Freemasonry

Freemasonry is a fraternal organizational movement whose members, Freemasons, are organized into private local lodges structured around ritual, symbolism and shared ethical teaching drawn substantially from the working tools and traditions of medieval stonemasons' guilds, from which the movement's own historical self-understanding traces its origin, though historians generally regard organized, speculative Freemasonry as a distinct early modern institution rather than a direct continuation of the operative medieval guilds. The institution's formally organized modern history is generally dated to the establishment of the first Grand Lodge, the Grand Lodge of England, in London in 1717, uniting several existing London lodges under a single central governing body, after which Freemasonry spread rapidly across Britain, continental Europe and, through colonial and commercial contact, to North America and other regions worldwide. Freemasonry is organized around a system of progressive degrees, most fundamentally the three Craft degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason, conferred through ritual ceremonies that use the tools and vocabulary of stonemasonry allegorically to teach moral and ethical lessons, and membership has historically required belief in a Supreme Being, though the organization is not itself a religion and does not require adherence to any specific creed beyond that belief. Freemasonry has no single worldwide governing body, instead comprising a large number of independent national and regional Grand Lodges holding varying degrees of mutual recognition with one another, and the movement has historically attracted both prominent public membership and, particularly from the eighteenth century onward, considerable external suspicion and conspiracy theory, including formal condemnation by the Roman Catholic Church beginning in 1738.