Can Anyone Become a Freemason? (And Who Cannot)

The question arrives at my lodge secretary's inbox in almost the same words every few weeks. Can anyone become a Freemason. The short answer, which I give plainly because men deserve plainness, is no. Not anyone. But the list of genuine barriers is far shorter than most enquirers fear, and almost never contains the thing they are actually worried about.

What follows is the honest shape of it: the formal requirements, the real disqualifiers, and the long catalogue of imagined ones that keep good men from ever writing the first email.

§The formal requirements

Requirements differ slightly between jurisdictions, and you should always read your own Grand Lodge's constitutions rather than a blog, but in the great majority of regular jurisdictions a candidate must satisfy the following.

1. He must be a man, of the minimum age set by his jurisdiction, commonly 18 or 21.
2. He must come of his own free will and accord, without solicitation or pressure.
3. He must profess a belief in a Supreme Being. The name and the faith are his own affair.
4. He must be of good repute, meaning no serious unresolved question over his honesty or conduct.
5. He must be able to support himself and his dependants without the lodge becoming a burden upon him.

That last point is widely misread. It does not mean a lodge wants wealthy men. It means a lodge does not want a man to sacrifice his family's grocery money for dues. The United Grand Lodge of England and most other constitutions put it in almost those terms.

§The belief requirement, stated carefully

This is the requirement that stops the most men, and often for the wrong reason. Freemasonry asks that a candidate profess belief in a Supreme Being. It does not ask which one, does not examine the sincerity of your theology, and does not require attendance anywhere. A Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Sikh and a man of quiet unaffiliated faith all sit comfortably in the same lodge room.

A convinced atheist, however, cannot honestly make the required declaration, and men who make it dishonestly tend to find the whole experience hollow. If you are uncertain rather than opposed, that is a different matter, and worth a conversation with a member rather than a self imposed disqualification. I have treated this at greater length in Is Freemasonry Religious.

§Who genuinely cannot join

Setting aside the formal requirements above, there are a small number of situations that will, in practice, close the door. I would rather you heard them here than at a committee table.

• A man with an unspent conviction of a serious kind, particularly involving dishonesty, violence or offences against children. Some jurisdictions bar such candidates outright.
• A man currently subject to proceedings that call his integrity into question, at least until they resolve.
• A man who cannot honestly profess belief in a Supreme Being.
• A man who is being pushed into it by a relative, an employer or an ambition. Free will and accord is not a formality.
• A man who has been expelled from a lodge elsewhere and never resolved the matter.

Old convictions, spent and disclosed, are a very different case from concealed ones. What sinks a petition is almost never the record itself. It is the discovery, later, that a man chose not to mention it. Disclose early, disclose to the secretary, and let the lodge weigh it properly.

If you want to know where you honestly stand before you contact anyone, the Readiness Quiz scores you against the same criteria a committee applies, and The First Step Roadmap walks you from that result through to your first year in lodge.

§The disqualifications men invent

Now to the far longer list. In three decades I have watched capable men rule themselves out for reasons no lodge has ever once applied.

• Not being wealthy. Lodges contain tradesmen, teachers, retired soldiers and men on modest pensions.
• Not knowing a Mason. The overwhelming majority of enquiries now arrive cold, by email or the Grand Lodge website.
• Being young. A lodge with no men under forty is quietly worried about exactly that.
• Being old. Men are initiated in their seventies and are all the better company for it.
• Being a poor public speaker. Ritual is learned slowly, kindly, and nobody is graded.
• Being divorced, being a shift worker, being an immigrant, being irregularly religious, having tattoos, having no university education. None of these appear in any constitution I have read.

The bar is character, not credentials. Most men who fear they will not clear it have already cleared it.

§Women and Freemasonry

Regular Freemasonry, of the kind recognised by mainstream Grand Lodges, admits men only. That is a matter of historical constitution rather than a judgement of worth, and there exist well established co-Masonic and women's orders, along with affiliated bodies such as the Order of the Eastern Star. A woman interested in the craft has genuine routes, but they are not the route described on this site.

§What actually decides it

Once the formal requirements are met, the deciding factor is not a rule at all. It is whether the men who meet you believe you will still be present in three years, and that you will be a decent presence. That is a judgement about character and consistency, which I unpack in What Freemasons Look For in New Members, and which shows itself long before a ballot in the ordinary business of your first visit.

So: can anyone become a Freemason. No. But the men who cannot are considerably fewer than the men who assume they cannot. If nothing in the disqualification list above applies to you, you are eligible, and the only remaining question is the practical one of cost and time, which I have set out in How Much Does It Cost to Become a Freemason.