Reason Number Three: Freemasonry teaches the principles of pagan religion as truth

Not only does Freemasonry use elements of pagan religion for inspiration in ceremonies, it also teaches their principles as truth. 

“Masonry, of no one age, belongs to all time; of no one religion, it finds its great truths in all.”  (Book of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry, McCleanachan, 1885, p. 380)

In its pursuit to create one platform for all religions, Freemasonry suggests that it has assembled and arranged the elements from each into one system.  In the process of assembling this composite, it has called into question a personal search for truth in one’s own creed or religion.  It has stated that such a search in a particular creed is in vain.  Its only premise is that the selection of one religion over another is exclusive and intolerant.  While debasing the idea that any one faith could be correct, it suggests that a composite of them is inherently better.  It tries to create something out of scattered pieces to unite all:

“Masonry is a worship; but one in which all civilized men can unite.”  (Book of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry, McCleanachan, 1885, p. 380)

Freemasonry believes that it has created a worship, one that is better than any one individual faiths.  Freemasonry sees itself as more than a fraternity involved in charities, but as a spiritual organization teaching a universal system of worship.

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Freemasonry believes it can find aspects of itself in all religions.  To achieve this, it clusters certain themes to prove a unity with itself.  Aspects of each religion that are out of harmony with the synthesis are quietly dropped away.  Similarities between religions are highlighted; differences are jettisoned.  In this way, the Druids of England are made to share common wisdom with the followers of Ceres or Apollo of Rome.  Conveniently, out of sight to Masons, are the human sacrifices practiced by the Druids or the execution of Christians by the pagans of Rome. 

Although Freemasonry advances these religions as examples of ancient insight, they selectively omit their intolerant practices in the process.  In this way, the Craft advances the notion of a primitive faith that was once shared by all people.  Freemasonry believes the Lodge is representative of that primitive faith.

“It is the universal, eternal, immutable religion, such as God planted it in the heart of universal humanity.”  (Liturgies of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry, Charleston, 1966, p. 199)

This brings to the surface the central issue, which is the nature of revelation.  If God has revealed Himself, how has He accomplished it?  Freemasonry advances the belief that God gave a universal religion, and its fragments have been pieced back together by the Lodge.  Masonry looks in one particular direction for the revelation of God.  It is not in the biblical doctrine of inspiration but in what theologians call natural revelation.  Simply put, Masonry believes that nature gives an accurate picture of God.

“Nature is the primary, consistent, and certain revelation of God.  It is His utterance, word, and speech. Whether he speaks to us through a man must depend, even at first, on human testimony, and afterwords on heresy, or tradition.  But in and by His work we know the Deity, even as we know the mind of another man, and his thoughts, by his acts and words.”  (Liturgies of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry, Charleston, 1944, p. 189)

Freemasonry, in classic pagan style, adheres to a nature-driven revelatory system.  At the same time, Freemasonry discounts revelation by God through people.  Whether God speaks, they suggest, is a matter of human testimony, hearsay, and tradition.  In other words, it is to be discounted.  Nature, on the other hand, is to be trusted.

It may be in Masonry’s universal interests to discount God-enabled revelation.  If God has indeed spoken through the Hebrew people, it is difficult to build a universal platform at odds against it.  Nature, on the other hand, is something all human beings share in together.  We live in it day by day.  If it can be made into religious speech, the whole world may be able to speak the same language.

Judaism and Christianity begin at a radically different point.  These major religions, with all their differences, do not believe that nature is the source of the knowledge of God.  They believe that God indeed spoke through human beings.  Together they believe that creation fell in a mighty cataclysm that rendered the world tainted with evil and destruction.  They collectively say that nature was hurled into such turbulence and that trying to understand God through it is fruitless.  If God would ever be known, He must come from outside the system and speak into it.  This is what the historic Jewish and Christian faith believes.

Freemasonry chooses to look in a different direction.  It looks to all spiritual systems for inspiration and filters out what it does not like. 

“Masonry teaches, and has preserved in their purity, the cardinal tenets of the old primitive faith, which underlie and are the foundation of all religions.”  (Book of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry, McCleanachan, 1885, p. 427)

Moreover, the Scottish Rite suggests that its initiates should perpetuate the truths of these ancient mysteries. 

“The duties of a Knight of the Brazen Serpent are: to purify the soul of its alloy of earthliness, that through the gate of Capricorn and the seven spheres it may at length ascend to its eternal home beyond the stars; and also perpetuate the great truths enveloped in the symbols and allegories of the ancient mysteries.”  (Book of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry, McCleanachan, 1885, p. 358

When Freemasonry speaks about "the mysteries," it is speaking of certain pagan religions that share common features.  The mysteries held initiations, had a death-like ordeal to pass, held out the promise of eternal life, and believed the passage brought people into knowledge and light. 

