The Soul of Freemasonry Defined

A Masonic Lodge represents a body of workmen in which each member has a station or place corresponding to his task or function. Its chief officer is a Master Workman charged with responsibility to see that the members work peaceably and harmoniously as a unit at the task for which he lays the design upon his Tracing Board; his principal assisting officer is responsible for seeing that each man begins and ends on time and is at work in the place where he belongs.
The body of potential workmen from whom new members may be drawn is called the quarries; a man who comes from them is called a Petitioner, and he must be qualified to take his place among the body of workmen or he is not admitted. Immediately he is accepted he becomes an Apprentice, which means he is to be trained, is to become a learner of a craft, or form of work; and he is said to be seeking light, which means intelligence and knowledge for the work he is to do.

At the beginning he is given a learner’s tools; later he will receive tools for more advanced skill; and at the end will receive the use of all of them; they are working tools. He is clothed in a workman’s apron; it is his livery, or badge, and he is warned against ever feeling shame while wearing it. These craftsmen are to act as one man, as men do when working together in the same place. They have traditions which concern men who worked on buildings, represented by a Temple, and of a Master of Workmen, who superintended the building of that Temple; but it is made clear that the work of builders is only a specimen of each and every form of work—it is symbolic. Their rules and regulations concern their hours, wages, their duty to their officers or overseers, and their discipline.

The Freemasons of the Middle Ages who formed the first of these Lodges lived in a society in which not only institutions and rulers but the great majority of men and women were opposed to the teachings of Masonic Lodges, and were ready to destroy them by force and violence. The fundamental doctrine of the Church was that work as a curse which had been pronounced on Adam’s descendants as a supernatural and never-ceasing penalty for his disobedience. The great reward of a good life was to be released by death from toil, and entrance into “an everlasting rest”where men have ceased from their labors and go about in a never-ending worklessness.

The two Patron Saints of a man in work are his wife and family, but the head of the Church had no wife, children or home. The only truly holy man was a celibate priest who did not work, or monks and nuns who kept long vigils of idleness, or friars who went about the roads begging for food and lodging. The King and his nobles and the aristocracy by which they were surrounded looked down upon work as something beneath them; and next below them came the rich merchants. From that level downward men and women belonged to the lower classes because they were working men and women in a descending series, skilled workmen, mechanics laborers, peasants, villains, serfs, cotters, slaves. These men and women of the lower classes were paid a few cents per day; had no voice or vote in Church or State; could hold no high office in army or government, received no education could not even read and write, could not marry above their class; could own almost no property; were compelled by law to dress according to their station; could be impressed with force by the sheriffs to labor on public works or to fight in the army or navy. When the new colonies were opened up they were herded into small ships like cattle and sent without tools, implements, weapons, doctors, or teachers to live in the wilderness among savages.

To prevent their rebellion some 200 small felonies were made punishable by death—one man was hanged, burned, and quartered because he had dared to translate the Bible into the language used by the common people These disgraces, indignities, injustices, and atrocities were heaped upon them with a terrible inhumanity a century after century not because they were criminals, traitors, or recusants but because they were neither lords nor landlords but were working men. There were better times and worse; there were occasions when a man was honored for work that he had done; once in a thousand times a man might marry above or below his class; but these were nothing but sporadic exceptions, and did not avail to overthrow the barbaric feudalism, the cardinal principle of which was that a lord own and not only the land but the men who worked on it, and since he owned the men he owned the products of their work. The Medieval Freemasons found out the truth about work; they found it out for themselves, and from the work they themselves were doing, which was unlike the work being done by any other craftsmen. They did not write that truth down in books or cast it in the form of a creed, and Masons have never done so since, nevertheless it is possible to set it down in a series of statements in the language of today:

1. To work is to produce, grow, or make something without which men and women cannot continue to live; to have such things a man must make use of himself as the means to produce them. Since this is true he is neither an animal nor a machine; to take away from him by force. fraud or chicane, directly or indirectly, the products of his work, is to do violence not to things but to the man himself, and hence is absolute injustice.

2. The need men and women have for countless products, services, and commodities is not a temporary one, nor is it accidental, but continues to be true for ever. For this reason work is neither a curse nor an inconvenience but is a fact about the nature of man and the world, and is so eternally.

3. Since this is true, work is one of the attributes of God. It is for this reason that He is named Sovereign Grand Architect of the Universe.

4. Man is by nature a worker. It is only in his work that a man finds himself, his fulfillment and satisfaction; idlers and parasites become less than men, are ex-men. This truth is plain to any observer; when a man ceases or refuses to work an inner deterioration begins, first in his character, later in his mind, and in the end his body undergoes a process of degeneration; and while this process of disintegration goes forward he knows himself to be under contempt.

5. To be able to carry on his work a man must have Knowledge and intelligence which means education; he must be free to think because work calls for reasoning and understanding; he must one free to speak, because the larger part of the world’s work is done by numbers of men working together and therefore they must have information from each other; they must be free to enter or to leave any form of work because always some things are completed and new things must be done, to work in continuous association with each other establishes them in a fraternalism a fact so clearly seen by Freemasonry that often it is said of men in the same trade or art that “they have a freemasonry among themselves,” and it is this which is meant by morale or esprit de corps.

