emergent) Grand Communications when the Grand Master summons it, but this is not a Grand Lodge's when, it is only the when of its assemblies. It itself has no when because it is on duty twentyfour hours a day, 365 days a year, keeps no holidays, does not stop for Sundays, never, as it were, shuts its doors or closes shop. It would be a curiously interesting book if one of our historians were to write a history of our Grand Lodges in the terms of chronology; a number of events occurred, but when, on what day of the week or year, and at what time of the day? If such a book were prepared, and if a sufficient number of Grand Lodges were included, it would show that somewhere a Grand Lodge is taking action on something at each minute in the day, and each day of the year. A Grand Lodge has no when, unless by a when is meant the whole of time; it never slumbers or sleeps.
What is a Grand Lodge? Here again "you must look at it in a certain way," because the what is just one thing and then another, and some of those things are hard to see. A grand Lodge has its own members, those officers and delegates who sit in its Assemblies with a voice and a vote, but those members take no action as members except when summoned to do so. Moreover a Worshipful Master who is a member is not one in his own person, but as a representative of his Lodge. Therefore it falls out that Lodges are members, and for that reason are called constituents of a Grand Lodge. Yet at the same time a Grand Lodge is not only something more than its Lodges combined but also is something other. It has a complete complement of Grand Officers, and it is they who carry on much of its work between Annual Communications, but it is obvious that no Grand Lodge could consist solely of its own Officers. A Grand Lodge has a printed Book of Constitutions and a set of general laws but these are not its what; else it would exist only on paper. Its concern is with the Grand Jurisdiction as a whole and as a unit and with the Lodges severally and collectively as wholes and units; its what therefore is whatever Freemasonry has in it with which to deal with such concerns, therefore while the what is fixed and crystallized at the core of it, its edges (as it were) are not fixed and crystallized but are living and fluid if its duties make it necessary for it to take on a new function it can do so, or it can discontinue a function if conditions demand it. The Fraternity has a certain number of Grand Lodge Landmarks and whatever they are a Grand Lodge is and has to be, but otherwise the Fraternity is not dogmatic about a Grand Lodge's what but permits it to have a living flexibility as we know in the United States, where a Grand Lodge may be carrying on a kind of work or have a department of its own which a neighbor Grand Lodge neither does nor has.
Why is a Grand Lodge? To this question Masonic history gives a summary answer: The Fraternity of Speculative Freemasonry could not exist without Grand Lodges. It tried to do so, but it failed. There were Lodges, Speculative or partly so, for more than a century before the first Grand Lodge was constituted (1717 A.D.), and there were many regular Lodges, perhaps 200 of them, which tried to work outside the Grand Lodge after it was constituted, but they did not succeed. In any given geographical area, as in one of our own States, events occur, or questions arise, or something must be done, which affects the whole Fraternity within it; unless the Fraternity could act as a whole, as a unit, it ultimately would break clown, and that is why it needs a Grand Lodge, for any Grand Lodge is nothing other than the organized means by which Freemasonry in any Grand jurisdiction can act as a unit, and by which a Lodge can act as a body, and the Lodges can act together. In almost any other fraternity, society, or association a Grand Body could take any one of many forms, and as a matter of known fact they have often done so, but in Freemasonry it was impossible for a general governing and directing agency to be anything other than that which a Grand Lodge is: to exist, the Fraternity not only must have a Grand Body but it must be just that particular kind of Grand Body we now have no other form of Grand Body, organized differently, could have served. The first Grand Lodge was not constituted because some leader persuaded the Craft to erect it, nor was it designed according to the blue-prints of any leader's theory; it came into existence because it was needed, when it was needed, and where it was needed; and its Constitutions, laws, and offices were each and every one required in order to satisfy some need in the Fraternity itself.
The Fraternity as a whole in a Grand jurisdiction
must act in a body and as a unit to carry on a number of activities;
these activities vary among themselves in kind, and the organs,
agencies, officers, etc., of a Grand Lodge are designed, each
one, to carry on one of those activities; this answer to the Why
a Grand Lodge? contains also the answer to the question of why
Grand Lodges are not exact duplicates of each other. The variations
express unlike needs and dissimilar circumstances. In a large
Grand Lodge the Lodges are represented only by the Masters because
there is not seating space for more, a small Grand Lodge can seat
Masters and both Wardens. One Grand Lodge can transact its annual
business in a single Grand Communication; another must hold four
Grand Communications a year. A Grand Lodge in a thinly populated
Grand Jurisdiction may have ten Grand ,Lodge Committees, a Grand
Lodge in a jurisdiction crowded with towns and cities may have
fifty; and in the same instances the one may have only twenty-five
Appointive Grand Officers, the other may have two hundred. History
in actual practice often takes the form of customs, usages and
traditions, and each of these is itself necessary; one Grand Lodge
in consequence is unlike another (Louisiana and Pennsylvania are
striking examples) because their history is so different. In some
Grand Jurisdictions a task is best performed by the Grand Lodges;
in another by the Lodges. Also, there are justifiable and rational
differences of thought among the Grand jurisdictions as to what
is proper for a Grand Lodge to do (instead of Lodges or their
members) and what is not allowable. The axiom that "new occasions
teach new duties" is equally valid when it reads that "new
occasions teach new methods"; it will always be impossible
(and will never be desirable) to abolish the different theories
of Grand Lodge func
tions, the very act of abolishing them would breed a new set of
conflicting theories.
