From the Quarries

In this carefully argued presentation, The Origins of Freemasonry by Alphonse Cerza, P.M., dismantles the many romantic and speculative myths that have accumulated around the Craft’s beginnings, from the Temple of Solomon to the Garden of Eden, the Ancient Mysteries, Roman Collegia, and medieval cathedral legends. Drawing on respected Masonic historians such as Henry W. Coil and Christopher Haffner, and grounded in documentary evidence rather than imaginative analogy, Cerza demonstrates why most origin theories collapse under scholarly scrutiny.

Rather than seeking a single founder or moment of creation, this lecture traces Freemasonry as a gradual historical evolution—emerging from the operative guilds of the Middle Ages, transitioning slowly into a symbolic and ethical fraternity, and culminating in the formation of the first Grand Lodge in 1717. Along the way, key primary sources such as the Regius Poem, the Cooke Manuscript, early Scottish lodge records, and the initiation of Elias Ashmole are examined as tangible milestones in that process.

This is not a story of ancient secrets preserved intact from antiquity, but of moral traditions, symbolism, and social practices shaped by centuries of human experience. For viewers interested in separating historical evidence from inherited legend, this presentation offers a sober, thoughtful, and rigorously grounded account of how modern Freemasonry came to be.