Almost every term in the nomenclature of Freemasonry is both ancient and beautiful. When they are defined with knowledge and understanding, and are correctly used in the times and places to which they belong, they are sound and true; no scientist uses words more accurately. Petition is such a word, and since it is more than 3000 years old the patina of antiquity is upon it. It began as the Latin peto, which meant to seek, and became changed into its present form by long usage, and by passing from one language to another. It was a sister word of praetor, which by usage became transformed into our word prayer. A man prays for something when he desires it greatly; because he desires it greatly he seeks for it; his petition is his attempt to answer his own prayer.
The Eighteenth Century ritualists who wrote into the ceremonies and rites such changes as were made necessary when Freemasonry was transformed from an Operative (or partly Operative) Fraternity into a Speculative one, and who, about 1750 A. D., wrote that portion of the Degrees which is called The Monitor, left behind them a number of phrases, sentences, and paragraphs which are, most of them, easily distinguishable from the older language of the Degrees. A microscopic analysis of these phrases and sentences one after another shows that at many points these Brethren were troubled by what seemed to them to be paradoxes in Freemasonry, and here and there they betrayed the fact by resorting to odd shifts of thought or language either to avoid them or to resolve them, and not always successfully; their attempts are a standing invitation to some young Masonic philosopher to devote a career to completing what they began.
A complete list of these paradoxes would be illuminating, but since space forbids the making of it here a few must serve as specimens to show what they would be. Why are the members in the Third Degree called Fellowcraft although they have passed that Degree, and how do the Fellowcraft in the Second Degree know some things which have not yet occurred, and will not until the next Degree? If a Candidate is already a man of sound character when he petitions, why then have so many moral lessons during the Degrees? How can a Petitioner know that he desires to become a Mason when he cannot know what Masonry is until he has received the Three Degrees? If only Masons can know the secrets of Masonry, and if each Mason is under oath never to communicate these secrets to non-Masons, then how are they to be communicated to the Candidate, who is a non-Mason?
Perhaps the most striking of the many paradoxes is enshrined in the old and often-debated question: it only Masons are permitted to enter a Lodge when it is duly tiled how can the Fraternity ever receive new members, since no Candidate is a Mason when he enters? Or, in another form of words, if only Masons can become members of a Lodge how can a Lodge ever have members when it is only by means of coming into a Lodge that a man can be made a Mason? This paradox, like a score of others, sounds as if by its own laws the Fraternity had doomed itself not to exist. These paradoxes here given are all resolved by the system which is composed of the Petition, Balloting, Preparation, the Ceremony of Entrance, the Obligation, Initiation, Passing, and Raising; that system of rules and rites is known collectively as "the making of a Mason"; the making of a Mason is itself the answer to the question: how can the Fraternity accept into membership Masons only when a man cannot be made a Mason outside the Fraternity? It doubles the fascination of the subject of the Petition and the Petitioner when it is studied in its place in this circle of paradoxes. That which generates these paradoxes, or what appear to be paradoxes (the word means "incredibilities"), is the idea, or assumption, that in the eyes of our Fraternity there are only two categories of men: Masons and non-Masons; whereas in reality there are three. Our Brethren in the Middle Ages would have described this third category as a tertium quid; Dante described it in his poem as a region to which he gave the name of Limbo; we may describe it in our own American language as the class of men who are neither Masons nor non-Masons, but are in the process of being made Masons. A Petitioner is one who has taken the first step in that process. He has entered the Limbo of Masonry.
We have long been accustomed to thinking that if a thinker solves some great problem, or a scientist makes a discovery, or a man accomplishes something great in the arts their first step will be to give it to the world, and to give it for nothing; even a writer of books, who must depend on their sale for his livelihood, loses property rights when the copyright expires and his book enters "the public domain" where it can be issued by any publisher in any language. We have even accustomed ourselves to seeing men form large associations and spend great sums of money and time to give something away and to persuade men to accept it. If we who have been thus accustomed to seeing truths given away and to seeing all manner of missionary enterprises financed and staffed could return to Britain in the Fourteenth Century when the first permanent Lodges of Freemasons were being established (because the Freemasons found themselves in possession of a treasure for the whole world) we should naturally expect them not only to open wide the gates of the Lodge but also to send out propagandists or missioners. But (and it is another paradox) theirs was the opposite course. They guarded their doors more rigorously than ever. They raised their threshold. They made it more difficult, not less, for new men to enter. They strengthened, not loosened, the obligations and oaths. They sent out no lecturers or missionaries; conducted no campaigns; engineered no propaganda, published no books, asked no clergymen to preach for them, and requested no schools to put Freemasonry into the curriculum. Never in history has any organization with something new and great for the world done less to have it accepted or shown more indifference to what the world thought or said about it. The fact is more than wonderful; it is amazing; and no other fact about Freemasonry is more striking or more revealing.
