The definition of 'fraternalism' used on this web site does not and is not intended to exclude females.
There have been numerous female 'fraternities', female-exclusive 'lodges' and female fraternal members, only some of which were referred to as 'sisterhoods'. The first Australian female-only 'lodge' appears to have been the 'Alexandra Tent, No 1' of the IOR's Albert District in South Australia, opened in December, 1866.
Mme Blavatsky's initiative in the 1880's with the Theosophical Society was explicitly an attempt to reform Freemasonry, and there have been other similar attempts. Lodges of female benefit societies with hundreds of members were noted in England in the early 19th century, while the 'Loyal Reformed Order of Odd Women' attracted attention in the 1870's. Its statement of objects provided another variation on the 'mateship' theme:
The cultivation of friendship, the pleasures of good company, and the improvement of the
morals are the primary objects for the attainment of which a number of individuals of the
first respectability have formed themselves into a fraternity of the Loyal Reformed Order
of Odd Women.
Male psyches have been a hindrance to female 'fraternal' progress, just as they have often negated fraternal idealism, which, historically, has included a confused but aggressive masculinism. But just as in the wider society, while male-dominance has been hoped for, fought for and theorised about for centuries, it has never been completely achieved. Even within societies defined as 'fraternal' and given over to the exercise and advocacy of 'brotherhood', women have been present and/or involved as persons of influence, precisely because fraternalism's intentions and principles emphasise growth, intuition and universality.
Manchester Unity Odd Fellows did not admit females to basic lodge ritual until 1923, and many male trade unionists still oppose equal pay for equal work done by women. The issue remains a topic of lively interest in English-based Masonry administrators of which continue to insist full membership is not for women.
Thus, while apparent gender-specific terms such as 'brotherhood' in an association's title imply a male-only domain, it is, like 'sisterhood', only useful as an indicator of the likely existence of oaths and regalia. 'Fraternalism' is used on this site as a term pin-pointing an approach rather than the gender of those involved.
The story of fraternalism affords illustrations of gender-based psycho-social struggles. The early Governors and military officers were a very mixed bag, but by the mid-1800's, many of Queen Victoria's representatives certainly thought themselves 'the height of God's creation' and key protectors of the flow of statistics-based management systems into the colonies. It was their less well-educated counterparts, however, who had to complete the paperwork and to train others in the tasks, something which they were often ill-equipped to do, precisely because of the class, gender and race-based-systems under which they laboured.
Because it has been people of lower socio-economic position who most needed the benefits which fraternalism offered, there has been a preponderance of working people involved with fraternities. Since the context has meant that the bulk of recorded membership has been male, some scholars have asserted that only men can be 'mates', ie fraternal, and that the 'fraternal societies' were agents of Imperialism, assumed to be a clear and deliberate policy and which necessarily included discrimination of various kinds.
The on-going research prompts questions such as: to what extent did gender psycho-politics lead to or encourage the decline of the 'Orders'? Tension along this line is known to have surfaced in the USA, where theatricalisation of the Scottish Rite Degrees of Freemasonry in the period 1895 to 1930 was criticised for allegedly feminising 'the Craft.' The use of certain rites is only the beginning of the answer to these questions.
Hypocritically, even while it exploits reader titillation with scraps from the literature of female divinity and eroticism, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, amounts to little more than the usual male-fantasy. Western and Eastern civilisations are alike in being male-centred, but while the pivotal industrialisation and the centralised and bureaucratic State are masculinist wish-projections, in which anxiety over performance measures has helped defeat the intentions of 'brotherhood' they have failed to achieve full expression. That is, in the broad or in the narrow, the practice has not matched the theory. Historically, members have not shown themselves any better at living up to their society's stated maxims, eg 'friendship, love and truth', than non-members.
The gap between theory and practice has been stark where the practice has involved sexual harassment of female office workers by 'Grand Directors' or the use of bullying and manipulation by more powerful executive officers of the less powerful.
No doubt the detail of the exploitation has varied as culture has shifted, as populations have moved and/or risks of exposure have varied. Rape is probably the great unexplored social issue of Australia's white history, but in this century female employees, and female fraternal members are still subject to more sexist and denigratory treatment than is reported, while defensive/aggressive behaviours remain as common at fraternal meetings as they do in the wider society. Impossible to quantify now, such cultural norms must have contributed to past membership declines and lodge closures.
The literature continues to treat fraternal theory as its practice. Harland-Jacobs, in her recent account of British Freemasonry and the British Empire takes the rhetoric of Freemasonry at face value and assumes it has been the only fraternal society to have taken British values and imperial ambitions around the world. Her book is a breakthrough in fraternal research, but because she has not questioned the Order's view of itself as unique and separate, she has relied on statements concerning the absolute exclusion of women. She is right to equate 'fraternal' with 'masculine' with regard to what is now the United Grand Lodge of Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons based on London, but she is incorrect when she equates 'fraternal' with 'masculine' and both with 'Freemasonry' more generally.
There have been numerous female 'fraternities', female-exclusive 'lodges' and female fraternal members, only some of which were referred to as 'sisterhoods'. The first Australian female-only 'lodge' appears to have been the 'Alexandra Tent, No 1' of the IOR's Albert District in South Australia, opened in December, 1866.
Mme Blavatsky's initiative in the 1880's with the Theosophical Society was explicitly an attempt to reform Freemasonry, and there have been other similar attempts. Lodges of female benefit societies with hundreds of members were noted in England in the early 19th century, while the 'Loyal Reformed Order of Odd Women' attracted attention in the 1870's. Its statement of objects provided another variation on the 'mateship' theme:
The cultivation of friendship, the pleasures of good company, and the improvement of the
morals are the primary objects for the attainment of which a number of individuals of the
first respectability have formed themselves into a fraternity of the Loyal Reformed Order
of Odd Women.
Male psyches have been a hindrance to female 'fraternal' progress, just as they have often negated fraternal idealism, which, historically, has included a confused but aggressive masculinism. But just as in the wider society, while male-dominance has been hoped for, fought for and theorised about for centuries, it has never been completely achieved. Even within societies defined as 'fraternal' and given over to the exercise and advocacy of 'brotherhood', women have been present and/or involved as persons of influence, precisely because fraternalism's intentions and principles emphasise growth, intuition and universality.
Manchester Unity Odd Fellows did not admit females to basic lodge ritual until 1923, and many male trade unionists still oppose equal pay for equal work done by women. The issue remains a topic of lively interest in English-based Masonry administrators of which continue to insist full membership is not for women.
Thus, while apparent gender-specific terms such as 'brotherhood' in an association's title imply a male-only domain, it is, like 'sisterhood', only useful as an indicator of the likely existence of oaths and regalia. 'Fraternalism' is used on this site as a term pin-pointing an approach rather than the gender of those involved.
