The Fraternity of Freemasonry is the oldest, largest and most widely-known fraternal organization in the world. Freemasonry is found throughout the civilized world even in oppressed countries where it is not allowed to exist openly. Volumes have been written about Freemasonry, yet to many people it remains a mystery.
Freemasonry tends to men to be strictly obedient to its precepts. Through its fundamental belief in the Brotherhood of Man and the immortality of human soul, it seeks to make a good man a ‘better man.’ It is an organization formed and existing on the basic tenets of Brotherly Love, Relief of the distressed and Truth in all things. These tenets are ethical principles acceptable to good men everywhere. It teaches the universality of man, regardless of race, creed or nationality. It teaches tolerance of all mankind.
Freemasonry traces its antecedents to the associations of operative craftsmen, the builders of Gothic cathedrals, which history records were introduced into England as early as 674 A.D. and flourished during the Middle Ages.
Due to their professional knowledge and skills, master craftsmen were accorded special privileges, including that of traveling and working in foreign countries freely to employ their craft. In order to protect their associations from intrusion by outsiders, these craftsmen developed secret means of identification and recognition – the secrets of the guilds.
Between the 17th and early 18th centuries as cathedral building came to an end, guilds of stonemasons began to accept as members other good men not directly connected with the builders craft, terming them Speculative of Accepted Masons. Gradually, Lodges came to be composed almost entirely of Free and Accepted Masons, and from these groups the Freemasonry of today had its origin.