true meaning of masonry

Originally posted by Kleversdad
Read it yourself. I can't do all your thinking.

get it a b and N. Then talk to me. I have my copy on my lap, where's yours?

Members most certainly don't have to purchase and read the same books as you in order to have a discussion. If you are going to make statments like your opening post, and then not even try to back them up other than to say 'someguy in some book I read said it, so it must be true', then you will be seen as one who can't support his own conlcusions, or rather the conclusions that someone else has arrived at.

www.freemasons-freemasonry.com...

Indeed, chapter 5 is the one most pertinant to this apparently, titled "Freemasonry in relation to the ancient mysteries"


The author notes that

'any student of masonic literature and comparative religion [is struck by] the remarkable pressence of common factors [...] in the religions of all races alike"

Which, of course is true, anyone looking into religion in a comparative way notices that there are incredible similarities between them. However, a person that seriously studies the issue has to eventually reject the idea that all the similarities are simply the result of there being 'one religion' that has spread across the entire planet, being edited and modified into local varieities in various localities. The author of this book apparently accepts that idea, however he is in error in doing so, in so far as it being an actual, lineal, physical religion-culture passed on and that diffused throuhgout the world.

The author continues noting that

"Masonic treatsies abound with demonstrations of this uniformity in the use of various symbols prominent in every Lodge. Authors delight in supplying evidence of the close correspondence in various unrelated systems and in demonstrating how ancient and universal such and such ideas, symbols and practices have been"

And notice the clear statement that these systems are unrelated! Has klevermonsad actually read and understood this book? Is his/her relucatnce to cite the evidence from the book simply because the book does not state what he/she is stating?

The author notes that the reason there are similarities between all religions, not simply the mystery religions and masonry, is because
"at one time, long back in the world's past, there existed or was implanted in the minds of the whole human family [...] a Proto-Evangelium or Root-Doctrine in regard to the nature and destiny of the soul of man and its relation to Deity"

he continues, in a vein I think most posters here would find resonates with their own thoughts:

"We assume that our ancestors lived in moral benightedness out of which we have since gradually emgerged into comparative light. All the evidence, however, negates these suppositions. It indicates that primitive man, however childish and intellectually undeveloped according to modern standards, was spiritually conscious and physically perceptive to a degree undreamed of by the modern mind".

And more pertinently to our topic here, he states, after first citing the knowledge imparted adam in the garden by the lord,

"Whence could come that skill and scientific knowledge if not from the Divine and now invisible world, from those "gods" and angelic guardians of the erring race of whom all the ancient traditions and sacred writtings tell? Would not that regenerative method be properly described if it were called, as in Masonry it is called, a "heavenly science", and welcomed in the words that Masons in fact use, "Hail Royal Art!" Thus, then, was the origin and birth of religion.

I mean, this man is not saying, at least in so far as I understand in my quick reading of this small portion, that masonry is the old mystery religions of the ancient world, that they have survived, in secret, for nearly two thousand years only to have finally re-emeged, in the Masonic Revival, under the guise of a men's club. He is noting that there is a 'universal religion', that is beyond the normal world, and that the ancient pagan religions are part of the various attempts by man to 'get at' the real religion, which, as far as anyone knows, is christianity itself. Indeed, in the bible, judaism was really only open to jews, they didn't send evangelicals to china and britain, so of course the rest of mankind had to have something, and that something needn't necessarily be entirely based on fallacy and satanic deception, indeed, why can't some of it have been getting at the divine influence, especially, (imporantantly here for accustaions of not being christian) if man is descended from adam, who left the garden, and noah, who lived in the darkness of the ark only to re-emerge into the world atop a veritable mountain. If those old testament stories are true, then it would make sense that these pagan religions would be 'corruptions' of the adamic religion, and that masonry is very well justified in having similarity of symbology with all the worlds religions (including christianity itself anyway). And this is all confirmed ever more by this passage:

We must now speak more fully of the Mysteries and the "Royal Art" as pursued by the Greek School. With the Greeks it took the form of a quest of philosophy

So all the author is saying is that Masonry can be thought of as yet another extention of man's attempt to understand the world he is in and to draw wisdom's and lessons from it, not that its secret worship of Isis or Bacchus or the Sun or Baal or anything else.