The recent push for Mormons to be stricter about wearing temple garments got me thinking about the temple again. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about connections between the endowment ceremony and freemasonry, from which a significant part of the endowment presentation is derived. After all, temple garments are essentially men’s undergarments with masonic symbols on them.
Joseph Smith instituted the endowment ceremony in 1842, less than two months after becoming a Master Mason in the Nauvoo Masonic Lodge. At the time, Smith taught that the endowment was the restoration of “true masonry”, which originated with the Priesthood and had since been corrupted through apostasy. Masonic rituals convey a connection between masonry and Solomon’s temple. They depict the legend of Hiram Abiff, who is presented as the temple’s chief architect. In the legend, Abiff was killed by three ruffians who unsuccessfully tried to obtain from him the Master Mason’s secrets.
Today’s scholarship points to a more modern origin of masonry. There is no evidence that anything close to masonry was happening in Solomon’s temple. It likely originated with trade guilds in medieval Europe and then evolved into a modern fraternal organization.
While the purported aims of the Mormon temple endowment are drastically different from those of the masonic rites, there are some curious overlaps between the two.
Most notably, the Mormon endowment borrows the masons’ use of tokens, signs and penalties. In both masonic and Mormon ceremonies, secret handshakes called tokens are taught to the participants. The participants must then make a sign corresponding to the token, and while making the sign, repeat an oath to never reveal the token and sign. Masonic candidates also covenant in the ceremony that they would suffer a violent penalty if they ever broke confidentiality and revealed the token or sign. Mormon endowments contained similar penalties until they were removed from the ceremony in 1990.
Because of this emphasis on secrecy (or “sacredness” as Mormons would prefer to say), Mormons generally don’t talk about the endowment. There is no approved written commentary on what the tokens and signs mean, what we’re supposed to learn from them, or what their purposes are. I was always taught that I would learn things in the temple over time “through the Spirit”. For years I would participate in endowment ceremonies (as proxy for deceased persons, a common Mormon practice) and rack my brain as to what the symbolism in the ceremonies could possibly mean. For one sign, participants are specifically told to keep their thumb extended. For another, they are told to put one hand in cupping shape. I wondered what these gestures were supposed to symbolize. Is cupping my hand supposed to suggest holding the water of life? Or making a receptacle to contain the Lord’s blessings? I really had no idea.
In masonry, the meanings of the signs are shockingly clear. For one ceremony, candidates are instructed to “raise the right arm and draw the hand, still open, across the throat, thumb next [to] the throat, and drop the hand perpendicular by the side."
They are then instructed to repeat the following:
“All this I most solemnly promise and swear, with a firm and steadfast resolution to perform the same, without any hesitation, mental reservation, or self-evasion of mind whatever, binding myself under no less penalty than of having my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by its roots, and my body buried in the rough sands of the sea, at low-water mark, where the tide ebbs and flows twice in twenty-four hours, should I ever knowingly violate this my Entered Apprentice obligation.”
In another ceremony, candidates are instructed to draw their “right hand flat, with the palm of it next to [their] breast from the left to the right side with some quickness, and drop[] it down by [their] side.”
They are then instructed to repeat the following:
“All this I most solemnly promise and swear, with a firm and steadfast resolution to perform the same, without any hesitation, mental reservation, or self-evasion of mind whatever, binding myself under no less penalty than of having my breast torn open, my heart plucked out, and placed upon the highest pinnacle of the temple, there to be devoured by the vultures of the air, should I ever knowingly violate the Fellow Craft obligation.”
The purpose of the signs in masonry is to graphically illustrate the penalties for revealing the associated tokens. Earlier versions of the Mormon temple endowment contained similar horrific descriptions of penalties and accompanying motions. The mention of penalties has been removed from post-1990 endowment ceremonies, but vestiges of them remain. These include, among others, the extended thumb (for cutting your throat) and the cupped hand (for ripping out your heart). Needless to say the meanings of the signs are not as uplifting as I hoped, and I doubt the Spirit would have ever deciphered them for me.
Secret handshakes made sense in the context of masonry and the trade guilds from which masonry was derived. Masons used tokens to identify members of their guild. Knowing a certain token meant that you had a certain level of experience and were entitled to a certain level of pay. If the tokens were publicly known, then anyone could pretend to be a skilled craftsman and the tokens would be useless. In an age without photo IDs or easily accessible registries, secret tokens were useful indicators of one’s skill and membership status.
It is less clear why secret handshakes are needed in the context of a Christian religion. I can only think of three possible responses to this conundrum.
It is a mystery that we are not privileged to understand in this life, but at some point in the afterlife, all will be revealed. We just need to have faith. I would guess that most Mormons think about temple ordinances this way, but I would be interested to hear otherwise. The problem with this line of thinking, aside from being entirely unproductive, is that it leaves one highly vulnerable to the whims of anyone who claims to speak for God. That’s why thought-terminating cliches like “God works in mysterious ways” are often employed by leaders of high-demand groups to escape scrutiny.
People will literally be tested at the gates of heaven to see if they know the tokens. Given that the tokens can easily be found on the internet, this doesn’t seem like a very good test of discipleship or righteousness. I doubt many Mormons believe this literally. Surely God would have a better system of deciding who gets into heaven than giving out secret handshakes to followers and swearing them to secrecy.
The tokens are used to train people to keep secrets. While this may sound incendiary, I believe it to be a fair hypothesis given that Joseph Smith himself said “the secret of masonry is to keep a secret.” Did Smith have any secrets that needed keeping at the time he instituted the endowment? He did. He was engaged in the illegal practice of polygamy. Smith went to great lengths to keep polygamy a secret, including the destruction of the printing press of the Nauvoo Expositor, which was planning to print an article exposing the practice. So there was certainly a motive for Smith to create an inner circle of people that knew how to keep secrets. In fact, the endowment ceremony first developed around church members who were secretly practicing plural marriage. It was later given to other members who knew about polygamy but kept it secret.
I don’t know if secret handshakes were ever used to identify polygamists or endowed church members, but given the facts that we have, I can’t think of any purpose for them other than to teach secrecy. They certainly never made me feel any closer to God.
It never bothered me that parts of the endowment ceremony came from masonry. Joseph Smith was a talented aggregator of ideas that were circulating in his day, and that never bothered me either. I think we should all look for good and useful ideas wherever we can find them. But it does bother me that Mormons are expected to sacrifice their time, money, agency and independent thought by participating in a ritual that is never fully explained and that has a questionable origin and purpose.
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