Q Why do your ‘obligations’ contain hideous
penalties?
A
They no longer do. When Masonic ritual was developing
in the late 1600s and 1700s it was quite common for
legal and civil oaths to include physical penalties and
Freemasonry simply followed the practice of the times.
In Freemasonry, however, the physical penalties were
always symbolic and were never carried out. After long
discussion, they were removed from the promises in

1986.
6
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