BLINDED BY THE LIGHT: RIDING THE WAVE OF OPTIMISM

How we analyze the process of freemasonry depends on whether we are approaching our work with the enthusiasm and positivism of our entered apprentices or with cynicism.

The start of freemasonry owes much to the renaissance when the corruption of the church and secular war brought it into disrepute.  Still the questions did not stop but the rebirth- renaissance sought out a re-examination of pre-Christian thinking; a study of ancient Egypt and ancient Greece.   The rebirth of those ideas,  or what we call the renaissance redefined the relationship between God and man. No longer was the church in control interpreting and dictating the nature of that relationship with the divine.  Mankind was no long corrupt or broken as the Garden of Eden described. The translation of the Egyptian Book of Thoth into Latin was accepted without challenge, to be the lost knowledge restored. No longer subservient, renaissance man had responsible for carrying out duties.  As God created beauty so it was the responsibility of mankind to create an experience based on aesthetics and science.  

More than 2000 years after it was thought to have vanished, the legend of the book of Thoth, lead to study of the Tarrot.