Early 1900's Masonic Poster
Franklin Freemasonry and the Enlightenment
By: Richard E. Fletcher
" in Febuary 1731, Franklin became a Freemason. Shortly thereafter he volunteered to draft bylaws for the embryonic local chapter, named for S. John the Baptist; upon acceptance of the bylaws he was elected warden and subsequently master of the lodge. Within three years he became grand master of all of Pennsylvania's Masons."
So said H.W. Brands in his book The First American.
" With twenty-three printing establishments and, by 1776, seven newspapers, more newspapers even than London, Philadelphia was the publishing capital of the colonies. It was not only that Franklin's immensely popular Poor Richard's Almanack emanated from Philadelphia, but political pamphlets of such far-reaching influence as John Dickinson's Letter from a Pennsylbania Farmer, Thomas Jefferson's spirited Summary Biew of the Rights of British America, and now, Common Sense, which was faster than anything ever published in America.
Shops in nearly every street offered an array of goods and enticements such as most delegates to Congress could never find at home.
There were as many as thirty bookshops and twice the number of taverns and cofeehouses, with names like Blue Anchor, Bunch of Grapes, Tun tTavern, Conestoga Wagon, Rising Sun, Half Moon, and each had its own clientele. The Free Masons conbened at the staid old Indian King on Market Street."
This was the Philidelphia John Adams found when he arrived in 1774, a new member of Congress, as described by David McCullough in his outstanding biography of John Adams.
Later Adams was appointed a Resident Commissioner and moved to Paris in 1777 where he joined Franklin. He was a desperately lonely man. Daved McCullough describes Adams as:
"Privately, he was distraught and painfully lonely. It had been more than three months since he left home and still there was no word from Abigail. He worried about her, longed for her.
Franklin amused himself playing chess with his fashionable friends; Adams did not know chess. Franklin had his Masonic meetings; Adams was not a Mason."
It's very clear that Benjamin Franklin had interests other than pure politics. Freemasonry was an important part of his life. Daved McCullough recognized this and remarked how it made a difference in the lives of the two men.
A bit later, Franklin added to his Masonic involvement by joining the Lodge of the Nine Muses in Paris. Said H.W. Brands in The First American.
The suspicions Franklin aroused were only increased by his association with one of the most prominent subversive organizations in the French capital. The Masonic Lodge of the Nine Sisters had been the brainchild of the late husband of Madame Helvetius. Named for the muses of the arts and sciences. the lodge deliberately embraced philosophers of all disciplines; among its members were some of the freest-thinkers in the realm. This, and the secrecy the lodge shared with all Masonic affiliates, rendered it suspect in the eyes of the keepers of the status quo. Franklin was aware of these suspicions, and as senior American commissioner he took them into consideration. But as a longtime Mason, a free-thinker, he could not decline membership. He was inducted during the spring of 1778 as the 106th member.
He came in the door just behind the most famous French subversive of the age. Voltaire had been skewering orthodoxies of barious sorts for decades, making him persona non grata with the monarchs of France and Prussia, to name two in particular. At Franklin's arrival in 1776 Voltaire had been exiled from Paris for a quarter century. Yet as he felt the life flowing out of his bony frame---whether retarded or accelerated by the fifty cups of coffee he was said to drink each day, no one knew---he insisted on returning to the capital."
In his book Revolutionary Brotherhood, Stephen Bullock talks about Franklin, beginning with a reference to Jean Theophile Desaguliers:
"his writings later inspired his Masonic Brother Benjamin Franklin's scientific work. Desagulier's demonstrations helped spread enlightened science in England as well. In 1719, while serving as grand master, he gave a series of lectures in the great rooms owned by Sir Richard Steele, the coauthor of the Spectator and, according to some evidence, Desagulier's Masonic brother. This connection between enlightened ideas and the fraternity continued throughout the century.
Franklin, whose newspaper reprinted a story about Montesquieu's 1730 initiation, led the aged Voltaire into a Parisian lodge for his initiation forty-eight years afterward."
By: Richard E. Fletcher
" in Febuary 1731, Franklin became a Freemason. Shortly thereafter he volunteered to draft bylaws for the embryonic local chapter, named for S. John the Baptist; upon acceptance of the bylaws he was elected warden and subsequently master of the lodge. Within three years he became grand master of all of Pennsylvania's Masons."
