MASONRY, MASONRIES, AND HISTORICAL PROBLEMS OF PLURALISM:

The Prince Hall and Mexican Examples

by Paul Rich MPS (Life)

and Guillermo De Los Reyes

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Dr.Paul Rich and Lic. Guillermo De Los Reyes are Professors of International Relations and History at University of the Americas, Puebla, Mexico. Dr.Rich is a member of the Scottish and York rites in Boston, as well as of many research lodges around the world. Their current research includes a comparison of Opus Dei, the Roman Catholic secret society, with Freemasonry.

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Historians have a terrible time with the pluralism of social movements, often presenting as a single organization what upon investigation is found to be a multiplicity of groups. The histories of Prince Hall Freemasonry and Mexican Freemasonry are excellent examples of the distortion and obfuscation that results. A case in point is the dispute over the part played by Joel Poinsett, the American minister in Mexico in 1825-1829. He is sometimes depicted as a sort of antebellum James Bond.

He was not the genius behind a worldwide Masonic plot to subvert Mexican ambitions for independence. Contrary to claims, Poinsett did not introduce Masonry to Mexico. The origins of Masonry in Mexico are shrouded in mystery, almost an inevitability given the nature of the organization and the passage of time. What can be confidently written is that there was not one Masonry in Mexico but rather many Masonries, and this would apply to other countries.

Early nineteenth-century Mexico was in revolutionary ferment, the atmosphere being one which encouraged the growth of different expressions of Freemasonry and a multifarious jumble of Masonic ideologies and philosophies. The analogy to the political confusion and the jurisdictional and regularity issues facing Prince Hall Freemasons of the period is obvious.

As mentioned in the first article in this series, Poinsett did not go to Mexico with the notion of being the patron of a Masonic conspiracy. Rather, he seized upon the York rite of Masonry, to which he belonged, as a means by which he could strengthen his diplomatic mission. The British minister, Henry B.Ward, was siding with the Scottish Rite in hopes of achieving trade privileges, and the Colombian Minister had been an Scottish Rite officer in Cartagena and was siding with Ward. This foreign interference coincided with growing resentment among Mexican patriots of the political power of the Scottish Rite, which was suspect not only for offering the cultural advantages of its supposed European affinities (relying as it did on the legend that Frederick the Great was the organizer of the Scottish Rite) but for proffering patronage and position rather than enhancing the commonweal.

In respects, Poinsett's decision to employ Masonry as one of the tools of his interventionist policies was the start of that long involvement of Masonry with Mexican politics which has been regarded so ambiguously by scholars as far as its good and bad effects have been concerned. He could not have expected the longlasting consequences of what looks like a spur-of-the-moment decision.

In any event, regardless of the rite, whether Masonry's political role was beneficial to Mexican society remains a deeply contentious issue. There are those who believe Masonry in Mexican history has been "a symbol of and major instrument for the creation of the modern 'neutral' society - a society in which the fixed statutes of the medieval world gave way to the needs of a changing and dynamic economic and social structure, where artificial and dysfunctional group distinctions are ignored and the individual is judged on his achieved rather than ascribed status." Others would be far less complimentary. The difficulty is that both sides prefer invective to objectivity.

Mexican historiography often presents Poinsett's motives and activities as purely political, and not enough credit has been given Poinsett's Masonic as opposed to his political enthusiasms. His involvement in Masonry was during an intense period of anti-Masonic activity in America. (This is also a factor which is not considered by the foes of Prince Hall regularity, who when considering the formation of Prince Hall lodges after the initial African Lodge period fail to acknowledge the difficulties for all Masonic groups in North America during the 1820s and 1830s as an aftermath of the Morgan incident.)

Such was the anti-Masonic opposition of the period to any politician with a Masonic affiliation that his commitment to the fraternity must have been firm. He was a Mason when it would have been politically expedient not to have been one.

Poinsett was active in Masonry long before his first contacts with Mexico. He had been Master of Recovery Lodge No.31 in Greensville, South Carolina, and of Solomons Lodge No.1 in Charleston. In 1821 he was Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of South Carolina as well as High Priest of the Grand Royal Arch Chapter of South Carolina, a post he held until 1841. The conclusion is that he enjoyed Masonry. He participated long after there was any apparent political reason to do so. .