The story of fraternalism affords illustrations of gender-based psycho-social struggles. The early Governors and military officers were a very mixed bag, but by the mid-1800's, many of Queen Victoria's representatives certainly thought themselves 'the height of God's creation' and key protectors of the flow of statistics-based management systems into the colonies. It was their less well-educated counterparts, however, who had to complete the paperwork and to train others in the tasks, something which they were often ill-equipped to do, precisely because of the class, gender and race-based-systems under which they laboured.
Because it has been people of lower socio-economic position who most needed the benefits which fraternalism offered, there has been a preponderance of working people involved with fraternities. Since the context has meant that the bulk of recorded membership has been male, some scholars have asserted that only men can be 'mates', ie fraternal, and that the 'fraternal societies' were agents of Imperialism, assumed to be a clear and deliberate policy and which necessarily included discrimination of various kinds.
The on-going research prompts questions such as: to what extent did gender psycho-politics lead to or encourage the decline of the 'Orders'? Tension along this line is known to have surfaced in the USA, where theatricalisation of the Scottish Rite Degrees of Freemasonry in the period 1895 to 1930 was criticised for allegedly feminising 'the Craft.' The use of certain rites is only the beginning of the answer to these questions.
Hypocritically, even while it exploits reader titillation with scraps from the literature of female divinity and eroticism, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, amounts to little more than the usual male-fantasy. Western and Eastern civilisations are alike in being male-centred, but while the pivotal industrialisation and the centralised and bureaucratic State are masculinist wish-projections, in which anxiety over performance measures has helped defeat the intentions of 'brotherhood' they have failed to achieve full expression. That is, in the broad or in the narrow, the practice has not matched the theory. Historically, members have not shown themselves any better at living up to their society's stated maxims, eg 'friendship, love and truth', than non-members.
The gap between theory and practice has been stark where the practice has involved sexual harassment of female office workers by 'Grand Directors' or the use of bullying and manipulation by more powerful executive officers of the less powerful.
No doubt the detail of the exploitation has varied as culture has shifted, as populations have moved and/or risks of exposure have varied. Rape is probably the great unexplored social issue of Australia's white history, but in this century female employees, and female fraternal members are still subject to more sexist and denigratory treatment than is reported, while defensive/aggressive behaviours remain as common at fraternal meetings as they do in the wider society. Impossible to quantify now, such cultural norms must have contributed to past membership declines and lodge closures.
The literature continues to treat fraternal theory as its practice. Harland-Jacobs, in her recent account of British Freemasonry and the British Empire takes the rhetoric of Freemasonry at face value and assumes it has been the only fraternal society to have taken British values and imperial ambitions around the world. Her book is a breakthrough in fraternal research, but because she has not questioned the Order's view of itself as unique and separate, she has relied on statements concerning the absolute exclusion of women. She is right to equate 'fraternal' with 'masculine' with regard to what is now the United Grand Lodge of Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons based on London, but she is incorrect when she equates 'fraternal' with 'masculine' and both with 'Freemasonry' more generally.
DOES Fraternalism Exclude Women?
Write to:
90 Henry St,
Tighes Hill. NSW.
Australia. 2297.
90 Henry St,
Tighes Hill. NSW.
Australia. 2297.
BELOW:
* Is Fraternalism Necessarily Protestant?
* Why have historians missed the point?
* How did I get involved?
* Why is this stuff seen as dangerous???
* Can Masonry be historically credible?
* Is Fraternalism Necessarily Protestant?
* Why have historians missed the point?
* How did I get involved?
* Why is this stuff seen as dangerous???
* Can Masonry be historically credible?
Is Fraternalism Necessarily Protestant?
Fraternalism and the story of 'mateship' is ultimately about Religion, ie organised and formalised belief systems based on a Creator or universal creative force. In the US, it has been argued that Protestantism has deflected 'male supremacy' into 'Manifest Destiny', but in Australia's case, it would seem a less well-developed self-belief, and less certainty about the Creator's intentions forced mates into a compromise - huddling rather than expanding - and into the more modest assertion - 'she'll be right.'
Religion will run as a thread through this account, not because a belief in a divine creator is a necessary condition for 'mateship' but because, historically, the elements which have gone into making our fraternals, and thus our 'mateship' derive from what we now call the Judeo-Christian tradition. Manning Clark's six volume history of Australia may seem overly personal and idiosyncratic, and he may have needed retrospection to see it clearly, but he was correct to interpret his early training and experiences as bringing him to a single idea:
I was feeling my way towards a story of Australia as a battleground for the
last days of the myths of Europe and America - the myth of Christendom, and the
myth of the Enlightenment.
'Our' fraternalism reflects our Christian heritage in its symbolism and practices, and in many of the societies insisting on the highest of high moral grounds as their reason for being. Many Australians, including women, first experienced fraternal discipline and its value system in a Juvenile Lodge, eg the Rechabites or Good Templars, or in one of the many church-based 'Orders', eg, the Methodist Girls Comradeship, or the Methodist Order of Knights. These all had degree structures, regalia, and secret signs and passwords.
While part of the story of fraternalism revolves around a shared heritage, there has also been the very raw and very human struggle for personal dominance and 'team' superiority within and between Orders. 'Brothers' have fought in the street with fellow-Christians for social, economic and political advantage. A number of comparatively well-known clashes between protagonists of the Orange and the Green attest to this, but there are numerous other, less-well known examples of individual assaults and murders, while there must be countless numbers of lives which could be shown to have been damaged or destroyed by sectarianism applied over the back-fence, through pulpit bias or in political manoeuvrings.
This account's emphasis on Religion - organised, conflicted or absent - inevitably has to contend with previous scholarly neglect of the influence of fraternal societies on socio-political issues in Australia which, in turn, cannot be divorced from previous scholarly treatments of Religion. This is particularly true with regard to those fraternal societies which, overtly or covertly, stood for Protestantism or for Catholicism.
The broad Protestant phenomenon in Australia has been under-researched, Spann's conclusion in 1961 still largely apposite today:
No work seems to have been done in Australia on Protestant political behaviour,
which is a pity..
Key organisations such as the Loyal Orange Institute (LOI), the Protestant Alliance Friendly Society (PAFS), and numerous 'defence' bodies almost not at all, and those scholars who have attempted to throw light on the situation have often been partisan, consciously or sub-consciously. The same statement can be made with regard to Catholic organisations.
The LOI's apparent public establishment in Australia in the 1840's and its apparent 're-invention' in 1868 only after the assassination attempt on the Duke of Edinburgh's life in Sydney, were as much the results of long-standing, broadly-held and deep-seated fears as short-term excitations. Clark spoke of the 18th century Protestant 'dark and monstrous suspicion' that Catholic priests 'were conspiring to enslave mankind.' Despite his various attempts, his account of 'the Protestant Ascendancy', the conflicting religionists and their belief systems, is not satisfactory, if only because he doesn't match his material with his claims.
Catholics had similar reasons to Protestants for leaving their homelands for a distant and alien place, and were equally fearful, suspicious and equally capable of arrogantly assuming a natural superiority, but only one of the two groups is characterised in the following way:
Misery and idleness encouraged drunkenness and feuds, and created too the
conditions in which loyalty to their own group and treachery to their eternal
enemies governed standards of conduct. Lying, deceit, double-dealing, perjury,
subornation of witnesses, violence, even murder, ceased to be reprehensible or
damnable if perpetrated against the Protestant ascendancy.
