We are all at our Initiation obligated to obey and preserve the Ancient Landmarks of the Order. Master Elect pledge himself not to allow or accept any deviation from the established and usage Landmarks. In reality United Grand Lodge of England’s Constitution rule 111, and thereby also The Grand Lodge of Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons of Denmark’s Constitution rule 68, establish, that every Master Elect, before being placed in the Chair, shall solemnly pledge himself to preserve and protect the Landmarks of the Order.
So why are these Landmarks considered important? Does a Masonic Landmark have a different meaning, compared to the meaning we normally put into the word?
We know that a navigator sees a landmark as a certain easily detectable characteristic mark in the landscape, which enables him to establish his position. We also know that the Bible in several books mention landmarks, e. g. in the Fifth book of Moses XXII, 17, where it clearly says, you shall not remove a neighbours landmark, being a certain tree, a big stone or a little brook, marking the boundaries for a farm, a village or for another certain area.
We also talk about landmarks in history – the battle of Trafalgar, the engagement at Dybboel, the Hiroshima atomic bomb, the landing on the moon and so on. In medical domain the discovery of the blood circulation, the introducing of antiseptic surgery and discovery of penicillin are landmarks.
All these landmarks have something in common: Each of them is special and distinct. Are there such landmarks in Freemasonry, and if so, can we make a list? Has such a list ever been published? These questions must sooner or later arise in every seeking Freemason, and when looking into the large amount of Masonic literature, he will actually find list after list. Some short with only a few items. Others long specifing a dozen or more. None of them are complete in accord.
Our seeking Brother then searches in the Constitution, in the rituals, in the annuals or in the minutes from the English Grand Lodge from 1717 and up to today. In none of these sources will he find an authoritative assurance or explanation about the Landmarks, and certainly not at The United Grand Lodge of England or its two predecessors. But if he searches carefully he will in the end find in the very first Constitution the earliest reference to the speculative Freemasons Old Landmarks. It is the contents of rule 39 in the common rules, claiming to be “ …. First collected by Mr George Payne, in year 1720, when he was Grand Master and approved by Grand Lodge on John the Baptist’s day, in year 1721, at Stationer’s Hall London.” That rule 39 begins as follows: “Every annual Grand Lodge has an inherited and deep rooted executive authority to make new Rules or change Rules to the best for the Fraternity: Always provided that the Old Landmarks are carefully preserved…”.
However, our searching Brother will notice that James Anderson, who collected that first Constitution’s introduction to the Common Rules declared, that he had: “ …compared them with and arranged them like the old Memoranda and like the customs of the Fraternity from time immemorial, and arranged them in this new Way…”.
This could help to bring our Brothers attention to the more than one hundred "Ancient Charges” in the form of hand scripts (HS) from Cookes and Regius’s hand scripts to the latest ones discovered. Having finished this laborious but interesting research, he will probably make the conclusion, that the phrase about old landmarks, or in reality the whole concept “Old Landmarks”, was a completely new idea brought forward by Grand Master George Payne, or perhaps more likely by James Anderson.
He will discover that the Ancient Charges are silent, over the subject “landmarks”, and our Brother will find it difficult not to make the conclusion, that whatever thoughts Payne and Anderson had in mind about Old Landmarks, they had at least not thought of a specific list with certain items, as they likewise were not bearers of any historical Principle brought to us from a distant antiquity.
It is perhaps therefore better to look on the purpose with the phrase. It is unthinkable that anyone will contradict the concept that the reason was, at that time as well as now, to preserve the existent speculative Masonic system absolutely unchanged. The Grand Lodge could not be deprived its inherited authority to make new rules or to make changes, but it was considered of major significance that such new or changed rules should not change the nature or characteristic of the system, as it was founded.
The meaning of the last lines was stated in the Constitution. As it were the History, Laws, Charges, Commands, Rules and Manners of the Brotherhood, written in James Andersons Constitution from 1723. No particular items should be relieved. The fundamental character of the new system had to be preserved.
It was actually as they had taken the almost empty shell from the operative Masons and filled it with the results of “conclusion of the Brotherhoods customs from time immemorial ….listed in this new Way”, i.e. filled with their own speculative Masonry, were devoted to secure a continuous existence for their new work. To have invented, what coming generations called a “moral system”, enabling a brotherhood of men of different faiths and political ideas, who otherwise would have disclaimed each other, was a great achievement.
It was worth preserving. Those who founded it were men with visions, and even if their big hope for some time was met with disillusions, during the festival and glamorous decades following the launch of the new system, the foundation they had laid was sound and strong enough to bear the magnificent building, which later generations built without diverging too much from the original plan.
Nevertheless there was nearly no part of this original plan, when it was suggested as a landmark, that was not criticized in one way or another. Systems claiming to be Freemasonry are today rather numerous around the world, and like doctrines of faith claiming to be either the true origin or representing that, which are closest to the intention of the old founders. Already in the middle of the 18th century a new Grand Lodge was consecrated in England, accusing the original Grand Lodge from 1717 to have diverged from the original plan, and at the end of the century there was or had been at least four Grand Lodges in this country alone. The first ten years of the 19th century passed by, before the discordances were “repaired” enough to enable the creation of a United Grand Lodge, which today in embossed repose continue its work.
But even this United Grand Lodge for some time has been accused by Freemasons from other sovereign jurisdictions to have a too stubborn reading of Anderson’s original charges. The Grand Lodge can not act otherwise if it will stay obedient to the exhortation to preserve the Old Landmarks. Every Masonic system is by necessity a dogmatic system, i. e. it demands from the candidates before the initiation to accept certain dogmas. Further more these dogmas can not be examined, analysed or modified, and no Grand Lodge can for logical reasons participate in a discussion about a new and different reading of them. An obvious problem arises, as different Grand Lodges have different fundamental dogmas, and a Grand Lodge can even go so far as to put question mark to another Grand Lodges right to use the word Freemasonry.
The United Grand Lodge is in a huge strong position to be descending from the original Grand Lodge from 1717, and only gives its recognition to those Masonic institutions, which recognize their own fundamental principles. From that logical reason it is obligated to forbid its members to have Masonic relationships with members from other systems. To accept that would be to admit the possibility of validity in other fundamental dogmas.
From this follows that the preserving of the original purity of any Masonic system must depend on the unchanged preserving of its fundamental dogmas, whatever they may be, and it is this preserving that metaphorical may be described as ”to preserve the Old Landmarks”.
To discus if this concept is or is not a Masonic Landmark is of no importance. A Landmark as such is not anything unchangeable, as well as it has no absolute meaning.
Landmarks relate to a certain Masonic system, to which it belongs, and helps to define it in the same way as Euclid’s principles and propositions define geometry. Other principles and propositions define other geometric systems.
From this follows necessarily, that the freedom of every specific Masonic system must not be extended to include a critical examination of its dogmas, because the system itself is an unexpressed part of it. In other words “Landmarks must be preserved”
