A French police raid in 1894 seized a set of Masonic rituals from a lodge in Paris. The newspapers called them satanic. They were not. What they found was a working manual of the Scottish Rite, complete with Kabbalistic diagrams, alchemical symbols, and invocations to the “Grand Architect of the Universe.” The police had no framework for what they were seeing. Neither do most people today.
Freemasonry and the occult are connected through shared symbolic systems, initiatory structures, and esoteric lineages, but they are not the same thing. The relationship is one of borrowing, overlap, and occasional outright hostility. Freemasonry is a fraternal organization with moral and philosophical aims. The occult is a broad category of practices and beliefs concerned with hidden knowledge. The two have crossed paths for centuries, sometimes intentionally, sometimes by accusation alone.
What Actually Connects Freemasonry to the Occult
The connection is not a single thread but a braid of three distinct strands: symbolic inheritance, initiatory structure, and historical overlap in personnel. Each strand tells a different story.
Symbolic inheritance is the most visible. Masonic lodges use the square and compass, the rough and perfect ashlars, the blazing star, the letter G, the checkerboard floor. Every one of these symbols has a documented history in alchemy, Hermeticism, and Kabbalah before it entered Masonic ritual. The checkerboard floor, for example, appears in the Splendor Solis (1532), an alchemical manuscript, decades before any known Masonic lodge used it. The blazing star, often called the “Star of the East” in Masonic context, is a direct descendant of the alchemical star that guided the adept through the stages of the Great Work.
Initiatory structure is the second strand. Freemasonry organizes its knowledge into degrees. So do the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Ordo Templi Orientis, and countless occult fraternities. The pattern is the same: a candidate undergoes trials, receives symbolic instruction, and advances through increasingly restricted knowledge. The Masonic three-degree system (Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, Master Mason) is the template that the Golden Dawn expanded into ten degrees and that Aleister Crowley later adapted for the O.T.O. The structure is not accidental. It derives from the mystery schools of antiquity, specifically the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Mithraic cults, which also used graded initiation.
Historical overlap is the third strand. Many of the most influential occultists of the 19th and 20th centuries were Freemasons. Eliphas Lévi (1810–1875), the French occultist who codified modern ceremonial magic, was initiated into a Masonic lodge in 1855. His book Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1854) draws heavily on Masonic symbolism, particularly the figure of Hiram Abiff, the legendary architect of Solomon’s Temple. Lévi’s work shaped the Golden Dawn, which was founded by three Freemasons: William Wynn Westcott, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, and William Robert Woodman. Westcott was a Master Mason and a member of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, a Masonic research society. Mathers was a Mason and later the chief of the Golden Dawn.
The Hermetic and Kabbalistic Foundations
The deepest connection between Freemasonry and the occult is not institutional but textual. Both traditions draw from the same well: the Hermetic corpus, the Kabbalistic Zohar, the alchemical works of Paracelsus and John Dee, and the Christian mysticism of Jakob Böhme.
Hermeticism, the body of writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, entered European occultism through the Renaissance. Marsilio Ficino translated the Corpus Hermeticum in 1463, and the idea of a “prisca theologia” (an ancient theology underlying all religions) became central to esoteric thought. Freemasonry adopted this idea in its concept of the “Grand Architect” and its universalist claims. The Masonic lodge is not a church. It is a temple of universal wisdom, and that wisdom is Hermetic in origin.
Kabbalah entered Masonic ritual through the same channel. The Scottish Rite, which originated in France in the 18th century, explicitly incorporates Kabbalistic teachings. The 14th degree (Grand Elect, Perfect and Sublime Mason) includes a lecture on the Sephiroth, the ten emanations of God in Kabbalistic cosmology. The 30th degree (Knight Kadosh) uses the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter name of God, as a central symbol. These elements were not invented by Freemasons. They were borrowed from Christian Kabbalists like Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522) and Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680), who had themselves adapted Jewish mysticism for Christian readers.
Alchemy is the third pillar. The Masonic concept of “rough ashlar” (the unhewn stone) and “perfect ashlar” (the finished stone) is a direct alchemical metaphor. The rough stone is the prima materia, the base material that must be purified. The perfect stone is the Philosopher’s Stone, the goal of the alchemical process. The Masonic journey from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge, mirrors the alchemical stages of nigredo (blackening), albedo (whitening), and rubedo (reddening). The Masonic lodge is an alchemical laboratory, and the candidate is the metal being refined.
The Occult Accusation: Why Freemasonry Was Called Satanic
The connection between Freemasonry and the occult is not only a matter of historical fact. It is also a matter of accusation. From the 18th century onward, the Catholic Church and various Protestant denominations condemned Freemasonry as a form of occult conspiracy.
