Well nobody has come forth the educate me in the ways of the Craft
To answer your question as an aside: I am a Freemason, to impart ,"LIGHT", without emotional strings attached. A brother here on this forum, expressed this in his signature, "Truth is truth, whether we like it or not".
Some here are overly sensitive and myopic; not saying who but......Some are not here to learn. So mote it be.
Historically, there are Operative Masons and Honorary Masons.
Why? I'll tell you why!
Freemasonry today, TRADITIONALLY practices 3 degrees but this was not always the case. For the longest time there wasn't any degree; that of the Master Mason was judged upon the completion of his master piece, by the Town Council. He was established as the man who knew how things should be done.
He became the Master of the job site.
The jobs attracted all sorts of men. It was established that a level of skill was needed for the pay scale to be fair.
Men who were not masters of the Craft, were entered as Fellows of the Craft. Now there was a need for SECRECY...Signs....tokens....grips....words. These were the pre back pocked, wallet , union card days. You couldn't hire a jamook who didn't know April from Tuesday and give him the wage of a man who knew the Craft. A man looking for work was tested. At the Guild Hall, masons were given the knowledge needed to be tested.
So now, the masons had a degree.
There was also a "thing" on the site. He/it, was an apprentice; usually sold into slavery by his parents to make a buck and have one less mouth to feed. He was a piece of goods, not human, a serf, owned by the Master. No degree involved.
That was the case until the Magna Carter, when the Thing was elevated to human status. The apprentice was now ENTERED on the roll as a human and became an Entered Apprentice with a ritual/degree.
The masons now had 2 degrees.
In 17th century England, if you were going to meet as a group, you had to be registered with the Crown but then everyone would know your business, so men who were interested in science and wished to keep their activity a SECRET, joined an existing Guild. These precursors of what we have today, could have joined any Guild but chose the Mason's Guild and obligingly paid double the fee to belong as HONORARY masons in an OPERATIVE Mason's Lodge.
Circa 1645, men interested in the specific science of alchemy, the for runner of chemistry, pharmacology and medicine, were absorbed into an Operative Mason's Lodge.
Their work had to be especially SECRET because the Roman Catholic Church was on the look-out for heretics , i.e. scientists.
The Honorary Masons admission into the guild, had in the past availed them of the Operative Masons trappings, i.e. words, signs, etc., they had to now further watch their backs, not only from the Crown but from the Church too.
These Honorary Masons developed their own 3rd degree which remained a mystery for hundreds of years and our ignorance was covered by making-up an assumed history that has been passed on to this day.
For hundreds of years, Freemasons kept their lack of knowledge a SECRET. That is the SECRET that Freemasonry has kept.
So mote it be!