So how many levels are there?

Craft Masonry consists of three degrees: Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason, as defined by bodies such as the United Grand Lodge of England and the Grand Lodge of India, with the United Grand Lodge of England declaring that pure Antient Masonry consists of these three degrees including the Supreme Order of the Holy Royal Arch.

Historical records indicate that speculative Freemasonry originally worked only a single form of initiation around 1717 12. The expansion into three degrees took place imperceptibly between 1717 and 1730 1, with the Fellow Craft and Master Mason degrees being introduced and perfected during the 1720s and 1730s 12. By the mid-eighteenth century, the Master Mason degree had assumed the central place in lodge legislation and practice, reducing the first two degrees to a preparatory role 1.

Masonic commentators interpret this three-fold progression symbolically. Arthur Edward Waite views the three steps—Entered, Passed, and Raised—as sequential stages in constructing the candidate into a spiritual house or temple of life 3. W.L. Wilmshurst takes the three degrees to signify a process of purification, intellectual illumination, and spiritual mastership, comparing their sequence to the three initiatory stages of the early Christian Church 4.