Freemasonry: gnostic images

taylorfrancis.com/chapters/freemasonry-gnostic-images-garry-trompf/e/10.4324/9781315561608-41

Chapter

ByGarry W. Trompf

BookThe Gnostic World

Edition 1st Edition

First Published 2018

Imprint Routledge

Pages 9

eBook ISBN 9781315561608

ABSTRACT
This chapter recognizes that a "Gnostic-associated" movement, namely Freemasonry, with its
many branches but common enough features, became a worldwide movement in modern
times. Freemasonry's popularity in Protestant countries followed its association with
scientific progress and liberal thought and its presumed opposition to western Catholicism.
Masonry grew strongly in Protestant-dominated, anti-Catholic contexts in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, and in such a country as France where Catholicism was weakened by
Protestant and deistic tendencies. The earliest distinctive mysteries of modern Freemasonry
connected architectural knowledge and the Bible. If Freemasonry has often been introduced
to outsiders simply as "a way of making men better," the evidence remains that some of its
renowned exponents, whether legitimately or not, have approached and unveiled it for its
loyalists as "a way of Gnosis." Freemasonry has the structure of Gnosis from the start for
being initiatic, and for being laden with hieroglyphic signals in lodge paraphernalia that
entice "spiritual curiosity".
Your institution has not purchased this content. Please get in touch with your librarian to
recommend this.