It seems he had borrowed a shirt and tie from the owner of the local tavern and never returned it. Late in the evening, he was bailed out by group of Masons led by Loton Lawson—the mastermind of the kidnapping, according to Light on Masonry , a 19th century compilation of documents about freemasonry. He was escorted hurriedly into a carriage and taken away, never to be seen again. With each new county that heard the news, it seemed the brutality and drama of the kidnapping grew exponentially, while the desire to portray it accurately diminished at a similar rate.
Although they had been involved in a potential murder, the four defendants—Loton Lawson, Eli Bruce, Col. Edward Sawyer and Nicholas G. Citizens from all over New York state met and declared their intent to stop voting for candidates with Masonic ties. That sentiment extended to the media as well, as Mason-owned newspapers were boycotted. The fervor in New York slowly made its way around the nation. As early as the next elections in , anti-Masonic candidates were winning offices all over the country.
Conspiracy thinking drove Mussolini, Hitler and Franco to crush the Craft. Today, Freemasonry is banned in China, and everywhere in the Muslim world except Lebanon and Morocco. The men who built the well know how deep it is. The rest of us can only peer down and wonder what might lurk below, while the dark surface mirrors back our fears. Ask the Freemasons today about secrecy, and you will receive a pat response.
But, of course, even moderately skeptical non-Masons will still wonder. What secrets? What are they hiding? Today a couple of minutes on Google is all it takes to find out everything you might want to know. Strip away all the protocol, and we find that Masonic secrecy is multifaceted: it is both more and less than what the Google results will tell.
During his initiation rites, a Mason learns many secrets: such as the strange handshake that vouches for his Masonic status. So Masonic rituals consist of secrets, wrapped in secrets, wrapped in secrets. Once the wrapping is removed, what is revealed are moral principles of utterly disarming banality.
In some cases old world lodges felt that what they were doing was so important that historical records needed to be carefully preserved. But other lodges, especially those for—and then by—women left only traces. Over the years I have visited just about every masonic library in western Europe. In the s I started this search for the historical reality of freemasonry by asking for permission to begin where the original lodges began, in London in the s.
I wrote to the Library of the Grand Lodge of Great Britain, in Freemasons' Hall on Great Queen Street, right in the heart of Soho, and requested permission to visit and read in its manuscript archives. The answer was a flat "no. Because at that time the records were closed to all nonmasons. In response I pointed out that, unlike many European Grand Lodges, the British one would not admit women as freemasons.
Hence, with impeccable logic, I pleaded that the rule should not apply to me. They never answered that letter. Times have changed, especially for British freemasons. Now all scholars have access to their library, everything is open. The early history of how English and Scottish guilds of stonemasons evolved into the freemasons of the eighteenth century is still incomplete, but in broad outline the story is now basically understood. The Scottish records as early as the s show local guilds in need of cash admitting relatives, or prominent figures with philosophical interests who were non-masons.
This process began as early as the sixteenth century, and one aspect of it must have been the intellectual interests of Scottish masons.
The masters among them, like master masons elsewhere, knew geometry and acted in effect like architects. They were also steeped in the mysticism commonplace to the Renaissance, a tradition that imagined arts like architecture and alchemy provided clues to the underlying principles of nature.
Among the earliest Scottish records—so brilliantly illuminated by David Stevenson—we see all of these traditions attracting learned gentlemen, some also drawn to the new science. The most interesting question raised by the process of converting lodges of stonemasons into enclaves of literate gentlemen, educated professionals, and a few tradesmen concerns not the breakdown of the exclusivity of the guilds under the pressure of market forces, but rather why so many men who had never lifted a brick wanted to join.
Why did freemasonry become so respectable, or controversial, and spread to every country where Westerners had colonies? What was it that made freemasonry so appealing that we reckon its membership in the tens of thousands by —and that included perhaps a thousand women. By there was barely a French town that did not have a lodge, and prominent and well-educated men and some women flocked to them. The growth of the lodges happened even in Catholic countries like France, despite the decree from Rome that prohibited Catholics from being freemasons.
Taking Europe and America as a whole by —the year of the French Revolution—well over a hundred thousand men had taken the masonic oath to the Grand Architect of the universe. There were more than four hundred lodges in Britain alone. A set of values and practices must have appealed across geographic, religious, and class barriers. Getting answers to the questions about the appeal of daily life as a freemason, as well as about their political and economic attitudes and values, meant visiting even more masonic libraries.
Members gathered in lodges, which served as the headquarters and focal points where the Masons socialized, partook in meals and gathered to discuss the events and issues of the day. However, with the rise of capitalism and the market economy during the 16th and 17th centuries, the old guild system broke down, Jacob wrote.
But the Masonic lodges survived. In order to bolster membership and raise funds, the stonemason guilds began to recruit non-masons. At first, the new recruits were often relatives of existing members, but they increasingly included wealthy individuals and men of high social status. Many of these new members were "learned gentlemen" who were interested in the philosophical and intellectual trends that were transforming the European intellectual landscape at the time, such as rationalism, the scientific method and Newtonian physics.
The men were equally interested in questions of morality — especially how to build moral character. Out of this new focus grew "speculative Freemasonry," which began in the 17th century. This modernized form of Masonry deemphasized stone working and the lodges became meeting places for men dedicated to and associated with liberal Western values, Jacob said.
A major turning point in Freemason history occurred in , when the members of four separate London lodges gathered together to form what became known as the Premier Grand Lodge of England. This Grand Lodge became the focal point of British Masonry and helped to spread and popularize the organization.
Freemasonry spread rapidly across the continent; soon there were Masonic lodges scattered throughout Europe, from Spain and Portugal in the west to Russia in the east. It was also established in the North American colonies during the first half of the 18th century. By the late 18th century, at the height of the Enlightenment, Freemasonry carried considerable social cachet.
Freemasonry wasn't always welcomed, however. In the United States in the s, for example, a political party known as the Anti-Masonic Party formed, the Washington Post reported. It was the nation's original third political party and its members were dedicated to countering what they believed was Freemasonry's undue political influence.
William Seward, who went on to become President Abraham Lincoln's secretary of state, began his political career as an Anti-Masonic candidate. The early Masonic lodges were exclusively male, meaning that women were prohibited from membership, a point made clear in the "Old Charges" "no bondmen, no women, no immoral or scandalous men This tradition, a principle that reflected the predominant social arrangements of the time, continued for many decades, especially in Great Britain.
But over the years, women increasingly began to play active roles in the organization, especially on the European mainland. In France during the s, for example, so-called "lodges of adoption" began to appear, Jacob said. These were lodges that admitted a mixture of men and women, the latter mostly the wives, daughters and female relatives of the male Masons.
They were not fully independent but were sanctioned by and attached to the traditional male lodges. Soon, similar lodges of adoption sprang up in the Netherlands and eventually in the United States. Out of this tradition, Masonic organizations were eventually formed that admitted both men and women as full members. In these organizations, both men and women partake in Masonic rites and women can hold positions of authority and leadership.
The highest ranking woman in the Order of the Eastern Star, for example, is known as the "Worthy Matron" and is the presiding officer of the organization.
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