Dan Brown’s latest best-seller, The Lost Symbol, has stirred public interest in the Freemasons, a society for upper-class men that began during the Enlightenment. In the book, fictional Harvard University professor Robert Langdon must decipher Masonic symbols and codes to find a missing Freemason.
UC Irvine’s Lilith Mahmud studies “secret” groups like the Freemasons. Her research has taken her to Italy, where she lived among Freemasons for 18 months. Here, the assistant professor of women’s studies, anthropology, and culture & theory discusses the appeal of secret societies and the accuracy of Brown’s depiction of the Freemasons.
Q: What is Freemasonry?
A: Freemasonry emerged in 18th century European intellectual salons as a secret fraternal society. Over the last three centuries, Masonic lodges have spread throughout the world; some are still secretive, while others are very visible. Freemasonry entails a hierarchical path: After an initiation ritual, a Freemason is considered an apprentice, then a fellow, then a master, advancing through as many as 33 different “degrees.” Members embrace humanist values such as liberty, fraternity and equality and are often involved with charities, but the lodges are still very exclusionary places. One of the stated goals of Freemasonry is to improve society by developing better citizens.
Of all the violence that has plagued Pakistan in the last few years perhaps none is more symptomatic of the larger war over the country’s future than the double suicide bombing that occurred in the International Islamic University in Islamabad last week.