Exploring Freemasonry, Joseph Smith, and Temple Connections

Only a few blocks away from the Latter-day Saint Temple in downtown Salt Lake is this building, the Masonic Temple of Salt Lake. Masons are a kind of mysterious organization that not very many people know very much about. You've probably only heard of them in movies like National Treasure.

But the Masons are an organization that goes back centuries, at least as early as the 1300s, where we have the first records. A number of the founders of the United States, like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, were Masons. And it's a fraternal organization where men come to buildings like this, where they enter into ceremonies, where they promise to assist each other, to help each other.

And the motto of Masonry is to help make good men better. Latter-day Saints in the 1840s had suffered serious persecutions. Some of them were former Masons, and they felt like if they connected with the Masons, they might have some friends that could help them out if they got in trouble.

And today, we've got the rare privilege of going inside the Masonic temple, where we're going to film a tour and find out a little bit more about the Masonic fraternity. We're here in Nauvoo, Illinois, where one of the most striking buildings on Main Street is this building, which is today called the Cultural Hall. This was used for a lot of things back in the 1840s when the saints were here, but the name that it was probably most commonly called back then was the Masonic Lodge.

Question is, why were the Masons here? What's their tie to the Church? And how did the Church's involvement with the Masons affect the development of church teachings and practice?

Here on the third floor of the Masonic Hall is where the Masonic Lodge met. They would have performed the ceremonies carried out with Masons. And because of the timing, Joseph Smith is inducted as a Mason in early 1842.

In May of 1842, he introduces the Temple Endowment. But there are some parallels between the Latter-day Saint Endowment Cemetery and the Masonic ceremony. So we're going to take a few minutes and explore those parallels, how they came from, how we explain them, and how the Masons may have influenced the development of Latter-day Saint temple practice.

Some Masons think their practices descend from Solomon's Temple, others from the Knights Templar. But many Freemason scholars point to Masonry beginning in the 13th century, when stonemasons created guilds. We know that Joseph Smith's brother, Hyrum Smith, was a Freemason early on, and that Joseph Smith joined later on.

This is an exciting opportunity we have, not just to learn about Latter-day Saint history, but also Freemasonry in general. Hi, Lon. Casey.

Welcome to the Salt Lake Masonic Temple. Today, we're touring with Lon Tibbetts. Lon has been a Grandmaster and is currently a Grand Secretary.

He's also served in the Church as a bishop, and he regularly gives tours in the Masonic temple. We are exploring a little bit about the connection between Latter-day Saints and Freemasons, and I understand you're both. I am.

That's true. You're a member of the Church, and you're a member of this Masonic Lodge. Yes.

And you give tours all the time, and you're going to show us through. I am. Okay.

Well lead the way. We're excited. This is the Grand Hall.

The Grand Hall. We don't hold meetings here. It's kind of a foyer, if you will.

The pictures in this room are the pictures of men or women who have held national or international presidencies of Masonic bodies. Okay. How long have these women's organizations been around?

It's more than 100 years, but I don't how much more than that. So we do call them appendant bodies or concordant bodies. Freemasonry itself is really the first three degrees in a lodge.

And Scottish Rite, York Rite, Shriners are also appendant bodies as well. Okay. So all these would be organizations that are attached.

Attached. Gotta. And the lodges move from place to place.

They can. They can, yeah. They become more permanent as we started buying buildings.

This business of having buildings wasn't. . .

They met in halls, but it's typically rented. That might not be something people know, is that a lodge refers to the people. It does.

And not necessarily the building that they're in. Right. Okay.

Now, this building, you use the word temple differently- Yes. Than Latter-day Saints use it. Explain the difference.

So the difference between the two, a temple in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is a place where we go and do ordinance work. And we do degree work in a Masonic temple, but it's built around the fact that all of our myths have to do with the Temple of Solomon. And so lodge rooms are patterned after the Temple of Solomon, those kinds of things.

So that's why we would use that word. It doesn't have any religious connotations whatsoever. Is there a religion requirement?

Does it matter what religion you're part of? No, it doesn't matter what religion. We would say that we're not a religious society, but a moral society.

