Freemasonry: The Naked Truth

There are two major secrets concerning Freemasonry. The first concerns the work we undertake. We promise not to disclose its content. The reason for this secret is that a layman who already knows a good deal about Masonic practice can never experience the Initiation ceremony with the required innocence. The desired effect will be lost.

The second secret concerns the membership of other Brothers and Sisters. We are authorised to inform you of our own membership, if we so wish (otherwise how could we write this book)?. On the other hand, we are not allowed to disclose the membership of anyone else.

This question of secrecy is very common in Europe and especially in France. The Freemasons in the U.K. or the U.S.A. are much more open concerning this point. There are historical reasons that explain this difference. First of all, since the Catholic Church is fiercely opposed to Freemasonry[1], it would not be in good taste to declare in a social evening, where fifty percent of the guests are practicing Catholics, "I am a Freemason ", and even less acceptable to disclose the membership of another person. This is generally not well-accepted by lay people who have little information on the subject. The highest Muslim spiritual authorities are, unfortunately, also opposed to Freemasonry.[2]

Authoritarian and dictatorial regimes have always feared free-thinking men and women. Those who think for themselves, outside the imposed dogmas, represent a significant danger for these systems. Need we say that Freemasons have always been bitterly hunted down by these regimes, as have certain other communities. The last period of harassment was the 1939-1945 World War. The Temples in Paris were ransacked and the archives seized and transported to Berlin for analysis.[3]

Marshal Petain, Head of the French government at that time, was driven by a fierce hatred towards the Freemasons, who had blocked him for a rise in rank during his career, and seized the opportunity to take his revenge. "A Jew is never responsible for his origins; a Freemason is always responsible for his choices"[4], he proclaimed. Unfortunately, the Nazis were not the only ones to persecute Freemasons. The Soviet regime[5] also persecuted many of them, before definitively banning their practice. Leon Trotsky judged that "Freemasonry is a blight on the body of French communism, and it must be branded with a hot iron". Freemasonry is still banned in many countries today: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates[6], North Korea, and Indonesia. In other countries, even if Freemasonry is not legally prohibited, its practice faces very unfavourable, even impossible, conditions, such as in Pakistan. [7]