Freemasonry: A Very Short Introduction - Andreas Önnerfors 2017
Secrecy and society
Enlightenment foundations
As it entered the 18th century and drawing upon its earlier intellectual legacy, freemasonry very pointedly engaged with the nascent scientific culture of the early Enlightenment in general and with Newtonian science in particular. Throughout Europe, freemasons actively promoted scientific culture and counted scientists among their members. The Constitutions mention ’arts’ and ’science’ as synonyms for freemasonry. Ramsay’s ’Discours’ suggested an edition of a universal dictionary of sciences and arts. A tract written in defence of masonry claimed that masonic lodges are ’eminently styled as academies’. With this clear support, freemasonry placed itself at the core of a new culture of knowledge, replacing prejudice and speculation with evidence and experimentation. Scholars such as Margaret C. Jacob argue that freemasonry not only formulated liberal concepts for its organization, but also acted as a proto-democratic and egalitarian ’school of government’ in which men (and some women) could learn skills fundamental to new forms of society, beyond the feudal logic and hierarchy that still governed most European states at the time.
This commitment is, however, difficult to align with the proclivity for mythology, secrecy, and ritual that is so prevalent in freemasonry. To sort out this potential tension, it is necessary to engage with the secrets and secrecy as representing a core distinguishing and organizing principle and as a structuring element for the transmission of masonic knowledge. The programmatic songs in The Constitutions speak of ’secrets of the art’ and that ’the world is in pain our secrets to gain’; one of the verses reads:
Whose Art transcends the common View?
Their Secrets, ne’er to Strangers yet expos’d,
Preserv’d shall be By Masons Free,
And only to the ancient Lodge disclos’d;
Because they’re kept in Masons Heart
By Brethren of the Royal Art.
Another verse claims that just as men are distinguished from animals, freemasons exceed their fellow humans because ’what’s in knowledge choice and rare’ is kept securely within a freemason’s breast.
These few lines already establish the basic sociological function of secrecy that, furthermore, has a constitutive dimension in the internal transmission of knowledge. For members, who are in possession of (real or imagined) secrets that are only to be transmitted inside the lodge, a line is drawn between freemasons and non-freemasons; between ’us’ and ’them’. These secrets, which are never to be revealed to strangers (or significant others), are in effect privileged knowledge, and represent art that ’transcends the common view’, distinguishing freemasons from their fellow human beings. The avoidance of unplanned transmission of such privileged knowledge places a huge responsibility upon the individual freemason in the form of secrecy and silence.
Swiss sociologist Georg Simmel identified the ability for secrecy as ’one of the greatest accomplishments of humanity’. Simmel claims that human relationships are determined by the amount of knowledge we share with each other. Whether done willingly or unwillingly, a withholding of information from others is a necessary part of modern reality. Acceptance of how much we do not (need to) know about another individual determines the level of interpersonal trust in modern society. In this intricate play between opacity and transparency, information that some have that is seen to be withheld from the many appears to possess a special value. Furthermore, according to Simmel, every superior aspect of personality or performance that is seen to exceed that of the average person is felt to represent something mysterious.
Both these propositions lead people to believe ’that every secret is something essential and significant’. As such, there is a tension created to reveal what is secret. To keep a secret from others requires psychological fortitude—so great is the human need to communicate and thereby release the tension of concealment. Simmel believes that the amount of secrecy in all societies is more or less constant but expressed in different ways. As such, the more transparent a state becomes in public matters, the more secrecy (or privacy) is allowed to its citizens; leeway of action is created in private space.
As discussed earlier, freemasonry claims to possess privileged secrets and to transmit them internally. According to the narrative of The Constitutions, knowledge (transcending that of the average person) has been handed down via an uninterrupted chain of initiates from biblical times. These initiates have each then had to endure pressure both externally from others in their society and internally from their own human need to communicate with others and share these secrets. However, a good freemason keeps his privileged knowledge to himself; a central element of the masonic oaths is about keeping secrets from the uninitiated, from the ’profane’, and from women in particular.
What, then, are the functions of secrecy in modern freemasonry? One is to bind the (until recent times, male) members to the secrets which must only be communicated through the performance of ritual or other normative masonic instruction. Images, narratives, and myths in this regard are used to establish a sense of transcendence, of providing a superior observation point, and with it a sense of exclusivity. It relies on the idea that freemasonry is about a select chain of initiates—and that these sage (usually) men, who are highly versed in the sciences and arts (particularly geometry and architecture) of their time, will then transfer uncorrupted knowledge that will flow down through the different eras of human history.
German Egyptologist Jan Assmann studied the reinvention of Egyptian religion among the elites of the Enlightenment. He described the phenomenon of this new interest in pagan tradition ’religio duplex’, whereby one secret religion was shared by the privileged (in this case, the elites were also in the masonic brotherhood) while a diversity of other religions were still being shared by the ordinary man. Freemasons saw themselves as representing a group that was a global, united, egalitarian, initiated, and exclusive male elite, which had set itself the task of building a better society for humankind. This taint of self-conscious elitism, even hubris, has haunted freemasonry ever since.
A second, more abstract and (possibly initially) unintended, function of secrecy is to prepare masonic initiates for life in modern society which has created a hitherto unprecedented level of anonymity and privacy. As Simmel argued, differentiation (initially in the Enlightenment period, of religion) in society has led to a loss of close and transparent interpersonal relations. Teaching secrecy to individuals is a way of accustoming them to a socio-economic reality of greater opacity/privacy, thus enabling them to navigate a society in which the creation of mutual trust is via increasingly abstract and detached means.
Last but not least, it is possible to read an indirect political dimension into the masonic insistence on secrecy. The Constitutions stress freedom of action for freemasonry in relation to political rule. Following Simmel’s argument, in authoritarian and opaque states, citizens are allowed less privacy and secrecy; when state power augments the amount of transparency in their governance, individual privacy and right to secrecy increases. By actively claiming a right to individual privacy and secrecy, freemasonry challenges all forms of non-transparent and coercive government, and particularly those that shroud their power in mystery (and secrecy). It is therefore no wonder that freemasonry has clashed with authoritarian forms of government throughout the centuries—whether absolutist, papal, or other religiously and ideologically charged political systems.
Freemasonry reflected a need felt in society to hold onto the right to secrecy during charged political times. However, by the end of the 18th century, it was already being argued that in the age of Enlightenment it was unnecessary to retain this level of secrecy; that humanity had made such progress, that knowledge could now be shared with everyone. During the subsequent century, masonic reform movements did indeed alter the formulation and gravity of the masonic oath to secrecy, in some instances even abolishing it completely. Today, in response to a persistent accusation of conspiracy, masonic organizations have adopted a hitherto unprecedented policy of extensive transparency.