So said H.W. Brands in his book The First American.
" With twenty-three printing establishments and, by 1776, seven newspapers, more newspapers even than London, Philadelphia was the publishing capital of the colonies. It was not only that Franklin's immensely popular Poor Richard's Almanack emanated from Philadelphia, but political pamphlets of such far-reaching influence as John Dickinson's Letter from a Pennsylbania Farmer, Thomas Jefferson's spirited Summary Biew of the Rights of British America, and now, Common Sense, which was faster than anything ever published in America.
Shops in nearly every street offered an array of goods and enticements such as most delegates to Congress could never find at home.
There were as many as thirty bookshops and twice the number of taverns and cofeehouses, with names like Blue Anchor, Bunch of Grapes, Tun tTavern, Conestoga Wagon, Rising Sun, Half Moon, and each had its own clientele. The Free Masons conbened at the staid old Indian King on Market Street."
This was the Philidelphia John Adams found when he arrived in 1774, a new member of Congress, as described by David McCullough in his outstanding biography of John Adams.
Later Adams was appointed a Resident Commissioner and moved to Paris in 1777 where he joined Franklin. He was a desperately lonely man. Daved McCullough describes Adams as:
"Privately, he was distraught and painfully lonely. It had been more than three months since he left home and still there was no word from Abigail. He worried about her, longed for her.
Franklin amused himself playing chess with his fashionable friends; Adams did not know chess. Franklin had his Masonic meetings; Adams was not a Mason."
It's very clear that Benjamin Franklin had interests other than pure politics. Freemasonry was an important part of his life. Daved McCullough recognized this and remarked how it made a difference in the lives of the two men.
A bit later, Franklin added to his Masonic involvement by joining the Lodge of the Nine Muses in Paris. Said H.W. Brands in The First American.
The suspicions Franklin aroused were only increased by his association with one of the most prominent subversive organizations in the French capital. The Masonic Lodge of the Nine Sisters had been the brainchild of the late husband of Madame Helvetius. Named for the muses of the arts and sciences. the lodge deliberately embraced philosophers of all disciplines; among its members were some of the freest-thinkers in the realm. This, and the secrecy the lodge shared with all Masonic affiliates, rendered it suspect in the eyes of the keepers of the status quo. Franklin was aware of these suspicions, and as senior American commissioner he took them into consideration. But as a longtime Mason, a free-thinker, he could not decline membership. He was inducted during the spring of 1778 as the 106th member.
He came in the door just behind the most famous French subversive of the age. Voltaire had been skewering orthodoxies of barious sorts for decades, making him persona non grata with the monarchs of France and Prussia, to name two in particular. At Franklin's arrival in 1776 Voltaire had been exiled from Paris for a quarter century. Yet as he felt the life flowing out of his bony frame---whether retarded or accelerated by the fifty cups of coffee he was said to drink each day, no one knew---he insisted on returning to the capital."
In his book Revolutionary Brotherhood, Stephen Bullock talks about Franklin, beginning with a reference to Jean Theophile Desaguliers:
"his writings later inspired his Masonic Brother Benjamin Franklin's scientific work. Desagulier's demonstrations helped spread enlightened science in England as well. In 1719, while serving as grand master, he gave a series of lectures in the great rooms owned by Sir Richard Steele, the coauthor of the Spectator and, according to some evidence, Desagulier's Masonic brother. This connection between enlightened ideas and the fraternity continued throughout the century.
Franklin, whose newspaper reprinted a story about Montesquieu's 1730 initiation, led the aged Voltaire into a Parisian lodge for his initiation forty-eight years afterward."
.
Anyone in need of coaching???
every wednesday night @ 5 pm
---Any Degree---
Please come learn your degree.
every wednesday night @ 5 pm
---Any Degree---
Please come learn your degree.
