Freemasonry: A Very Short Introduction - Andreas Önnerfors 2017

Lodge organization, numbers, and names
Organizational culture

The basic administrative unit and local node for all activities in freemasonry is the lodge, which is self-governed by officers elected from among its members and which follows its own by-laws. Apart from their symbolic roles in the enactment of ritual, these officers occupy designated functions in the administration of the lodge, such as master/chairman with deputies, treasurer, secretary, archivist, and so on (see Figure 6). From the early 1720s (at the latest), the grand lodge assumed the role of superior governing body with the right to regulate the activities of its subordinate lodges.

6. ’Le Tablier maconnique’ (1785).

The Constitutions were approved by twenty individual lodges in 1723. By 1730, this number had multiplied to 160, according to Masonry Dissected. That list mentions a French lodge in London as well as lodges abroad, in cities such as Paris, Valenciennes, Aubigny, Lisbon, The Hague, Hamburg, Boston (MA), and Savannah (GA). From the outset, lodges as a rule did not choose their own names, but used those of the public and coffee houses (pubs) where they assembled. However, lodges did start to give themselves symbolic names such as ’friendship’, ’fortitude’, or ’cordiality’ early on. From 1729 onwards, an engraved list of lodges was printed that displayed pub signs and meeting times. The impressive nine-volume publication, Religious Ceremonies and Customs of All the Peoples of the World (1723—43), included an article on freemasonry (volume 4, 1736). The article was illustrated with a grandiose display of the engraved lodge list as a background to one of the first images of modern freemasons assembled for a lodge meeting (see Figure 2). From this nucleus of roughly 160 lodges, thousands of lodges developed subsequently in Britain alone.

A standard work of reference is Lane’s Masonic Records (1894), an authoritative listing of all lodges under the English masonic constitution from 1717 onward. This work has now been digitized and is fully searchable online. Lodges established after 1894 have also been added, and the highest serial number (as of 2012) is 9870. In the British case, praxis has evolved to allow the establishment of lodges that are smaller in membership size and that have specialized interests—frequently professional. This tradition started during the 18th century with the establishment of military or regimental lodges. On the continent, however, the pattern is rather different—the typical lodge tends to comprise members of all walks of life and has a rather high membership. Masonic lodge records thus provide interesting insights into biographies and social history, particularly in a colonial context. Famous lodges that gathered intellectuals together were established in Paris (Neuf Soeurs) and Vienna (Zur Eintracht). Proper research lodges came to life with the 1884 establishment of Quatuor Coronati No. 2076 in London (UGLE).

It is difficult to estimate the total number of members that have joined masonic lodges over the centuries. A digitized card index at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (’Fichier Bossu’) has roughly 170,000 entries for the period 1780—1850. During the first century of Swedish Freemasonry (1737—1844), the number of members is calculated at roughly 15,000, and about the same number applies to Prussia and to Ulster (up to 1800). A prominent website for genealogical research has made English and Irish masonic membership registers from 1751 to 1921 available for research. No less than 1.7 million names are listed.