Freemasonry Rituals

Freemasonry is known for its ornate rituals. There are three levels to pass through before you can become a Mason. The levels are called degrees. The three degrees represent a three story temple. The first degree: Entered Apprentice like ground level, symbolizes the new man’s connection with the material world. The second degree is Fellow Craft, and the third is Master Mason. These upper floors, like higher degrees of the temple, symbolize his unconscious and as he advances in degrees he will advance psychologically in the understanding of his hidden mind. The head of the Lodge is called the Worshipful Master.

One of the most interesting is the ceremony in which an initiate becomes a Master Mason. In the first phase the novice must swear to many things including allegiance to God and his fellow Masons. When he thinks he has completed the ceremony and become a Master Mason, his real initiation begins. He is blindfolded and has to act out the part of Hiram Abiff, the murdered master in a legend of the building of King Solomon's temple. There is much action wherein the initiate refuses to divulge the secrets of the Masons and is symbolically murdered and wrapped in a sheet. At the end, the five points of fellowship are explained to him, along with many Masonic symbols.

The medieval tools of Masons are still used today to symbolize important ideas of the Masons. The ladder is a symbol of progressive advancement from a lower to a higher sphere. Small rectangular aprons are the traditional garb of the Freemasons made of simple white cloth, and must be kept clean to symbolize innocence.

An important symbol of the Masons is The Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza. It is an emblem of the continuity of the craft of Freemasonry from the dawn of civilization in Egypt. The pyramid with the all-seeing eye represents the Great Architect of the Universe that guided the Founding Fathers of the United States to establish a nation that might one day reveal itself as the heir of the ancient mysteries of Atlantis and restore all humankind to the earthly paradise that existed in that Golden Age of old.