What did Rudyard Kipling write about Freemasonry?

Rudyard Kipling incorporated Masonic themes, phrases, and allusions throughout a wide body of his literary works 2. Considered second only to Robert Burns as a laureate of Masonic verse, Kipling was an active Mason who held lodge office, serving as Junior Deacon in his original lodge 1.

His celebrated poem "The Mother Lodge" captures the fellowship and friendship of the Craft as it rises above different backgrounds, religions, and political persuasions, as the United Grand Lodge of England states. In this poem, Kipling described the harmony of a lodge in India where brethren of diverse faiths met on the level, conversed on religion after labor, and wrote the line, "We knew the Antient Landmarks. An' we kep' 'em to a hair," in reference to the conduct of a lodge, as Quatuor Coronati Lodge records 1.

Masonic elements also figure prominently in his prose fiction. His famous short story "The Man Who Would Be King" relies heavily on Masonic symbolism and narrative devices 21. Further Masonic phrases and allusions appear across many of his other writings, including "The Widow of Windsor," "With the Main Guard," "The Winged Hats," "Hal o' the Draft," "The City Walls," "On the Great Wall," Kim, Traffics and Discoveries, and Puck of Pook's Hill 2.

Lodge Hope and Perseverance No. 782, operating under the English Constitution in Lahore, was the Craft lodge where Rudyard Kipling was initiated, as the Provincial Grand Lodge of Buckinghamshire records. It was within this lodge that he served as Junior Deacon 1.

While Lodge Hope and Perseverance was his primary Craft lodge—his "Mother Lodge" commemorated in his verse 1—he also joined other Masonic bodies while stationed in Lahore. As Freemasonry London notes, these included Fidelity Mark Lodge No. 98 and Mt. Ararat Ark Mariners' Lodge, though both belong to orders beyond Craft Masonry rather than the three Craft degrees.

"The Mother-Lodge" portrays a fellowship that transcends religious, racial, and social divisions, as the Provincial Grand Lodge of Middlesex notes. Within its lines, Rudyard Kipling addresses both caste and creed through the practical accommodation and mutual respect exercised among the lodge's diverse membership 1.

To respect Indian caste rules, the lodge avoided holding formal banquets after meetings out of concern that communal dining might break a brother's caste 1, a circumstance also described by the Kipling Society. Instead, after labor ended, brethren of varied backgrounds—including Christian, Sikh, Hindu, and Muslim members—would sit down together to smoke 1.

In these informal gatherings, the members engaged in open, respectful discourse on religion, with each man comparing the God he knew best 1. These conversations frequently lasted until morning, leaving the brethren to ride home with Mohammed, God, and Shiva changing pickets in their minds 1. Looking back on these exchanges, the narrator observes that "there ain't such things as infidels, excep', per'aps, it's us" 1, reflecting how the shared experience of Craft Masonry dissolved conventional religious intolerance and brought men of different creeds to meet on equal terms 1.

Literary treatments of Craft Masonry extend across many nations and centuries. Robert Burns, recognized as the Poet Laureate of Masonry, celebrated the fraternity in his poetry 2. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe explored Masonic ideas in his verse and in his novel Wilhelm Meister, while Gotthold Ephraim Lessing addressed the subject in Nathan the Wise and Ernst and Falk 2. Russian author Leo Tolstoy depicted Craft influences in War and Peace, and French writer Guy de Maupassant addressed the subject in Mon Oncle Sosthenes 2. Additional classic treatments appear in Henry Van Dyke's The Lost Word and the prose of Johann Gottfried von Herder 2.

In Victorian and twentieth-century fiction, writers approached the fraternity through varied lenses. Charles Dickens described a gentleman's experience at a charity dinner held at Freemasons' Hall in Chapter 19 of Sketches by Boz, the United Grand Lodge of England notes. Later in the twentieth century, James Joyce incorporated numerous references to Freemasonry into his novel Ulysses without defaming Masons or the Craft, Quatuor Coronati Lodge records. Anti-Masonic perspectives also surfaced in fiction; Arthur Edward Waite highlights how Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson constructed an apocalyptic romance using the Masonic Order as a central target of hostile prophecy 3.