What really goes on inside the secretive world of the Freemasons? | ITV News

we are not a secret society you know we've got a big headquarters in Covent Garden it's open to the public pretty much every day of the year there's a library that's a museum we do public tours talk to any of my members they'll be very happy to tell you what it is that we do there are things that are supposedly kept secret the sort of the ceremonies were their morality plays they teach us to think on us about ourselves about our place in society about people less fortunate than ourselves and how we might be able

to help them and if you want to see what they are they're all on Google take you ten seconds to find them [Music] it's used within our lodges as a token of recognition and again it stems back from our history in a time before see these and in a time before people were literate stonemasons had to prove that they detained a certain level of skill and so within our lodges this is used as a token of recognition but it's absolutely forbidden to use it outside of our logic [Music] we're a 300 year old organization and

we take our roots from the medieval stonemasons who used to wear aprons to protect themselves from stone shipping's and gloves to protect their hands when they were building cathedrals and we use an analogy of building buildings to represent building ourselves into better people and that's really what Freemasonry is all about [Music] I think that for far too long we've not come out and told people who we are and what it is that we actually do freemasons do a huge amount for the communities that they're drawn from last year we raised thirty three million pounds in

charity and that's not by going out and advertising and asking people for money that's raised from our own membership some people will have a ring with the square and compass on shows that there are freemason you know there's various sorts of iconography we have an all-seeing eye which people will recognize from on the American banknotes that reminds us that we're being watched by something greater than ourselves but at some point at the end of our lives we have to account for how we've behaved and what we've done during our life to something greater than us

I don't know where that's come from after my knowledge there's me watch freemasons don't wear two watches [Music] freemasons have to believe in a God and it's worth saying that we take people of any faiths and I'm really proud that our organization has allowed people of all different races or different classes or different backgrounds to come together as equals you