Over the years, many scholars have had difficulty with even-handedness, not realising that the side they were seeing as normal or ordinary, was that way because that was 'their' side, making the other easy to see as the aberration, the unusual, the reprehensible:
The general conduct of the people was good; there could be little said against
them. But the exceptions here as on the Burrangong field were the Donegallers
who more than once disgraced themselves by their exhibitions of brutality.
Deaths in both places were attributable to their violence. In several instances
men were kicked to death in the public streets.
This is taken from the memoirs of a miner who was present at the Lambing Flat 'riots' when Chinese were beaten and burnt out of their camps. That brutality the author blamed on a generalised 'Europeans', but when attempting to explain certain tensions, it was 'Australians' who were virtuous and 'Donegallers' who had the problem:
The reason the Donegallers appeared to be unfriendly to the natives I have
never heard explained. It is my own opinion they envied them their popularity
as horsemen, cricketers, dancers, and in all kinds of sports, and in particular
the greater attention paid to them by the Australian girls. In all these the
Donegallers had to take a back seat, and this made them both sullen and
spiteful.
Hammond left mining to enter politics where he was quite successful, but he left his 20th century editor to explain, in a footnote:
There was no party organisation to help in the elections, but there were local
organisations..chief of these were religious associations, notably the Loyal
Orange Lodge, and temperance groups.
Serle's books on 19th century Victoria contain numerous 'devout churchman' references, but no mention of the specific Church or even the faith involved - unless they're Catholic, eg, John 'Big Jack' O'Shanassy. For Serle, as with so many others, the Protestants were never organised as Protestants, and he has nothing on the LOI, either. McConville has had a lot to say about Irish fraternal societies in Australia, including the Hibernians and the LOI, and has located other useful sources, but has not thought it necessary to access any 'lodge' records.
Numerous remarks in the scholarly literature attest to assumptions that religious networks exist, but they remained invisible, at least unproven, rarely even tested. Code-words, such as 'true' or 'genuine' for 'Christian' and words such as 'loyal' when discussing social issues are rarely unpacked. Treatments of key 19th century figures, Henry Parkes and David Syme are prime examples of this failing.
The important question of the degree to which Catholics and Protestants followed a 'party ticket' in elections or more broadly in socio-political issues remains open. Established conceptual confusions have led to a mixed bag of claims that in Australian politics Irish/Catholics were active and radical but voted en bloc for the ALP, while Protestants were largely passive and conservative but independently and enthusiastically supported the anti-ALP forces. This confusion has to be because up to the present, so much of the context of the debate has been missing. Donald Horne, while discussing, with insight, the 1960's situation:
Mutual distrust between Protestants and Catholics is still one of the divisive
issues in Australia..(Anti-Catholicism) is an article of faith among many
intellectuals..It is now self-perpetuating, with each side in opposition
because it believes the other is plotting against it.
was wrong to suggest that 'How all this began no longer matters', as he was to blithely lump 'the Masonic Lodges' into the anti-Catholic camp, and to assume that the Catholic 'secret society', the Knights of the Southern Cross, was a 'pseudo-Masonic outfit'.
Before generalisations about whether origins matter or not are made, the relevant facts have to be accumulated. Only then, can conceptual and actual links between 'cause' and 'effect' be seen. The post-War struggle for the ALP, as one example, cannot be understood if its fraternal context is not available.
Like 'the tramp' and 'fraternalism' more generally, the 'lodge', ie, the place and the membership group, has represented two worlds simultaneously:
* a Bible-based spiritual world and
* the flesh-and-blood world of human threat and response.
'Lodge' executive positions straddled the spiritual and the physical worlds. Degrees and ritual represented the first, the managerial tasks corresponding to those degrees represented the latter.
All initiates are still told they can 'progress' from the lowliest to the highest of lodge levels if they show the right attitudes and application. In recent times, the 'modern' path of advancement from less to more power and wealth has dominated the more traditional path, ie of enlightenment, from darkness into light.
Yet while the workings of increasingly 'safe' fraternal associations have reflected a diminishing Biblical influence, the speed and strength of that diminution has been repeatedly over-stated by observers. Britain's colonies in general provided fresh fields where old batteries could be recharged and old battles refought. Nor was the drive to replace Biblical injunctions with secular materialism the same everywhere. In Australia's fraternal associations:
* The actual day-to-day life of fraternals, and not just the obvious Catholic and Protestant ones, has included continuing struggle between and within religions, and with secularism; and
* the form and content of the material embodiments of fraternalism, 'lodge' artefacts, illustrate aspects of the struggle and are themselves part of the struggle.
For some fraternal members, the Reformation/Counter Reformation dynamic remains in play, today. A greater number has preferred a blander form of Christianity and concentrated on non-sectarian aspects of 'lodge', eg, sporting and social activities, or on rituals which emphasised a broad fraternalism rather than the identity of a specific 'Order.'
As the bureaucratic mentality has worn away at the fraternal trappings, it has allowed in for a time the fear that ceremonial colour and movement somehow represented a Catholic resurgence, within the very heartlands of Protestantism. Reported at length in Australian newspapers in the middle decades of the 19th century was the bitter struggle over 'Puseyism':
(A)visit to…St Albans, Holborn [London], on the occasion of what is called the
"High Service" is still sufficient to startle even the most tolerant of
ordinary churchmen. Priests, as they delight to call themselves, in defiance of
the most judicious of English divines, are conspicuous in dresses unknown to
the English eye for three hundred years.
After describing the 'High Service' in shocked tones, The Times reporter went on:
There is something we don't understand in the notion of grown-up men
deliberately introducing such practices and taking a share in such a
performance. These gee-gaws and flaunting dresses and candles and odors and
gesticulations, have in them something almost nauseous to an ordinary English
stomach.
and:
These glaring dresses and elaborate ceremonials are simply the relics of less
civilised times; the very vestments in which these ecclesiastical performers
flaunt, and to which they attach such ridiculous importance, have been shown to
be nothing but ornamental varieties of the usual garments of the Roman Empire.
It was, of course, not only churches where 'glaring dresses and elaborate ceremonials' were to be found, but did this church-based conflict over ritual and regalia have lodge counterparts? Equally, did public politics, say at election time, have an impact behind tyled doors?
SFreemasons would say that their philosophy has always been non-sectarian and non-political. The historical actuality denies this claim, and asserts that the practice of Speculative Freemasonry was often itself a political issue. A number of fraternals have been overtly and determinedly political.
The managerial approach, of course, gave fraternal 'head offices' a proxy State power to insist on conformity of practices within an association, and with increased use of expensive technology, even collection of contributions and payment of benefits was taken out of the hands of local officials. This meant self-respect gradually drained out of the lodge structure along with the ceremonial and knowledge of fraternal history.
