Page 17 - ASHLAR - Oct-Dec 2019

N A L G R
I O
G E AND LODGE
The Ashlar R Vol. XV Issue III
with work or helped on their way. The institutions in England and Scotland were
similarities between their initiation and similarly influenced from across the Channel
English Masonic catechisms are suggestive in this period.
but It is unfortunate that so little is known of Freemasonry a British product.
them before Perdiguier, by which time much Up to the present time, no even plausible
may have been adopted from Freemasonry theory of the "origin" of the Freemasons has
which had been popular and widespread for been put forward. The reason for this is
a century. (In this country we know probably that the Craft, as we know it,
remarkably little about Friendly Society ritual originated among the Operative Masons of
which was so generally borrowed from the Britain. No doubt it incorporated from the
Masonic that the Foresters took an especial earliest times shreds of ritual, folk-lore and
pride in their alleged independence). even occult elements, of time-immemorial
In Britain, Operative masonry lost its ritual antiquity. But it is almost certainly a British
which passed over into the keeping of and product and of British origin.
was elaborated by the speculatives,
whereas the Compagnonnage retained its
and remained aloof from French speculative
freemasonry.
Although this Compagnonnage cannot be
claimed to be in any way one of the origins of
Freemasonry, yet it is more than likely that it
did exercise considerable, if indirect,
influence upon Speculative Freemasonry in
the sixteenth century, just as other

V.W.Bro. Darius Sukhia

Lodge Gen Williams No 165,

Pune

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