Nevertheless there is a set of Grand Lodge Landmarks, and in respect of it every regular Grand Lodge is in the exact duplicate of every other one. In the United States a Grand Lodge has a Grand jurisdiction which lies within the boundaries of a State (including the District of Columbia); over it the Grand Lodge has exclusive territorial jurisdiction. Each regular Lodge in such a Grand jurisdiction is on the List of the Grand Lodge and can owe neither obedience nor allegiance to any Grand Body in a Rite other than Ancient Craft Masonry; nor can any regular Grand Lodge permit any Grand Body other than itself to have any voice in its affairs or in any one of its Lodges. The Principal Officers are elected at a Grand Communication, usually for a term of one year. Their duties are defined by their constitutions, but they are answerable for the performance of them to the Grand Master. Appointive Officers are appointed by the Grand Master for a term of one year; their duties are assigned to them by the Grand Master in some Grand Lodges they are called the Grand Master's Staff. A Grand Lodge has its own Constitution, statutes, by-laws and general laws. It must hold a Grand Communication for the transaction of business at least once a year, deciding for itself the place and date for it. The membership of a Grand Lodge consists of its Grand Officers and of Lodge representatives; only members are entitled to a voice, a vote, and to hold office. Insofar as Lodges help to constitute a Grand Lodge they are called Constituent: insofar as they must obey Grand Lodge rules and orders they are said to be Subordinate there can be no "holdouts," or "loyal opposition," or any "minority" in a Grand Lodge; if it enacts a law each and every Lodge on its List must without exception or excuse obey that law, even if a Lodge was not in favor of it, and its representative voted against it; it is this which is meant by saying that a Grand Lodge is sovereign. A Grand Lodge collects dues and fees from Lodges, and its appropriate Officers may attend or inspect a Lodge. At least once a year each Lodge must send a written report ("Annual Returns") to the Grand Secretary. A Grand Lodge may have Standing Committees and Special Committees; their members usually are appointed for one year, but may be for longer, and though the larger number of Committees are appointed by the Grand Master they may also be appointed by Grand Lodge in a few cases where a Committees' composition is defined by the Constitution or a law (as that it shall consist of Past Grand Masters) the law creating the Committee virtually names its members. Non-members of a Grand Lodge are entitled to seek to visit it under the same terms and conditions as visiting in a Lodge. A Grand Lodge can own property, and can own and administer homes, schools, hospitals, etc.
Ever since William Hutchinson, the sagest of the philosophers and interpreters of the Craft have known that almost nothing in Freemasonry is a definition for a man to learn, or a doctrine for a man to believe, but is a subject presented to the mind for a man to think about. It is one of the consequences of that fact that the Ritual does not do his thinking for the Candidate and a Lodge does not do his thinking for a Mason; each one must do his thinking for himself, and that includes his thinking about Grand Lodge. Another consequence is less easy to state because it has to do with a certain complexity or subtlety, almost a mystery, in each theme or subject in the Craft. A man can take the dimensions of a table with a yardstick; he can take the dimensions of a house with a tapeline; he can even take the dimensions of the earth with geometric calculations; but no man can take the dimensions of a Grand Lodge because so much in it is either multi-dimensional or non-dimensional; it has so many aspects, it contains within itself so many things of different kinds, that "you have to look at it in a certain way"; just when we think we have run down some question or subject in it and have followed it almost out to the end we find that it does not come to an end but merges into something else-it is an illustration of William James' phrase "ever not quite."
These observations hold true of what we may safely take to be the essence of a Grand Lodge. It is itself a Lodge, it has a Lodge form of organization, and yet it is not a single Lodge standing among other Lodges. It is a Lodge of Lodges: is constituted by 50 or 100, or 500, or even 1000 Lodges, yet it is both more and other than these Lodges combined. It is more nearly a pooling, a throwing together, of the Lodges, their members, their money, their work, their wisdom, abilities, and talents; and no sooner are all these resources pooled together than that the whole pool of Grand Lodges 63 them is made fully available to each and every Lodge. A Lodge has its own Room, its own members, its own funds, and the measure of them is the apparent measure of its strength; yet at the same time that one local Lodge might almost be the same as the whole Grand Jurisdiction because everything which belongs to Freemasonry in that Grand jurisdiction belongs also to that Lodge, is available to it, is accessible to it, and is so without restraint. Because of the Grand Lodge system each Lodge and each Lodge member is strong with the strength of the whole Grand Jurisdiction.
Because these things are true we can lay
down a fundamental axiom in Masonic Jurisprudence; Any Lodge is
to its Grand Lodge what the Grand Lodge is to itself. This axiom
instantly blows away the confused and foolish notion that Grand
Lodge is there to act as if it were a "boss," or that
if it enters a Lodge it does so as an intruder, or that Grand
Lodge discipline is an arbitrary device for using force, and seeks
only to penalize. The whole spirit and purpose of a Grand Lodge's
concern with one of its own Lodges is the opposite; its concern
is for and on behalf of a Lodge, it is on the Lodge's side, if
a Lodge is in trouble its aim is to save the Lodge from self-destruction;
the whole spirit of it is unselfish service.
Back to More About Masonry [ Next ] [ Previous ]
