I am very interested in becomming a Freemason! I would be greatly appreciate if someone can answer my call!

Thank you,

Louie Betro

Mr. Betro,
Our Fraternity do not actively "recruit" members. You have to ask at least three members in good standing to recommend you to recieve the Degrees in Freemasonry. Our organization is not secret so my advice to you is to visit a Lodge of your choosing which you can find it listed in a phone book or check Grand Lodge of New York for listing, introduce your self and state your desire. You just took the first step in joining the largest Fraternity in the world-- Freemasonry, your knock is a start of a journey. Good Luck and I leave you a question that you should be asking yourself, "In what are you in search of?" What are you really looking for?

VR,
Rudy

Thank you very much!

my name is oluyemi ibrahim,i am very interested in becoming a member of the freemasons.I am a NIGERIAN,and i lived in nigeria,i don,t know how to go about it.pls reply me on this email address,yemie_03@yahoo.com.thank you.

HI there, I have been interested in freemasonry since High school when one of my parents aquaintences brought it up to me. Never looked at it to seriously though til 6 months ago. Funnily enough my interest was peaked by the movie "National Treasure". I started looking around on the internet , there was a lot of junk out there but i stumbled upon the Grand Lodge of Manitoba (Canada) site. I wanted to get some reading material on freemasonry mainly for curiosity sake. I was searching at the time but never knew it. I sent an e-mail through the "contact Us" section asking for reading material that wasn;t all fluff or lies.

I was put in contact with a mason from the lodge closest to my town who put me in touch with another mason who is really well read and has a deep knowledge of the craft. He gave me some ideas for books to read and a bunch of essays as well. Well i was considering petitioning the local lodge but on looking around and reading everything i could get my hands on i started looking at other lodges. I ended up petitioning the lodge the learned mason i mentioned earlier is starting. It is called Templum SIon Lodge. It is a european concept lodge, meaning a "education" lodge if you will.

The point of all this is follow the old masonic sayin "To be one ask one" pretty simple words but true. There is so much information out there to wade through and for someone witha low knowledge level like myself and others looking at this site for help it can be a little daunting. If your reading this you odviously have the internet look for your local grand lodge and e-mail them. They will contact you and point you in the right direction probably assign you a mentor to help you along and answer any questions you have, i have had 2 so far and i'm sure there will be more in the future. It works trust me, i am proud to say that i am scheduled to do my EA degree mar 11th 2006 as long as my petition goes well. I will be a part of the first EA degree performed by the Templum Sion Lodge.

My advice contact the grand lodge and then research the different lodges, there are 3 main types of lodges there are Social lodges that are more geared towards the fraternal socializing side of the craft. There is benevolent lodges that do a lot of charity work in the community. ANd there is research lodges that lean more towards the educational and philisophical side of the craft. All lodges take from all 3 types of lodges but some tend more towards one side than the others. None is better than the other or more "right" they are just different sides of the coin. Ask yourself what your searching for and be honest with yourself then decide which lodeg you would like. this will save you joining and then quitting from disinterest 2 years down the road. Ask and you shall recieve the answers. It's all pretty simple in my mind.

The system we use is,a MM proposes a candidate who he knows for a considerable amount of time.The MM must truly consider the candidate can be a part of the Temple we are trying to build.The candidate,then,is voted to see if the procedure will continue or not.Then three MM's are appointed to question the candidate.With their report,he is voted(scrutinized) again.If the result is clean,then he is invited.
However;in the evaluation of the candidates,two aspects are considered which i believe are not proper.One is if he can pay the enterance fee and yearly dueswhich are considerably high,second if he truly is a person to represent Masonry is not thoroughly investigated.
So at the end of the day,we have BB's who are only rich and who will have short masonic life.

The system we use is,a MM proposes a candidate who he knows for a considerable amount of time.The MM must truly consider the candidate can be a part of the Temple we are trying to build.The candidate,then,is voted to see if the procedure will continue or not.Then three MM's are appointed to question the candidate.With their report,he is voted(scrutinized) again.If the result is clean,then he is invited.
However;in the evaluation of the candidates,two aspects are considered which i believe are not proper.One is if he can pay the enterance fee and yearly dueswhich are considerably high,second if he truly is a person to represent Masonry is not thoroughly investigated.
So at the end of the day,we have BB's who are only rich and who will have short masonic life.