Men who join us take obligations to do good things, and there needs to be a higher power that they would hold themselves accountable to, if they broke that obligation. You don't have to be a member of a church, but you do have to recognize a supreme being. Not necessarily a recognized supreme being, but it can't be Satan, if that makes sense.

Yeah. So you don't have to be a member of any church, but if you acknowledge a higher power. Right.

And we don't check up to make sure you're active or any of those kinds of things. We take a man at his word. Our advertising tagline is that we take good men and make them better.

We really are very narrowly focused there. You're like the Marines. You're looking for a few good men.

A few good men, yeah. Now that we have the basics, Lon takes us into our first lodge room. Oh, wow.

So what would this room be called? This is the Colonial Room. The Colonial Room is one of five different lodge rooms in the temple.

Each lodge room is designed differently with its own historical theme. And the reason we call it the Colonial Room is just its architecture. Yeah, the decor.

I recognize this gentleman right over here. Most Masonic temples or Masonic lodges across the United States have this exact print up on the wall someplace. We don't deify, but we do venerate George Washington.

We looked to him as one of the Masonic forefathers of American Masonry. Here, you've probably seen there's prints all the way in here of George Washington in different settings. Well, tell us, what can you say about this room?

This is the altar. We also call it a trestle board. A trestle board would have been a place where ancient stonemasons would have had their plans laid out.

There's some symbolism in that for us. What's on this for us is a King James version of the Bible. Oh, okay.

It's open to one of three different scriptures in the Old Testament that line up with the degree that we would be open on. So the Worshipful Master sits here and we have some traditions. So one of them is nothing passes between the light and the Worshipful Master.

So we go to great lengths. If we're coming from over here, we go around. If we're sitting up over there, we go around.

Along with the trestle board or altar, you see three lights. We call them burning tapers. On the other side up here, we have the chaplain.

We open our meetings with a nondenominational prayer. We never say in the name of Jesus Christ at the end of our prayers. But the reason for that is because we have all religions represented in a lodge, and we're expecting that the God that they worship is who they're thinking of as we close that prayer.

So naming any of them would be inappropriate for us. So is there an Amen at the end of the prayer? There is an Amen.

Okay. But you're respecting the other faiths? Yeah.

And we would typically say something along the lines of, "In thy Holy name. " And of course, when that happens, I'm thinking of Jesus Christ. But somebody else might be thinking of the deity they worship.

Their deity they worship. Yeah. Yes.

Aside from the chaplain and the senior warden, there are other officers such as senior and junior deacons, secretary, treasurer, and stewards. There's also one other officer. He's outside that door.

He's called a Tyler. He has a sword. It doesn't have an edge on it.

He'd probably hurt himself if it did. But he is guarding our door from what we would call cowans and eavesdroppers. So a cowan and an eavesdropper is someone who's not a Mason who's trying to get a look at what it is that we do.

Basically us, I guess. We were invited. You were invited.

Okay. Yes. Can you tell us about this globe?

Is that part of the decor? Every lodge in this state has two pillars. They don't all have stairs, but these are representative of the two pillars on the porch at King Solomon's temple.

And they have names, right? They have names. Jachin, is that right?

You tell me. I'm going to get-I actually can't. You can't, okay.

No, I actually can't. That's one of those. But they can be easily found.

And many of our myths have to do with, and by the way, I'm going to offend some Mason somewhere by saying myths, but many of our myths have to do with Hiram, who we can find in 1 Kings and 1 Chronicles, was the guy who built these pillars. We've stretched his duties in our myths to other things. At the top, you see the lilywork and the pomegranates that would be called out in that scriptural account.

But over here, we have the continents, and over here, we have the constellations at the top of it. Oh. Very Masonic.

Okay. The stairs over here also contains some things. So the first three steps are actually the square, the level and the plumb.

And those are the symbols of the offices of the three principal officers in the watch. Then we have the five senses, and then the last seven. And you probably already figured out three, five, and seven.

Which are very Masonic numbers. And these are the seven liberal arts and sciences. But early in Masonry, Masons were encouraged to make themselves thoroughly familiar with the seven liberal arts and sciences.

And if you think on stonemasons in general. They probably would have been very well-educated in geometry and in stonemasonry, but not necessarily those things. Can you tell us about how Solomon's Temple fits into this?