“A MASONIC THOUGHT” VOL V, #13 (31 JUL 09)
Freemasonry has tenets peculiar to itself. They serve as testimonials of character and qualifications, which are only conferred after due course of instruction and examination. These are of no small value; they speak a universal language, and act as a passport to the attention and support of the initiated in all parts of the world. They cannot be lost as long as memory retains its power. Let the possessor of them be expatriated, shipwrecked or imprisoned, let him be stripped of everything he has got in the world, still those credentials remain, and are available for use as circumstances require. The good effects, they have produced are established by the most incontestable facts of history. They have stayed the uplifted hand of the destroyer; they have softened the asperities of the tyrant; they have mitigated the horrors of captivity; they have subdued the rancour of malevolence; and broken down the barriers of political animosity and sectarian alienation. On the field of battle, in the solitudes of the uncultivated forest, or in the busy haunts of the crowded city, they have made men of the most hostile feelings, the most distant regions, and diversified conditions, rush to the aid of each other, and feel a special joy and satisfaction that they have been able to afford relief to a Brother Mason.
AUTHOR: Benjamin Franklin
Freemasonry has tenets peculiar to itself. They serve as testimonials of character and qualifications, which are only conferred after due course of instruction and examination. These are of no small value; they speak a universal language, and act as a passport to the attention and support of the initiated in all parts of the world. They cannot be lost as long as memory retains its power. Let the possessor of them be expatriated, shipwrecked or imprisoned, let him be stripped of everything he has got in the world, still those credentials remain, and are available for use as circumstances require. The good effects, they have produced are established by the most incontestable facts of history. They have stayed the uplifted hand of the destroyer; they have softened the asperities of the tyrant; they have mitigated the horrors of captivity; they have subdued the rancour of malevolence; and broken down the barriers of political animosity and sectarian alienation. On the field of battle, in the solitudes of the uncultivated forest, or in the busy haunts of the crowded city, they have made men of the most hostile feelings, the most distant regions, and diversified conditions, rush to the aid of each other, and feel a special joy and satisfaction that they have been able to afford relief to a Brother Mason.
AUTHOR: Benjamin Franklin
"A MASONIC THOUGHT” VOL V, #11 (17 JUL 09)
“Masonry should make, and must make, each man who conscientiously takes its obligations, a fine type of American citizen, because Masonry teaches him his obligation to his fellows in a practical fashion.”
AUTHOR: Theodore Roosevelt
“Masonry should make, and must make, each man who conscientiously takes its obligations, a fine type of American citizen, because Masonry teaches him his obligation to his fellows in a practical fashion.”
AUTHOR: Theodore Roosevelt
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At least eight distinct streams of Masonic thought have emerged since 1717 (and possibly more), each "school" of thought on the nature of Freemasonry having its own particular advocates. Here is an adaptationof H. L. Haywood's summary of Masonic Schools of thought, The Great
Teaching of Masonry, pages 155-163:
1) The "Scientific" School, whose chief advocate, William Preston, formulated much of the modern ritual of the Craft, and whose chief objective was the employment of Masonry towards the study of the arts
and sciences.
2) The "Rational" School, whose chief advocate, Karl Friedrich Krause, believed that Masonry should work with both the Church and Government towards the perfection of the human condition through the promotion ofa life governed by Reason.
3) The "Christian" School, whose chief advocate, the Reverend George Oliver, believed that Freemasonry should exist to reconcile Christianity and Philosophy, and who strongly rejected excess intellectualism and attached high value to intuition, faith and tradition.
4) The "Philosophical" School, whose chief advocate, Albert Pike, saw Freemasonry as an exercise in comparative religion and philosophy in the pursuit of wisdom and enlightenment, by means of the study of
Masonic symbolism and the conduct of Masonic ritual.
5) The "Historical" School, whose chief advocate, Robert Freke Gould, saw Freemasonry as a school of wisdom that only reveals itself to Masons who expend the time and effort to study the history of the
Craft and its symbols.
6) The "Esoteric" School, whose chief advocate, Arthur Edward Waite, viewed Freemasonry as a form of mystical teaching, whose objectives are Enlightenment and the perfection of the self through the study of arcane knowledge and the practice of occult rites.
7) The "Romantic" School, with whom no one individual is associated as a chief advocate, but whose name seems a condescending label ascribed
by the "Authentic" School (see below) to those Masons who believe in the Templar origins of Freemasonry, or other historically dubious facts about the Craft.
8) The "Authentic" School, with whom no one individual is associated as a chief advocate, but which seems to primarily view Freemasonry as an exercise in scholarship and philanthropy, and has been specifically dismissive of the "Romantic" and "Esoteric" Schools of Masonic philosophy.