By the 21st century even the reasons why one's local lodge might have once done things differently have become the vaguest of memories. Throughout the 20th century, however, deep-seated currents within the mediaeval original, particularly religious faith and fear of 'the other', fed and thrived on the new wisdoms of centralised administration.
In 2009, I was appointed by the then-Grand Master, of Freemasonry (Craft) in NSW&ACT to 'his' Masonic Light Committee. This group was told its mission was to draft a Curriculum for Masonic Education, to review the then-operating research methods, and to come up with ideas designed to enhance a 'culture of curiosity.'
In 2010 I resigned having realised that
a) I had been used by the GM as a pawn in a political game within the Masonic jurisdiction,
b) the numbers on the Masonic Light Committee were with the reactionaries who believed that Freemasonry was divinely-ordained and that study of any material other than 'the Scriptures' and Bible-derived 'truths' within the Craft ritual was to be opposed at all costs, and
c) that, generally-speaking, the current world-wide disinterest of Masons in their own history and in any kind of serious learning was only regarded as hypocrisy of the highest order by men who passed in and out of Masonry very quickly, like me.
Fraternalism and the story of 'mateship' is ultimately about Religion, ie organised and formalised belief systems based on a Creator or universal creative force. In the US, it has been argued that Protestantism has deflected 'male supremacy' into 'Manifest Destiny', but in Australia's case, it would seem a less well-developed self-belief, and less certainty about the Creator's intentions forced mates into a compromise - huddling rather than expanding - and into the more modest assertion - 'she'll be right.'
Religion will run as a thread through this account, not because a belief in a divine creator is a necessary condition for 'mateship' but because, historically, the elements which have gone into making our fraternals, and thus our 'mateship' derive from what we now call the Judeo-Christian tradition. Manning Clark's six volume history of Australia may seem overly personal and idiosyncratic, and he may have needed retrospection to see it clearly, but he was correct to interpret his early training and experiences as bringing him to a single idea:
I was feeling my way towards a story of Australia as a battleground for the
last days of the myths of Europe and America - the myth of Christendom, and the
myth of the Enlightenment.
'Our' fraternalism reflects our Christian heritage in its symbolism and practices, and in many of the societies insisting on the highest of high moral grounds as their reason for being. Many Australians, including women, first experienced fraternal discipline and its value system in a Juvenile Lodge, eg the Rechabites or Good Templars, or in one of the many church-based 'Orders', eg, the Methodist Girls Comradeship, or the Methodist Order of Knights. These all had degree structures, regalia, and secret signs and passwords.
While part of the story of fraternalism revolves around a shared heritage, there has also been the very raw and very human struggle for personal dominance and 'team' superiority within and between Orders. 'Brothers' have fought in the street with fellow-Christians for social, economic and political advantage. A number of comparatively well-known clashes between protagonists of the Orange and the Green attest to this, but there are numerous other, less-well known examples of individual assaults and murders, while there must be countless numbers of lives which could be shown to have been damaged or destroyed by sectarianism applied over the back-fence, through pulpit bias or in political manoeuvrings.
This account's emphasis on Religion - organised, conflicted or absent - inevitably has to contend with previous scholarly neglect of the influence of fraternal societies on socio-political issues in Australia which, in turn, cannot be divorced from previous scholarly treatments of Religion. This is particularly true with regard to those fraternal societies which, overtly or covertly, stood for Protestantism or for Catholicism.
The broad Protestant phenomenon in Australia has been under-researched, Spann's conclusion in 1961 still largely apposite today:
No work seems to have been done in Australia on Protestant political behaviour,
which is a pity..
Key organisations such as the Loyal Orange Institute (LOI), the Protestant Alliance Friendly Society (PAFS), and numerous 'defence' bodies almost not at all, and those scholars who have attempted to throw light on the situation have often been partisan, consciously or sub-consciously. The same statement can be made with regard to Catholic organisations.
The LOI's apparent public establishment in Australia in the 1840's and its apparent 're-invention' in 1868 only after the assassination attempt on the Duke of Edinburgh's life in Sydney, were as much the results of long-standing, broadly-held and deep-seated fears as short-term excitations. Clark spoke of the 18th century Protestant 'dark and monstrous suspicion' that Catholic priests 'were conspiring to enslave mankind.' Despite his various attempts, his account of 'the Protestant Ascendancy', the conflicting religionists and their belief systems, is not satisfactory, if only because he doesn't match his material with his claims.
Catholics had similar reasons to Protestants for leaving their homelands for a distant and alien place, and were equally fearful, suspicious and equally capable of arrogantly assuming a natural superiority, but only one of the two groups is characterised in the following way:
Misery and idleness encouraged drunkenness and feuds, and created too the
conditions in which loyalty to their own group and treachery to their eternal
enemies governed standards of conduct. Lying, deceit, double-dealing, perjury,
subornation of witnesses, violence, even murder, ceased to be reprehensible or
damnable if perpetrated against the Protestant ascendancy.
Over the years, many scholars have had difficulty with even-handedness, not realising that the side they were seeing as normal or ordinary, was that way because that was 'their' side, making the other easy to see as the aberration, the unusual, the reprehensible:
The general conduct of the people was good; there could be little said against
them. But the exceptions here as on the Burrangong field were the Donegallers
who more than once disgraced themselves by their exhibitions of brutality.
Deaths in both places were attributable to their violence. In several instances
men were kicked to death in the public streets.
This is taken from the memoirs of a miner who was present at the Lambing Flat 'riots' when Chinese were beaten and burnt out of their camps. That brutality the author blamed on a generalised 'Europeans', but when attempting to explain certain tensions, it was 'Australians' who were virtuous and 'Donegallers' who had the problem:
The reason the Donegallers appeared to be unfriendly to the natives I have
never heard explained. It is my own opinion they envied them their popularity
as horsemen, cricketers, dancers, and in all kinds of sports, and in particular
the greater attention paid to them by the Australian girls. In all these the
Donegallers had to take a back seat, and this made them both sullen and
spiteful.
Hammond left mining to enter politics where he was quite successful, but he left his 20th century editor to explain, in a footnote:
There was no party organisation to help in the elections, but there were local
organisations..chief of these were religious associations, notably the Loyal
Orange Lodge, and temperance groups.
Serle's books on 19th century Victoria contain numerous 'devout churchman' references, but no mention of the specific Church or even the faith involved - unless they're Catholic, eg, John 'Big Jack' O'Shanassy. For Serle, as with so many others, the Protestants were never organised as Protestants, and he has nothing on the LOI, either. McConville has had a lot to say about Irish fraternal societies in Australia, including the Hibernians and the LOI, and has located other useful sources, but has not thought it necessary to access any 'lodge' records.
Numerous remarks in the scholarly literature attest to assumptions that religious networks exist, but they remained invisible, at least unproven, rarely even tested. Code-words, such as 'true' or 'genuine' for 'Christian' and words such as 'loyal' when discussing social issues are rarely unpacked. Treatments of key 19th century figures, Henry Parkes and David Syme are prime examples of this failing.