A man petitions to receive the Three Degrees; it will not be until after he has surmounted successfully those three barriers that he can take the last step of petitioning for membership in a Lodge. No man can decide to become a Mason; he can only decide to petition to become one, because membership is no man's right. It is conferred, but it is not offered. He must fill in a printed official form and sign it with his legal name and by his own hand - an X will not be accepted. He must be of lawful age, which is twenty-one in the United States. He must be a man, must be well recommended, and he must have his petition signed by men who are Masons. The qualifications required of him are not qualifications in general-many men are highly qualified for many vocations - but he must have just those qualifications which are called for in Masonic work. He must put a certain sum of money ("initiation fee") in escrow with the Lodge. He must come of his own free will; the "free" meaning that he is free to act without consulting others, and that he is committed to no obligations which will conflict with his Masonic obligations; the "will" meaning not that he wills something in general but wills to be a Mason. He is not to be solicited, and he is to solicit no Mason to vote for him when he passes the ordeal of the ballot. Once he has signed his petition and mailed it to the Secretary he is to wait with patience and remain in circumspection until he hears from the Lodge.
Such a Petitioner is not a member, or a half-member, or a prospective member; he is not even a Candidate until he has passed a favorable ballot; nevertheless he has a status, and though it is not inside of Freemasonry it is one officially recognized by Freemasonry, and comes under certain of its rules and regulations. He cannot attend a Lodge, or appeal to a Lodge, or have any voice in a Lodge; a Lodge is not ever under any obligation even to accept his petition for consideration, or investigate it, or bring it to ballot, but can return it to him without warning or excuse, or argument; he is wholly and solely in the position of one who prays, or seeks, or asks, and is doing so with no encouragement except from his own internal desires, therefore he must not take it amiss if the door is not opened when he knocks. If his petition is returned to him without ballot, or is rejected by unfavorable ballot, he stands where he stood before; he has done no harm to himself; even the fact that he made a petition will remain locked up in faithful breasts.
Somewhere in or about London, or possibly at York, and near the year 1350 A. D. the Freemasons in a Lodge decided not to dissolve their Lodge when their work was completed, but to keep it as a permanent center of Freemasonry; and rested their authority for doing so upon the first written copy of the Old Charges. Men who sought membership in it, whether as Operatives or as Speculatives (Accepted), had to petition as a man does now; and it was no easier then than it is now for him to pass the ordeal of the ballot and afterwards to be made a Mason - if anything it was even more difficult. The Lodge - and we do not know either its name or its town-was doubtless a small one, of from fifteen to thirty members. After a time a second Lodge was constituted, on the same authority, and as time passed one after another were set up here and there in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Not one of those Lodges solicited members, or sent out agents, or salesmen, or missionaries, or advertised itself, but gave everywhere the impression that accepting a new member was almost the last thing it wished to do. Wherefrom two questions arise: how explain that the Fraternity survived, through thick and through thin, across the welter of these past six centuries (what other fraternity has survived)? and how explain its immense vitality, its irrepressible growth into a Fraternity of millions of men established in fifty or sixty countries, and speaking forty or fifty languages? It put forth no effort either to survive or to grow. Why did it?
Each and every petitioner has the answer
in his own hand, not only in the printed form but also as the
petition is recalled to him during the Degrees, in that statement
which Grand jurisdictions word differently but which in meaning
is everywhere the same, and which is to the effect that the petitioner
was moved to pray for the honor of receiving the Degrees by Freemasonry's
good name, by its repute, by the reputation it has for both antiquity
and honorableness. An old and wise interpreter of the Ritual once
declared this "to be the most beautiful fact in Masonry,"
and went on to explain that it was beautiful because Freemasonry
had never said it about itself. If it has never said it about
itself then others have said it for Freemasonry. The petitioner
must come of his own free will; this reputation also arose of
its own free will. It came of itself. It arose around the Fraternity
without prompting and, as it were, as grass and shrubs do, grew
up out of the ground without any man's planting. This free and
universal and unbought testimony is responsible for that longevity,
and for that growth. Has any society or fraternity or association
ever received a larger testimony? or one more real, or more sincere?
for it is history itself which gives it.
Back to The Newly-Made Mason [ Next ] [ Previous ]
