Freemasons

Freemasonry became a global movement in the 18th century, and its ideas have created a considerable social, cultural, and political impact. Since its official inception in 1717, without any formal organization, it has spread throughout the world as a prominent feature of associational life. It became one of the largest nongovernmental organizations worldwide. Although the significant importance of Freemasonry in world history has been acknowledged, a growing number of case studies point out the tension between integrating and fragmenting influence of Masonic groups and bodies on global, national, and local levels.

Freemasonry at the beginning of the 21st century gathers approximately 2 to 3 million members worldwide. Following a dispute over ideological matters in the 1870s, the Masonic world is divided into two main spheres of influence: lodges recognized by the United Grand Lodge of England (1717/1813) and lodges recognized by the Grand Orient de France (1738/1772). Besides these two major Masonic bodies, there exists a large number of independent unrecognized Masonic lodges and orders. A wide range of other fraternal organizations, such as the International Order of Good Templars, were established based on principles of Freemasonry.

The historical origins of Freemasonry are to be found in medieval professional guilds for stonemasons, active in the construction of cathedrals, churches, and secular buildings around Europe. Modern Freemasonry was modeled on the imaginative world of the guilds, their mythology, symbols, feasts, and rituals and represents, to a certain degree, a continuation of this tradition. The medieval heritage was amalgamated with the emerging scientific and associational culture of the early Enlightenment, creating an eclectic mixture of various intellectual and religious traditions. This undogmatic openness contributed to a large transgressing cultural dynamics in the development of various Masonic rites and systems during the subsequent centuries across space, which makes it impossible to speak about Freemasonry as a unified or even unifying phenomenon. Rather than establishing a homogeneous centripetal globalized organization, Freemasonry promoted the formation of heterogeneous centrifugal glocalized nodes in a loose global network.

The joint features of various Masonic rites are the performance of rituals for the purpose of initiation of new members or the promotion to higher degrees. These ceremonies are enacted in private space, the lodge; those followed by a formalized dinner are held in what are called table lodges. The lodge is a physical location as well as the place for ritual work and the name of the smallest organizational unit within Freemasonry. Several single lodges in the same region form, as a rule, a provincial lodge and several provincial lodges a national Masonic organization. There is no international Masonic body, but national Masonic organizations have historically issued patents to single lodges outside their territorial borders. Because modern Freemasonry counts its organizational origin back to a constitutive meeting of four lodges in London in 1717, the United Grand Lodge of England, as heir of this first body, claims the right of assessing and granting the regularity of other national Masonic bodies in the world.

Already in its first published normative text, The Constitutions of the Freemasons of 1723, the tolerant and inclusive values of Freemasonry are stressed, values that opened up to establishment of lodges in a large variety of cultural, social, and religious settings. Fifteen years later, a famous Masonic oration delivered by André Michel de Ramsay stated that there were no significant differences between men based on languages, fashion, borders, or ranks. The world was described as one vast republic, every nation as a family within it and every individual as a child. It was the goal of Freemasonry, the author claimed, to bring about a unity of mankind.

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