Conference at the Masonic Museum of Portugal

CONFERENCE: " Philosophy and Freemasonry in the eighteenth and nineteenth century "

Main SPEAKER: Prof. Teixeira Francisco
May 23, 2014 7 pm 
Gremio Lusitano [Rua do Gremio Lusitano, 25, Lisbon

Masonic Museum of Portugal

"Freemasonry in its ideas of values,and its ritual symbolism, has always been influenced and shaped by the philosophical and spiritual views of each age.

Freemasonry emerges from the values ​​of tolerance, freedom of conscience, of the primacy and autonomy of the individual, resulting from an experimentalist English Enlightenment and the Royal Society of the 18th century. It was a child of the values ​​and the ideals of the French Revolution and encyclopedias. It is permeated by the thought of the Rosicrucians, theosophists, the perennial philosophy, the occult of the 19th century...

The positivist philosophy and thought "pierces" Freemasonry and adapted masonic rituals and practices. In public space are heroes, artists, and men of letters replace the saints. Atheism is gaining ground in the plural and fraternal coexistence, where various philosophical currents of thought reign.

Freemasonry is enriched by other viewpoints, other approaches, other ways of life and other peers. In present day society, pragmatism wins supremacy of the mercantilist view, Wellness, Opinion, and the ephemeral spectacle of society, opposed to the essence and Being. Freemasonry, in its spirituality, is not immune to the influence of these new trends.

Material interests overlap with spiritual interests, solidarity and brotherhood. Time moves on and we are dispossessed of our inner time, which is reflected in the current experience of Freemasonry "

[Fernando Castel-Branco Sacramento - Director of the Portuguese Masonic Museum ]