This is part of Advice Week: Friendship Edition. We’ll help you make friends, leave them—and even sleep with them.
A nondescript building in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood houses, variously, the offices of the Fader magazine, the offices of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies (and various therapists’ rooms therein), and the infrastructure consulting firm AECOM.
Visitors to the building, coming in through the 23rd Street entrance, might glimpse some strange imagery decorating the lobby—a mural full of odd symbols, men in aprons moving blocks of stone around a pyramid featuring a golden sun.
The Masonic Hall was built by Freemasons in 1873, and is still owned and operated by them. The 23rd Street half of the city-block-spanning building is the commercial side, rented out to tenants, but the other side is entirely occupied by Masonic lodge meeting rooms, libraries, and administrative offices, and has been for over 150 years.
For the uninitiated, a Masonic “lodge” (a word the organization uses in a nongeographical sense) is an affiliation of local Freemasons. As for what a Freemason is—well, he’s a member of a Masonic lodge.
Every Tuesday, after seeing my therapist on the 14th floor, I would head down in the elevator alongside a guy about my age whose appointment clearly ended at the same time as mine. Stepping out into the Masonry-themed lobby I wondered to myself, half-jokingly, if he ever considered becoming a Freemason to assuage whatever personal or psychological issues were bringing him to the National Institute for the Psychotherapies.
Officially, women cannot become Masons; nor can atheists. To become a Mason of a recognized, “regular” lodge, you need to be a man of legal age who has a belief in “the Great Architect of the Universe.” A nondenominational belief, that is—Jews, Muslims, Christians, deists and agnostics alike can join, although for a Catholic, joining risks excommunication.
After a few months of weekly visits to the building, I was finally curious enough to take the free tour offered on a plaque in the lobby. Accompanied by Masons from around the world and their more than slightly reluctant-looking wives and children, I was led up and down the building by an elderly Mason named Shlomo.
I marveled at the huge, colorfully decorated, pristine meeting rooms for each lodge and the history on display in the foyers outside—famous faces from Harry Houdini to Fiorello La Guardia had once been Masons meeting inside, as Shlomo proudly explained.
Clearly Masonry was still thriving, at least in New York City, making use of these spectacular meeting spaces. But who are the Masons today?
Modern Freemasonry, a voluntary organization of men known as a fraternal order, emerged in the 18th century in England, out of existing associations of literal, actual medieval stonemasons. “Accepted” or “speculative” masons—those who were interested in belonging to such a respected brotherhood, but did not lay brick and stone for a living—first began to be admitted to Scottish and English lodges made up of actual masons in the 16th century. Soon enough, Freemasons were, for the most part, not hardworking tradesmen but educated gentlemen of the Enlightenment, who adopted the guild structure and the allegorical, spiritual vibes of the Freemasons as the basis for a more general-interest, semisecret members-only society.
A central body, the Grand Lodge of England, was founded in 1710, marking the beginning of modern Freemasonry. Its genteel membership found in Freemasonry an appealing in-group with staunch principles, rituals, and history dating back to biblical times, which they then proceeded to imbue with modern principles of toleration, progress, and experimental science, alongside traditional values of brotherhood and hard work.
Freemasonry is what I would call an elevated subculture. By virtue of being populated and promulgated from the very start by elite and wealthy Western men, and because its internecine squabbles and general popularity the world over have become public knowledge thanks to various anti-Masonry campaigns which have aimed to discredit its members, it has acquired prominent cultural standing and power which is, some might say, disproportionate to its actual substance.
As a “secret society,” it has been the target of large-scale conspiracy theories, immortalized by The Illuminatus! Trilogy and National Treasure films, to say nothing of the Dan Brown books, which placed Masonic myth and legend on center stage.
While not a religion in and of itself, Freemasonry is far from secular. Its principles of self-improvement are based in Abrahamic fundamentals, with a dash of Orientalism, and the symbolism of the biblical temple and its architect are central to the rituals which make up the meat of official Masonic meetings.
An answer to my question—Where are all the masons, in 2024?—can be found on the thriving /r/freemasonry subreddit, where dozens of enthusiastic young Masons from around the world practically knocked down my door in order to gush about their experiences in the fraternity.
While Masonic numbers are down since the boom days of the 1940s and ’50s, there are still nearly 1 million Masons in the U.S., belonging to 50 state Grand Lodges plus one for Washington, D.C., and 6 million Masons worldwide. Most lodges are engaged in active recruiting. The stereotype of Masons being entirely stodgy old boomers is only half true.