There can be no chasms of class distinction among workers because they must meet upon the level in order to co-operate with each other. If a man be not honorable, upright, and truthful it is not he alone who suffers from his failure; his fellows suffer also, they and the work together. If work fails the world fails, and workers and non-workers go down in catastrophe together. No church or government is more stupid than one which denies men the liberty to work, or interferes with the liberties required by work.

The best thought of men about the matters which belong to religion are embodied in the great organized religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc., and by them is stated in their creeds which in turn are amplified and expounded and taught by their theologies. It is an astounding fact that thus far no theology has ether embodied in its creed any doctrines about work.

Men’s best thought about their way of life in the world is embodied in the great philosophies, of which the first were founded by Greek thinkers of about 600 B.C. Although a philosopher may endeavor to incorporate the whole world in his system it is always found in the end that his philosophy consists of the elaboration or exposition or exploration of some one idea or truth or fact. The philosophy of Plato concerns itself with ideas. Aristotle was the philosopher of logic. Roman Stoicism was an elaboration of the theory that there are laws of nature, and that these are the laws of man. Descartes declared that everything is a dualism of matter and mind; Spinoza declared that there is no dualism and only one Reality, but that this Reality manifests itself in the two modes of matter and mind. Kant was an epistemologist, concerned with the nature of knowledge. Haeckel was a materialist. Bergson examined and elaborated the fact of change, or flux, or motion. There is scarcely an idea or truth capable of being thought which has not been seized upon, expanded and expounded, and made into a system of philosophy by some thinker. And yet, and again it is an astounding fact, no system of philosophy has ever been devoted to the subject of work! William James and John Dewey have come closest to it but neither of them took work itself as his subject matter but only used it as if it were a means to an end. Thomas Carlyle saw the need for a philosophy of work, and cried out for some man to do it, but did not produce it himself.

When the first Freemasons found out for themselves the truth about work and though they did not embody it in creeds or books but left it, as it were, to speak for itself, and only among themselves, it was a far greater achievement than the discovery and perfection of Gothic cathedrals. They won a place for themselves among history’s great way-showers, thinkers, philosophers, prophets. Nor is it any wonder that in those days of feudalism they kept it among themselves, in their tiled rooms, behind locked doors, and pledged every candidate to hold inviolate the privacy of his Lodge. What they thought and taught and knew was not a heresy, theological or philosophical, but it differed so radically from the whole mass and drive of the beliefs and practices of the feudalism around them that they saw no need to disturb outsiders by what those outsiders could not have understood; and not being fanatics, and having intelligence as well as character, they saw no need to expose themselves to the fury of the priests or the barbaric brutalities of the lords.

It is not all-important to Freemasons that the founders of their Fraternity were builders, or even great builders; the all-important fact is that they were great thinkers, and found out for themselves a set of truths which no men had found or seen before, and which, even now, only a few are beginning to see; there would be neither point nor purpose for adult men to carry on, month after month, a mere routine repetition of builder customs. The soul of Freemasonry as well as its purpose in the world. is the set of truths which they found. The fact that those truths are not codified, or printed, or tabulated but are embodied in rites and symbols and Lodge practices does not matter; they are there, and while a man is being made a Mason they stamp themselves upon his mind. It is because they are there that after a man has worn off the first strangeness of being a member of a Lodge and begins to learn for himself what Freemasonry is and what its history has been, there begins to grow in him a zeal and an enthusiasm for it.

http://encyclopediaoffreemasonry.com/f/freemasonry-definition-of/

Part 3: If Masonry is so aboveboard, why is it "secret?"

Part 3: Difficult Questions About Freemasonry by Roger Firestone

"If Masonry is so aboveboard, why is it "secret?"

There are fewer secrets to Freemasonry than most non-members imagine; even many Masons are not entirely clear on what is and is not secret in Masonry. The moral principles of Masonry are the same as those taught you in Sunday school or at your mother's knee (sometimes over it!); it is only the exact procedures and words by which those principles are taught in Masonry that are secret, for it is the knowledge of those that distinguishes a Mason from those who are not members. To be entitled to the fellowship peculiar to the Lodge, a Mason must be able to identify himself, and these secrets provide the means for doing so.

A better term than "secrecy" would be privacy. Masonry is not a public organization like a school board or a city council. It is an association of private citizens, just like a country club or a church. No one who is not a member has a right to know about the internal workings of any of these things. They are private to the group, not "secret."

What about "blood oaths" and hideous penalties of the degrees?

