In the Grand Lodge Room of Freemasons’ Hall, a
stately Victorian building on Dublin’s Molesworth Street, the scene is
set for an initiation ceremony.
In a few hours, a blindfolded candidate
wearing a halter around his neck will kneel on a blue pillow – one of
three steps representing the first degrees of “The Craft” – before his
choice of scripture.
The “Entered Apprentice” will then take an oath
surrounded by men in regalia, half of them brandishing swords, half
extending their right hand in friendship. Each of these degrees instils a
basic moral lesson, each ritual dramatises the candidate’s personal
growth.
“It’s nursery-school simple,” says Morgan
McCreadie, assistant to the grand secretary of the Irish Freemasons.
“There’s no mysterious meaning. They’re not magic or anything like that.
No, we don’t eat babies and, no, we don’t kill anybody.”
Freemasons aren’t known for divulging details
or dispelling myths. For 300 years, the order has shrouded itself in
mystery, infamous for its use of passwords and secret handshakes.
Despite being a fraternal organisation that seeks to improve men and
thereby the society around them, Freemasonry is often perceived as an
elite circle wielding a malign influence.
“A lot of Freemasons would be like boys in the
corner of the school playground,” says McCreadie. “‘We’re not lettin’
you into our club!’ But that secrecy can play against you because if
people can’t find out the truth, if they suspect you’re hiding
something, they’ll make up something horrible.”
McCreadie, 56, works full-time for the
governing body that presides over Ireland’s 25,000 Freemasons. Sporting a
neatly trimmed white moustache, he repeatedly emphasises that he’s
neither a publicist nor an apologist for the order. Instead McCreadie
prefers to “tell it like it is”, which is exactly what he did upon
learning that Grand Lodge once commissioned a survey to gauge public
opinion.
“I said, ‘About a third have absolutely no
interest. A third are fascinated because it has all sorts of
connotations. The other third think you’re a shower of eejits. It
doesn’t take a marketing firm to tell you that.’”
To apply, you must be over 21 and believe in
the existence of a supreme being.
But you also have to ask.
Freemasons’
Hall received 147 expressions of interest last year, which translated
into about 20 new members.
Candidates are stalled for up to a year in
order to assess their character and clarify any misconceptions.
“A lot of them lose interest when their
curiosity has been satisfied about what we do and what we don’t do. No,
we don’t have the Holy Grail and, yes, we do have ceremonies. We tell
them all about it, which we wouldn’t have done in the past, and they
say, ‘Oh. Is that all?’”
When a brother recently suggested recruiting
members, McCreadie firmly insisted that the excellence of the order
should speak for itself.
Recalling this, his raised voice echoes through
the hall while reciting the conditions for entering a masonic lodge:
that you must come of your own free will, uninfluenced by solicitations
and unbiased by suspect motives.
In the UK, masonic lodges belonging exclusively
to judges and police officers have drawn allegations of corruption,
tarnishing the order’s image.
McCreadie feels it’s inevitable that
abuses would arise in those circumstances and for that reason it’s
forbidden for an Irish lodge to comprise only one profession.
Over here, he says, it’s difficult enough just
to find commonality among members, who are forbidden from discussing
politics or religion.
A list of expulsions is published annually.
Nevertheless, some approach the organisation
hoping to boost their career through networking and favouritism. “We
would tell them quite honestly: if you want to get something out of it,
you’re mad. Elsewhere, like the States, you might get more networking
and all that but it just doesn’t work that way here.”
Of the nearly 1,400 registered Freemasons
across Dublin’s 35 lodges, McCreadie speculates that the majority of
those with jobs are working-class men struggling to make a living. This
may be hard to reconcile with a list of Freemasonry’s famous brethren.
Aside from 14 US presidents and five British monarchs, the more notable
names include Mozart, Winston Churchill, John Wayne, J Edgar Hoover and,
for a time, Daniel O’Connell.
McCreadie suspects that certain figures joined
every club available while on the ascent and never returned once they
were successful. Hearing brethren dropping names only embarrasses him.
“I mean, what are they trying to justify? I told somebody very publicly:
‘I wouldn’t want to be associated with a chain gang like that!’ I think
it’s irrelevant and it demeans the order.”
The building’s crimson staircase leads to
several ornate meeting rooms of different architectural styles, some of
which are used by invite-only Masonic branches that one can eventually
advance to. Women are not admitted. McCreadie believes this policy stems
from an era of chauvinism, when men “refused to accept the intellectual
capacity, and therefore the power, of women”.
Instead he refers
interested parties to the unaffiliated Order of Women Freemasons, who
have an office in Northern Ireland. (The Grand Masonic Orient of
Ireland, an unaffiliated body that practises continental-style liberal
Freemasonry, also recognises women.)
Though the policies of the masonic order and
its offshoots vary throughout the world, the association with conspiracy
theories is all-pervasive. Even in Freemasons’ Hall, Dan Brown novels
can be seen sitting alongside a copy of
Cracking The Da Vinci Code
.
McCreadie attributes Freemasonry’s starring
role in such narratives to its “magpie” approach in adopting symbols
(like the Eye of Providence), its former “no comment” policy and its
links with the original Bavarian Illuminati, an 18th-century society
that opposed superstition and inequality.
“We’re pretty good for a conspiracy theory,” he
says. “It’s got a mysterious history associated with senior political
figures like Frederick the Great, Bonnie Prince Charlie, some of the
kings of France and so on. If you tie that in with religion,
particularly Roman Catholicism, which has been secretive enough in
itself, all you need is the thread of a story with a timeline rather
than facts and you’ve got a bloody rattlin’ yarn. But intelligent people
don’t take that sort of thing seriously.”
According to Prof James Kelly, head of history
at St. Patrick’s College in Drumcondra, hostility towards Freemasonry
dates back to its ties with revolution. Despite being one of the few
clubs to welcome Catholics in 18th-century Ireland, it became forbidden
by the Catholic Church and marginalised by mistrust in a sectarian
landscape.
“As much as you can find that’s puzzling about
them,” Kelly says, “they strike me as a grossly misrepresented
organisation whose charitable endeavours for schools and others have
performed a public role of some consequence.”
Asked what Freemasonry means to him, McCreadie
is uncertain. He enjoys mixing with “men of good will” from various
backgrounds, but when he once posed that same question to a meeting of
brethren, he concluded from their silence that the appeal is entirely
subjective.
“I’ve been asked again and again if Freemasonry
improves people. I don’t believe it does. But I do believe that the
people who come to Freemasonry want to improve themselves. They already
have strong opinions about society or moral values. Freemasonry is just a
representation of that.”