The papal bull In Eminenti (1738) by Pope Clement XII was the first official condemnation. It called Freemasonry a “sect” that threatened “the safety of the kingdom” and “the peace of the state.” The bull did not mention the occult specifically. But subsequent condemnations did. In 1884, Pope Leo XIII issued Humanum Genus, which described Freemasonry as a “naturalist” religion that rejected divine revelation and sought to establish a “kingdom of Satan on earth.” The document drew on the same anti-occult rhetoric that had been used against witches and heretics for centuries.
The accusation stuck. In the 19th century, conspiracy theorists like Léo Taxil (1854–1907) fabricated stories of Masonic devil worship. Taxil claimed that Freemasons worshipped a demon named “Baphomet” and performed sexual rituals in their lodges. He later admitted the hoax, but the damage was done. The idea that Freemasonry is a Satanic cult persists in some evangelical and conspiracy circles today.
The truth is more mundane. Freemasonry does not worship Satan. It does not practice magic in the ceremonial sense. But it does use symbols and rituals that overlap with occult traditions, and it does maintain a doctrine of secrecy that invites suspicion. The accusation of Satanism is a distortion, not a complete fabrication. It is a misunderstanding of what the symbols mean.
The Golden Dawn: Where Masonry and Occultism Merged
The most significant point of contact between Freemasonry and the occult is the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888. The Golden Dawn was not a Masonic body, but it was built on Masonic principles and staffed by Masons.
The founders, Westcott, Mathers, and Woodman, were all members of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (S.R.I.A.), a Masonic research society that studied Rosicrucianism and alchemy. The S.R.I.A. had a system of nine degrees, which the Golden Dawn adapted into its own ten-degree structure. The Golden Dawn’s rituals, written by Mathers, are heavily indebted to Masonic ceremonial forms. The opening and closing of a Golden Dawn temple, the use of officers, the hierarchical seating, the symbolic furniture: all of it comes from Masonic lodge practice.
But the Golden Dawn went further. It incorporated practical occult techniques that Freemasonry had abandoned or never possessed: astral projection, scrying, talismanic magic, invocation of spirits, and the use of the Enochian language of John Dee. These techniques were not part of standard Masonic practice. They were the province of the occult underground. The Golden Dawn brought them into the light, and in doing so, created a hybrid tradition that remains influential today.
Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) was a member of both the Golden Dawn and the O.T.O., which he later led. He was also a Freemason, initiated into the Anglo-Saxon Lodge in Paris in 1904. Crowley’s system of Thelema draws on Masonic symbolism, particularly the figure of the “Crowned and Conquering Child” as a reinterpretation of the Masonic “Third Degree.” Crowley’s Liber AL vel Legis (The Book of the Law) uses the Masonic concept of “do what thou wilt” as a moral principle, though he radicalized it beyond anything Masonry intended.
The Difference That Matters
For all the overlap, Freemasonry and the occult are not the same. The difference is one of purpose.
Freemasonry is a fraternal organization with a moral and philosophical curriculum. Its rituals are designed to teach ethical lessons, not to produce magical effects. The Masonic “secret” is not a hidden power. It is a set of passwords and grips that identify a member as belonging to a particular degree. The occult, by contrast, is concerned with the manipulation of hidden forces. Its rituals are designed to produce change in the material world or the spiritual world. The occult “secret” is a technique that works.
A Mason does not expect his ritual to summon a spirit. An occultist does. A Mason does not believe that his symbols have inherent power. An occultist does. The two traditions share a language, but they speak different sentences.
FAQ
Is Freemasonry a religion? No. Freemasonry requires belief in a Supreme Being but does not prescribe a specific creed. It is a fraternal organization, not a religion.
Do Freemasons worship Satan? No. This is a conspiracy theory with no basis in Masonic practice. Freemasonry explicitly forbids the worship of Satan.
Can an occultist be a Freemason? Yes, and many have been. But Masonic lodges generally require members to affirm a belief in a Supreme Being, which excludes some occult traditions.
What is the relationship between Freemasonry and the Illuminati? The Illuminati was a short-lived secret society founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt. It borrowed Masonic structure but was not part of Freemasonry. The two are often conflated in conspiracy theories.
Closing
The connection between Freemasonry and the occult is real but often misunderstood. It is a relationship of shared symbols, overlapping personnel, and common sources, not of identity or conspiracy. To understand one, you must understand the other. For a deeper look at the traditions that shaped both, see our guide to occult history and the glossary of esoteric symbols. The Hermetic and Kabbalistic foundations of both traditions are explored in our guide to Western esotericism.