Royal Arch Principals
ANTIPODEAN SUMMER SEASON Videos originally published in 2022. These lectures explore the three Principals of the Royal Arch—Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and Haggai—through close reference to A History of Royal Arch Masonry by Everett R. Turnbull and Ray V. Denslow (1955), one of the standard historical treatments of the development of the Royal Arch in the Anglo-American…
Summer Season
As the northern hemisphere settles into winter, here in Australia we are heading into the height of summer—an arrangement that makes Christmas a season of Test Cricket, heat, bright light, and the mild absurdity of festive traditions conducted in shorts rather than coats. To mark the Christmas and New Year period, From the Quarries will…
Good Masons, Bad Masons
This presentation explores the strange and often contradictory world of anti-Masonic conspiracy literature, drawing on historical sources and modern examples to reveal how Freemasonry has been alternately vilified, romanticised, and misunderstood. Inspired by an essay by Australian journalist David Greason, this lecture traces the evolution of anti-Masonic thinking across Britain, America, Russia, and beyond, highlighting…
The Lodge as “Occult Machine” – The fantastical claims of Charles Webster Leadbeater
In this extended lecture, we explore one of the most extraordinary texts of early twentieth-century esotericism: The Hidden Life in Freemasonry (1926) by Charles Webster Leadbeater. A towering figure within the Theosophical Society and Co-Masonic circles, Leadbeater claimed that modern Masonic ritual is not merely symbolic but the vestigial survival of an ancient Egyptian initiatory…
The Hour-Glass and the Scythe: Time, Mortality, and the Master Mason
Few symbols in the Third Degree speak with such austere eloquence as the Hour-Glass and the Scythe. Though familiar to generations of American Freemasons, these emblems are—perhaps unexpectedly—comparatively modern additions, shaped by the ritual innovations of Thomas Smith Webb and visually disseminated through the Doolittle engravings in Jeremy Cross’s True Masonic Chart. Yet their deeper…
Memento Mori
Good evening Quarrymen This weekend learn why two of the most familiar symbols in the American Third Degree aren’t as ancient as you think—and their true story is far stranger, darker, and far more revealing. From Webb’s ritual innovations to Egyptian reaping knives, from the Fates’ shears to the apocalyptic sickle in Revelation, these emblems…
Noachidae – Children of Noah
Long before Solomon’s Temple, before the tools of the builder became moral symbols, there was another origin story—one almost forgotten. In 1723, the Reverend James Anderson claimed that Noah and his sons were the first Freemasons, keepers of geometry and divine order who rebuilt civilisation after the Flood. This episode explores Anderson’s extraordinary idea that…
Who are the Noachidae?
Good evening Quarrymen Was Freemasonry founded by King Solomon—or by Noah himself? In 1723, the Reverend James Anderson published The Constitutions of the Free-Masons and made a startling claim: that the Craft began long before Abraham, when Noah and his sons built the Ark “according to the Rules of Masonry.” In Anderson’s vision, all humanity…
Trestle Board and Tracing Board
What is the true difference between the Trestle-Board and the Tracing-Board—two terms often spoken together but rarely understood? This 1932 Short Talk Bulletin unravels the fascinating history of these symbolic tools of the Craft, tracing their evolution from the chalk-drawn plans of operative builders to the moral designs of speculative Freemasonry. Discover how the trestle-board…
Freemasonry and the Ancient Wisdom
What is the true origin of the Craft? Beyond its moral allegories and social history lies a stream of teaching as old as civilisation itself — the Ancient Wisdom. This lecture traces that lineage from the Golden Age of myth through the Mysteries of Egypt, Greece, and Jerusalem, revealing how their sacred science survives within…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Follow My Blog
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
From the Quarries 