Membership Requirements

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Personal Requirements

1. One must be at least 21 years of age.

2. One must believe in a supreme being.

3. One must be a man, free by birth, of strict morals and under the tongue of good report.
(ie. Horse thieves and cattle rustlers ought to consider membership in another jurisdiction.)

4. One must indicate an interest in freemasonry and acquire an application from a free mason.


Lodge Requirements

1. One must make application to a lodge of free masons and such application be accepted by the lodge to which one applies.

2. One must pay the proper (nominal) fee established by the lodge to which one applies.

To A Mason's Family
Masonic Charity



Applications for a chapter, preceptory and/or Shrine Temple must first be made to a craft lodge membership in which is a pre-requisite.

 

Age

21 years of age as of the date of admission to the lodge to which one has made application.

 

Beliefs

One must have a belief in some supreme supernatural being beit God, Allah, Buddha or what have you. Freemasonry in general is not a religious organization but a fraternal one though for certain branches of it this of course is not the case

 

Interest in Freemasonry

Free masons do not solicit members though we do encourage those interested in the craft to join. One must apply of one's own free will and accord without pressure being improperly applied.

 

Free Born

    In the Cathedral building age, more men were serfs than were free; the serf could not make a contract; provide that his children learn a trade; had to pay a fee to his lord to enable his daughter to marry; often had to submit her to the lord of the manor before marriage; could not bear witness without permission; could not hunt or kill without permission; could not leave his land or town without permission. He, his wife and children were, if not slaves, truly bondmen.
    It is of such that the Old Charges speak when they prohibit the making of Apprentices of bondsmen, or even those born of bondsmen. No mathematician has so far ventured to calculate how many generations back one can go without encountering an ancestor who was a slave.
    In feudal England, free born must have meant immediately free born-not born of slave parents-and did not attempt to go backwards into other generations.
    Many Old Constitutions stress the requirement that a Mason must be free born. Slavery was abolished in England in 1772; in France in 1848; in Russia in 1861; and in the United States by the War Between the States. In England the phrase has been changed; Apprentices must be "free men" but in America all Grand Lodges have clung to the old "Free born," meaning without slave ancestry.

courtesy of  Wor.  Bro.  Richard  A.  Byrd

Application forms are available through any Mason.