Freemasons
FREEMASONS. The name for members of Freemasonry, the largest fraternal organization in the world, Freemasons are linked to numerous other rites, degrees, and orders collectively termed Masonic. Originally two words, Free Mason, the compound Freemason became standard by the nineteenth century. The term stands for "free and accepted mason," an accepted or "honorary" mason who is both freeborn (not bonded in servitude) and "free" from the original "operative" definition of masonry, the trade of stonecraft used to build churches and cathedrals throughout medieval Europe. Although there are records of noncraftsmen or "nonoperatives" joining earlier operative guilds, such as that of Elias Ashmole and Christopher Wren of Oxford, purely nonoperative "lodges" where Freemasons met were not publicly disclosed until the formation of the Grand Lodge of England in London in 1717. A Freemason (or simply "Mason") from about this time, and as outlined in the official Constitutions (1723 and 1738), was basically a "speculative" mason who, having undergone three degrees of initiation, lived a moral life devoted both to teachings derived from a symbolic understanding of the stonemason's craft and to the three great Masonic principles of brotherly love, relief, and truth.
Secrecy—and a certain mystique—has surrounded and continues to surround the Freemason rituals of initiation and moral instruction, yet Freemasonry, or "the Craft," is not in principle a "secret society" in the subversive social or political sense, since respect for lawful authority is a hallmark of Masonic teachings.
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