Can you think of anything said in a lodge room recently that could not have been said in public without doing harm to Masonry? Is there any need for secrecy today?
When the concepts that have become Masonic concepts first emerged, the people were uneducated and lived in a society in which order was necessary to preserve life. The Mysteries which we have inherited were clothed in ceremony and ritual, and their deep meanings were restricted to the intellectual class. Secrecy was needed so that the ignorant would not pervert the lessons and knowledge of these Mysteries to the detriment of society. Such knowledge in the hands of men motivated by false and petty reasons would have been dangerous to order and therefore to life. Such organizations as the Essene Order, the Dionysian Mysteries, the Delphic Mysteries, the Pythagoreans, early Christians, Knights Templar, Rosicrucians and finally Masonry, were meant to be places of learning and investigation into the philosophical and scientific vanguard so that society could progress. Their secrecy was never for the purpose of evil. When our Order was organized into a public institution, it was hoped that t