If does not matter how many times a Lodge agreed to question a potential candidate for his interest to join the Craft, the bottomline is that the "system" our brother described is still---recruiting. Through the years of the Fraternity's existence, we are not naive to believe that some of our brothers particularly members of ruling class were not given a hint, advise or flatly recruited to join for one reason or another. It could be a two-way street affair, prestige for both parties. Obviously, I can not prove or drop a name but some of you might agree that joining for the sake of continuing a family tradition is not exactly the spirit of an "own free will and accord." As there are always exception to the rule but I wont be surprised if the result is what Bro gunal described---short Masonic life.

BTW, good call on not hinting your location, often times the most bitter enemy is one you used to call or known as a brother particularly a "woshipful brother." Strange, but as the saying goes, we are rough ashlar struggling to reach that level of perfection through a medium of study known as Freemasonry. Some just dont get it which make's ones to wonder---how they ever got in! recruited?

"When will we ever learn" ----from Where Have The Flowers Gone--- Peter, Paul and Mary.


S&F,

Rudy
Rocky Hill, CT

gunal wrote:

The system we use is,a MM proposes a candidate who he knows for a considerable amount of time.The MM must truly consider the candidate can be a part of the Temple we are trying to build.The candidate,then,is voted to see if the procedure will continue or not.Then three MM's are appointed to question the candidate.With their report,he is voted(scrutinized) again.If the result is clean,then he is invited.
However;in the evaluation of the candidates,two aspects are considered which i believe are not proper.One is if he can pay the enterance fee and yearly dueswhich are considerably high,second if he truly is a person to represent Masonry is not thoroughly investigated.
So at the end of the day,we have BB's who are only rich and who will have short masonic life.

One thing to keep in mind for those people out there searching around that it is not required to "know" a MM. Maybe in the district gunal is from it is a requirment i have no idea but in most places i have seen if you don't know a MM then you should contact the local lodge and tell them you are interested in joining then it will be taken from there. If you absolutely have to be reffered by a MM kind of leads into the whole "old boy" system of getting anything in life. Not to mention you would be excluding an entire section of society that may be searching for light and would never find it without masonry. If anyone is interested in becoming a mason contact your local lodge. Before i contacted my local grand lodge i never knew a mason aside from the one of my parents friends who i haven't seen in 12 years. There are ways to ask but you have to do the looking and asking.

Male undergraduates who have had enough of the "lager mentality" of university life are being encouraged to join the Freemasons.
The English masonic lodge is looking to boost its numbers by actively recruiting students and staff from several UK universities.

The organisation's second-in-command, assistant grand master David Williamson, started the recruitment scheme to create wider opportunities for undergraduates and other university members to enjoy freemasonry.

He hopes to replicate the success of the established Oxford and Cambridge university lodges across the country.

At present there are nine lodges in university cities participating in the scheme: Bath, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Durham, Exeter, Manchester, Oxford and Sheffield, but the aim is to gradually expand it beyond these universities.

Mr Williamson said: "This is a challenge for the lodges that have chosen to participate. Young masons under 25 make up only about a quarter of 1% of the membership of the craft in this country, so we want to make the craft more accessible to young men."

The masons hope to encourage new members by dropping the joining age from 21 to 18 and halving the fees for under 25s. Lodges at Oxford and Cambridge can already admit members at 18 at their discretion.

The group's chairman, Oliver Lodge, said: "Oxford and Cambridge have proved just how popular freemasonry can be at universities. I hope we can help to make those same wonderful experiences available to more prospective masons."

The group's media manager, Chris Connop, said: "We've fundamentally never been a recruiting organisation. But we really should be trying to appeal to young people as well as old. It was always possible to join at 18 at Oxford and Cambridge, but in this day and age that's a bit of a nonsense."

Mr Connop, who was headteacher of a comprehensive school for nine years, interviews potential members and tries to gauge whether they are suitable or not before introducing them to lodgers.

"I'm the first obstacle. They have to write a letter of introduction first, saying how the masons came to their attention and why they want to join. I head off people who think they will get an advantage from it because that's part of the mythology about the Freemasons. It's against the rules. You don't just walk into the Freemasons, we want people of the right calibre with the right values from whatever level of society."

The organisation does a lot of charitable work and Mr Connop says this explains a lot of the interest. "We do an enormous amount for charity and that really appeals to students."

What also appeals to new members, the majority of whom are aged between 18 and 35, is contact with older generations.

"When I talk to these youngsters they really appreciate meeting with adults with more experience. Most are tired of going to the pub and of the lager drinking mentality. They are traditionalists as well. We uphold traditions and they like that aspect," Mr Connop added.

source:
EducationGuardian.co.uk


_________________
Sincerely & Fraternally
R.W.Bro. Bruno Gazzo
Editor, PS Review of FM