This book is the latest in the series and is a prequel to the Spiritual Freemasonry series, investigating a possible origins for Freemasonry.

The various theories about the origin of Freemasonry that have emerged since the birth of Speculative Freemasonry in the heart of London in 1717 are explored. From the depths of ancient Egypt to the majestic lands of China, this captivating volume unearths the mystic threads that connect Freemasonry to the ancient civilizations of the past. You will navigate the hidden paths that lead to secrets in alchemy and hidden texts, the realm of chivalric orders, and the alluring world of mystery and rituals. No stone is left unturned in this quest for knowledge, including The Stone!

This book focuses on the First Degree

From the back cover:

Modern Speculative Freemasonry was born at a Lodge meeting at the Rummer and Grapes Tavern, later moving to the Horn Tavern. The first three Grand Masters had changed the existing Operative Mason’s rituals in some way, and the only way to find out what those changes were, was to compare the current ritual to the bits of ritual that exist prior to the establishment of the Premier Grand Lodge in 1717, the event Masonic scholar Albert Pike calls the “Revival.”  The allure of researching the early days of Freemasonry is that we can learn about the objectives of the first three Grand Masters, and thus answer some or all of the following questions:

•   Why the Lodge at the Horn Tavern was so different from the other three Lodges whose “Constitution is Immemorial.”
•  What was the secret scroll owned by a librarian at the University of Oxford that might hold the formula for alchemy’s ultimate prize, the Philosophers’ Stone?
•  Why valuable documents were destroyed during the early days of the Grand Lodge of England.
•  How did the son of the only “black” queen of England become Freemasonry’s first royal Grand Master?
•  Why the Bishop of London treated Pocahontas as “visiting royalty,” and what became of her?
•  Who was the Chinese mandarin, who may hold the secret to one of the degrees?
•  Why a rival “Chinese” secret society tried to bring down Freemasonry.
• This book answers these questions, and many more!

This book focuses on the Second Degree.

From the back cover:

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 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.
•   Why there is a “key to the rituals” that Desaguliers referred to in the Constitutions of 1723.
•   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.
•   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.
•   The answers can be found in the book!

This book focuses on the Third Degree.

From the back cover:

After the Premier Grand Lodge was established in 1717, which later became the Grand Lodge of England, the first three Grand Masters were urged on by a moral imperative to rewrite and expand the existing two degrees of Operative Masons, and then add another, the Third Degree. However, their reasons have, until now, remained obscure, for example:

•  How does the Hiramic Tragedy relate to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and why?
•   What important aspects suggest that Sir Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis might have been a template for Freemasonry?
•   Why did George Washington’s apron have a skull and crossed-bones depicted inside the Square and Compasses?
•   Were medieval mystery plays, that had been performed by guilds, the origin of Free-masonry’s Third Degree?
•   What does the Scarlet Pimpernel have to do with the Masonic emblem of the forget-me-not?
•   What perfidy were Freemasons addressing, when they re-wrote the degrees of Operative Masons to add a Third Degree, that was a cause célèbre at the time and even debated on in Parliament?  
•  Why did Masons despise atheists, though Catholics were welcome in Lodge, whereas in England generally at the time it was the Catholics that were reviled, not atheists.
• This book answers these questions and more!

This book focuses on the Royal Arch as well as the Third Degree.

From the back cover:

After the spiritual awakening following the Transmission of Light in the First Degree, the stimulation of the “dew” that animates the soul in the Second Degree, followed by the “Dark Night of the Soul” and the mystic resurrection in the Third Degree, the Mason is now perfected. However, without understanding the 25th Signpost, he is without a guide: “The Grand Master is dead, the Temple is not complete, and we have not found the Lost Word.”

Like the Royal Arch Degree, this book completes the journey, and understanding the symbolism of the Royal Arch, completes this remarkable transformation.

•   What was thought to be so important about the Royal Arch Degree that it is included in the Blue Lodge as a Chapter, as well as both the Scottish and York Rites?
•   What the various hints (Signposts) in the preceding three degrees were pointing to, and an explanation of the import of the Twenty-fifth Signpost.
•   How this degree categorically refutes any notion of the soul dying after death.
•   Why Freemasonry may hold the secret teaching that religions around the world, including the Abrahamic faiths, have either not found, or do not want the faithful to know.
•   Why Trinitarianism was thought to be so essential to Christianity that it was enshrined in law, and how Freemasonry’s rituals complete this doctrine.
•   How the Third Degree completes the Mason’s journey with a life-changing experience.
• This book answers these questions, and many more!