‘Freemasonry: Rituals, Symbols and History of the Secret Society’ by Mark Stavish
Review: Mark Stavish, Freemasonry: Rituals, Symbols and History of the Secret Society. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn 2007, ISBN 97807738711465
by Don Webb
I am going to begin this review with two observations about Freemasonry, in particular the Scottish Rite. Firstly, when I was learning how to drive (in the late 1970s) every little town in Texas – even towns so small that they had neither a stoplight nor a Dairy Queen – had a small sign indicating the presence of a Freemasons’ lodge. Now it’s 2020 and all those signs are still there, but for the most part it’s still the same signs. And the brothers are few and aged, if the lodge exists at all. Growing up it was part of the TV culture that all men were in some sort of lodge – the Racoons (the Honeymooners), the Water Buffalo (the Flintstones) or the Camels (Petticoat Junction). Whatever it was – it was boring old white guys. Secondly, in the 1990s an acquaintance of mine, a heavily tattooed shaven head rock-n-roller, came to Texas to the little town of Smithville. To my surprise, I---, a serious esotericist, was a Freemason. But to my much bigger surprise he contacted the local lodge. This will go well – they’ll run screaming from him. Instead, the elderly brothers in a dying Texas town held a banquet in his honor – eager to hear of Masonry across the pond. My friend looked wild enough to get the stink eye in regular stores in liberal cosmopolitan Austin, but was regarded as a “Brother.” That is power.
Stavish’s book does not pander to mythic history, nor to current prejudices within Masonry. He begins with the economic and historical reasons that caused Masonry to change from a guild of skilled workers to a group without a stonecutter or bricklayer in the 1700s. He shows the advantages of middle class men getting a network not tied to inherited wealth that could cut across national lines. Having described the outer experience, he describes the inner experience in two valid ways. The first of these is that he explains the Renaissance mind-set – the worldview that Masonry grew out of.
As dwellers in a time when esotericism is seen as opposed to science, it is easy to forget that the Renaissance thinker saw the world as an interlocking hierarchical matrix of forces that were perfect, fair and guided by rules. What better way to develop magical sympathy to these forces than participating in a group ruled by law that recognized the dignity of man? Discipline, memory training and ethical development are not a matter of book-learning but enactment. Stavish goes one better than most books on occult history: with each chapter he provides a list of supporting texts – both scholarly and etic as well as experiential and emic. His pedagogical style is admirable. He presents each chapter’s material, then a summary of key points and books to consult. And more. The genius of this text is in the more.
With each chapter he provides exercises for the reader to embody/experience the ideas. For example, readers are urged to work in a local charity, which is a vastly different idea than reading about a charity. Readers are encouraged to examine the effects of local architecture not only on their own psyches but by visiting and observing buildings and their neighborhoods. Most books on Freemasonry never go beyond mentioning Solomon’s Temple as a metaphor. We live inside metaphors of all sorts, often blithely unaware of their effect on the roots of our thoughts. He challenges readers with guided thought exercises to consider their own flaws and use the Masonic metaphor of continuous slow work to improve the Self – unlike the prevalent New Age notion of change as unnecessary or (even worse) easy. He provides an essay by John Michael Greer on Sacred Geometry – in which Greer takes the reader through the generation of rectangles showing the golden proportion. Again, the notion of Φ is often discussed in New Age texts, but it is a different matter to see how stonecutters can reproduce this ratio in stone armed with a stick, a string and a straight edge. (Years ago, I had visited Stonehenge with another Setian and remarked on its proportions – she guided me with the three mentioned tools to reproduce those proportions back in our hotel. It was an electric moment.)
Having laid out the rich basics, he provides a history of the Scottish Rite and the York Rite. He mentions, but I feel does not examine, the lack of esotericism in most of these Brotherhoods. Neither does he come to grip with the astonishing rise and fall of Masonry in the United States, nor the close relationship between the KKK and the Scottish Rite at one time. Conspicuously, Prince Hall Freemasonry does not warrant a mention. Stavish tactfully does not remark on the effect of the lodge on certain areas that Freemasonry is strong in such as Scotland Yard nor its role in Italy’s P2 scandal. The position of Freemasonry in the Commonwealth is not mentioned either.
However, the emphasis on Brotherhood and the Renaissance notion of underlying truths behind religion does get strong mention – and the fact that certain institutions such as the United States derive their ideals from these notions counterbalanced by ideas of discipline and respect for one’s initiators does get the praise it deserves. The role of Freemasonry in the possibilities for justice, fairness and brotherhood in the world is enshrined here in a surprisingly not-preachy way.
Stavish covers the more openly esoteric approaches to Masonry that included Kabbalah and Alchemy which gave us the Egyptian Freemasonry of Cagliostro and the strong dialogue between the fictional utopianism of the Rosicrucians and the real world brotherhoods that worked in matter. Thus he is able to give a good background to modern pseudo-Masonic movements such as the Golden Dawn and the OTO. He rounds out the book with a section on the tools and symbols of Freemasonry – in most books on Freemasons the tools are discussed first and often this ends the text. This is easy to do since one merely has to read Masonic histories or encyclopedias. Stavish correctly fills in the reader with the intellectual and philosophical background so that these tools are a concretization of the Ideal – the true metaphor of Masonry laid bare. Make the idea a tool, learn the tool from others who are seeking to better the world and themselves, and understand that changing both self and world begins with deeds and one temple at a time. Lastly he shares Albert Pike’s words about the degrees that compromise the root of all Masonic groups: that of Apprentice, Fellow-Craft and Master. Here the original trade guild’s secret were hidden – and these Roots explain all the Fruits that came from them.
Inner Traditions is republishing this book in 2021 with a foreword by the erudite Arturo de Hoyos. I am looking forward to this. I will end my thoughts with a last story. A few months ago I asked five esotericists for a good book on Freemasonry. The first one that responded was Mark Stavish and he recommended this 😊 – but the next four all included this book in their lists.