The night of my initiation, I showed up at the lodge about 30 minutes before it was about to start. I got to meet many people that I had not previously met. Everyone seemed to be very nice and supportive. One of the things told to the three of us that every single person that was in that room had been through the exact same thing. That helped calm the nerves a little not knowing exactly what was going to happen.
One thing that I had found during my research was an account of George Washington’s initiation and it did make me a little nervous. If anyone reads this that is considering joining freemasonry, I will advise you to not spoil the night in any way by reading any ritual posted on the internet. There are differences in how things were done then and how they are done now. Besides that, each state, province, country, etc. is governed by its own grand lodge. From my understanding, although they all are very similar, there are differences.
The lodge meeting started and the three of us were sitting outside the lodge room waiting to be asked to enter. A little while later someone came out and asked us some questions then took us to another room where we changed clothes into something they had provided for us. We were then ready to begin the ceremony.
I will not write anything about the ceremony itself. What I will say is that it impressed me very much with all the work that went on and that it was done 100% from memory with a little prompting on what we were to say. For anyone reading this that might be considering joining freemasonry but worried that there is some religious reason not to, I did state that I put my trust in Jesus Christ and that was acceptable to the requirement that a mason must believe in God.
The ceremony took about an hour and 45 minutes and was very impressive. It was a little overwhelming all the information given to you. There is no way you can take all of that in. It is something that I will remember for as long as I live though.
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