These ideas are firmly planted in the Craft.  It states that its ideas are:

“…drawn from the ancient mysteries of Egypt, Persia, Greece, India, the Druids, and the Essenes, as vehicles to communicate the great Masonic truths.”  (Book of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry, McCleanachan, 1885, p. 312)

The Mysteries are most closely associated with Greece, where they reached international fame.  In Greece, they were divided into the Greater Mysteries and Lesser Mysteries.  The Greater Mysteries were celebrated in September, and the Lesser Mysteries generally in March or April.  The Greater Mysteries celebrated the pagan goddess Demeter in Eleusis, while The Lesser Mysteries were held in Agrae.

It was believed that the goddess Demeter revealed the Mysteries and how they were to be observed.  As with other pagan fertility systems, the Greater Mysteries revolved around the loss of the planting season and the retreat of the sun.  The Eluesian mysteries held out the promise of salvation through initiation.  Pigs were sacrificed to Demeter.

The similarities between Freemasonry and the pagan mysteries are very real.  In both systems people are initiated, blindfolded, sworn to secrecy, overcome a death/life experience, are helped in the journey by a mystegogue, are given the promise of an afterlife, undertake various degrees of initiation, and meet in temples, among other things.

Greek Mysteries, like Freemasonry, hold out the promise of eternal life through initiation.  The boundary from darkness to light is through ritual.  Without initiation, a person is hopeless.  Homer’s Hymn to Demeter states:

   “Blessed is the moral on earth who has seen these rites

but the uninitiated who has no share in them never
 has the same lot once dead in the dreary darkness.” 

According to Homer, only the initiated escape Hades and move to a sun-drenched existence.  The mysteries represent salvation through initiation into the pagan afterlife.

Although the Scottish Rite suggests that it has put its hand on an ancient religion once given to primitive man, the truth is that the mysteries of Rome or Greece are no earlier than the 2nd century B.C.  This is four hundred years later than Isaiah of the Old Testament.  Hardly primitive, just pagan.  (An Introduction to Roman Religion, John Scheid, Indiana University Press, 1998, p. 9)

Does Freemasonry teach principles of pagan religion as truth?

In the Rose Croix degree, we read:

“HERMES is their Master, to be obeyed and imitated.”  (151 Liturgies, Knights Rose Croix, 1956) 

We further read that Masonry’s dogma, or teaching, is that of Zarathustra and Hermes:

“The dogma of Masonry is that of Zarathustra and Hermes; its Law is progressive initiation; its principle Equality, regulated by a Hierarchy and universal Fraternity."  (Liturgies of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry, 1944, p. 104)

The McCleanachan monitor is even more explicit:

“The Sun and the Moon in our Lodges are the truth, and the reflection of the truth in doctrine.”  (Book of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry, McCleanachan, 1885, p. 354)

The funeral services in the Rose Croix degree picture not the biblical view of the afterlife, but that of the pagan Elusian mysteries:

“At the East end of the Chapter there should be a kind of representation of the Elysian fields…”   (Book of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry, McCleanachan, 1885, p. 277)

In the Prince of the Tabernacle degree the concept is pagan:

“Excellent Senior Warden, let prayers be offered up on the tabernacle for the return of light and the reascention of the Sun, and of that moral and spiritual light of which he is the type."  (Book of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry, McCleanachan, 1885, p. 355)

In the same degree he is asked to:

“Weep for Osiris, type of the good, the true, the beautiful.”  (Book of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry, McCleanachan, 1885, p. 356)

Lest there be any doubt, Albert Pike states in his first draft of the Scottish Rite degrees:

“Though Masonry is identical with the Ancient Mysteries, it is so in this qualified sense; that it presents but an imperfect image of their brilliancy.”  (Magnum Opus, Albert Pike, XXVIII, p. 29)

In summary, Freemasonry in the Scottish Rite advocates the introduction of pagan truth into the Old and New Testament themes presented in the degrees.  In attempting to create a composite platform of religions, they have generally selected nature-driven pagan systems.

In the process, the Lodge advances the religious notions of idolatrous nations and has dismissed the revelation of God through the Hebrew people.  This attempt to trace these religions to the archaic period has no scholarly basis, for what is known about them comes from records no further back than the 2nd century B.C.

The religions represented are the ones God told His people to avoid.  Truth is not found in them but rather in the Word of God. Adding pagan thought is a clear violation of the first two commandments, which read: “You shall have no other gods before Me.”

“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”  (Deut. 5:1-10)