The important question of the degree to which Catholics and Protestants followed a 'party ticket' in elections or more broadly in socio-political issues remains open. Established conceptual confusions have led to a mixed bag of claims that in Australian politics Irish/Catholics were active and radical but voted en bloc for the ALP, while Protestants were largely passive and conservative but independently and enthusiastically supported the anti-ALP forces. This confusion has to be because up to the present, so much of the context of the debate has been missing. Donald Horne, while discussing, with insight, the 1960's situation:
Mutual distrust between Protestants and Catholics is still one of the divisive
issues in Australia..(Anti-Catholicism) is an article of faith among many
intellectuals..It is now self-perpetuating, with each side in opposition
because it believes the other is plotting against it.
was wrong to suggest that 'How all this began no longer matters', as he was to blithely lump 'the Masonic Lodges' into the anti-Catholic camp, and to assume that the Catholic 'secret society', the Knights of the Southern Cross, was a 'pseudo-Masonic outfit'.
Before generalisations about whether origins matter or not are made, the relevant facts have to be accumulated. Only then, can conceptual and actual links between 'cause' and 'effect' be seen. The post-War struggle for the ALP, as one example, cannot be understood if its fraternal context is not available.
Like 'the tramp' and 'fraternalism' more generally, the 'lodge', ie, the place and the membership group, has represented two worlds simultaneously:
* a Bible-based spiritual world and
* the flesh-and-blood world of human threat and response.
'Lodge' executive positions straddled the spiritual and the physical worlds. Degrees and ritual represented the first, the managerial tasks corresponding to those degrees represented the latter.
All initiates are still told they can 'progress' from the lowliest to the highest of lodge levels if they show the right attitudes and application. In recent times, the 'modern' path of advancement from less to more power and wealth has dominated the more traditional path, ie of enlightenment, from darkness into light.
Yet while the workings of increasingly 'safe' fraternal associations have reflected a diminishing Biblical influence, the speed and strength of that diminution has been repeatedly over-stated by observers. Britain's colonies in general provided fresh fields where old batteries could be recharged and old battles refought. Nor was the drive to replace Biblical injunctions with secular materialism the same everywhere. In Australia's fraternal associations:
* The actual day-to-day life of fraternals, and not just the obvious Catholic and Protestant ones, has included continuing struggle between and within religions, and with secularism; and
* the form and content of the material embodiments of fraternalism, 'lodge' artefacts, illustrate aspects of the struggle and are themselves part of the struggle.
For some fraternal members, the Reformation/Counter Reformation dynamic remains in play, today. A greater number has preferred a blander form of Christianity and concentrated on non-sectarian aspects of 'lodge', eg, sporting and social activities, or on rituals which emphasised a broad fraternalism rather than the identity of a specific 'Order.'
As the bureaucratic mentality has worn away at the fraternal trappings, it has allowed in for a time the fear that ceremonial colour and movement somehow represented a Catholic resurgence, within the very heartlands of Protestantism. Reported at length in Australian newspapers in the middle decades of the 19th century was the bitter struggle over 'Puseyism':
(A)visit to…St Albans, Holborn [London], on the occasion of what is called the
"High Service" is still sufficient to startle even the most tolerant of
ordinary churchmen. Priests, as they delight to call themselves, in defiance of
the most judicious of English divines, are conspicuous in dresses unknown to
the English eye for three hundred years.
After describing the 'High Service' in shocked tones, The Times reporter went on:
There is something we don't understand in the notion of grown-up men
deliberately introducing such practices and taking a share in such a
performance. These gee-gaws and flaunting dresses and candles and odors and
gesticulations, have in them something almost nauseous to an ordinary English
stomach.
and:
These glaring dresses and elaborate ceremonials are simply the relics of less
civilised times; the very vestments in which these ecclesiastical performers
flaunt, and to which they attach such ridiculous importance, have been shown to
be nothing but ornamental varieties of the usual garments of the Roman Empire.
It was, of course, not only churches where 'glaring dresses and elaborate ceremonials' were to be found, but did this church-based conflict over ritual and regalia have lodge counterparts? Equally, did public politics, say at election time, have an impact behind tyled doors?
SFreemasons would say that their philosophy has always been non-sectarian and non-political. The historical actuality denies this claim, and asserts that the practice of Speculative Freemasonry was often itself a political issue. A number of fraternals have been overtly and determinedly political.
The managerial approach, of course, gave fraternal 'head offices' a proxy State power to insist on conformity of practices within an association, and with increased use of expensive technology, even collection of contributions and payment of benefits was taken out of the hands of local officials. This meant self-respect gradually drained out of the lodge structure along with the ceremonial and knowledge of fraternal history.
By the 21st century even the reasons why one's local lodge might have once done things differently have become the vaguest of memories. Throughout the 20th century, however, deep-seated currents within the mediaeval original, particularly religious faith and fear of 'the other', fed and thrived on the new wisdoms of centralised administration.
In 2009, I was appointed by the then-Grand Master, of Freemasonry (Craft) in NSW&ACT to 'his' Masonic Light Committee. This group was told its mission was to draft a Curriculum for Masonic Education, to review the then-operating research methods, and to come up with ideas designed to enhance a 'culture of curiosity.'
In 2010 I resigned having realised that
a) I had been used by the GM as a pawn in a political game within the Masonic jurisdiction,
b) the numbers on the Masonic Light Committee were with the reactionaries who believed that Freemasonry was divinely-ordained and that study of any material other than 'the Scriptures' and Bible-derived 'truths' within the Craft ritual was to be opposed at all costs, and
c) that, generally-speaking, the current world-wide disinterest of Masons in their own history and in any kind of serious learning was only regarded as hypocrisy of the highest order by men who passed in and out of Masonry very quickly, like me.
How Have Historians Missed the Point?
'The spirit of fraternalism permeates the nation'
- Donald Horne, The Lucky Country, 1964, p.12.
'The spirit of fraternalism permeates the nation'
- Donald Horne, The Lucky Country, 1964, p.12.
Not just historians, but Australians seem afraid of, anxious about, and uncomfortable with their own past - why? One scholar has suggested:
Because of the country's 'thief colony' image, and for many years a lack of proper
information, Australians have suffered from intellectual and emotional difficulties in
developing a view of their national origins.
In the specific case of fraternalism, is the answer discomfort with ritual? Donald Horne, in the mid-20th century, categorically insisted:
Australians are self-conscious if they have to take part in ritual.
He appears to have assumed that he already knew enough about Australians' rich and varied use of ritual, especially private ritual, making further research unnecessary. Despite saying about his birthplace:
(The) town's tone was set by the Anglican-Presbyterian Ascendancy and its affairs were
very largely in the hands of the Masons.
he added nothing to our understanding even of Freemasonry as an important social phenomenon. In passing, 'Freemasonry' has never been a term which necessarily marked a refuge for a region's elite. As one example only, their 'Lodge of Harmony of South Australia, No 743' was 'one of those well known in England as Mechanics and Tradesmens' Lodges' wherein:
The various expences (sic) are fixed at the lowest rates allowed by the Rules of the
Order, and will be exclusively devoted to Masonic purposes.
