Have you ever wondered how Freemasons came by their name in the first place? I mean, most people know that Freemasonry evolved out of the medieval guilds of stonemasons, but the debate over the origin of the name Freemason has been going on for a long time.
The earliest extant records of a non-stonemason joining a company of Stonemasons comes from London, England and dates back to 1620-21, which also happens to be the earliest year we have a set of records. Could there have been earlier instances? While we have no earlier documentation, the records detail an existing set of fees to be paid by a non-professional mason to join the company. This would argue for a still earlier date than 1620. In Scotland and Ireland even non-professional masons joining a Lodge were called Masons in the seventeenth century. It was only in England that the term Freemason was used to describe these non-professional members of the lodge or company.
Sure, there are many Masonic writers who love to come up with complex explanations of how it relates to a certain style of building or other arcane explanations. However, despite the tendency to look for hidden meanings in anything to do with Masonry, sometimes the simplest answer tends to be the correct one. In this case it probably has more to do with the name of the London Guild these men joined than anything else.
It was called The Worshipful Company of Freemasons.
There is another mystery which is closely related to this on that I think is far more important. By the time of the English Civil War(s) (1639-46), Lodges of Freemasons had begun springing up in England and in many of them, all the members were non-professionals. None of these Lodges seem to cause any problems with the London company. Then suddenly, at the height of Lord Cromwell’s iron fisted rule over England this 375 year-old company suddenly decided to remove the word Freemason from its name. Why do you think that happened?
To find one possible answer you could sign up for the survey course on the History of Freemasonry.
The fraternity has a lot of practices, the origins of which are not widely understood even by Freemasons. For instance, have you ever wondered why so many Masonic Lodges are located on an upper floor?
This is another practice which traces its roots to the Stonemason guilds. Every trade has its secrets, and the men who learned the secrets of how to build magnificent edifices out of stone, had more than most. Equipped with only a knotted line and a piece chalk a Mason could draw perfect circles, be able to accurately draw right angles, squares, and even lay out the very sophisticated and complex design of the famous rose window. Is it any wonder that in designing and building such elegant structures, some of which took several generations of masons to complete, that they would eventually master the science of geometry?
Each Mason had to serve an arduous seven year apprenticeship. The work was hard and dangerous and there was no such thing as blueprints back then and they jealously guarded the secrets of their trade. They devised secret methods of recognizing each other, not only to show they were Stonemasons, but also to indicate whether they were still apprentices or Journeymen.
Each morning, the Master Mason responsible for the job, would first send one of his journeymen outside to make sure no one could enter the Lodge. Then, he would draw out the days work on the floor or on a tracing board if one were available, away from the prying eyes of competitors. Once everyone understood what they had to do, the drawing was completely erased before they left for the job site. Their expertise and skill assured them of their livelihood and they made sure no one outside the guild stole their secrets.
In the early days of the Fraternity of Freemasons it became a practice for the Master of the Lodge to draw out what would happen during the Lodge meeting on the floor of the Lodge room. This would show where each officer would sit and include instruction and directions a candidate would take if there was to be a Degree that night. The practice became know as carpeting the Lodge. By requiring that the Lodge Room be on an upper floor, The Grand Lodges attempted to protect these designs from the prying eyes on non-members of the Lodge. In fact, secrecy was so important, that if the members left the Lodge room for refreshment the chalk marks had to be washed off the floor before they left. A mop and bucket of water were always present in the early Lodge rooms. Even today a Master Mason sits outside the door of a Masonic Lodge room while it is meeting to make sure there are no interruptions.
One last little known secret of Freemasonry has to do with the presence of a trestle board in a modern Freemason Lodge. The first mention of a trestle board in Freemasonry occurred in 1731 when it was printed in an expose of Freemasonry by a man named Prichard. Later the Trestle Board would also become known as a tracing board after a Master lecturer by the name of Preston used the term. Regardless of which name it goes under, it serves two purposes in the Lodge, the first being practical and the second symbolic.
Its practical purpose was to display the various symbols used in each of the three Degrees of Freemasonry. It is explained to the candidate in a lecture on that Degree afterwards. After the Fraternity developed better ways to display these symbols, the practical reason for the trestle or tracing board no longer existed, but it remained an important piece of the Lodge furnishings for its symbolic purpose.
In some jurisdictions the trestle board is called a moveable jewel of the Lodge and in other an immoveable jewel. It is the symbolism behind the trestle board which makes it immoveable not its physical shape. In the section above we discussed how the stonemasons, or operative masons drew out the building plans on a tracing boards. However, with the development of Freemasonry, which is also known as speculative masonry, the focus is on building an inner, or spiritual, structure within ourselves. The trestle board is now used to symbolize the ongoing need to continually work on that inner temple each and every day of our lives. After al, no structure physical or spiritual can long exist without constant attention.
For those interested in learning more, there is a new book out on the history of tracing boards written by Julian Rees called, “Tracing Boards of Three Degrees in Craft Freemasonry Explained”.