20 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Becoming a Freemason

Nobody should talk you into Freemasonry. The whole tradition insists on free will and accord for a reason, and the men who last are the ones who arrived at the decision themselves. So this article does not argue for anything. It asks.

Twenty questions, in six groups. Answer them honestly, alone, in one sitting. If most of your answers are steady, you are ready to make contact. If several make you flinch, that is useful information too.

§Motive

1. Why now? What changed in the last year that put this in your head?
2. If nobody ever knew you were a Mason, would you still want it?
3. Are you looking for brotherhood, or for an audience?
4. Do you expect business contacts, and would you be disappointed without them?

Question four sinks more petitions than any other. Lodges are not networking clubs, and the men who join for advantage are visible within a month.

§Time

1. Can you protect one evening a month for the next three years?
2. Can you occasionally give a second evening for rehearsal or a visit?
3. What in your current week would have to give way, and are you willing to let it?
4. How have you handled previous voluntary commitments? Be truthful.

The realistic time commitment is set out in What a Freemason Actually Does Every Month. It is smaller than most men fear and larger than the ones who drift out ever planned for.

§Money

1. Could you absorb a first year cost of several hundred without strain on your household?
2. Could you keep paying annual dues if your income dropped by a fifth?
3. Are you comfortable asking a stranger directly what membership costs?

The requirement is that membership must not burden you or your dependants. Real figures are in How Much Does It Cost to Become a Freemason.

§Family

1. Have you actually told your partner, or are you researching in secret?
2. If they object, do you know what specifically they object to?
3. Can you explain Freemasonry to a sceptical relative in three sentences without getting defensive?
4. Are you prepared for someone you respect to think less of you for it?

The secret research phase is the single most common pattern I see, and it almost always ends in a difficult conversation that could have been an easy one six months earlier.

If you want the actual scripts for those conversations, along with the lodge comparison sheet and a first year plan, that is what The First Step Roadmap is built to hand you.

§Faith

1. Can you honestly profess a belief in a Supreme Being?
2. Does your own religious tradition raise any objection you have not yet looked into?
3. Are you able to sit in a room where religion is never debated, including when you would like to debate it?

This one deserves proper reading rather than a quick yes. I have set out the documentary position, including the Catholic objection, in Is Freemasonry Religious.

§Temperament

1. Can you take instruction from a man twenty years younger who holds an office you do not?
2. Can you keep a confidence indefinitely, including from your closest friend?
3. Can you sit through administration without visible impatience?

Freemasonry does not reward the impressive man. It rewards the reliable one.

§Three questions men skip and later regret

There are three more that rarely occur to anyone in the research phase, and every one of them shows up in year two.

1. What will you do when the lodge you join turns out to be less impressive than the one you imagined? Every lodge has a quiet year, a thin meeting, a stretch where the same four men do all the work. Will you be one of the four, or one of the men who drifts?
2. How will you handle being a beginner again in your forties or fifties? You will be corrected in public, gently but in public, by men who learned the material before you did. Some men find that refreshing and some find it unbearable.
3. What would make you leave? Answer this now, in writing, while you are calm. Men who have never considered it tend to leave over something trivial: a slighted feeling, a missed invitation, one dull meeting too many.

None of the three has a right answer. They exist to move the decision out of the imagination, where Freemasonry is always candlelit and profound, and into the ordinary Tuesday evening where it actually lives. If your answers still hold up under that light, your interest is real.

§Scoring yourself honestly

There is no pass mark, but there are patterns. If your hesitation clusters in time and money, wait a year and arrive properly. If it clusters in family, have the conversation before you contact a lodge. If it clusters in motive, sit with that, because a lodge will find it before you do.

And if nothing here troubled you, stop reading and send the email. The mechanics of that are in How to Join a Masonic Lodge.