NOTICE: Freemasonry, as an organization, does not consider itself a religion, and it does not openly promote any particular religion. It is presented here based on the misconceptions within and without.
The Order of Free and Accepted Masons is an international fraternal order with massive historical connections to occultism. While not actually an occult organization, Freemasonry is the, most important of the fraternal orders in the Western world, and the source of a very large percentage of occult ideas about lodges, degrees, initiations, symbolism, and the like. In its basic and essential form, Freemasonry consists of three degrees of. initiation that draw their symbolism and teachings from the stonemason's trade, and from the biblical account of the building of King Solomon's Temple. On this relatively simple foundation has been raised an immense structure of ritual, symbolism, philosophy, magic, philanthropy, spirituality, speculation, and sheer hogwash.
The origins of Freemasonry are wrapped in a thick fog of guesswork and wishful thinking. Masonic historians, at various points over the last three hundred years, have traced the origins of Freemasonry to ancient Egyptian priests, Roman colleges of architecture, and the medieval Knights Templar, as well as to King Solomon's Temple itself. Many of these claims can still be found in popular literature today. There is, however, no actual evidence that any of these groups had anything to do with the historical origins of Freemasonry. Rather, the evidence of current research suggests that its roots can be found in the much more prosaic realm of late medieval stonemasons' guilds in Scotland and England.
Scottish records of working stonemasons' lodges provide the oldest known references to the Mason Word (the secret method of identifying oneself as a Mason to other Masons), permanent masons' lodges, multiple degrees of initiation, and the initiation of people who were not working stonemasons into lodges. As late as 1691, the Rev. Robert Kirk referred to the Mason Word as one of five "curiosities" common in Scotland but rare or nonexistent else ere. There is also documentary evidence that Scottish stone asons were expected to study the Art of Memory as of 1599, the date of statutes issued by William Schaw, Master of Works to the King of Scotland. This points to a familiarity with traditions of Hermetic imagery that later played a central role in Masonic ritual and practice.
These traditions, and the symbolic and ceremonial dimensions that ultimately became the core of the Masonic movement, took their place gradually over at least a century. In the early sev eenth century, most members of Mason's lodges were operative masons-that is, working men who made their living in the building trades. Starting around 1640, men who had no business connection to building, but were interested in the masons' rituals and symbols, began to join lodges; they were called accepted masons. By 1700, accepted masons were in the majority in most lodges, and there were many lodges without a single member who had ever spread mortar with a trowel.
In 1717, four London lodges came together to form the Grand Lodge of England (now the United Grand Lodge of England), the oldest Grand Lodge in Freemasonry. The next hundred years were a period of explosive growth, as lodges were founded throughout Britain, Europe, and the American colonies as well.
During this time Masonry became entangled in the complex net of political and magical intrigues surrounding the House of Stuart, which was driven off the British throne in 1688 and tried for most of a century to regain its former place. The Jacobites, as the pro-Stuart party was called, used the secrecy of Masonic lodges as a shield for their conspiracies against the House of Hanover, the new British royal house. The Hanoverian side, responded in kind. The Grand Lodge of England, which was a stronghold of Hanoverian Masons, and the Scottish Rite, which developed out of Jacobite lodges in France, both took shape in the midst of these controversies.
Central to these intrigues was Scottish Freemason Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686-1743), a Jacobite and Catholic convert who spent most of his life in exile in France. In the 1730s, as part of the preparations for the Stuart rising of 1745, Ramsay played a central role in creating a new, more complex system of "Scottish" Freemasonry closely allied to the Jacobite cause, and heavily loaded with Hermetic and occult material, in keeping with Ramsay's own interests. After Ramsay's death and the failure of the 1745 rising, Scottish Freemasonry regrouped into a Rite of Perfection of twenty-five degrees, which later evolved into the Scottish Rite of thirty-three degrees.
Another set of complexities emerged out of the relations between Freemasonry and the Catholic Church., These started off poorly and rapidly worsened. Anything associated with Protestant England was looked at suspiciously in Rome, and as Masonry spread in France and Italy, it drew most of its members from liberal circles who supported political reform and religious toleration-two things the church was not prepared to accept. The first Catholic condemnation of Masonry, the papal bull In Eminente, was promulgated in 1732, and followed by others. To this day a Catholic who becomes a Mason risks excommunication. The Catholic condemnation of Freemasonry has at times risen to the level of claiming that Masonry is actually a front for the deliberate worship of Satan, a charge that has involved the church in extreme embarrasment at least once already in its history.
