Articles

Hollywood sells glamour, but the film-era Freemasons in this story kept another commitment in the lodge room. Fame earned them nothing there, and the record is careful about which famous names truly belong on the roll.

Henry Ford and J.C. Penney both shaped how Americans work and shop, and both were Freemasons. One changed how things are made, the other how they are sold, and both stories need the admirable parts and the hard ones.

Harland Sanders and Dave Thomas were two familiar faces of American roadside food, and both were Freemasons. Their lives say less about chicken and burgers than about what a man does with a hard beginning.

In May 1886, Atlanta pharmacist John Stith Pemberton carried a jug of dark syrup to Jacobs’ Pharmacy. The five-cent drink that followed became Coca-Cola, and Pemberton, a Columbus Mason, did not live to see what it became.

In 1843 a French whaler limped into Honolulu carrying a commission to found Masonic lodges. Over the next half century, Hawaiian kings and a crown prince would wear the apron in a kingdom learning modern statecraft.

On a rain-soaked day in October 1886, a veil fell from the Statue of Liberty’s face in New York Harbor. The long path from a spoken idea to copper standing in the harbor still reads as a lesson in patience and craft.

Who were Avatar: The Last Airbender’s old masters, what did they stand for, and why does their brotherhood feel so familiar to Freemasons?

Which acacia grew in the Bible lands, why the Ark was built of shittim wood, what the Burning Bush may have been, and why Masons honor the evergreen.

Han and Tang images show China’s creator pair holding a square (矩) and compass (規). What 規矩 means, why it isn’t “virtue,” and why there is no link to Freemasonry, only a parallel.

Before it meant a sign, “symbol” meant half of a broken token kept as proof of a promise. From Greek tallies to creeds to the square and compasses.