Tyler Lee, a 26-year-old Mason based in Boston, joined a local lodge after being frustrated with the difficulty of making friends after college. He checked out a few lodges, ones full of older guys and ones that were super serious about ritual, before landing on one made up of mostly younger men who were slightly more casual about the whole thing.
Like most lodges, Tyler’s lodge meets once a month for “official” meetings, where members perform Freemasonry’s secret and elaborate rituals, but informal meetings are far more frequent—like the group of college friends he had been missing, they organize over group chats to have barbecues, go to baseball games, and just hang out.
Tyler says that to be a Mason, you need to be a stand-up guy. “Anyone who’s a good guy who’s looking for a little bit of community, that’s what we’re looking for,” he said, telling me about his role in admitting new members to his lodge. Specific admissions criteria vary from lodge to lodge, but broadly, an emphasis is placed on trustworthiness, friendliness, sincerity, honesty, and openness to experience. Essentially, guys have to pass a vibe check from the other brothers of the lodge before being officially asked to join.
The consensus among the group of enthusiastic Masons that my Reddit outreach self-selected for seems to be that Freemasonry is a force for good in their life, helping them be even more of a stand-up guy than they were before joining.
“Freemasonry has fundamentally changed my worldview for the better and made me a genuinely more accepting and open person,” said Nicholas Bell, a 33-year-old Mason in Washington state. Joseph, a 24-year-old Mason in the U.K., agreed that “Masonry has really helped me find my place in the world since [the pandemic].”
Mainline Freemasonry’s dependence on tradition—no women, no atheists—might be a turnoff to some, but in our lore-obsessed culture, Freemasonry fits right in as a fount of nearly infinite history, ritual, symbolism, and mystery, which is the icing on the cake of close-knit and reliable community.
Freemasonry can be addicting, and often expensive. Once a Mason is initiated, he can spend a lot of his free time organizing lodge events, visiting other lodges, or adding on bonus degrees and organizations. Once you get through the basic three degrees (levels) of Freemasonry, there is a veritable bouquet of appendant bodies to choose from, all with their own lore and traditions—the Scottish and York Rites, the Shriners, the Order of the Eastern Star.
There’s something for everyone in Freemasonry. A reliable “found family” of loyal friends on hand when you need them, as Tyler recounted, or deep dives into the centuries of Masonic lore and history, for the nerds. Community service is a big part of Masonry and associated groups like the Shriners, and men find support for big life events like divorces, deaths, raising children, and career changes from among their lodge family, including from older men who have been through it all before.
“I think that fraternal orders can satisfy [both] the desire for male companionship and mentoring without toxic masculinity,” said Paul, a 28-year-old Mason from Ontario. He grew up in Hamilton near the Scottish Rite building and always wondered what happened inside. Eventually, posts on Reddit convinced him to join, and he soon found himself a member of a nonjudgmental brotherhood which has become a vital support system for him. “There’s a sense of community and trust that I have never found anywhere else, that nothing is off-limits.”
Andre LaFleur, a 32-year-old Mormon Mason based in Salt Lake City, enjoys all aspects of being a Mason, including the deep connections between Mormonism and Freemasonry—founder Joseph Smith himself was a Freemason. “I love the camaraderie and the ceremonies that we perform for new candidates,” he told me, adding that Freemasonry in his experience includes all sorts of guys, from more intellectually oriented “Renaissance men” to dudes who are mainly there for the barbecues.
There is a general understanding that some work needs to be done in order to make the somewhat obscure traditions that Masonry centers on turn into a productive and fulfilling community.
I heard over and over again the truism that a man gets out of Masonry what he puts into it. The official prerequisites of age, sex, and belief are accompanied by unofficial ones: A guy has to be ready to approach the objectively strange and un-modern habitus of Masonry with earnestness, sincerity, and commitment. “To make the most out of Freemasonry, a prospective candidate needs a desire for self-improvement and an open mind,” Paul said.
“If you show up, help get a dinner going, socialize, attend lodge, discuss deep topics with brothers, really put your all into memorizing ritual and making a lodge meeting something impactful and meaningful,” agreed Nicholas Bell, “then you will get a lot out of Freemasonry and will become a better man by doing it.”
