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how old is freemasonry?

Roy Vance

Certified
Premium Member
My question now though is this... When did people decide to overlook history and make up their own beliefs on freemasonry.

People will deny and make up things (lies) about subjects that they do not, or do not want to, understand. I have a niece that thinks the Freemasons are trying to take over the country, and no matter what I say to her, she will not capitulate in her belief. She is on of the ones that does not want to understand, therefore, the made up stories.
 

jamaz knight

Registered User
I have a book called " The Secret Destiny of America" by Manly P. Hall. The name of the book doesn't really apply to the content. I believe Bro. Hall, like other authors knew how to get a readers attention with cool titles. But he gets into the notion off sonic principles influenced on the American psyche. It truly is a good read.

realy

Freemason Connect Mobile
 

dfreybur

Premium Member
I seem to recall fmr. Pres. Bush.saying something along the lines of the US being a judeo-christian nation (not an islamic nation).

That mostly shows that in the US one can become President without learning the content of elementary school social studies. Who knows if either pres Bush ever read the Federalist Papers (required reading when I was in junior high school), the Anti-Federalist Papers (every bit as important but much less popular) or even what the form of government in the Roman Republic was?

We were founded on religious freedom. Many know this.

Fun tidbit - More than one colony was founded so they could practice their own sect with exclusionary policies. As the exact sects were different the only way they could do that was by guaranteeing religious freedom. What's not obvious about religious freedom is countries with it have consistently higher religious fervor.

But ive seen all over the net conspiracy advocates claiming the freemasons are religious cult.

Thank God for the publicity brought to us by nuts like that.

My question now though is this... When did people decide to overlook history and make up their own beliefs on freemasonry.

Philosophers insist that it is reason that separates humanity from animals. Humans are endowed with a vast store of unreason just as we are endowed with reason.

I conclude that the mayan apocolypse was nothing more than the history channel needing higher ratings.

Exactly. Those Mayan calendars are *round*. You know, like endless circles.
 

JManley215

Registered User
Freemason Connect Mobile
 

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Bro_Vick

Moderator
Premium Member
For me, I'm just not terribly caught up in where it came from before. Solomon's Temple, Knights Templar and all the symbolism pertaining to each is mostly window dressing to me. The surer a man seems about any of it the more skeptical I become, with a pretty quick loss of interest to follow. I think there is likely one real answer.

Noone knows.

We have to have some idea of what has happened, to both learn from it and prevent it from happening again. I wrote about it in the education forum recently that in Europe the infestation of charlatans, and conman into our fraternity claiming to have the mystic origins of Freemasonry were too many to count. America, because of our isolation at the time wasn't as impacted, but still had to contend with it. These Masonic story tellers have diluted so much of our history, and begged, borrow and stole other concepts to tell a good story.

Reading books from European Masonic organizations from the 1700's is painful, it is like getting a tooth pulled with no anesthesia. A lot of good mysticism, Christian esoteric teachings, and other teachings were lost, simply because the teachings were on the losing side of a personality conflict.

A part of the reason that recognition is so meaningful in our fraternity was to stop this type of activity, and to ensure that men were not being taken advantage of, has it gone too far today? Perhaps, but that is for another thread. :)

S&F,
-Bro Vick
 

Michael Hatley

Premium Member
Well, in my opinion, the question and others like it have caused us to jump the shark a fair bit.

Consider the 2nd degree, and the topics we are instructed to learn.

When is the last time you've seen a good healthy seminar on one of those topics at a lodge? For me, the lodges doing Masonic discussion and whatnot - and so standing out from the lodges who do little education at all, they talk almost exclusively about speculation from this or that book as to the history of our order, the meaning of this symbol or that, and so forth. And all that is well and good - we are an order with a deep history and a whole sack full of symbols.

But it seems to have jumped the shark. Music, philosophy, geometry and so forth - these and others are the sort of thing that our ancient brethren were into. But we've become obsessed with studying ourselves. And many men off the street are a lot more interested in the mysteries and potential conspiracies surrounding our order than they are our quest for more light. Its a form of stagnation, in my opinion.

I'm partially playing devils advocate here. I've cracked a bunch of books on our history as well. And I can't hold that same curiosity against anyone.

Its just that its a lot smaller part of what we are actually about that I think a lot of folks give credit to.
 

dfreybur

Premium Member
When is the last time you've seen a good healthy seminar on one of those topics at a lodge? For me, the lodges doing Masonic discussion and whatnot - and so standing out from the lodges who do little education at all, they talk almost exclusively about speculation from this or that book as to the history of our order, the meaning of this symbol or that, and so forth. And all that is well and good - we are an order with a deep history and a whole sack full of symbols.

The DDGM in one of my districts is into such topics. He's done an education piece of sacred geometry among others. I've done talks on each of the 7 as well as a talk on all 7 viewed as a pattern. Being an aerospace guy I started out with a graph of a nozzle then switched to a saddle curve. The 7 start as emerging out of chaos and concentrate into narrow order (as is to be expected thinking about the Scottich Rite degrees). Then they expand back out this time through imagination not chaos.
 

jwhoff

Premium Member
Would love to know if any such classes are given in the Houston area.

Please let us know if there are.

Thanks brother
 
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