How to join Freemasonry, step by step

1. Understand what you are joining

Freemasonry is a fraternity that uses allegory and ritual to encourage moral self-development, sociability and charitable work. A lodge is a local meeting of members, usually monthly, with a formal ceremony, a meal and ordinary administrative business. It is not a secret society in the sense of being unknown; its meeting places are published and its aims are not hidden. It is private in the sense that its ceremonies are for members.

Three things follow from that, and they shape everything else. First, membership is voluntary and personal: nobody is recruited, and nobody is expected to join because a relative did. Second, the craft works through jurisdiction: a lodge is warranted by a grand lodge, and that grand lodge decides the rules for candidates in its territory. Third, joining is a process with other people in it — a secretary, a committee, a ballot — and it takes months rather than weeks.

2. Check which jurisdiction covers you

This is the step that most candidates get wrong, so it is worth doing carefully. In England, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, the body is the United Grand Lodge of England, which delegates candidate enquiries to its provincial grand lodges — for example Surrey, Middlesex or West Lancashire. In Scotland it is the Grand Lodge of Scotland; in Ireland, the Grand Lodge of Ireland.

In the United States, each state has its own sovereign grand lodge — Texas, New York, California and the rest — and you apply in the state where you live. Canada, Australia and South Africa are organised the same way, province by province or state by state. Continental Europe is a patchwork of national grand lodges.

Two rules of thumb help. If you live in one country and work in another, apply where you live or where you have your principal connection; the jurisdiction will advise if that is wrong. And if a search result offers you a "worldwide lodge" with no territorial jurisdiction, treat it with caution — regular Freemasonry is territorial by design.

3. Approach the lodge or the provincial office

There are three legitimate routes. You can write to a named lodge directly, if you know one. You can write to the grand lodge or provincial office, which will allocate you to a lodge near your home. Or you can use the enquiry form on this site, which composes a formal introduction addressed to the correct office and gives you a reference to track.

Whichever route you take, include the details a secretary actually needs: full name, date of birth, home address, telephone and email, your occupation and employer, and a short paragraph on why you are interested. A secretary who has to write back asking for your address has already lost a week.

4. What the lodge does with your enquiry

The secretary acknowledges your enquiry and passes it to the lodge's membership officer or a small committee. Someone will contact you for an informal conversation — often in a pub, a coffee shop or the lodge's own bar. This is not an interrogation; it is both of you checking that the fit is sensible.

If the conversation goes well, you will usually be invited to meet the committee more formally, and to visit the lodge. Some jurisdictions require a proposer and seconder at this stage; if you do not know any members, the membership officer will help, and in many constitutions the lodge itself can propose you after meeting you.

You may be asked for references. The lodge may make discreet enquiries of the people you name. Every regular constitution allows this, and it is the reason the questionnaire asks you to declare any matter that might bear on your character.

5. The petition and the ballot

A petition is a short formal document: your name, age, address, occupation and a request to be admitted. In most jurisdictions it is signed by you and by your proposer. The lodge then ballots its members — traditionally with balls — and a single adverse vote can be enough to reject a candidate. This is not personal. It is the mechanism by which a lodge protects its own harmony, and it is used sparingly.

If the ballot is clear, you are given a date for initiation. If it is not, the secretary will tell you, usually without giving reasons, and you may be invited to try again after a period — commonly six or twelve months.

6. Initiation and the degrees

Initiation makes you an Entered Apprentice, the first of three degrees. You will be given a ritual to learn and expected to attend regularly. After a period of at least a month you may be passed to the Fellow Craft degree, and later raised to the degree of Master Mason. The craft describes these as degrees of knowledge rather than ranks; the work is moral and allegorical, and no promise of worldly advantage is made or permitted.

7. What it costs, and what it asks of your time

Costs are set locally. In England, typical annual subscriptions run from around £150 to £400 depending on the lodge, with additional dining and charity contributions. In the United States, annual dues commonly fall between $100 and $300, again depending on the lodge and state. There is usually a one-off initiation fee.

Time is the larger commitment: a monthly meeting of two to three hours, plus rehearsal and dining, plus the work of learning the ritual. Members are also expected to support the lodge's charitable work, quietly and without publicity.

8. If it does not work out

Jurisdictions decline candidates for reasons that have nothing to do with their worth: the lodge may be full, the timing wrong, or the fit poor. You are entitled to ask the secretary, politely, whether there is another lodge worth approaching. You are also entitled to withdraw at any point before initiation, and to ask that your details be deleted — which is one of the rights described in our privacy notice.