Membership Reality Check

The Masonic community is really a strange thing indeed. Often, you get members of specific jurisdictions who believe (honestly) that the criteria for membership in their jurisdiction blindly applies as some sort of universal Masonic membership criteria. The fact is, this belief while often sincere is totally false. No one jurisdiction, order or the like owns Freemasonry. Nor do they have any authority over anyone who is not a member under their jurisdiction. No authority at all.

So if group A has a requirement of a belief in a supreme being or that the membership be exclusively male, those requirements only apply to their own membership. Now, they may also been in fraternal relations with other jurisdictions that share those same requirements. But this is a voluntary agreement between sovereign institutions, it is not mandated by one on the other.

The 1613 Nation, while not a Grand Lodge, Grand Orient nor Supreme Council, does have it's own set of shared requirements that prospective member lodges must be in agreement with. These in no way have any effect on anyone outside the community, nor are they intended to. It should be well understood that since no one owns Freemasonry, we are within our constitutional and human rights to govern ourselves as we see fit.

This really should be the end of the confusion. The world is big enough and we are not making demands on anyone other than ourselves. Of course that would be the gentlemanly and mature way to behave. Sadly, many in the Masonic community are not gentlemen, nor are they mature. Instead they feel that it is their mission to drive everyone who does not yield to their supreme authority into a submissive state of non existence.

This type of bullying is nothing new. When one bully passes into the great beyond there soon comes another to take their place. This is the reality one must fully comprehend , understand and prepare for if they are going to join any alternative form of the Craft, especially one that promotes freedom, liberty and self determination as does the 1613.

IN LVX,
BC