September 2025
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This lecture explores the history of Freemasonry in Russia, from its first appearance in the eighteenth century to its re-establishment in the late twentieth century. We trace the earliest lodges under Peter the Great’s successors, the flourishing of the Craft under Catherine II, and the dramatic suppression of Nikolai Novikov’s publishing empire. We follow the…
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Good evening Quarrymen This weekend’s lecture traces the history of Freemasonry in Russia. It is a story marked by repeated cycles of growth and suppression: from the lodges of the eighteenth century, through Catherine the Great’s crackdown, the Decembrist movement, the long silence of the Soviet period, and the re-establishment of the Grand Lodge of…
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William Hutchinson’s The Spirit of Masonry (1775) is one of the most influential works of eighteenth-century Freemasonry—an official, Grand Lodge-endorsed vision of the Craft as a moral and philosophical system. In this lecture, Hutchinson traces Masonry’s roots through the Essenes, the mysteries of Greece, medieval knighthood, and the philosophy of Pythagoras, showing how ancient wisdom…
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✨ Coming This Saturday, 20 September ✨ Freemasonry in the eighteenth century was not merely convivial—it was a moral and philosophical system rooted in the wisdom of the ancients. In this week’s video, we explore William Hutchinson’s The Spirit of Masonry (1775), focusing on his account of the Essenes, the Eleusinian Mysteries, and the great…
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Albert Pike’s name inspires both admiration and condemnation—and rightly so. He was a gifted linguist and philosopher, but also a Confederate officer, nativist politician, and outspoken opponent of racial inclusion. His great Masonic text, Morals and Dogma, has been accused of preaching Lucifer-worship, a claim rooted not in Pike’s words but in a nineteenth-century hoax.…
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Good evening Quarrymen This weekend … Few men in American Masonry cast as long and troubling a shadow as Albert Pike. His legacy as Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite and author of Morals and Dogma is unmatched—but so too is the moral baggage he carried: Confederate generalship marked by failure, documented racism and…
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The story of Irish Freemasonry is one of profound continuity, stretching from the ritual pageantry of the Dublin gilds to the global influence of travelling warrants, and from the laughter of seventeenth-century satirists to the worldwide reach of the Grand Lodge of Ireland in our own time. To trace this history is to recognise that…
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