BELIEF AND SUPERSTITION: WHAT PAUSED THE PROGRESS OF FREEMASONRY?

It is captured in a sense of loss.  We cannot modernize lest we leave some part of our heritage and ourselves behind.  As we profess to be the Gentle Craft, let's not be harsh or smug in our observations. There is no honour in hurbris.  We profess to be humble servants and now our craft requires us to look deeply into the mirror and see what we have become. The dawn of civilization was a time when the forces of nature and the whims of gods held us in a tight grasp.  2,500 years ago, the experience of civilization began to change forever. It was a time when rationality overrode superstition and belief.  We became responsible for our own destiny.   Three key thinkers from the ancient world put us on a path of understanding natural forces- seeing for the first time a  geometry of the world outside and consciousness within the mind.  Is good stronger than evil?  How do I live a good life?  What is a just society?  What is my destiny?  Who am I? We owe so much to them as any free thinking masons will acknowledge.  I am talking about Socrates, Confucius, and Buddha.   It is not the place to speak about their specific contributions to thought.  Their ideas were all the more remarkable because they came out of utter darkness;  a time before civilized men used reason to answer the imponderable questions of existence.  Today MasonicFX will attempt to illustrate the basis for a few startling observations.  Try as we might- we experience freemasonry as a thriving source of restrained energy.  Full of potential to bring light to the darkness, centuries of brethren have left us bereft of the study of ideas that were from perhaps that first period of enlightenment.  Freemasonry is far more than mortar and stone. It is essential ideas that shape character and inspire.  It is a reservoir of knowledge. Yet it remains untapped.