Guiding the Entered Apprentices
He meets regularly with the apprentices, explains the symbols and customs of the first degree and helps them with the questions that the initiation leaves behind.
Office of the lodge · Dutch Freemasonry
Tweede Opziener
The first guide of those who have just come in: the line that shows what is upright.
- Place in the lodge
- In the West, at the head of the other column
- Jewel of the office
- The plumb rule
- In particular care of
- The Entered Apprentices (leerlingen)
The Tweede Opziener cares in particular for the (leerlingen): the brothers who have only just been initiated. For them everything is new: the ritual, the symbols, the silence, the other brothers. The Second Warden is their first guide, the one they can go to with every question.
His influence is greater than his place in the hierarchy suggests. The newest brother watches the Second Warden more closely than anyone else, and learns from his conduct what it means to be a Freemason. The first impression a lodge makes is often his.
Origins
History of the office
On the operative building site the second overseer watched over the youngest workmen. He taught them how to handle their tools, saw that they did not overreach themselves, and called them from labour to rest at the proper hour.
In English-speaking lodges the sits in the South, where the sun stands at noon, and calls the brothers from labour to refreshment. In Dutch lodges he sits in the West beside the First Warden, at the head of the column where the apprentices traditionally sit: the northern side of the lodge, the side of the least light, where every Freemason begins.
The apprentice is traditionally asked to listen and to keep silent for a while before he speaks in the lodge. The Second Warden helps him use that time well: not as an exclusion, but as the time in which one learns to hear.
Tweede Opziener
What the office involves
Opening and closing
Like the First Warden he takes part in the ritual opening and closing, answering the Master and repeating his knocks with his own gavel.
Keeping his column
He keeps order among the brothers on his side of the lodge and passes on their requests to speak.
Readiness for the next step
He assesses with the Master whether an apprentice is ready to be passed to the second degree, often after the apprentice has given a first short paper.
Refreshment
Following the old symbolism of rest after labour, he is in many lodges involved in the fraternal meal (broedermaal) that follows the work: the place where the bond between the brothers is strengthened in conversation.
In practice
How it works in a Dutch lodge
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Election
He is elected with the other officers. It is often the first office of the higher rank that a brother holds, and the start of a path that may lead through the West to the East.
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In the West
He sits in the West with the as his jewel and a gavel of his own.
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Evenings of instruction
In many lodges he leads evenings for the apprentices, in which they study the ritual and symbols of their degree together.
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A point of contact
Between meetings he is the brother an apprentice can call with any question. That accessibility is perhaps his most important tool.
What the office asks
- Approachability
- Patience
- Clarity
- Being an example
- Joy in beginnings
The lesson for every brotherNo one stays an apprentice in the lodge for ever, but every Freemason remains a beginner in something. The Second Warden teaches the art of beginning well: with open eyes, a quiet tongue and a straight back.
To reflect on
- Who watched over your first steps, and how can you do the same for someone else?
- Where in your life are you a beginner, and do you allow yourself to be one?
- Do you stand upright when no one is watching?
Whether or not you hold this office, each office mirrors a task that every Freemason carries within himself.