Henry (a pseudonym) is a 38-year-old trans man in the north of England who became a Mason a few years ago. He’d never considered Freemasonry until after the pandemic, when he was unemployed, searching for community, and found himself walking past a local lodge near his home and seeing lots of guys hanging out outside.
“The sense that we’re all working together on something that is ultimately pointless is very nice,” he said, before clarifying that it isn’t that the rituals are pointless, per se—in fact “the whole point of the enterprise is to spend time with each other, and to do these sort of morality plays together.” Masonic rituals, the scripted rites that Masons act out at official meetings, have an emphasis on teaching morals through allegory. One of the most important Masonic allegories is of the fable of the building of the Temple of Solomon, starring the mythological architect Hiram Abiff, whose life and death are acted out during Masonic ceremonies.
These rituals are at the very center of what it means to be a Freemason. A brother has to memorize his part in the rites and aim to perform them well. But, Henry continued, it’s not like at work or at home, where a mistake could cost people time, money, or hurt feelings. Being a Mason is a low-stakes but high-reward way to spend your time.
While Henry isn’t out as a trans man to his lodge, and doesn’t plan to let them know, he’s out as gay and says his brothers have all been very accepting of him and his partner. Freemasons tend to be “the kind of people that want to join; very sociable and friendly and human-focused,” he said, acknowledging that while in his experience the Grand Lodge of England is generally LGBTQ+-positive, he’s heard differently about state Grand Lodges in America.
Nevertheless, Masonic lodges are commonly referred to as “safe spaces” by brothers—oases of support and male camaraderie in a modern desert of political division and the noxious temptations of the manosphere. It’s a phones-down, eyes-up escape from the mundane into the symbolic, one which—as one Mason described it to me—will ”inculcate a deep respect and love for the human condition.”
Speaking to a selection of the general population of young Freemasons, as well as career experts in fraternal orders, I was struck by the fact that the appeal of Freemasonry has a great deal of crossover with the appeal of modern-day fandom cultures. Freemasonry, like fandoms, offers an opportunity for people who initially come together over shared interests and practices to end up as a tight-knit community with deep bonds that go way beyond the lore.
Is Freemasonry an example of an extant antique fandom? I asked Heather Calloway, director of the Fraternal Center at Indiana University. An expert in the material culture of fraternalism, she agreed that there’s a great deal of crossover between Freemasons and fanboys. “They all want to buy the pin, the jewel, the sash,” she explained, telling me about her experiences at Masonic conventions. “If they’re going to join this little side group,” like the Shriners or the Scottish Rite, “they buy all the swag to go with it, and they want it now. They want it while they’re at the con.”
They’ve got merch, they’ve got low-stakes historical and mythological LARPing, they’ve got delicious lodge dinners and regular outings—basically, they have fun. And, importantly, they also seem to become better people, thanks to the focus on philanthropy and self-improvement prevalent in Masonic tradition. It seems clear that the values of Freemasonry, and the material and social benefits that it provides, can certainly act as answer and antidote to the loneliness and disaffection that many men deal with today.
“It’s not just Freemasonry,” Calloway told me. “Odd Fellows [are] having a huge resurgence—guys are looking for a place to join.” The Odd Fellows, a co-ed fraternal order almost as old as the Masons, has some 3,000 lodges around the world. (Yes, “co-ed fraternal” sounds like a contradiction in terms, but that’s how they self-describe.)
Clearly, young men yearn for the lodges. If a lodge is full of only old dudes and in danger of dying, then it’s not the fault of Freemasonry’s inherent incompatibility with the 21st century, but instead of the lodge itself—if a lodge doesn’t have an accessible website or isn’t easily contactable, it misses out on younger members like Henry, who told me that when it came time to join, he picked the local lodge with the best website.
Of course, Masonry isn’t for everyone—each man I spoke to emphasized that. “You have a lot of guys who are just curious, they give it a try, come to some of the dinners, and then they see that it’s not for them,” Tyler Lee said.
Sure, it’s not as glitzy or hip as a run club or pickleball league, but lodges have lasted for centuries for a reason. The idea of a real-life, analog community, spiritual but not religious, built around basic principles of brotherhood and self-improvement, is never not going to be something guys are interested in and benefit from.
Masons, officially, don’t recruit—the common phrase “to be one, ask one” refers to how an intrinsic motivation to be a Mason is the only thing necessary to make the leap. If anyone reading this finds themselves lodge-curious, I suggest throwing a line to the friendly guys at /r/freemasonry.