The myths, rumours and unexamined assumptions about secret societies have, inevitably, been inaccurate. The fact that authors such as Horne have appeared to be celebrating fraternalism while neglecting the reality has been a major problem for serious research. Bolger, in 1973, could not distinguish between Friendly Societies and Freemasonry, and considered genetics the major factor in white Tasmanian social conflict. As recently as 1992, in The Age of Macquarie, self-proclaimed experts Broadbent and Hughes relied, not on primary research but on gossip and heresay in asserting:
…Brotherly support probably intervened to save a high-ranking freemason, GF Jackson, a
relative of Lieutenant Colonel James Erskine, who had been condemned to death in
September, 1819.
They cited as 'proof' the journal of a young man 'George Allen' who, records show was born in 1800, arrived in Sydney in 1816 and became an articled clerk to solicitor Frederick Garling, and thus was the first to receive legal training in the colony. That Journal shows the following:
p.41 '…Friday 17th Sept, 1819…George Fendrick Jackson, tried and convicted of the wilful
murder of John Wiliams[?] at the lime burners, Newcastle, ordered for execution. Court
adjourned till Monday next…'
p.43 'Saturday, 18th September, 1819…George Fenwick Jackson - the man tried for the wilful
murder of Jno Williams and sentenced to die is respited till the pleasure of his Royal
Highness, the Prince Regent's pleasure is known…'
p.44 'Monday, 20th September, 1819…GF Jackson the murderer has been (as it is commonly
reported) an officer in the Army and was recognised by his brother officer Capt Drinan [?]
..one of the [court panel] members on the Trial. He is also, it is said, a free mason of
very high order - and a relation of the Lieut Governor Col Erskine - Criminal Court still
sitting [?]…'
There would appear to be a story worth investing time and effort in here, either in the rumours or in the facts of the matter, but these 'experts' apparently bothered to do neither. The general lack of curiosity about the fraternal artefacts, along with the caricaturing of secret societies, the assumption they have all been essentially the same, and their long-term, scholarly dismissal, are parts of a single problem which flows from fraternal history itself. Within this whole unfortunate situation, the concept of Australian mateship has survived at least 200 years, but only as a much-weakened secular ideal, with little historical context, increasingly prone to populist hijack and manipulation.
It is important background to understand that Freemasonry has been assumed by many past authors to have been the original source of all the rites and what are often called 'the trappings' of fraternalism. Ignorance, laziness and pride have all played their part in this, and all have fed into the continuing difficulties bedevilling attempts to understand fraternalism.
Masonic historians have seen no reason to question Masonry's asserted uniqueness nor its alleged pre-eminence among fraternities. Non-Mason scholars have ridiculed the 'secret theatre' of lodge as naive, 'Boys Own' heroics and unworthy of close examination.
Where they have been sighted by non-Mason historians, the apparently weird elements have been separated from the apparently respectable and therefore legitimate fraternal activities, with the result that secrecy, ritual and symbolism, in particular, have not been seriously assessed. Often used to justify derision amongst apparently embarrassed scholars of trade unions is this memoir from an 1820-30's shoemaker's 'union club':
After paying entrance fees, our society had about forty pounds to spare, and not knowing
what better to do with it we engaged Mr Thomas Jones to paint for us a banner
emblematical of our trade..(We) also purchased a full set of secret order regalia,
surplices, trimmed aprons, etc, and a crown and robes for King Crispin.
Shoemaker delegates were later arrested on conspiracy charges because they were found to be carrying:
Two wooden axes, two large cutlasses, two death masks, and two white garments or robes, a
large figure of Death with dart and hourglass, a Bible and testament.
The 'Tolpuddle Martyrs', who used exactly this same ceremonial material, have been extracted from their secret, fraternal context to be heavily promoted as pioneers of 'modern trade unionism'. The large, marching trade union banners of the 19th and 20th centuries have been celebrated as 'stained glass windows of labour's cathedrals', but fancifully, as decoration, without context. Mateship has been similarly extracted from its fraternal context and made part of heroic-romantic mythology.
The clichéd celebration of a small gallery of heritage icons has allowed poorly-educated Australians to declare pride in their past and avoid unsettling information, such as our long history of 'sectarian', ie faith-based, struggles. In a circular fashion, this has allowed academic and professional historians to justify their not standing up for their profession.
Thirty years of research have convinced me that there is much more to fraternalism than a mere spirit. And that mateship did not originate with isolated shepherds and cedar cutters, nor in an 1880's bush culture, nor in World War I trenches. Years of exposure to its literature have further convinced me that there is a great deal more to secrecy than is allowed by the mindset among professional historians who make it the polar opposite to 'rational enquiry and scientific/industrial progress', the supposed defining characteristics of 'the Enlightenment'.
The tragedy is not the fraternal societies' alone. Because of the central place of this idea in the building of Australian society and psyche, neglect of fraternalism has meant neglect by Australians of themselves.
The northern hemisphere has provided the bulk of the secret society literature on which the caricatures are based, but the fraternal phenomenon has not been neglected there quite as profoundly as it has in Australia. Even so, the tendency has been to treat 'strands' of fraternalism separately, ie, to talk only of Freemasons, or only of Trade Unions, or only of Friendly Societies. As in Australia, distinct genres - Masonic History, Labour History, Friendly Society History - have developed in isolation, one from the other.
This has suited the various brotherhoods since projecting themselves as 'different' has been a major strategy during two centuries of competition with one another - for members, for resources, for status and for political pre-eminence. Their self-serving, in-house 'histories' have eventually, in the last part of the 20th century, played a major part in the profound difficulties each has suffered. Only very recently, most obviously among European Freemasons, has a welcome broadening of approach and a willingness to confront issues appeared.
It is important that fraternal societies, including Freemasonry, find location in the single dynamic context that is their total history, and that comparisons then be made of the Australian version with similar colonial and post-colonial situations.
Locating our societies in the full secret society context by treating the fraternal strands as elements of a single phenomenon better reflects historical reality, and reveals, not one, but two stories. One records the national expansion of specific societies, and their decline. The second is a deeper history of their competition and conflict, internally and with one another.
Fraternalism, as a whole, has not been class, religion, race or gender specific, and its expressions have not been confined to any one group, caste or social strata. Inevitably, fraternal organisations have been directly involved in events of consequence throughout Australian history, sometimes positively, sometimes not and, at times, in defence of conflicting positions.
Individuals with fraternal connections have repeatedly played roles of significance in line with the aspirations of that fraternity, locally, and nationally. As the matrix of power, control, autonomy and independence has shifted during 200 years within the various Australian and international jurisdictions, fraternal societies with an Australian voice have been players in and sites of many major events.
The Australian fraternal story is huge, with massive implications for what we believe we already know about ourselves. There are many more levels to be plumbed and many more stories to tell than those that appear here.