It is true that Masons must take solemn obligations to be faithful to the principles of Masonry, and their very nature and seriousness implies that there should be penalties. However, the language of these obligations makes it clear that the penalties are not actually inflicted by the Lodge or any body of Masonry but are expressions of how disgraced and contemptible one should feel for violating such an obligation. In some jurisdictions, the candidate is told that the penalties are of "ancient origin and symbolic only." Later degrees make this even more apparent, even if the actual information is not specifically addressed to the candidate. But the true penalties for violation of the laws of Masonry are three only: Admonition (or reprimand), suspension, or expulsion. Stories about Masons being maimed or murdered for violation of their oaths are just that: fiction. Not one single instance can be documented, despite the many attempts by the enemies of Masonry to promote this slander."

Part 2: What about allegations that Freemasonry is Satanic or pagan?

Part 2: Difficult Questions About Freemasonry by Roger Firestone

"What about allegations that Freemasonry is Satanic or pagan?

Most of these are complete fabrications; the rest are misunderstandings of the institution and its rituals. A number of forgeries and alleged exposes of Masonry were created during the last century. Most of the claims of "Satanism" in Masonry can be traced to one or two of these fraudulent sources. Other such allegations are simply made-up claims about what various Masonic emblems and symbols stand for. For example, it is sometimes claimed that the letter "G" found in the Master Mason's jewel, along with the Square and Compasses, is a substitute for a phallic symbol. But there is nothing in Masonry to support such a statement; it is complete fiction. The letter "G" stands for God (it is used by Masons who speak other languages due to the modern origins of Masonry in English-speaking countries); in the Scottish Rite, the Hebrew letter yodh, which is the first letter of the Tetragrammaton, or Ineffable Name, plays the same role.

Another example that came up recently was a discussion of the Blazing Star. This is one of the "ornaments" of a Lodge, introduced in the Entered Apprentice degree. A non-Mason insisted that Masons "worship" the Blazing Star. The Blazing Star is somehow to be identified with Lucifer (based on the verse Isaiah 14:12)
the Blazing Star is the "false dawn" that can then be identified with a false light (in competition with the true Light of Jesus) and that therefore Masons engage in devil worship.
Here are the facts:
Isaiah 14 is a chapter with a prophecy against the kings of Babylon, specifically Nebuchadnezzar. The quoted verse is rendered, in my Bible, "Day-star, son of the morning, how hast thou fallen?" In this passage, the prophet alleges that the arrogant king of Babylon has thought himself as glorious as a celestial body, but that the destruction of the kingdom of Babylon shall surely bring him back to earth. The word here translated as "day-star" is, in Hebrew, "heyleyl," and refers to the planet Venus. The ancient Greeks and Romans both used different words for this planet when it appeared in the morning sky from its appearance in the evening sky. The Greeks called it Hesperus in the evening and Phosphorus in the morning; the Romans called it Venus in the evening and Lucifer in the morning. Hence, the translation of the Hebrew, via Greek, into Latin (i.e, from the Hebrew to the Septuagint to the Vulgate), naturally would introduce the word "Lucifer" as the correct Latin translation of the Hebrew. The term "Lucifer" as a name for the Devil or Satan, cannot be traced any farther back than the Middle Ages, and was only widely popularized by Milton's epic poem, "Paradise Lost."

The Minnesota Masonic Manual (as one source on the lectures of Masonry) clearly identifies the Blazing Star as emblematic of the Star of Bethlehem, hardly a "Satanic" reference. It has nothing to do with the planet Venus. The Blazing Star is mentioned for about 30 seconds in a lecture some 20-30 minutes in length (it depends on jurisdiction) in the first degree of Masonry only, an amount of attention that could scarcely be described as "worship."

The "false dawn" is not heralded by Venus, but is a phenomenon produced by the Zodiacal Light, a band of dust lying in the plane of the Earth's orbit, which most prominently appears as a skyglow before sunrise in the fall (the false dawn) and after sunset in the spring, but can only be observed under ideally dark conditions. In other words, the allegation about Masonry in this case combines many errors: Taking a portion of a single verse of the Bible out of context, misinterpreting its translation, misunderstanding an astronomical term, misidentifying a Masonic emblem with an astronomical object, and mischaracterizing the importance of a symbol in the ritual. Perhaps all of this can be attributed to ignorance, but since the facts are easy to obtain, one is forced to wonder about how such allegations come to be and to persist.

Assertions about "pagan" material in Masonry may stem from the study of material from the ancient world in some of the degrees. But this is not paganism (the worship of idols, natural objects, or polytheistic human-like deities). In fact, many of the early teachings of the Church depended heavily on the works of such "pagan" philosophers as Plato and Aristotle; Christianity has absorbed such pagan elements as the Christmas tree, the name Easter (from a pagan fertility goddess), and the actual date of Christmas (pre-empting the Roman's pagan winter solstice festival of the Saturnalia). Indeed, the mythos about the fall of Lucifer from heaven to the underworld is of pagan origin, derived from the Graeco-Roman legend of Hephaestus (Vulcan) who fell from Mt. Olympus to the nether regions, where his forges were located, and in ancient art is depicted as lame from the fall. There have been many thinkers and learned men in cultures other than that of the West in the Judaeo-Christian era, and it is not "paganism" to study them."