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I would like to join the Manhattan Beach, Ca lodge. Anyone on here that can help me out?

srios9

Registered User
Any members willing to help me out?


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dfreybur

Premium Member
In California and most of the US the standard procedure is to look them up on line to find out when and where they meet. Send email and/or call but understand that many lodges are bad at answering email or calls. Show up about an hour before the monthly meeting and starting showing up every month from then on. Introduce yourself and ask how to become a Mason. Expect to be there several times before you get a signed petition. So you don't need a recommender at most US lodges and it's not expected in California lodges.

Do not be surprised if it turns out you know a member but were not aware of his membership before you started showing up.
 

angelNOLA

Registered User
I live in southbay also. Is this lodge coed? My father, grandfather and great grandfather were all free masons in new orleans. Being a female I wasn't sure I could join. How would I go about finding a lodge that is accepting of women? My family has passed on, but I do have a few membership cards of theirs that does show their lineage in the organization. Thank you so much.
 

Roy_

Registered User
angelNOLA. I understand that there is no too much co-Masonry in the USA, so you may have to look around a bit to see if there is a lodge in your neighbourhood. A good start is Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-Freemasonry
There are links to co-Masonic organisations at the bottom.

As far as I know, in the USA there is:
  • Order of the Eastern Star; when you are in some way affiliated with a regular Freemason (family to the third line), you can join this affiliated organisation. Open for men and women;
  • Le Droit Humain is a mixed Masonic order that is active in over 60 countries, inclusing the USA. It originates in France in the late 19th century;

There are a few theads here about "can women be Freemason" and "co-Masonry", but these threads tend to get cluttered around the regular/irregular discussion. There are lodges mentioned here and there though. There is at least one member of Le Droit Humain active on this board, perhaps he can tell you more about this organisation in the USA.
 

dfreybur

Premium Member
I live in southbay also. Is this lodge coed? My father, grandfather and great grandfather were all free masons in new orleans. Being a female I wasn't sure I could join. How would I go about finding a lodge that is accepting of women? My family has passed on, but I do have a few membership cards of theirs that does show their lineage in the organization. Thank you so much.

If you want to follow in the family footsteps the way to go about it is to find an Order of the Eastern Star chapter or Order of the Amaranth chapter near you. Regular lodges are male only and have been since the system was founded three centuries ago and that's the system that your family was involved in. Male only lodges have mixed auxiliary orders that include women and those are the Star and Amaranth. You may find your mother, grandmother and/or great-grandmother were members of one of these orders. This is the path your ancestors would expect you to take - They made promises to be loyal to this system.

That's not the only option. Just as the world has both horses and zebras, the world has regular lodges with the system I described built up around them and the world has orders that revolted and splintered away in the past. Some families have a long history of being rebellious. Only you can say if your ancestors would smile on you for taking this path. If they were the rebellious sort it can be about the "spirit of the law versus the letter of the law" so they may care more about your spunk than about exactly which order you approach.

But be cautioned - If you want to be active the Star and Amaranth are vastly larger than the tiny zebra groups. There's a female only lodge that meets in (Hollywood, maybe North Hollywood) and a CoMason lodge that meets San Francisco. You might have to go to Chicago to get to the next one. Join the Star or Amaranth and you'll drive past several just to get to the nearest zebra lodge. Zebras are wild and pretty and so on but there aren't many of them around on this continent.
 

NY.Light

Registered User
I live in Manhattan. While I am not yet a mason (I need to be 21 now! lol), the vast majority of Manhattan lodges meet at the GL building (nymasons.org). Go to their web page (above) and they can help locate a lodge. Other lodges are in the city, but lodges outside of Manhattan are localized in the other boroughs.
 
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