How Did I Get Involved???
In 2009 I was asked to put down some thoughts on the particular voyage of discovery which had brought me, at age 68 into Freemasonry. The person making the request was not to know that one of my earliest memories is that of my mother, of Irish Catholic extraction, sounding off in the 1940's and 50's at 'the Masons' and their darkly suspicious doings.He was not to know, either, that my father was, apart from his trade union commitment, a conscientious non-joiner who instilled in all his family, habits difficult to shake. He was a non-drinker, and affable comradeship was, for him, a foreign land. Whether he, or my older brothers would have turned out any differently, or been any better of if they had joined Freemasonry at a time when class and religious tensions remained strong is doubtful. The truth is that, back then, they probably would not have been seen as suitable.
Six decades later, with an eye made keener by experience I have seen the Craft very differently than my parents did, but in 2012 I continue to ask myself whether it has changed, and if so, how?.
I leave others to express opinions about the uniqueness of Freemasonry's spiritual message or the timelessness of its moral appeal. In Freemasonry's belated recognition that it is a social phenomenon, first and foremost, there may be the source of its attractions and its capacity for renewal.
Viewed historically, Freemasonry is a modern fraternity which has evolved as the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and, now the Information Age, have hammered and chiselled all of us into shapes we could neither predict nor prevent. The old world has not been entirely replaced and it is into that tension between mediaeval mysticism and rational enquiry that Dan Brown casts his stones and where Freemasonry now faces its most challenging times.
Swimming against the tide by joining rather than leaving Freemasonry, I was willingly caught up in the latest waves of change which, beginning in Europe and North America some two decades back, were set to break slowly but heavily on local shores. It was entirely coincidental but it seemed my personal search for meaning and for historical 'truth' mirrored this tsunami with which Freemasonry was now faced.
I first observed fraternal ideas in trade union banners some twenty five years ago. In my ignorance I referred to the bee hives and the doves and the temples displayed there as 'Masonic' and tempted a black-eye from wharfies and other stalwart sons of toil by putting that word in the same sentence as 'trade union' when asking why their banners showed these symbols. Whatever their responses, the mounting evidence clearly showed that consideration of all fraternities as parts of a single context was the key to my and to their understanding.
So, though I had hated 'History' when I left high school and teachers' college behind, my circumnavigation of the known world had resulted in my returning to it, but under my own terms. A PhD at Newcastle University had turned into a look at parades and the communities that produced them. What I also found myself doing was rescuing 'the evidence' - regalia, photos, jewels, certificates, minute books, even lodge furniture and large marching banners - from mouldy basements, garbage skips and op shops, and writing my own version of Australian history to accommodate them.
It seemed that no-one in Australia had previously considered the connections between the Labour Movement and Freemasonry, or seen that the established frameworks in which Masonic History and other genres were set did not work. Even a new definition of 'fraternity' was required to highlight disregarded and mis-understood elements. A search of the standard Masonic histories had disclosed one connection, the operative stonemasons, but had uncovered numerous other fraternities, including the extremely important Friendly Societies and those based on religious affiliation, such as the Loyal Orange, Hibernian and Holy Catholic Guild societies. These added to the sense of being on the right track but also to the complexity of the undertaking.
The more I searched, the more evidence I found, and the more I was confronted with the fact that the present-day members of fraternal societies did not know their own history, and by and large, did not care. Freemasons and trade unionists sometimes claimed to care, often making a great show of their heritage, but was it real or strategic?
Many false starts later I felt I had a workable definition of fraternalism and a viable historical framework. After two decades, I felt I understood why my mother had ranted against 'the Masons' and why members of other working class communities strongly supported them. I was in a position to identify Ned Kelly's sash, to understand why Francis Greenway had been horse-whipped, and to explain why certain umpires were selected to stand in Test Cricket matches and others were not.
It was a warts and all history of Australia, acceptance of which was not going to be straightforward.
I had, by then, left Labour History behind and been initiated as two kinds of Odd Fellow, and as a Druid. I had been made the official custodian of Rechabite memorabilia and been elected onto the Board of Management of the Grand United Friendly Society Health Fund [GUFS]. The 'bobalogue' of fraternal items in my care ran to over 200 pages.
Consideration of a new history could not be separated from a new approach to the display of that history. It was useless thinking of Freemasonry, for example, as an organisation devoted to learning and to changing men for the better without taking on board the real-time processes of conservation, publishing and distribution. Since my whole life had been spent in the education industry it again seemed I was destined to be in the thick of it.
Keeping this part of the story brief, almost the last action of the GUFS Board before it became part of the Australian Unity group of companies in 2005 was to vote $300,000 for the Australian Centre for Fraternal Studies which I then established in conjunction with the Newcastle Regional Museum.
Despite having a history in Australia as long as that of the Freemasons, the various Odd Fellows, Foresters, Druids and Rechabites had succumbed to government legislation and were now 'financial instruments', not brotherhoods practicing or teaching mutual aid. They had little in the way of written history and were not sufficiently curious to consider indulging my 'fantasies'. As private health funds they saw no reason to associate themselves with the care and display of strange ritual items or arcane symbols.
The seed money quickly ran out and was not replaced. The Centre closed and I retreated into more and purer research the results of which were derided in this country but were increasingly in demand in Europe. I first made acquaintance with fraternal enthusiasts at a Conference at Manchester in 2003, and was invited to give the Key-note address at the 2004 "We Band of Brothers" Conference at Sheffield where Professor Andrew Prescott was setting up the Centre for Research into Freemasonry, the first of its kind in the English-speaking world. I've subsequently given papers at the 2007, 2009 and 2011 International Conferences on the History of Freemasonry at Edinburgh and Washington.
Anyone looking at what I wrote in 2009 might suggest that I entered into Freemasonry in 2008 only in order to satisfy long-held interests which had nothing to do with 'the Craft'. Rather, the reverse was closer to the mark. Being my father's son, I 'entered the tent' only because of northern-hemisphere indications that Freemasonry, alone among significant fraternities, was apparently prepared to acknowledge previous shortcomings and, trusting to an inner resilience, to try charting a new, more realistic future. Of all the fraternities which I've studied, some of which I've also looked at from the inside, Freemasonry was the only one which so far had shown itself to have sufficient integrity and sufficient self-belief to look its detractors squarely in the eye and, without pulling down new shutters, make a serious attempt at its own re-invention.
In 2009, for the book It's No Secret, published by the United Grand Lodge of NSW & ACT, I wrote that 'Only time will tell how thorough and how successful the effort will be.' Recent experiences and further research now (in 2012) lead me to say that Australian Freemasonry is struggling against the forces of darkness but probably losing. This is a very melo-dramatic thing to say, and not something I do loosely. The nearby essay on Research Lodge Quatuor Coronati attempts to provide the context usually missing from official Freemasonry's account of itself and thus to justify my conclusion.
Dr Bob James, April, 2012.
WHY
is this stuff seen as dangerous?