What's appropriate to say? Everything we do, we are using imagery from stonemasons. We are using imagery from temple building, all of those things to inculcate in hearts.

We use words like inculcate. Inculcate means something very specific to us. And so, if you think about a degree as a morality play, and there are two or three or four, or maybe more, morals that we want a Mason to understand and inculcate into his heart and then live as he goes forward.

So there are some in the first degree, there are some in the second, there are some in the third. When you go through the system of degrees in the Scottish Rite, for example, you begin with the fourth and you go to the 32nd. And each of those degrees has at least one moral that we are hoping that you will pick up and again inculcate or drive deeply into your heart.

And they're all good things. I would just say that right up front. They're all good things.

Let me just take one. Honesty. Honesty would be one of those important things.

How we treat women is another. There are a number of those kinds of things. I've found over the years that the wives and sweethearts of Masons can tell you when in their Masonic journey, they started to be different kind of men.

And so the ritual, the catechism, has some kind of an impact on them and has some psychological impact upon them as well. Well, that is a lot to process. Do you want to continue on in here?

Let me finish one other thing. So this is furniture, and this is furniture. But until it's set up with its furnishings, it's not a lodge room.

And they're not in here today. You can find pictures of them on the internet, but I won't tell you how to set up a lodge room, because that's one of those things. But in this room are two ashlars, we call them.

And Casey, they're these rocks. I was going to ask about these. Yeah.

Of all the symbols in Masonry, these are probably my favorite. This is a rough ashlar. It's a little bigger and much rougher than that one, which is a perfect ashlar.

And this symbolizes man's journey. From our point of view, before you joined Masonry, you were like this, and over the rest of your life, you are seeking to knock off the hard, rough edges and become that so that you can go to the next life and fit in that house made in the heavens without hands, if you will. So a rough stone.

A rough stone. Yeah. Yeah.

A year after becoming a Mason, Joseph Smith said, "I am like a huge rough stone rolling down from a high mountain, and the only polishing I get is when some corner gets rubbed off by coming in contact with something else. Thus, I will become a smooth and polished shaft in the quiver of the Almighty. " Joseph may have been using Masonic imagery here, influenced by his Masonic experience.

Can I ask the G? The G? The G stands for-Yes.

So we really don't hide this, but it stands for both geometry and God. Okay. The God part of that is why it's so brightly lit.

Can you explain the geometry part? So geometry was a big part of stonemasonry, and some of the really intricate things that a stonemason would have done when he built a cathedral. If you think about some of those cathedrals and some of the things that are there, you understand that that's a lot of geometry.

So this was a society that encourages education and bettering themselves. They also give plenty of donations, scholarships, and other charitable acts. And the Masonic temple is regularly used for these things.

So, Casey, let's go see the Egyptian Room. The Egyptian Room. Okay.

While Freemasons don't trace their history to ancient Egypt, Lon explains that Masons generally say they've borrowed good features from many different cultures. So it may be overblown to say that Joseph borrowed from Freemasonry when Masonry borrowed from others. A better word might be adaptive.

Joseph Smith would say that "one of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism is to receive truth, let it come from whence it may. " And since we're coming into the Egyptian Room, this is a perfect opportunity to talk about another topic that has to do with ancient Egypt, the translation of the Book of Abraham. Around the same time that Joseph Smith was becoming involved in Freemasonry, he was also finishing his work on the translation of the Book of Abraham with its references to ancient covenants.

All of this was part of the background for the introduction of the endowment in Nauvoo. During this time, the Saints built the Masonic Lodge in Nauvoo. This has been restored and currently stands on Main Street in historic Nauvoo.

Joseph Smith may have adapted some of the methodology and symbology of Freemasonry and made them part of the inspired ceremonies that take place in Latter-day Saint temples. So this is the Egyptian room, and you can immediately see the same elements. We have the stairs here.

We have the pillars. You see both of the stones up here again, the ashlars as well, the altar or trestle board. This one looks more altar than trestle board.

And then, of course, the lights, the senior warden up over here. Can you tell me about this inverted star right here? Okay, I can.