The Royal Arch degrees of which he was an officer, then as now, were open to a Mason after first taking the three degrees offered by the "blue" lodge. Conferred in chapters rather than lodges, they are known to all Masons today as part of the system of Masonic initiations popularly called the York rite. The situation in Poinsett's day was somewhat similar to that of today as far as the York rite being composed of several autonomous bodies: other York organizations included even then the Council of Royal and Select Masters, which conferred the Cryptic degrees, and the Knights Templar, whose commanderies gave the chivalric degrees.

The Royal Arch was much more wide-spread in the United States at the time than was the Scottish Rite, so it was not surprising that Poinsett's major affiliation as far as the "higher" degrees were concerned was with the Royal Arch rather than the Scottish Rite. The degrees are highly dramatic pageants and it is easy to understand that he liked seeing them exemplified and that he found satisfaction in being an officer and helping to stage them.

Poinsett's is a case where personal inclinations have public consequences. The full implications for Mexico of his Royal Arch membership have to our knowledge never been adequately discussed. Mexican historians lump the Royal Arch degrees with all Masonry and do not understand the diversity of Masonic bodies. Mexican historians have not written with an appreciation of the pluralism of Masonry: it is rather like Martians writing about Christianity and lumping Jehovah's Witnesses, Episcopalians and Unitarians together. Moreover, Mexican historians writing from a conservative Catholic perspective have a vested interest in describing Masonry as a monolith. (So too do white Masonic historians in the United States who wish to deny that from the start American Freemasonry has been a pluralistic movement.)

Unfortunately, for understanding Mexican history, this apparently arcane matter of lodge affiliations and diversity of Masonic rites was to prove enormously significant in Poinsett's tempestuous Mexican career and to American relations with Mexico. To this day the activity of the Scottish and York Rites during the Mexican struggle for independence is misunderstood, sometimes deliberately.

One aspect of the Scottish-Yorkist issue in Mexico during the last 175 years which hinges on appreciating that they have diverse rituals and purposes is that there has been no study of the possibility of two rites having contrasting views about religion and secularism caused by their ritualistic perspectives. It is reasonable to expect that there would be different attitudes arising out of their rather different rituals, but that has gone unremarked.

Mexican Masonry since it achieved visibility in the 1820s has always been involved with Mexican church-state issues and in a running war with the Roman Catholic Church. What is missed is that a case can be made that the Scottish and York organizations have had different postures towards religion because their rituals are different. The York rite culminates in the Christian degrees of knighthood, including those conferring the honors of the Crusades in the Knight of Malta and the Knight Templar. The Scottish Rite included a degree in which the Papal tiara was trampled.

That is not to claim that the York rite in Mexico was Christian in a sectarian way or that the entire rite was Christian; the matter is more complicated. Nor is it to assert that the Scottish Rite was for the anti-religious. However, when it comes to considering Poinsett's part in Mexican politics, his York affiliation has to be considered. His lifelong devotion was to the Royal Arch. While taking the Royal Arch degrees was then as now a requirement for taking the chivalric degrees, the Royal Arch has never been a mere appendant and dependant body, as some would argue are such Scottish Rite bodies encountered on the way to the thirty-second degree as the Lodge of Perfection and Council of Princes of Jerusalem. Arguably (though contestably) it is a part of the original blue lodge or basic system of degrees which accidentally became estranged.

The Royal Arch was the most universal and widespread of the York organizations when Poinsett belonged, having the largest membership of the York bodies. Its situation in Freemasonry was then as now unusual. Unlike many of Masonry's auxiliary bodies, Royal Arch Masonry has a case for being considered as an integral part of Masonry. Proponents consider that its ritual dramas complete the story which the candidate is told in the first three degrees. Thus considerable numbers of men, including non-Christians, took and take the Royal Arch degrees not as a step to further degrees but as a completion of their Craft or blue lodge degrees.

On the other hand, although the Royal Arch admits non-Christians, the York rite of which it is part limits its 'higher' degrees to Christians. So it may be that the religious beliefs of members provide a partial explanation of why the Royal Arch in Mexico has never been accused of being opposed to religion to the same extent that the Scottish Rite has. The Masonic knights pledge to defend the Christian religion. Whether the presence in the Royal Arch of many chivalric knighthood holders who had climbed the degree ladder to become Templars mitigated any potential anti-clericalism is worthy of investigation.

