Duties and Privileges of a Fellowcraft

The first and foremost duty of a Fellowcraft is to live according to the obligations of the Degree; to be obedient to the Officers of the Lodge and to the rules, regulations, and laws of the Fraternity. Also, he must learn well the work in order to pass his test for proficiency. If he be earnest and sincere he will study the meaning of the Degree for his Masonic life in the future.

His limitations are equally plain. He may sit in his lodge only when open on the Fellowcraft or Entered Apprentice Degree. He is not entitled to vote, to hold office, to have a voice in the administration of the lodge, now would he be entitled to relief, or to join in public Masonic processions. He is, however, entitled to a Masonic Funeral.

He has a right to instruction whereby he may prove himself proficient in open Lodge; and he can make himself known to other Fellowcrafts by means of his modes of recognition.

A Mason remains a Fellowcraft, in a real sense, as long as he lives. Taking the First Degree is like drawing a circle, the Second Degree is a circle drawn around the first, the Third Degree is still a larger circle drawn around the other two, and containing both. A portion of Freemasonry is contained within the first, another part is in the second, still a third in the last. Being a Master Mason includes being also an Entered Apprentice and a Fellowcraft. The Entered Apprentice’s and Fellow Craft’s Degrees are not like stages left behind in a journey to be abandoned or forgotten; rather are they preserved and incorporated in the Master Mason’s Degree and form the foundation on which it rests.

The ideas, the ideals, and the teachings of the Second Degree as permanently belong to Freemasonry as the Third; the moral obligations continue always to be binding. A Master Mason is as much the Brother of Entered Apprentices an Fellowcrafts as of Master Masons.

Freemasonry has many aspects. The First Degree makes its appeal to the conscience, and we are taught how necessary is obedience, apprenticeship and industry if we would become good men and true. The Second Degree exalts the intellectual, paying its tribute alike to knowledge and wisdom. In the Third Degree, as you will learn in due time, is the Masonry of the soul. Running through all three degrees isthe Masonry of fellowship, good will, kindness, loyalty, toleration, brotherly love, we also learn the Masonry of benevolence, expressed in relief and charity; again we have Masonry as an institution, organized under laws and managed by responsible officers; and yet again we have a Masonry that holds above and before us those great ideals of truth, justice, courage and goodness, to which we can always aspire.

The Operative builders gave the world, among other masterpieces, the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe. Their art was one of the highest and most difficult practiced in their period. The Masons were masters of mathematics, which they called Geometry, or engineering, of the principles of design, or carving, of stained glass, and of mosaic.Through all the changes of the Craft in after years, through it’s transformation more than two hundred years ago into a Speculative Fraternity, their great intellectual tradition has remained and stands today embodied in the Second Degree, which teaches Masons to love the Liberal Arts and Sciences, and apply them in daily living.

This Masonry of the mind develops one of the real meanings of the Second Degree; it is what is truly signified by our term “Fellow Craft” Whenever you prove yourself a friend of enlightenment, whenever you become and enemy of bigotry or intolerance, and a champion of the mind right to be free, to do it’s work without check or hindrance, when you support schools and colleges, and labor to translate into action the command “Let there be light”, you live the teachings of the Fellow Craft’s Degree.

Excerpted from “The Masonic Scholar: A Manual of Masonic Education for Candidates”

Printed by the Grand Lodge F.&A.M. of California.