Printed in the Fall 2024 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "The Masonic Enigma: An Interview with Jay Kinney" Quest 112:4, pg 10-14
By Richard Smoley
Jay Kinney and I go back a long way. I met him in the mid-eighties, when he had just started a new magazine called Gnosis: Journal of the Western Inner Traditions, which attracted a great deal of attention in occult circles. I began to write regularly for it, and in late 1990, I came on as editor, with Jay as publisher and editor in chief.
Gnosis was always a tiny magazine, with a maximum circulation of 16,000. Its full-time staff never consisted of more than four people. Yet it had and continues to have an outsized impact. I have been editor of Quest for sixteen years and have published thirteen books of my own, but when I run into people in the esoteric milieu, the most common thing they still tell me is how much they loved and miss Gnosis.
Gnosis was published between 1985 and 1999, which was a golden age for small magazines. Desktop publishing (though still in its infancy) made it possible to produce a great deal more with slender resources. And many independent distributors were catering to niche markets like ours.
This changed in the late nineties. Book and magazine distributors began to consolidate or go out of business entirely, making what was already a marginal enterprise unsustainable. In those days, Quest was a competitor of Gnosis on newsstands, but it too became unsustainable. Although the magazine was obviously not discontinued, in 1998 its scale was pulled back, and it became what it is now is: a journal for members of the TSA.
In 1999, Gnosis ceased publication, and Jay and I went on to different enterprises. Jay was strongly drawn to Freemasonry, about which we had published an issue in 1996, and he became heavily involved in it. This culminated in (among other things) his 2009 book, The Masonic Myth: Unlocking the Truth about the Symbols, the Secret Rites, and the History of Freemasonry (HarperOne), which remains the best single introduction to the subject.
In the spring of 2024, Jay and I conducted an email interview about his thoughts on Masonry.
Richard Smoley: What were your first impressions of Masonry, going back to childhood?
Jay Kinney: To be honest, I don’t recall being very aware of Masonry at all when I was young. My family lived in Ohio until I turned twelve, and Masonry was pretty widespread there historically, but I didn’t cross paths with it much at all. Though, when my family would go on summer road trips and we drove into small towns, it was common to see signs on the outskirts promoting the local Rotary Club, the Lions Club, the Elks, and the local Masonic lodge. But they were all an equal mystery to me.
It wasn’t until I was in my later teenage years in Illinois and I came across dusty old occult bookshops in Chicago and the TS headquarters out in Wheaton, with its marvelous Olcott Library, that I became more aware of Masonry, which seemed to have some vague relationship to esotericism and ancient myths of temple builders. So that rather intrigued me.
Smoley: What drew you to Masonry at first?
Kinney: I suppose, over the years, it was that it kept popping up in writings by metaphysical authors such as Manly Palmer Hall, Max Heindel, A.E. Waite, and Dion Fortune. They seemed to imply that Masonry was intertwined with the Western esoteric tradition in some fashion, either as an expression of that tradition or as a repository of esoteric lore. And of course I became aware that during Annie Besant’s and Charles Leadbeater’s leadership of the TS, they encouraged a Theosophical variant of the Craft, Co-Masonry, which accepted both men and women as members.
At the same time, there were critics of Masonry who spread murky conspiracy theories about it being some sort of powerful secret society ruling the world from behind the scenes. That struck me as extremely far-fetched, but it also prodded me to seek out reliable sources discussing Masonry in down-to-earth terms. I researched it as best I could and actually met some Masons, both in person, and over the Internet in its early years.
I came away from those contacts with the strong impression that it was a fraternal brotherhood going back centuries that emphasized honesty and charitable works, and that it wasn’t diabolical or scary at all. If anything, it seemed kind of square and stuffy, but it was beginning to attract a younger generation who were taken with the legends of Masons building the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe and who were fascinated by all the symbolism and rituals that were part of it.
Smoley: What led you to decide to become a Mason?
Kinney: As I said before, I met some Masons and was favorably impressed by them. Also, we published an issue of Gnosis on Freemasonry, and doing that brought me into further contacts with Masons and a lot of its history. When Gnosis had one financial crisis too many (one of our major newsstand distributors declared bankruptcy, owing us tens of thousands of dollars), I suddenly had more time on my hands, and I figured that it might be a good time to explore the Craft, and, who knows? I might find an editing niche within its publishing networks that would appreciate my talents and knowledge.
Smoley: Could you say a little about your personal history and journey with Masonry?