That's the Order of the Eastern Star, which is one of our ladies groups. They're very, very large. They have both male and female members in it.

The men have to be a Mason to join it. It's also one of those stars that causes people to think that we might be involved in devil worship, and we're not. And Hyrum was the Grand Master, right?

Hyrum was the Master. Hyrum was the Master. Joseph was a chaplain.

Chaplain. Yeah. Yes.

Explain what that role would be. So that role, so it sits there. So this is an idea from someone named Greg Kearney, and that is that if you've been a chaplain, you've got a different view of a lodge and what's happening during a degree.

Because of that, that you see and the things that a chaplain does, if our degrees had any influence on Joseph at all, it was probably the interactive form of learning that he was watching, the repetitive form of learning he was watching. It's not all the things that I think people think that it is. And are there some similarities?

Yeah, there are some similarities. Joseph was accepting of anything that rang true. So when he came upon Freemasonry, one theory is that he saw some truths in its teaching methods and adapted them for the temple.

Another theory is that Freemasonry served as a catalyst that inspired Joseph Smith to restore ancient ceremonies that had previously been lost or corrupted. We don't know the exact answer to these questions, but certainly, Freemasonry was part of the context that the temple ceremonies were revealed in. While there are some similarities, there are also important differences.

In Joseph Smith's time, Masonry was a fraternal order consisting only of men. Latter-day Saint temple ceremonies involved both men and women. While Masonic ceremonies focus on specific stories from Masonic lore, Latter-day Saint temples tell the story of Adam and Eve and their redemption through Jesus Christ.

The covenants made by Latter-day Saints and Masons are also very different. One scholar linked about 10% of the endowment to Masonry. The rest comes from the Bible and other scriptural sources.

We then go from the Egyptian room to the biggest room in the Masonic temple. Holy cow, I had no idea there was something this huge. Yeah, this is one of those take your breath away kind of rooms.

Yeah, wow. So this is the auditorium. It is used for Scottish Rite degrees, but also for other events, when we install a brand new Grand Master every year, it's a public event.

It's one of the few ritual things that we do as Masons that we open the doors and let the public come see. The rectangular part of this floor down here, we can turn into a lodge room. And when the Grand Lodge meets, we turn that into a lodge room.

But above our heads, here are 103 drops. And those drops are all handpainted. But those 103 drops will create everything from a Scottish war camp, to King Solomon's temple being built or destroyed, or his throne room, or being rebuilt, a German forest, a lot of those kinds of things.

And those are used as backdrops for the fourth through the 32nd degree in the Scottish Rite. Interesting. And the disk up above is supposed to represent the sky, the night sky above Salt Lake.

And there's a robe room around the corner where costumes that have been made or used for those degrees. And there's another room around the corner for the props that go with them. So backdrops, props, we have music.

I had no idea it was this complex. Yeah. Wow.

Lon estimates that about 10% of Masons in Utah are Latter-day Saints. Today, it is accepted for Latter-day Saints to join Freemasonry, but it wasn't always this simple. The tensions between Masons and Latter-day Saints have a long history.

So Lon takes me to a back hallway to explain some of that story. This is our wall of all of the past Grand Masters of Utah. The first Grand Master we had was A.

O. Strickland. A.

O. Strickland was a federal judge who had been appointed and sent here by Ulysses S. Grant to lock up polygamists.

Okay. Yeah. And many of the men who were federal officers that were here, that was kind of their background.

And I was giving a tour one day, and I was talking about A. O. Strickland, and I made this comment about him having been a federal judge who had been sent out here, and I'm listening to myself say this, and all of a sudden I went, "Well, of course, the Church didn't have a great relationship with these guys.

These are the guys sending our prophets to prison. " So of course, there was this going on. There's a lot of it.

Yeah. And it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. It wasn't until about 1984 that Masonic organizations in Utah accepted Latter-day Saints as members.

Lon takes me up several flights of stairs, through some hallways, past some epic art, and into what is known as the Gothic Room. While Masonry doesn't care about your religion, it has different orders and ceremonies linked to Christianity, and this room is usually used for those. So one of the differences, first of all- You got this backdrop.

Yeah, Worshipful Master sits up here. We'd still have stairs. They're not marked.

