The Mason Charges 1723

I AM FRANC-MACON ...

Having reached the age when one makes assessments rather than projects, retired from the written communication, I have three children and a half-dozen grandchildren ... Nothing of particular good therefore in my civil status: I am an average Frenchman, approaching the end of his life, registered on the registers of several pension funds and beneficiary - more than others - of health insurance.

What sets me apart, however, at the risk of annoying some of my friends, is that I am "Freemason"; active member of a "Brotherhood" with hints of sect which, if we believe the public rumor and what we will say, holds in the shadows the reins of power and finance.

I am a Freemason ... I claim it, without pride or false modesty; this is how. There is, however, in my eyes, no reason to worry about me. My only political force is that of my ballot, which I am sometimes asked to slip into the ballot box, my only financial power is that, well limited, my bank account.

An occult force

Ever since it began, Freemasonry has continually excited and exacerbated rumors and passions. We are always interested, with more critical than understanding eyes, in institutions that we do not know. To convince oneself of this, it is only necessary to consult one or the other of these press files which are published in our weeklies when the general information becomes scarce. Freemasonry cultivates
the secret ; therefore it is a dangerous sect which it is necessary to supervise, indeed to prohibit.

And yet, despite the surveillance, the prohibitions, the persecutions that it may have been the object of in the past, Freemasonry continues to exist, to work in discretion, not to ensure the seizure of political power or the domination of finance, but more simply, whatever one may believe or think, to allow people like me, like you, in short like anyone else, to cultivate and develop in themselves principles of spirituality , of esotericism and fraternity.

The Freemason is, in fact, a "philosopher" who is unaware of himself, who dreams of a better tomorrow for himself and for those around him, who wishes to be able to insert his stone, the one he intends to model and to fashion from day to day, in the moral edifice of Humanity.

But what in truth is Freemasonry?
What good is being Freemason?

To answer these questions, after several decades of Masonic practice, I undertook to present the results of my research and studies in a series of information and popularization works; without prejudices or bias; in all simplicity, as a ... Freemason eager to share what he himself has learned.

Guy Chassagnard

http://theoldcharges.com/chapter-292.html