Kinney: As it turned out, I discovered that a good number of Masons I met were familiar with Gnosis and had read it regularly. I felt very welcomed and became quite active, both at the local lodge I had joined, and on a more national level. I edited a monthly newsletter for my lodge and wrote research articles for the Scottish Rite Research Society’s newsletter and annual research volume. I served as librarian for the San Francisco Scottish Rite’s extensive archive and also wrote a long historical paper on one of the founders of the Oakland Scottish Rite, Edwin A. Sherman, who was quite a character, to put it mildly. I was honored with an Albert Gallatin Mackey Award for excellence in Masonic research for that paper. I eventually wrote a book on Masonic history and lore, The Masonic Myth, which ruffled some feathers of the old guard, but proved very popular with younger Masons and the curious public.
Smoley: What is your current status as a Mason?
Kinney: I remain a member in good standing of my two Craft lodges, as well as with the York Rite and the Scottish Rite, and was honored with the 33rd degree by the latter. I still attend some meetings and functions, but am not as active as I was in my busiest years.
Smoley: Could you talk about your views of Masonry as a collective institution?
Kinney: Many people do not realize that Masonry is not one big international institution, but a complicated network of local grand lodges (by states and countries), as well as local lodges, side orders, youth groups, affinity groups, and many charitable groups. Some are in close relations with each other, but not all of them necessarily work together or even recognize each other’s validity.
Nevertheless, many Masons enjoy meeting other Masons when they travel around the world, and I think there is a shared sense of brotherhood and fraternity between individual Masons that transcends the differences or formal gaps between some Masonic organizations.
Smoley: What did you feel was most beneficial to you about your involvement with Masonry?
Kinney: There is a passage in the early eighteenth-century Constitutions of the Grand Lodge in London to the effect that Masonry brings together men who might have otherwise remained at a distance. And it has certainly been my experience that I’ve met many Masons and their families who I would not have met or socialized with were it not for Masonry.
I think the thing that has impressed me the most is that Masonry has enabled me to meet all sorts of people from all walks of life, and sometimes with the most differing perspectives and opinions, but to meet them in a context and a frame of mind that has enabled us to get along with each other and share in a sense of friendship and brotherhood.
Smoley: What did you find most frustrating and dissatisfying?
Kinney: I will admit that when I first joined Masonry, I came in with a very idealized view of its members and its values. Masons are taught that, in Masonic parlance, we are all “on the level,” that there is no station higher than that of a Master Mason (of the third degree), and that we are all to treat each other as brothers and equals. And I think that most of the time, that is true.
But, you know, people are people, and whatever we might intend, some people just don’t get along, or they rub each other the wrong way. Cliques form. Officers in positions of power, particularly those who have devoted decades of hard work to helping maintain Masonic institutions, can feel underappreciated or like they are carrying more of a load than others. That may even be true. So let me just say that Masonry gives all its members plenty of opportunities to try to be better men, and everyone does what they can.
Furthermore, Masonry dates back to earlier times, when memorization was a much more common skill, and its rituals have been handed down over the centuries in remarkably well-preserved forms. Much of that was passed along by mouth-to-ear transmission: the wording of rituals and lectures was not supposed to be written down. The rules on that have loosened over the years, but still, performing Masonic rituals demands a lot of memorization, which is not everyone’s cup of tea. I found that my own capacity for memorization is pretty limited, as I have a strong visual memory, but oral memory? Not so much. So I found myself limited in the roles I might play in degree rituals or even just the rituals of opening the lodge. That was a bit frustrating.
Smoley: What is your impression of the current direction in which Masonry as a whole is headed?
Kinney: My impression is that Masonry—at least in America—is headed in several different directions at once. On the one hand, based on membership statistics, the Craft has been slowly but surely shrinking since its peak in the 1950s. This has meant that many lodges across the country, especially in sparsely populated areas, have had to sell off their buildings and shut down or merge with other lodges. As our society shifted, and the stable patterns of working fathers and stay at home moms began to change, Masonry, as a men’s fraternal order, became out of step with the times and seemed anachronistic.
But if you hang on long enough, the pendulum begins to swing back, and a new wave of younger men have been attracted to Masonry, often precisely because it seems to be a living monument of the past, from when men came together to give each other mutual support (both moral and emotional). While many social institutions have almost disappeared, Masonry is doing its best to accommodate new generations who have been brought up feeling adrift and with a lack of roots. If the present leadership rises to the challenge, Masonry has the potential to start growing again and find a new role in civil society.
Smoley: One of the most evident aspects of Masonry is its rich symbolism. Could you say something about this in general and how it affected you personally?
Kinney: Symbols are one means by which humans convey ideas and feelings which are often quite deep but hard to express with mere words. One can run into this when trying to understand dreams. The same goes for myths, which are populated with characters or animals who act out stories that seem to convey some truths about existence that are also elusive and many-layered.