You'll notice that there's no pillars in here. If we held a lodge meeting in here, we'd have to bring pillars in. There's no stones in here.

We'd have to bring ashlars in. Typically, this is used for York Rite meetings and when a lodge will install a new master every year, the building use this for the installation of that, and the public sits up here. So public people could.

. . Come to that installation as well.

Okay. So, Casey, last room. Yeah, last room.

This is the Moorish Room, Arab style. And one of the high points of this room happens to be the neon sign, which we're told is the oldest neon sign in the state of Utah. That's one of the real differences in this room.

Other than its size, when a lodge is going to have a smaller group of men, it's kind of nice sometimes to do it in here, so you're not lost in the furniture. This one's a room that means something to me because this is the room I was initiated in. So this is the first lodge room I actually ever saw.

Although I had a great interest in Masonry all my life, I never had seen the inside of a lodge room until the night that they took off the blindfold in this room. So when you joined, was there any hesitation? Did they just ask if you believe in a higher power?

There was no hesitation at all. I was asked the standard questions, and was treated exactly the same as any other person would be. And can I ask, there's degrees that a person goes into.

Can I ask what degree you are right now? Is that okay? So I'm a 33rd degree Scottish Rite Mason, and I'm a Knight Templar, York Rite Mason.

Now, I've had people tell me, Joseph Smith was a 33rd degree Mason. Could you know? Could you explain?

Couldn't have been. So first of all, the Scottish Rite did not come into this country until 1801, to begin with. It came in in South Carolina.

It had not made its way to Joseph Smith in Nauvoo by the time that he was made a Third Degree Master Mason. So he was a Third Degree Master Mason. We do also know Abraham Jonas was the name of the Grand Master, and Abraham Jonas made him a Mason on sight.

So he didn't have to petition the Lodge. They didn't have to vote on him. The Grand Master said, this man is a Mason.

I'm making him a Master Mason. Now, he had to go through the degrees, but he didn't have to memorize a catechism. Didn't have to do those things in order to become a Master Mason over a two-day period of time.

Was that common, or was it because Joseph Smith was the leader? It was more common then than it is today, but it wasn't that common. So one last question, since this is our last room.

We started out by saying you're a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and you're a Mason. How has being a Mason helped you be a better Latter-day Saint? The principles that they talk about, very, very similar to those of the Gospel.

They're not a replacement for it, but very similar to those of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and very important for a man to have. Believe me, I don't know about the rest of you, but I need lots of improving. I'm a very flawed man.

I'm working at becoming better. I would say that what I do in an Elders Quorum these days, what I do in my ward, the callings that I have, the things that we do when we go to the temple, my wife, all have great influence on me for that, but so do these good men in the fraternity. They make a great difference to me.

They're great examples, and sometimes just the things they do, caused me to say, I never even thought about doing something like that before. Not just the teachings, but the examples of good men. Obviously, nothing is like the purification of a heart that comes through the Holy Ghost.

But hanging out with, running around with some of the finest men I've ever met in my life who are not members of our Church, but are Masons has an impact on my life, makes a difference. I see good examples in many of them that I want to inculcate in my heart and emulate in my life. And I think that's how the two of them work together.

Well, I can't thank you enough for walking us through. It's been a pleasure. I really, really appreciate you and all the members of your lodge that have walked us through today.

So thanks very much. Thank you. This proclamation is made from the East, from the West, from the South.

Once, Twice, Thrice; all interested will take due notice and govern themselves accordingly. The Bible, the Book of Mormon, and other ancient scripture all talk about temples. So it's not surprising the good people from Joseph Smith's time, like many of the Masons were, would seek out more knowledge on these subjects.

Joseph Smith drew from many sources to create the temple endowment under the direction of the Lord. And it's possible that the Masons were one of these as well. But in creating it, it's best that we don't assume that it appeared out of thin air.

We've got to consider the context Joseph Smith existed in and the sources he may have drawn from. The stated aim of Masonry was to make good men better. Joseph Smith borrowed some of the tools, and created a system to make good men and good women better, but not only make them better, to allow them to make covenants that would allow them to enter into the presence of God, where they could gain exaltation and eternal life.