Greek Freemasonry
The history of modern Freemasonry begins three hundred years ago when four pre-existing Lodges met on St. John the Baptist’s day (June 24) in the saving year of 1717 at ‘The Goose and Gridiron’ Brewery. At this solemn Assembly they elected the first Grand Master Mr. Anthony Sayer as the “Center of Unity and Harmony.” The name of this first Lodge was Grand Lodge of London and Westminster. It was then renamed the Premier Grand Lodge of England.
Prior to this historical development and the recorded history that followed there are at least two basic roots. Medieval guilds and internal, oral tradition. Thus the history of Greek Freemasonry can find its roots and the correlation with its European counterpart on the one hand in the traditions of the ancient Dionysian Guilds, which passed to Europe through the Comacine masters (magistri comacini) , the Greek teachers of the Art who left Byzantium in the Middle Ages and directed the European guilds such as the mythical Naymus Graecus and the newer powerful professional guilds or brotherhoods or sinafia, such as the famous cooperative in Ampelakia which from the Greek area, spread their influence throughout the Ottoman Empire, the Balkans and European countries.
We still must not forget that great mythical figures whose action shaped the tradition of early Freemasonry during the Renaissance period, such as Paracelsus and the Christian Rosenkreuz, sought knowledge from “Teachers of the East”. And the east they mention was none other than “our own East”, Constantinople, Northern Greece and the monasteries of Mount Athos and Cyprus.
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