The Guild prefers the word admission. Each of the seven grades is entered by a short rite in which the Chapterhouse acknowledges work already done. The rite adds nothing to the work, and it is not the less valued for that.
What an admission is
Many seekers come to this subject believing that initiation is a transmission: that something is passed from the initiator to the candidate which the candidate could not have come by alone. The Guild makes no such claim for its own ceremonies. An admission does three ordinary and serious things. It marks a threshold, so that the member knows it has been crossed. It binds the member, by his or her own freely spoken word, to the Charges. And it welcomes the member among peers who have crossed the same threshold before.
No one is made a Master by a ceremony. The ceremony only says aloud what the bench has already said.
Ambrose Tolland, Address to the Convocation of 1986
The admission of an Apprentice
The outline of the first admission is public. Only the wording is reserved.
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The vigil
On the evening before, the candidate keeps the Lamp alone for an hour and reads through the Record of the thirteen weeks of probation.
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The door
The candidate is brought to the door of the Hall by the two sponsors, who testify that the probation has been kept.
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The questions
Three questions are put, and the candidate answers each in his or her own words: why have you come, what have you done, and what do you ask?
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The Charges
The Five Charges are read. The candidate accepts each aloud. A candidate may decline, and may withdraw at any point, without reproach.
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The lamp
The candidate's own lamp is lit from the lamp of the Hall.
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The roll
The new Apprentice signs the roll of the Chapterhouse and receives a plain cord and the first Paper.
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The table
The Chapterhouse then eats together. This is regarded as part of the rite.
The whole takes rather less than an hour.
The later admissions
Each later admission keeps the same form of door, testimony, charge and signature, and adds one act of its own. The Scribe is given a pen. The Artisan sets the four instruments on the bench of the Hall for the first time. The Journeyman is given the road, in the form of a letter of introduction to every Chapterhouse of the Guild. The Keeper is handed the key of the Hall. The Master is seated in the East. The admission of an Elder has no words.
What is never asked
- No oath against conscience. Nothing in any admission conflicts with a member's religion, with the law, or with obligations to family and to others.
- No surprise. Everything that will be done is explained to the candidate beforehand. There is no blindfold, no binding and no ordeal.
- No undress and nothing sexual. Candidates are received in ordinary clothes or in the robe.
- No payment. There is no fee for any admission, in any grade.
- No secrecy beyond the fifth Charge. A member promises to protect the privacy of other members, and nothing more.
- No compulsion. A candidate may stop the rite at any moment by saying so.
Why the wording is reserved
The texts of the admissions are not kept back in order to conceal a doctrine. There is none in them. They are kept back because words met for the first time in the Hall, with the lamp lit and one's sponsors standing by, do their work better than words read on a screen the week before. Members who have left the Guild have, almost without exception, respected this, which we take as evidence that the reason is a good one.
Admission at a distance
Members of the Hearth Course are admitted Apprentice in person wherever that is possible: at a Convocation, at the Mother Hall, or by a Keeper who is traveling. Where it is not possible, the Warden of the Hall may authorize a solitary admission, performed by the candidate alone at his or her own bench from written instructions, while the mentor keeps the same hour elsewhere. It is confirmed in person at the first opportunity.
Admissions to the grade of Journeyman and above are always held in person.