Promoting the Fraternity across the World
Freemasonry consists of fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local fraternities of stonemasons, which from the end of the fourteenth century regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities and clients. The degrees of freemasonry retain the three grades of medieval craft guilds, those of Apprentice, Journeyman or fellow (now called Fellowcraft), and Master Mason. These are the degrees offered by Craft (or Blue Lodge) Freemasonry. Members of these organisations are known as Freemasons or Masons. There are additional degrees, which vary with locality and jurisdiction, and are usually administered by different bodies than the craft degrees.
The basic, local organisational unit of Freemasonry is the Lodge. The Lodges are usually supervised and governed at the regional level (usually coterminous with either a state, province, or national border) by a Grand Lodge or Grand Orient. There is no international, world-wide Grand Lodge that supervises all of Freemasonry; each Grand Lodge is independent, and they do not necessarily recognise each other as being legitimate.
Worshipful Master, do you realize that by addressing you as “Worshipful” I am providing absolute proof in the minds of some credulous and ignorant religious zealots that this Lodge is in fact worshipping you?
EVER SINCE Heinrich Schurtz published his Altersklassen und Maennerbunde in 1902, anthropologists have become more and more interested in the part played by secret societies among primitive peoples
I’d like to think when life is done
That I had filled a needed post.
That here and there I’d paid my fare
With more than idle talk and boast;
THREE CHALLENGING SIMILARITIES:AN EXPLORATION OF MONASTIC AND MASONIC ORDERS by Bro. Karel Musch, Middelpunt Lodge 280, Grand East of The Netherlands
Billy Ray Cutlip is the first member of Greeneville Lodge No. 3, F&AM, to be elected the Most Worshipful Grand Master of Free and Accepted Masons of Tennessee. His lodge hosted a homecoming for him at the end of May.
At the Installation Meeting of the Leicestershire and Rutland Lodge of Installed Masters No. 7896 on the 8th April 2016 the members and visitors were treated to an informative lecture on Freemasonry and Sport by W Bro Rex Hazeldine of the Lodge of Science and Art No. 8429
Over the years, there have been published several charts or plans of the degrees and orders of Freemasonry. Masonic editions of the Bible, presented to newly raised members, often include such a chart.
The story of The Magic Flute focuses on the triumph of reason and virtue over irrationality and the amoral. This concept was important in Freemasonry, which was popular during the Enlightenment of which Mozart was a card-carrying member
How did the “Working Tools” come into our ceremonies? Were all our present-day “W.T.s” used and moralized from the earliest times, or were they introduced gradually?
In modern times the implement used by the Tiler is a sword of the ordinary form. This is incorrect. Formerly, and indeed up to a comparatively recent period, the Tiler’s sword was wavy in shape, and so made in allusion to the “flaming sword which was placed at the east of the garden of Eden