“Let it not be imagined that we are influenced by personal feeling in any of our reflections upon Masonry. So far from this being the case we unhesitatingly proclaim our highest respect for the original purposes of the Order and some of our most valued friends are within its membership. We say naught against Masonry as it should be, but denounce it as, thanks to the intriguing clergy, both Catholic and Protestant, it now begins to be. Professedly the most absolute of democracies, it is practically the appanage of aristocracy, wealth, and personal ambition. Professedly the teacher of true ethics, it is debased into a propaganda of anthropomorphic theology. The half-naked apprentice, brought before the master during the initiation of the first degree, is taught that at the door of the lodge every social distinction is laid aside, and the poorest brother is the peer of every other, though a reigning sovereign or an imperial prince. In practice, the Craft turns lickspittle in every monarchial country, to any regal scion who may deign, for the sake of using it as a political tool, to put on the once symbolical lambskin.
How far gone is the Masonic Fraternity in this direction, we can judge from the words of one of its highest authorities. John Yarker Junior, of England; Past Grand Warden of the Grand Lodge of Greece; Grand Master of the Rite of Swedenborg; also Grand Master of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry, and Heaven only knows what else, says that Masonry could lose nothing by “the adoption of a higher (not pecuniary) standard of membership and morality, with exclusion from the ‘purple’ of all whom inculcate frauds, sham, historical degrees, and other immoral abuses” (page 158).
And again, on page 157: “As the Masonic Fraternity is now governed, the Craft is fast becoming the paradise of the bon vivant; of the ‘charitable’ hypocrite, who forgets the version of St. Paul, and decorates his breast with the ‘charity jewel’ (having by this judicious expenditure obtained the ‘purple’, he metes out judgment to other brethren of greater ability and morality but less means); the manufacturer of paltry Masonic tinsel; the rascally merchant who swindles in hundreds, and even thousands, by appealing to the tender consciences of those few who do regard their O. B’s; and the Masonic ‘Emperors’ and other charlatans who make power or money out of the aristocratic pretensions which they have tackled on to our institution – ad captandum vulgus.””
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 