THE GRAND LODGE
OF UKRAINE

Freemasonry is an ancient moral, ethical and philosophical system of relationships that is revealed through allegories and symbols with the help of experienced masters. It is a social practice of shaping the individual within a free brotherhood. The Masonic system is not dogmatic, for it opens the way to the development of one's own worldview. A person whose principal values are faith in the immortality of the soul, freedom and social optimism may become a Freemason. Freemasonry has a clear structure. It is an Order built upon the ideas of harmony, one's own path of knowing the world, respect, friendship and unity. In democratic countries, lodges are independent organisations. There is no single organisation that governs all of world Freemasonry. Relations between the lodges of the countries of the world rest solely on mutual recognition. Freemasons declare their aspiration to seek truth through self-knowledge. By forming a process of shared social action, in which society itself becomes an instrument of knowledge, Freemasonry "hews" the individual and establishes fraternal relations.

Freemasonry strives to affirm established concepts and values through the idea of social harmony and modernization and, above all, Liberty – Equality – Fraternity. Freemasonry cultivates a free person who takes part in building an independent Ukraine, a free Ukrainian society in which law and order will prevail. This path cannot be travelled without one's own inner rebirth. And in this Freemasons are the builders of social progress. Freemasons build themselves (the Temple within their soul), the masonic brotherhood (the Temple of the Masonic lodge) and the whole of world society (as a Temple), with the aim of making the world better — creating not a cosy men's club for leisure, but a voluntary service of the Order to great goals and ideals.

Faith in the immortality of the soul is the foundation of Freemasonry. A candidate who seeks to become a Freemason takes an oath upon the Books of the Sacred Law (the Bible, the Quran, the Talmud). Before the lodge begins its work, the seeker always declares what lies at the basis of the faith to which he belongs. If the members of the lodge profess different religions, then different sacred books are present in it. Every Freemason, while in the lodge, addresses God as the Great Architect of the Universe. Yet each Freemason continues to profess the religious views with which he came to the lodge. Freemasonry is not a dogmatic religion or a substitute for religion. Masonic philosophy concerns only questions of ethics and morality. Freemasons strive to build an order which they regard as the dialectical law of the self-ordering of the material world (systematicity — harmony, accord, self-organisation, self-regulation).

Freemasons believe that the Masonic Order is able to act as an instrument for knowing and creating a new human being. Feeling, mind and heart — the three principal cognitive faculties of every individual — correspond to three different types of knowledge. Freemasonry develops intuition as one of the instruments for discovering meaning, for moral renewal, for the merging of subject and object, and for acquiring knowledge of the outer world within oneself. By changing himself, the Freemason thereby changes the surrounding world. The creed of a member of the Order lies in knowing the surrounding world, which impels the necessity of self-knowledge. For the Freemason, knowledge of the world begins as a system of symbolic keys that open the way to understanding the laws of the universe. Moral perfection requires moral purity. It is the condition of knowledge and of the comprehension of the metaphysical principles of the world order. Freemasons give philosophy a central role in the teaching of the Order. The gatherings of Freemasons take the form of an allegorical ritual in which they use the architectural symbolism of masonry (that is, they engage in philosophical building). The purpose of the ritual and the symbols is to awaken supra-sensory faculties in the perception of the world. Freemasons do not impose their light, but they are always ready to share it with a person of good repute, whenever that person desires it.