Why Every New Brother Needs a Mentor in Year One

Every Entered Apprentice leaves his initiation with an apron, a grip, a password and a head full of things he does not yet understand. The ceremony itself is unforgettable, but the meaning of what he has just promised — and how he is supposed to live it out in the twelve months ahead — is rarely clear on the night.\n\nThis is why every new brother needs a mentor. Not the Junior Deacon who conducted him around the lodge room, useful though that officer is. Not his proposer or seconder, whose duty ends at the ballot box. He needs a separate, assigned brother of at least five years' standing in the craft, whose explicit job is to sit with him once a month and answer the questions that the ritual deliberately does not answer.\n\nA good mentor does three things, and does them quietly. First, he explains the ritual step by step: the language, the symbolism, the history, and what each obligation actually means in practice. Second, he introduces the new brother around the lodge, especially to the older members whose names he will otherwise not remember. Third — and this is the part most easily overlooked — he teaches him how to be a Freemason outside the lodge room: how to speak to a brother in distress, how to recognise a masonic token when it is offered, and how to decline politely when someone asks him for something the craft does not do.\n\nIf your lodge has not assigned you a mentor, ask the Worshipful Master for one at the next regular meeting. You will not be the first brother to do so, and a well-run lodge will consider it a serious failing of its own that you had to ask.\n\nYou do not need to be a brilliant ritualist, or a wealthy man, or a natural public speaker to be a good Freemason. What you need, more than anything else in your first year, is one brother you can be honest with. Find that brother.