Agnosticism and Freemasonry
By: Draško Miletić
We explore the profound evolution of Freemasonry from ancient origins to modern agnosticism.
This thought-provoking journey unveils the struggle against dogma, the quest for moral integrity, and the embrace of knowledge free from religious constraints.
Discover how the ideals of self-awareness and community reshaped a revolutionary movement that still resonates today.
Dear Brethren, let’s consider the origins of Freemasonry and inevitably enter into its foreword, which reaches back to Ancient Egypt and is allegorically embodied explicitly in Old Judea, in the era of the First Temple and its builder, Abbi Hiram.
The very roots of our correctness and completeness are marked there. Equally important was the decision of the brothers in 1717, London gentlemen and former pastors, to resist the ultimate authority of knowledge – the church.
Along with that went the will of the first brothers to abandon feudalism, not only as a way of thinking but also as a sign. Instead of the ecclesiastical scepter, establishing civic consciousness without delay was necessary.
Instead of revelation – promoting deism (
) as the rule of reason over mere theological indeterminacy.
The proclaimed religious beliefs, which, in the case of Christianity, gave forgiveness from sin through odious indulgence, had to be denounced by all ethically permissible means.
Wars in the name of confession were to be abhorred. As the outcome, there should have been a loud denial of the claims of Europe and the Levant:
A Christian country is as long as there are Christian graves, and a Muslim country is as far as you can throw a spear. So, for centuries, graves and spears have been inseparably joined. Two justices, two ways, one sky. Blood everywhere. Because, they say, there could be no other existence.
However, the first speculative Freemasons noticed the absence of the concept of the Fellow man and the disastrous applicability of the prevailing religions.
Yet, the Enlightenment urge warned man that the form overcame the purpose, that the essential Being turned to the possessive To Have, and that church dogma, that arrogance over knowledge and history itself, devalued and stopped the Artes liberales.
Dear Brethren, leaving the five-sense sensorium and its static form, I am about to change the name of my craft into AGNOSTICISM AS A TYPE OF FREEMASONRY because agnosticism, as I appreciate it, is an attempt to prove the supernatural not only with mental skills but also with the human spirit.
The prerequisite for all of this should discard the dogma, and raise the skepticism that events are just as they are, that all conditions must remain as they are and cannot be changed, and that the radicalism of the human mind is not the only natural way of our mental behavior and that supervision is not the essence of our spirit.
Freemasonry and its agnostic form initially served as a socio-philosophical necessity and a scholarly effort to liberate knowledge from religious constraints, fostering a moment of increased tolerance.
Therefore, it was a revolution not only in the eye and mind but also in the spirit. Every thought and action should be driven by a profound sense of morality and balance, as these principles lay the foundation of the Masonic life.
The notion of the New Man was accessible through Seneca’s aspirations and Rousseau’s perspectives on education.
Speculative Freemasonry moved away from declarative Christianity and devoted itself to self-improvement and personal achievement.
So, the cause, execution, and result are much like the holy trinity of the Rosicrucians: self-knowledge, self-awareness, and pure will. After all, the ascetic principles and symbols of royal art:
Jakin and Boaz, chisel and hammer, square and compass, plumb and level, lemnis and knot, mirror and rose, Orphic egg and ladder, the all-seeing eye, that ophthalmological singularity, all together express the inseparable combination of earth and heaven, mere matter and ethereal spirit.
All this belongs to the certainty of the mystery of death and ascension.
In the end, let me remind you of one of the key foundations of royal art: each erected house, in its blood, has had communal meaning:
a whole network of new polis took place in which were settled military veterans and scholars, wholesalers and petty traders, the surrounding population and newcomers from the homeland.
Those who demolished someone else’s properties built dozens of new Alexandrias as veterans. Those who taught only under one sky plunged into a new knowledge.
The cult of Pythagoras crossed with that of Osiris. Those who traded the same goods all their lives encountered a new abundance, and those who lived only among themselves met others.
Shortly said, a multitude occurred. The feeling of Wholeness prevailed. The urban insight was the one that mattered. The triumph of the will was evident. The concept of the city came to life.
The man brought his destiny to purpose. He embodied what was incomprehensible to him, the first arrogance: he showed the angry deities that he had taken a different path. To be meaningful.
Dear Brethren, driven by the old simplicity, the man was ready to overcome the abyss. Otherwise, the whole construction would collapse.
It would remain a crippled piece of land, ruined heritage, stolen property. Antipolis. The misery of ontology. Chronicle of a mental dump.
It would be the best way to end up with our Mephisto, crush the Being, darken a behold, and decline thought and language.
It would create the ritual stone for the sacrifice of the cities. However, ancient agnosticism got involved. The significance of civil gestures has become evident, as it is today.
Or perhaps it hasn’t?
I have said!
3×3
Belgrade, March 25, 6025 AL
Bro. Draško Miletić, DAR
Article by: Draško Miletić
Draško Miletić was born in Kotor, Montenegro, on the 6th of February 1963. He graduated from Belgrade University with a BA in tourism but changed his vocation and worked as a journalist for fifteen years.
He was an editor and author in digital media, newspapers, and ART TV. Since 2001 he has been a writer and an editor-in-chief for the literary magazine URB, issued monthly from 2003 to 2007 by Independent editions Slobodan Mašić.
From 2005-2007, he used to run a literary workshop at the Center for Youth Creativity and has published three books. More than fifty literary and web magazines in Serbia and the region have published his works.
He is a member of the Serbian Literary Society as an independent artist. He wrote six novels and two books of poetry. The first and second novels are listed in the Washington Library of Congress. The second novel was nominated for the prestigious NIN Award (2007).
He was initiated in 2021 to the Lodge “Michael Pupin” under RGLS. Since 2022 he has been writing for thesquaremagazine and the ARS REGIA, an annual magazine published by Lodge Quatuor Coronati.
He was a panelist at the Second International Masonic convention: “Freemasonry in the 21st Century: Service, Sustainability, Dignity. All about people”, held in Belgrade on June 21, 2024.
He named his work: Nobility is Needed. He is multilingual, speaking English and French. He lives and works in Belgrade.
Books by Draško Miletić
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