Basic Training - Military or Masonic?

I’m sure you’ve heard of “Basic Military Training” which is the term used for the U.S. Air Force version of military boot camp, but have you ever heard of “Basic Masonic Training”? I would wager a guess that you have not. I’m sure it never occurred to you to compare basic military training to early masonic education, but here we are, and I am about to take you somewhere you’ve never been – if you’re willing to follow me!

What is basic military training? It is the initiation of a recruited civilian into a new profession and a new way of life. What is the craft lodge? It is where we initiate the curious candidate into a new way of life and prepare him for his eventual rebirth as a new man. Both basic military training and the craft lodge are the first step in an initiatic process intended to break a man away from his past and prepare him for an entirely new vision and purpose for his life.

Basic training separates a man from his family for a period of time to break that dependence on family and to allow the recruit to learn how to tap and depend on their own inner strength to accomplish their tasks and objectives. In our craft lodges, we separate the candidate from the outside world through the secrecy of our tiled meetings to provide a secluded world where they can absorb the necessary lessons and then, ultimately, reach inside of themselves for the strength and the desire to move forward in life. In our lodges, we also isolate the candidate from external influencers with our veil of secrecy that prevents him from reaching out to the irrelevant or distracting noise of society for direction. Just as the military physically separates and isolates their recruits, masonry spiritually separates and isolates our candidates.  

Basic military training offers ritualistic training in the form of formations, marching, customs and courtesies (such as saluting), and drill. The craft lodge provides its early lessons through ritualistic degrees that include circumambulation, instruction, and commands provided from The East.

Basic military training offers classroom instruction on service history, traditions, and law, and our craft lodges provide instruction on the catechisms (memory work), history, traditions, and law.

Basic military training requires new recruits to prove their fitness through written exams and physical tests, and our craft lodge requires new masons to prove their readiness through oral and written examinations (the Additional Lodge Light program in Texas).

Basic military training provides a final graduation ceremony with formal military drill, replete with pomp and circumstance, and then the new service member is launched out into the military world as a new member of an elite group. In our craft lodges, we (might) congratulate our new mason and present him a certificate before we bid him to take his rightful seat on the sideline among his brothers.

At the end of the two initiations, we see similar results; in one we see a new, confident service member, steeped in the rules and traditions of his service on his way to his first duty station where his training will continue and, with the help of his brothers in arms, he will grow and advance according to the level of effort he invests in his own career and future. The mason will assume his seat on the sideline, and he too will grow and advance in masonry and his life according to the level of effort he invests in his own future.   

My goal with this impromptu exercise was to show you how basic military training and basic masonic training share objectives and some similarities in purpose and function. Now that I have laid out my conceptual comparison, let’s do a little troubleshooting to see if it holds up under scrutiny.

In many of our lodges, a new mason memorizes some scripts and recites them to the satisfaction of his brother lodge members and is pronounced “knowledgeable” in the craft for that degree; are they really? When a servicemember completes his written and physical tests, you can be sure he has met a clearly defined and measured standard and attained a well-defined level of knowledge regarding his new profession. Is there any standard level of knowledge – beyond the ability to memorize a script – that actually confirms that a new mason is qualified or proficient in the craft?

The craft lodges are charged with conferring the first three degrees in masonry. Their highest priority and principle function is to prepare men for their travels as masons and prepare them for the further degrees that are available and waiting in the other orders. Are we preparing our new masons with the knowledge and experience necessary to function in the world of masonry and – more importantly – make personal decisions on the quality, direction, and destinations of their masonic journeys?

Perhaps it is time to consider some type of ordered, progressive education program that sets objectives and defines progressive tasks (meaning sequenced in a progressing order) and performative challenges to achieve them. We might design a one- or two-year program that is organized according to key components of our craft such as symbolism, ritual, and history; notice I left out lodge operation and I did that intentionally because most jurisdictions already have some form of lodge leadership training programs. In my mind, this concept would focus on the more sublime and esoteric aspects of our craft – the mysteries.

I would not design this educational regimen as a “pass-fail” course of instruction, rather “completed or non-completed” and it might be tracked in the brother’s record whether that might be Grandview or some other variation found in other jurisdictions.

This idea is merely conceptual and certainly not “ready for prime time”; my objective here is to plant a seed, to perhaps move some of our brothers to take some action or actions to commit our lodges and the craft to our newest generations of brothers with the same zeal our armed forces commit to their new recruits – take them by the arm and teach them! Provide our new brothers the single-most critical working tool of all, the working tool necessary for us to preserve the craft and for new masons to design and follow their own masonic journey – knowledge!

I suppose this is a good place for a shameless plug for my “Lodge Education Manual” that I wrote several years ago. It’s posted on my website in a downloadable (pdf) format. It is designed in blocks so you may find some duplication between chapters, but this way a lodge can use the manual to design an educational program based on their unique lodge needs. I finished work on the most recent edition in 2021and proudly posted it as the “Official Bootleg Copy” that is free for any lodge to use if they like. The centerpiece of the manual is the “phase” system where I identify specific phases in a mason’s journey and match knowledge, skills, reading lists, and some sources to each phase. My warning would be this – this manual is based on the Grand Lodge of Texas work and law book and there have been a few minor changes here and there since 2021, but on the whole, you should be able to at least develop some ideas for your lodge using this version. If you are interested in the manual, you can download the document at this link: LODGE EDUCATION MANUAL

((If the link does not work for some reason, simply go to my WEBSITE and click on the “Library” tab – you will find the manual in the list))

The military is obligated to provide their recruits with the knowledge and training necessary to improve the servicemember’s chance of surviving in battle and to provide them with the skill necessary to contribute to military success on the battlefield. In masonry, a craft handed down from one generation to the next by way of the knowledgeable tongue to the attentive ear, we are obligated to provide our newest masons with the knowledge and education necessary to pass our masonic story to the following generations accurately; are we, or are we not our brothers’ keepers? It seems to me that we are entrusted with the mysteries of our craft and the legacies of our brothers who have gone before us, and it is up to us to pass them on into the future by teaching them to each and every new mason in each and every new generation.

My brothers, next time you are sitting around your lodge or dining room, passing the time, why not put your heads together and create an educational experience for new masons in your lodge? A lodge well-founded on solid knowledge of our mysteries and the history of the craft is also a lodge that is well positioned for a long and healthy future!

I would like to thank you for your time and your consideration; may brotherly love prevail, and every moral and social virtue cement us!

~BroBill

A Mason’s Journey