Masonic Regularity: Of Clandestine, Irregular Masons

"As brothers, we can tie ourselves in knots over the regular/clandestine issue, or we can recognize that regularity is only a tool, one that has served the grand lodges and freemasonry well for almost 300 years. It is a tool for GRAND LODGES, however, and is not a tool of a master mason.

"We have other tools at our disposal, one of which is the level. Let us, as brothers then, apply the Level to our non tyled meetings. If a person claims to be a Mason, let us, in the spirit of brotherly love, accept the claim on its face and grant them the respect they are due as masons. Leave the issues of regularity to the grand lodges to wrangle over."

Above is a portion of a blog post by Bro R Theron Dunn in his blogsite: "A Beacon of Masonic Light". The article defines and discusses the regularity of lodges and Freemasons. A very compelling reading in today's schisms in Freemasonry worldwide.


"Those who become Freemasons only for the sake of finding out the secret of the order, run a very great risk of growing old under the trowel without ever realizing their purpose. Yet there is a secret, but it is so inviolable that it has never been confided or whispered to anyone.

"Those who stop at the outward crust of things imagine that the secret consists in words, in signs, or that the main point of it is to be found only in reaching the highest degree. This is a mistaken view: the man who guesses the secret of Freemasonry, and to know it you must guess it, reaches that point only through long attendance in the lodges, through deep thinking, comparison, and deduction.

"He would not trust that secret to his best friend in Freemasonry, because he is aware that if his friend has not found it out, he could not make any use of it after it had been whispered in his ear. No, he keeps his peace, and the secret remains a secret."

Giovanni Giacomo Casanova, Memoirs, Volume 2a, Paris, p. 33 (From the same Blogsite).