Reality Becoming Art

Think about masonry as an art form of the period and some interesting things happen.

Mocked and suppressed.  Incomplete.  The history of some art forms tells more about us than we may realize.  Baroque- incomprehensible in the day.  Rococo- an affront to good taste, all the blending of colours and form and pleasure and work itself telling us of the naughtiness of the day that connects us.  Impressionists were scorned by the major galleries of Paris, so they made their own show- and the rest is history.  

We were never so lively or interesting as our history.  The story about masonry is a concoction using symbols, compressing the history of thought and culture into a stream of consciousness. Innuendo played a big part in the development of mystery, discovery, and genius.   I don't subscribe for a second that masonry began through the Grand Lodge of England. It is difficult to chart a big bang event.  We became something beautiful, something almost imaginary with all the stains removed.  So we can be forgiven for thinking we are a pious institution.  We recorded reality and produced fantasy. This is why we can't replicate the past and why that desire is insatiable.

Masonry, like Rococo always presented as this great enlightenment where science triumphs at a time when Linnaeus classified the natural world; from an age of sophistication into an era of awkwardness. Pre-Darwinian, we were gawking  at a fanciful intellectual processor, a product of the brooding natural man.

The overall design is absolutely compelling.  What was there left to conquer but man's need to become conscious?