Freemasonry’s origin being lost in obscurity, numerous theories abound about how and when and where it came to be. Its roots, it is said, lie in ancient history.

The most plausible theory places its origin in Middle Ages Europe when church and cathedral building was pursued with great fervour. During this time an immense number of masons, working with stone, wood and other material were employed by the church builders. Not all were experts or masters in their field, and many were apprenticed to receive hands-on training on the job. Also, in the frenzy of activity, many were hired solely for their physical brawn, with little attention paid to their antecedents. Most hired labourers, as to be expected, hardly attended church, for they were unschooled and could not understand Latin, the then language of divinity. Many were not possessed of high moral values. The builders, then, took it upon themselves to work on improvement of their workmen’s skills during the day, and, after sundown, to work on improvement of their characters by imbibing their minds with moral lessons expounded in the Bible. For this purpose, they met in small on-site shelters which they called “lodges”, and it was in these lodges that the rough and rustic workers received their moral instruction.

With the passage of time, this evening activity came to the notice of the upper classes of society, who were so greatly impressed that they often joined and sponsored these morality sessions. The labourers, who were the operative masons, actually working with various tools, were essentially bonded to the builders they served; whereas the upper classes and nobility, who came in later, being free men, came to be known as free masons, which later became the single word Freemason.

Even after the frenetic church-building activity abated, moral instruction continued, and continues to this day. The earlier Freemason lodges, now no longer situated on building sites, were held in inns and taverns across the continent. Later, the lodges met in venues, very aptly called Temples, built specifically for the purpose of imparting moral values to the lay citizenry. The moral instruction given in Lodges today assist the Mason on his path of self-discovery, through an awakening of his awareness of his obligation to society at large, mainly through acts of consideration, kindness and charity.

The Lodge, today, is the basic unit of assembly of Freemasons, and is also where non-Freemasons are admitted into the Masonic community. A Temple can serve as a meeting place for several lodges, and most Masonic edifices around the world house more than one Temple.

Modern Freemasonry may be considered to start when four Lodges meeting in their respective taverns in London got together in 1717 to establish the Premier Grand Lodge, a Masonic body dedicated to the governance of Masonic activity in all lodges. The history of modern Freemasonry, or Masonry for short, has been very well documented and makes for very instructive, and often very entertaining, reading. This website directs the reader to several links where this narrative can be found.

At this point, a word of caution is noteworthy. Not everything one finds on the Internet about Masonry is authentic, and the reader is advised to exercise his own judgement to distinguish the genuine from the false and malafide anti-Masonic postings and material one is very likely to encounter.

With time, British expatriates working in the colonies established Masonic Lodges where they were domiciled, and Masonry took off in a big way around the globe, particularly in America, where three quarters of the world’s Masons currently reside.

At this point it is worth noting that Masonry is, and has always been, areligious in nature. A person’s religious affiliation has never been a consideration, even before it spread around the world. Also, a man’s wealth, education, social position, occupation, vocation, etc. are of no consequence whatsoever when admitting him into the fraternity. What matters, and matters only, is that he be a believer in a Supreme Being, a man of sound moral principles, and of mature age, which is presently set at 21.

Masonry is like a giant tree, made up of several “Orders”. Each order is dedicated to a particular aspect of morality. The root and trunk of the Masonic tree is the Order known as Craft Masonry, which is the first step every candidate has mandatorily to take to be admitted into the fraternity, and is his basic qualification to be considered as a Mason. All other Orders require this basic requirement to be fulfilled before he can be considered for further progress. These Orders are like branches and sub-branches emanating from the trunk, and cover a very wide scope of moral lessons. In order to progress to a certain Order, the candidate has to fulfill its requirements in terms of prior membership of other Orders, where such requirements exist.

For administrative convenience, Masonry works in a hierarchical organization structure. Starting at the lowest level and moving up, the Lodges in a given region are affiliated to a Provincial Grand Lodge, and several Provincial Grand Lodges are in turn affiliated to a Grand Lodge. The Grand Lodge, is the supreme governing body for the Provincial Grand Lodges affiliated to it, formulating rules and regulations which their respective affiliated Lodges must abide by, and may deviate from only after obtaining the requisite dispensation. Legally binding agreements, or concordats, do exist between Grand Lodges, and several of them are so firmly ingrained by the close fraternal ties which they share with one another, that they often form part of their rules and regulations.

All Orders also are similarly structured, each having its own Grand Lodge and Provincial Grand Lodges, its own Book of Constitutions, and its own administrative setup. The District Grand Lodge of Bombay is dedicated solely to the promotion of Craft Masonry within its jurisdiction.

A question which is often posed is: What is the purpose of the “secrets” that the Masonry is supposed to impart to its members? The secrets are mainly identification devices, very much like internet or bank passwords, to prevent access to Masonic bodies by non-Masons. An unknown person desiring entry to a Lodge, say, will be admitted only after his knowledge of the pertinent identification marks is satisfactorily tested. Their purpose, one may say, is more to keep non-Masons out than to let Masons in. This is true for all Masonic Orders.