Despite the tide of Catholic rhetoric, and more recent flurries of criticism from fundamentalist Protestants who have become convinced that Masonry is somehow connected to secular humanism and the Antichrist, the reality of the Masonic lodge is prosaic enough. Lodges hold business meetings for third-degree members at intervals ranging from once each week to once each month, usually with a dinner either before or after the. meeting; perform traditional and rather verbose initiation rituals for new members; raise money to donate to a wide range of worthy causes; and behave like most other clubs. On initiation, members promise to keep the rituals, identification signals, and private business of the lodge secret from non-members, to follow the various rules and bylaws of the lodge and the order, and to maintain standards of good behavior with other Masons. The tone of the whole system can be measured adequately by the fact that an open Bible is part of the lodge furnishings, and the Pledge of Allegiance is recited by American Freemasons at the beginning of each meeting.
The degrees of initiation conferred in Freemasonry fall into two broad classes. The first, the Symbolic- or "Blue Lodge" degrees, are the foundation of the entire system, and any person who has received them is considered to be fully i' 'tiated as a Freemason. They are:
1°: Entered Apprentice
2°: Fellow Craft
3°: Master Mason
Beyond this, matters get confusing very quickly. There are higher Masonic grades, assembled in a variety of rites, and there are also concordant booms-with their own degrees, which are not considered Masonic but which recruit members only among Master Masons. In the United States, two main rites-the York Rite and the Scottish Rite-attract most Masons interested in higher degrees, but other rites exist, and concordant bodies number in the dozens. None of these additional rites or bodies have any authority over the Blue Lodges that work the three degrees already mentioned.
The York Rite in North America offers the following degrees, divided up into three sets:
Chapter degrees
Mark Master
Past Master
Most Excellent Master
Royal Arch
Cryptic degrees
Royal Master
Select Master
Super Excellent Master
Knights Templar degrees
Order of the Red Cross
Order of the Knights of Malta
Order of Knights Templar
For its part, the Scottish Rite provides its initiates with a much more extensive set of degrees. The following degrees are offered in the Southern Jurisdiction of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, which includes most of the United States:
Lodge of Perfection degrees
4°: Secret Master
5°: Perfect Master
6°: Intimate Secretary
7°: Provost and judge
8°: Intendant of the Building
9°: Elu of the Nine
10°: Elu of the Fifteen
11°: Elu of the Twelve
12°: Master Architect
13°: Royal Arch of Solomon
14°: Perfect Elu
Chapter of Rose Croix degrees
15°: Knight of the East, of the Sword, or of the Eagle
16°: Prince ofJerusalem
17°: Knight of the East and West
18°: Knight of the Rose Croix
Council of Kadosh degrees
19°: Pontiff
20°: Master of the Symbolic Lodge
21°: Noachite or Prussian Knight
22°: Knight Royal Axe, Prince of Libanus
23°: Chief of the Tabernacle
24°: Prince of the Tabernacle
25°: Knight of the Brazen Serpent
26°: Prince of Mercy or Scottish Trinitarian
27°: Knight Commander of the Temple
28°: Knight of the Sun or Prince Adept
29°: Scottish Knight of Saint Andrew
30°: Knight Kadosh or Knight of the White and Black Eagle
Consistory degrees
31°: Inspector Inquisitor
32°: Master of the Royal Secret
Supreme Council degree
33°: Sovereign Grand Inspector General
Many of these Scottish Rite degrees have fairly explicit occult content, and Albert Pike, who was reponsible for creating much of the present Scottish Rite system, expounded that system in occult terms in his massive Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (1871); SEE PIKE, ALBERT. Nonetheless, very few Scottish Rite Masons pay much attention to this aspect of the system, and there seems to be no reason to think that the present leaders of the Scottish Rite are occult adepts-or, for that matter, occultists at all.
The internal politics among the various Masonic bodies are extremely complex, involving overlapping jurisdictions, disputes as to who is or is not a valid Mason, and the like. There are also bodies such as Co-Masonry, a Masonic order open to women as well as men, which nearly all other Masonic bodies refine-to recognize, and Adoptive Masonry, open only to women, which has a complex relationship to the male-only Masonic Lodges.
The above was taken from "The New Encyclopedia of the Occult" by John Michael Greer.