Toronto Society for Masonic Research -- Governance Inquiry

This web site contains Masonic governance research work in progress.

Education is the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction.  It teaches accepted habits, values, skills, facts, knowledge, and conclusions.

Research is the systematic inquiry into and study of materials and sources in order to discover facts, gain insight, and reach understanding.

Freemasonry is often described as a "peculiar system of morality", with fundamental values such as honesty, goodness, truth, equality, and liberty of conscience.  An objective scrutiny will show Freemasonry to be a peculiar system of governance, with issues ranging from authenticity to veracity.

The object of Masonic Research is not to influence, persuade, or change any body or persons, not to defend past actions or justify future decisions, but to inquire, find the facts, and document them without applying evaluative filters.  It is essential to render texts with utmost fidelity, to distinguish between the texts and our interpretations, evaluations, comments, conclusions, and conjectures, and to make explicit our prejudicial assumptions, beliefs, or desires.   It would be best to minimize evaluations and eliminate predispositions.

Many masonic authors have had access to sources that document corruptions or falsifications, but they failed to bring to light the facts of these surreptitious alterations and tacit substitutions.

Whether such "veracity issues" were perpetrated by a most famous Mason 230 years ago, or by an oligarchy of leaders today, and regardless of the motives, the concern of a Masonic Researcher should be to find and document the facts, dispassionately and without bias.

The actions of Masonic Politicians should be reported factually, not eulogized.  When historians are silent, or embellish their accounts, they may be more culpable than those politicians themselves, by perpetuating into perpetuity what would otherwise have been limited wrongs.  The documents and histories published here illustrate this principle.  For example, the contemporaneous failure to expose William Preston's 1781 forgery, led to its enshrining by Webb in 1797 and by Sussex in 1827, perpetuating harm against the spirits, hearts, and minds of a million Masters of lodges, and abusing their trust, in a chain of deception and self-deception.  Even though the UGLE did correct this falsification in 1986, most Grand Lodge Historians, Educators, Legislators, Ritualists, and top leaders have not made this fact known to their lodges and their members, and instead continue to mislead trusting Masters-Elect into assenting to and swearing to enforce compliance with, known falsehoods.  All this in the name of the sacrosanct doctrine of "no change", which is itself a hoax.

"The curious subject of freemasonry has unfortunately been treated only by panegyrists or calumniators, both equally mendacious." -- Henry Hallam, 1872

"The historian must not try to know what is truth, if he values his honesty; for if he cares for his truths, he is certain to falsify his facts." -- Henry Adams