On Feb 20th, 2009 under the auspices of Grand Orient of Poland, a new lodge has been erected. It took a name of Galileo Galilei, an Intalian renaissance astronomer and philosopher, known for defense of Copernicus Theory.
The Lodge was installed in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Galileo Galilei Lodge (spelled as Galileusz in Polish) is a mixed, liberal workshop and accepts both Brothers and Sisters in the Craft. It is the very first lodge installed by Grand Orient of Poland (as previous workshops were instantiated with help of Grand Orient of France). It works due to Scottish Rite. Due to logistic factors, we sometimes work in the remote location of the Torun city.
Why the name of Galileo Galilei? First of all it is a symbol of a astronmer's humanist heritage. There are two famous cites link to him: "A knowledge cannot be simply given to a man. It can be only helped to discover it by himself, as it is already hidden somewhere in his soul" and "There is no man so stupid, that nothing can be learned from one". Both statements depicts most important rules of freemason teachings and a way we work on ourselves: not listening to some "enlighted gurus", but rather working toghter to develop ourselves and learn life, humility and tolerance.
This shows our great respect not only for great sciencist ant humanist, but also for an individual who was able to describe a very heart of freemasonry, decades before its appearance.
Secondly, the reason to accept Galileo Galilei as our patron was his devotion to great helicentric theory. Copernicus changed the old view of the world, while Galileo though his works and observations strenghtened it. The same way we - the masons - seek out to confirm values and virtues which were stored by years of inexistence (due to banishment of masonry in Poland) by the Grand Lodge Copernicus.
Our credo is described by the triad: Liberté-Égalité-Fraternité