'Fraternity', 'family', brotherhood', 'friendship', 'couples' are all about a collective enterprise. You can't do any of them on your own.
The history of Western Civilisation, however, is of increasing separation of societies into communities, communities into atomised individuals, all told to pursue personal goals, individual goals, not collective goals.
So, fraternities have had to contend with strong shifts in attitude against them. Their principles and practices have been thrown into doubt, and they have been criticised as subversive, irrational or having nothing to offer a 'modern' world.
Fraternities which have survived such as the Freemasons and 'trade-oriented societies', trade unions if you prefer, are, historically, anachronisms. They really shouldn't exist in today's society. But they do, and they cater for a subversive urge which seems to exist in many of us to come together, to find and become part of a collective enterprise.
However, because of the history, we no longer understand what's involved with 'togetherness', we no longer have the skills necessary to make it work over a long period, indeed very few even know what skills are required.
For what it's worth, I suggest just two skills will do it, if we have the time and patience: 1) curiosity (a desire to learn), and 2) an understanding of conflict resolution.
Anyone can belong by becoming one of an unthinking mass, all doing the same thing. However, curiosity and learning involve retaining a personal, independent point of view. So, keeping one's desire to learn while part of a group, inevitably results in differences of opinion which can be either destructive or constructive depending on how the conflict is resolved.
Some people, perhaps a majority, fear curiosity and a desire for learning because such attitudes could lead to QUESTIONING of STRUCTURES, OVERTURNING of CONVENTIONS, FREEDOM FROM CONTROLS, or even ENLIGHTENMENT.
Some people, perhaps a majority, fear non-violent conflict resolution because such an approach could lead to MORE PEACE than VIOLENCE, an UNDERSTANDING OF HOW WE ARE MANIPULATED TO CONFORM, or even to COLLECTIVE ASPIRATIONS for a BETTER WORLD.
Over, say the last 1,000 years, various 'masters' have claimed to know THE ONE TRUE PATH. And all have claimed that such-and-such evidence was relevant to understanding and certain other evidence was not. If and when any one theory has dominated, it has denied access to all other 'truth', by:
* the burning of witches;
* the INQUISITION's regime of torture and worse;
* BOOK-BURNINGS, including in the USA;
* lynchings, pogroms, ethnic cleansing;
* 'un-common ideas' have been labelled 'blasphemous', or 'dangerous';
* believers in a particular 'truth' commonly tell any questioners 'You just don't understand', or worse - 'You're not class-conscious', 'you've betrayed your upbringing', or 'you've brought dishonour on our family, and so you must die.'
Today, commonly it is asserted that 'you are either with us, or against us, there can be no in-between.'
The stories of fraternal societies are littered with conflicts over possible paths to 'THE LIGHT'.
Historically, fraternal societies have drawn on the Bible for their precepts, their stories and their symbols. Seeking 'the light' has been a common message to initiates - by a rational approach to learning, particularly of science and mathematics.
But today, two things are different: the fraternals, eg, Freemasonry, have allowed themselves to be captured by a single belief system, in their case Christianity. Believers of modern-day rationalist approaches to learning repeatedly, but futilely, fling themselves against this entrenched mind-set. And 'the brethren in control' have convinced themselves that Christianity, as they understand it, provides all that they need to know. Thus they deny their own principles and refuse any need for curiosity or independent thought. All brethren will accept the narrow, self-serving 'truth', as presented by those in favour, or else.
Even to discuss, let alone assert, alternative views has been declared 'heretical'.
is this stuff seen as dangerous?
'Fraternity', 'family', brotherhood', 'friendship', 'couples' are all about a collective enterprise. You can't do any of them on your own.
The history of Western Civilisation, however, is of increasing separation of societies into communities, communities into atomised individuals, all told to pursue personal goals, individual goals, not collective goals.
So, fraternities have had to contend with strong shifts in attitude against them. Their principles and practices have been thrown into doubt, and they have been criticised as subversive, irrational or having nothing to offer a 'modern' world.
Fraternities which have survived such as the Freemasons and 'trade-oriented societies', trade unions if you prefer, are, historically, anachronisms. They really shouldn't exist in today's society. But they do, and they cater for a subversive urge which seems to exist in many of us to come together, to find and become part of a collective enterprise.
However, because of the history, we no longer understand what's involved with 'togetherness', we no longer have the skills necessary to make it work over a long period, indeed very few even know what skills are required.
For what it's worth, I suggest just two skills will do it, if we have the time and patience: 1) curiosity (a desire to learn), and 2) an understanding of conflict resolution.
Anyone can belong by becoming one of an unthinking mass, all doing the same thing. However, curiosity and learning involve retaining a personal, independent point of view. So, keeping one's desire to learn while part of a group, inevitably results in differences of opinion which can be either destructive or constructive depending on how the conflict is resolved.
Some people, perhaps a majority, fear curiosity and a desire for learning because such attitudes could lead to QUESTIONING of STRUCTURES, OVERTURNING of CONVENTIONS, FREEDOM FROM CONTROLS, or even ENLIGHTENMENT.
Some people, perhaps a majority, fear non-violent conflict resolution because such an approach could lead to MORE PEACE than VIOLENCE, an UNDERSTANDING OF HOW WE ARE MANIPULATED TO CONFORM, or even to COLLECTIVE ASPIRATIONS for a BETTER WORLD.
Over, say the last 1,000 years, various 'masters' have claimed to know THE ONE TRUE PATH. And all have claimed that such-and-such evidence was relevant to understanding and certain other evidence was not. If and when any one theory has dominated, it has denied access to all other 'truth', by:
* the burning of witches;
* the INQUISITION's regime of torture and worse;
* BOOK-BURNINGS, including in the USA;
* lynchings, pogroms, ethnic cleansing;
* 'un-common ideas' have been labelled 'blasphemous', or 'dangerous';
* believers in a particular 'truth' commonly tell any questioners 'You just don't understand', or worse - 'You're not class-conscious', 'you've betrayed your upbringing', or 'you've brought dishonour on our family, and so you must die.'
Today, commonly it is asserted that 'you are either with us, or against us, there can be no in-between.'
The stories of fraternal societies are littered with conflicts over possible paths to 'THE LIGHT'.
Historically, fraternal societies have drawn on the Bible for their precepts, their stories and their symbols. Seeking 'the light' has been a common message to initiates - by a rational approach to learning, particularly of science and mathematics.
But today, two things are different: the fraternals, eg, Freemasonry, have allowed themselves to be captured by a single belief system, in their case Christianity. Believers of modern-day rationalist approaches to learning repeatedly, but futilely, fling themselves against this entrenched mind-set. And 'the brethren in control' have convinced themselves that Christianity, as they understand it, provides all that they need to know. Thus they deny their own principles and refuse any need for curiosity or independent thought. All brethren will accept the narrow, self-serving 'truth', as presented by those in favour, or else.
Even to discuss, let alone assert, alternative views has been declared 'heretical'.
CAN MASONIC HISTORY BE TRUSTED?