Many Masonic symbols are visual reminders of ideas or myths that are shared in Masonic degree rituals, which are compact dramas acted out in the lodge room. Others are a kind of geometric shorthand for lessons that convey certain values and principles. For instance, the workman’s tool of a level can symbolize being balanced in one’s approach to life as well as upholding that all Masons are “on the level” and to be treated equally.
For better or for worse, I would say that symbols as a kind of coded visual language played a larger role in Masonry in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries than at present. But there too, it might be a part of the Masonic heritage that the new generations of Masons may pull out of the storage closet and polish up and use anew.
Smoley: What effect did the Masonic rites have on you?
Kinney: I was lucky to join a lodge whose members took pride in performing the degree rituals with sincerity and considerable skill, so I had the wonderful experience of feeling like I was being initiated into a tradition with a lot of depth and meaning. They had a great impact on me, and they remain alive in my memory to this very day.
Smoley: Could you offer some reflections on Masonic origins and history?
Kinney: I think it is safe to say that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, much of what passed for Masonic history and origins was a mix of legends, hearsay, horn tooting, and speculation. Masonry claimed a lineage going back to the workmen who designed and built Solomon’s Temple, and even those who built the Egyptian Pyramids, but such claims were “traditional” and without any concrete proof. Some legends associated the Masons with the Knights Templar, the famous warrior monks of medieval times who protected pilgrims to the Holy Land and who were associated with the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The evidence for this is extremely slim and circumstantial, but a lot of people will believe what they want to believe.
Luckily, beginning roughly in the mid-1800s, Masonic historians began to be more serious in their research and tried to find actual evidence for their theories. Later historians built upon this, and today we find serious academic scholars paying increasing attention to Freemasonry, both as a historical phenomenon and as a sociological and anthropological subject of interest.
Needless to say, most depictions of Masonry in novels and movies bear little resemblance to actual Freemasonry. I’m sure that some readers will be disappointed to hear that.
Smoley: As you mentioned, some popular theories link the origins of the Masons to the medieval Knights Templar. Could you explain a bit more why you dismiss those theories?
Kinney: Dating back to the 1980s and 1990s, there was a flood of “alternative history” books, including Michael Baigent’s and Richard Leigh’s Temple and the Lodge, Christopher Knight’s and Robert Lomas’s Hiram Key, and John J. Robinson’s Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry, among many others. To one degree or another, many of these books alleged that the Knights Templar, who fell out of favor with the papacy and the French monarchy and were put to the torch or otherwise disbanded, escaped to Scotland, where they survived within the Masonic lodges there.
There are many variations on these themes. One of the most popular is that the privately built Rosslyn Chapel outside of Edinburgh was decorated with secret Templar and Masonic symbols and motifs. An excellent debunking of these claims and many others can be found in books such as The Rosslyn Hoax? by Robert L.D. Cooper, the curator of the Grand Lodge of Scotland Museum and Library in Edinburgh.
Smoley: What would you say are the most common and most harmful errors people at large make about Masonry?
Kinney: I think the number one error is to attribute far more political and esoteric significance to Masonry than it has ever really had. There are many anti-Masonic conspiracy buffs out there, including many sincere Christians, who string together misinterpretations, long-disproved hoaxes, rumors, and fantasies about Masonry and end up convincing themselves that Masons are pawns of some sinister secret order or worse.
The Nazis in the 1930s and 40s were convinced that the Masons were in cahoots with the Jews and the Communists, and 80,000 German Masons were sent off to concentration camps, along with the Gypsies and everyone else that the Nazis deplored. Earlier, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Vatican condemned Freemasonry and considered it a threat to Catholicism. To be honest, there were Masons who did oppose Nazism and who did wish to trim back the political influence of the Vatican, especially in France and Italy. The Grand Orient variant of Masonry, which is predominant in France and Italy, did play a role in promoting democracy and secularism in those societies. It is often confused with the Masonic variants in the English-speaking countries, which have minimized their involvement in politics or religious controversies.
In The Masonic Myth, I share my research into the complicated reasons for the accusations and struggles affecting Masonry, and I must say that Masonry’s penchant for secrecy has done the Craft no favors. If people feel you are keeping secrets from them, it’s not surprising if they conclude that you have something to hide.
Now the case can be made that Masonic initiations have more impact if the candidate doesn’t know what will happen in the ritual ahead of time. That was certainly my experience. But, I think that a lot of the traditional secrecy in Masonry has been overdone. Luckily, the United Grand Lodge of England and various Grand Lodges in the United States have been making efforts to be more open and inviting. I find that encouraging.
At a time when so much of our political landscape has become polarized, with different groups projecting the worst onto each other, I think it is refreshing and helpful to have an organization that emphasizes fraternal good will, fellowship, honesty, and equality.