GAINING ON THE ENIGMATIC PRACTICE OF FREEMASONRY

There once was a time when freemasonry was fluid, a counter balance to superstition and the suppression of ideas. Only when we were able to gain distance in time and space from the events of the 16th 17th and 18th century were we able to calculate the effects of shifts in social acceptance.  Magna Carta; Rennaisance; Age of Enlightenment ; War of the Roses, Waterloo.  In hindsight great minds were able to help us comprehend why history is so important to a culture.  Perspective allows us to sort out major events, though at the time of them, few are known to be so.  Perhaps there are exceptions to the rule- certainly when Germans were eradicating one culture and Americans were incinerating another, convinced many of us there is no extent of human cruelty; nothing including evil is out of bounds in a righteous cause.

After reading the work of Andrew Hammer I was taken back by the extent we are from the fluid counterbalances of our early days. Does mankind continue to struggle? Yes of course. Does it stuggle to use the moral meridian? Yes, more than ever.  The accumulated knowledge matters little unless it is put to use as it was intended in the day. Univeral laws bind us but it is the purity of philosophy that translate principles into decisions that define us.

Bro Hammer tells us to avoid the allure and distractions around us, suggesting what we seek in those appendent groups can be found within the walls of the lodge. Are we so tribal as this implies that joining appendent groups must confuse us about what version of masonry it is that drives us?    Is this a masonic  secularity?   Once we were content celebrating sun and moon. Then we celebrated representative gods. Then G-d and philosophy addressed how to live a good life. Then we quarreled about the best G-d and then blasphemy was born.