Freemasonry and mortality Archieven

Skull and candle in a Masonic chamber of reflection symbolizing mortality

End of Life and the Art of Living: Two Perspectives

France recently passed a law permitting assisted dying under strict conditions — a decision that strikes at the very heart of how a society thinks about life, death, and human dignity. As public debate intensifies, this moment invites deeper reflection: how did people in earlier centuries approach the end of life, and how does that compare to our modern outlook? Freemasonry, rooted in centuries-old traditions of self-examination, offers a uniquely illuminating perspective on this timeless question. The Past: Death as a Daily Companion For our ancestors, death was not a topic to be avoided. In the medieval world, the end of life was ever-present: infant mortality was staggeringly high, epidemics swept through communities without regard for wealth or status, and average life expectancy was a fraction of what we know today. This reality produced a culture that did not hide from death but placed it squarely at the center of daily awareness. The ars moriendi — the art of dying — flourished as a literary genre in the fifteenth century. Countless manuals appeared to prepare people for a “good death.” This good death had nothing to do with pain management or medical intervention. It was about spiritual readiness. People died […]

Skull and hourglass as Masonic memento mori symbols on a dark background

Montaigne on Feelings That Reach Beyond Ourselves

In the sixteenth century, a French nobleman wrote an essay that still challenges the way we think about death, fame, and the memory we leave behind. Michel de Montaigne explored, in the third essay of his first book, how human emotions stretch toward times and places we will never experience. Centuries later, his questions still resonate — perhaps nowhere more deeply than in the symbolic world of Freemasonry, where mortality and eternity stand as central themes of reflection and ritual. The Core Idea of the Essay Montaigne opens with a deceptively simple observation: we concern ourselves with matters that lie far beyond our own existence. We worry about our reputation after death, about what will happen to our bodies, about the memory we leave behind. But can we truly feel anything about events that take place when we no longer exist? This is the central paradox Montaigne investigates. He argues that our emotions extend into domains our consciousness can never reach — and he wonders whether this makes any sense at all. Historical Examples as Mirrors As is typical of his essays, Montaigne draws liberally from classical antiquity. He cites Roman generals and Greek philosophers who were intensely preoccupied with […]