Conversations on the Craft, the symbol,
and the long work within.
"The Genesis of American Freemasonry" with Dr. Ric Berman
with Dr. Ric Berman
There was no England and no America. There was a greater Britain, and a few thousand people in London held most of the levers. Dr. Ric Berman joins us to talk about his new book, The Genesis of American Freemasonry, published this June and timed for the semi quincentennial. It traces the craft in America from its earliest colonial footholds, through independence, to the creation of the state Grand Lodges, and it asks a question most American brethren have never had answered plainly: how did our ritual, our structure, and our lodges actually get here?
Selected dispatches
"The Rosicrucian" Vol 1 with RWBro. Alex Rofaila
with RWBro. Alex Rofaila
For over one hundred and fifty years, the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia has pursued its founding mission quietly, rigorously, and away from public view: to investigate the philosophy of Hermes Trismegistus, the secrets of the Kabbalah, and the meaning and symbolism of the wisdom, art, and literature of the ancient world. Now, for the first time, that work steps into the open. The Rosicrucian is the first global publication to emerge from the world's oldest independent society of Masonic Rosicrucians. Produced in partnership with Lewis Masonic, its purpose is to bring the mysteries of the Western Tradition into the light, in a voice that is scholarly in its foundations and accessible to every sincere seeker.
"Astrology in the Western Esoteric Traditions" Bro. Jaime Paul Lamb at EFC2022
with Bro. Jaimie Paul Lamb
Recorded at the Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference 2022, this throwback episode features Br. Jaime Paul Lamb, professional astrologer and author. Recently uncovered from an archive of conference recordings, this presentation is titled Astrology in the Western Esoteric Traditions. Please forgive any audio irregularities, as this was captured live at the event. Slides are available to follow along on our YouTube channel. Br. Lamb opens with a personal story: two weeks after being raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason, he came across Robert Hewitt Brown's Stellar Theology and Masonic Astronomy, a book he describes as producing a kind of Sixth Sense moment, where the symbolic architecture of the Craft suddenly resolved into something far larger. That book remains a touchstone for everything that follows. The presentation offers a definition of astrology as the study of the mirroring of celestial events on the terrestrial sphere, the sympathetic resonant relationship between microcosm and macrocosm. Lamb draws a structural analogy: astrology is to astronomy as alchemy is to chemistry, as magic is to technology. What separates the pairs, he argues, is the quality of enchantment, the qualitative dimension that the Enlightenment stripped from the quantitative sciences and which he identifies as a genuine cultural loss.
Essays & notes
How Freemasonry Came to America
A companion to Episode 45 of The Mystic Tye, "The Genesis of American Freemasonry," with Dr. Ric Berman Most American Masons know the outline. Washington was a Mason. So were Franklin, Revere, and a good number of the men who signed the Declaration. The lodge was there at the founding, and every Grand Lodge in the country will tell you so. What almost nobody gets told is how the craft actually arrived. Who sent it. Who appointed whom, and why. How a fraternity chartered in a London tavern in 1717 ended up with a lodge in nearly every frontier settlement west of the Blue Ridge inside a century. This is that story, and the short version is that it did not travel as an idea. It travelled as a network.
By Troy Spreeuw