In any event, a full consideration of how the teachings and rituals of the degrees may relate to the Scottish and York competition over the decades in Mexico and their religious posture is beyond the brief of this paper. It seems though to have had a relevance to political developments, because in the later part of the nineteenth century the growing Scottish anti-clericalism in Mexico enabled the rite to present itself and to prosper as the spokesmen for a secular Mexican republic in the face of a corrupt and authoritarian church in a way that the York movement never did.

Moreover, the Scottish Rite had (and still maintains) a tradition of reinterpreting Christian symbols which the York never did, giving them a Masonic gloss. For example, INRI stood not for the Latin inscription Jesus Nazarenus Rex Iudoeorum but instead had a different and dual meaning, standing for the Hebrew words iammim (water), nour (fire), rouach (air) and iebeschah (dry earth) and as well for the Latin Igne Natura Renovatur Integra (all of Nature is renovated by fire). The cross was reinterpreted as Druidic, Egyptian, and Indian symbolism.

This gross theological revisionism understandably would fuel fears of the Catholic hierarchy about Masonry. Nor of course would the Church appreciate Masonic orders of crusading knights, no matter how pious and sincere their professions of faith. The Roman church has its own order of knighthood, with their own claims of historical legitimacy.

Moreover, a case can be made that both the Scottish and York lodges were anti-Catholic and that the differences are those of degree (to pun) rather than of kind. Undoubtedly the continuing tension between Catholicism and secularism which has characterized and troubled Mexican history since the beginnings of the Republic can trace part of its roots to the Masonic activity of this era. But that is not the same as claiming that the troubles were all of Poinsett's making.

The question then of whether the ritual of the Scottish and York Masons supported opposing outlooks on the church-state problem and contributed to the political animosity between the two rites in Mexico is deserving of attention. While this has relevance to considering Poinsett's Yorkist activities while minister, the rivalry of the two rites works against any speculation that he headed a general Masonic conspiracy.

Also worth emphasizing is that the Scottish Rite in Poinsett's time was not anti-clerical in the way that the Scottish Rite subsequently was in the 1850s and 1860s during the time of President Benito Juárez. Indeed, clergymen belonged to the early Scottish Rite in Mexico.

Any effort at an understanding of the Scottish-York issue is further complicated by the fact that the accurate reconstruction of the rituals worked in early Mexico has not yet been accomplished. Problems of analysis of fraternal ritual are compounded by the secrecy that enshrouded the affairs of the early lodges. The orders were more scrupulous about obeying injunctions not to have the ceremonies recorded or published. However, "...publishers sold exposés to members who needed help in memorizing their parts or to the curious who wished to 'fathom the wonderful secrets of Freemasonry' without paying for an initiation (Richardson's Monitor, p.iv)."

In any event, Scottish or Escocés Freemasonry was the dominant Masonic rite in Mexico in the early 1820s when Poinsett arrived on the scene, and despite his efforts for the Yorkists it continued in the face of difficulties to be a major influence in Mexican life for many decades. It still dominates Mexican Masonic life, at least in terms of size of membership. Apparently one of its roles has been to legitimatize political power in a country where other sources of legitimacy, such as the Church, are denied to the ruling elite: "To sustain a 'father' role, the power leader often surrounds his leadership with a mystical aura. By claiming a divine right, for example, he persuades the 'sons' of his own infallibility, supposedly derived from a godhead."

What is crucial to an appreciation of Poinsett's position in Mexican affairs is to understand the ambiguities of Mexico in the 1820s, and here there is a direct parallel with the ambiguities at the time of Prince Hall's lodge activities in revolutionary Boston. The Scottish Rite and York Rite in Poinsett's day were not the same as they were later. He had been an enthusiastic Mason before he set foot in Mexico and he remained an enthusiastic Mason long after he left Mexico. The various Masonic bodies were not all of one mind. Masonry has always been a pluralistic system. This takes on importance today not only for understanding Mexico but for appreciating other historical disputes, such as that over the corruption of history to buttress last-ditch attempts to depict black Freemasonry as somehow outside the pale.

As will be seen in the concluding article in this series, Poinsett did use York Masonry for political purposes. What is significant is that it was the Mexicans who took the initiative in the politicization of Masonry, not Poinsett. Masonry was already part of Mexican politics when he arrived. Nevertheless, there is denying that the brothers found in him an energetic ally.