Religious and personal development in freemasonry

freemasonry started in the 16th century as an organization for spiritual and personal development for free thinkers. At a time when whole new conceptions of the world were opening up, some people wanted to explore new realms of personal evolution. freemasonry provided a place for such people to gather and discuss their ideas in absolute secrecy and privacy, safe from the control of the government or the church. freemasonry was open to anyone who worshiped some form of deity, Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, and so on, though much of the basic myth and symbolism of freemasonry relates to the construction of the first Jewish Temple in Jerusalem as reported in Hebrew Scripture, later incorporated in the Christian Bible as the Old Testament.

Freemasons developed a series of degrees of freemasonry that represented the development of the individual on a spiritual or personal level. They also developed symbols and codes that represented this development to the initiated.