num_pages: 432
description: In 1716 four Lodges of Operative Masons met at the Apple Tree Tavern in London and decided to create a Grand Lodge to reorganize Freemasonry which was slowly dying out. After the establishment of the Premier Grand Lodge the next year 1717 one of the Lodges the Rummer and Grapes took a decidedly new direction that resulted in the creation of what would later become known as Speculative Freemasonry the basis of modern Freemasonry. However as there is very little documentation from this period many questions are left unanswered:Why three educated and busy men decided to rewrite the ritual of a stonemasons guild when they were neither stonemasons nor manual workers.Why the first three Grand Masters gave eight years of their lives to this cause. Not only that but why they thought it necessary to add a third degree to the ritual.Why the literati and aristocracy of Europe were motivated to join these three men an antiquarian a Huguenot priest and a possible alchemist in a room above a tavern to study the new degrees.Why there is a key to the rituals that Desaguliers referred to in the Constitutions of 1723.Why the first three Grand Masters were interested in making good men better when they were also not philanthropists.Why the first three Grand Masters used steganography to hide secrets in the rituals making them a puzzle for Freemasons to discover.Lastly and probably most importantly why the English nobility (and later royalty) believed so strongly in what these three men had conceived that they lent their names to the enterprise by becoming its figurehead Grand Masters.This book answers these questions and more!
language: English
title: Freemasonry: Spiritual Alchemy
publisher: None