Craft Masonry
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What is Freemasonry really for? Its symbols and ceremonies are familiar, but the purposes they serve have received remarkably different explanations. In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Freemasonry (1915), Roscoe Pound examined four influential answers: William Preston’s conception of the lodge as a school of knowledge; Karl Christian Friedrich Krause’s account of moral development…
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Could the origins of Masonic symbolism extend hundreds of thousands of years into the prehistoric past? In 1920, the physician and Masonic author Albert Churchward advanced one of the most extraordinary theories ever proposed concerning the antiquity of Freemasonry. He believed that its working tools, symbols and ceremonies preserved fragments of humanity’s earliest language of…
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This Saturday on From the Quarries, we turn to Albert Churchward and one of the most extraordinary attempts ever made to reconstruct the origins of Freemasonry. Writing in 1920, Churchward traced the Craft’s symbols, rituals and working tools far beyond the medieval guilds, beyond Egypt, and into what he believed was the prehistoric symbolic language…
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Could the Great Pyramid conceal the three degrees of Freemasonry—and a chronology of the world written into its passages? In this From the Quarries presentation, we explore Rowbottom’s extraordinary interpretation of the Great Pyramid as a temple of initiation. Sacred geometry, stellar alignments, biblical history and Masonic ritual converge in an account that finds meaning…
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William Harvey’s The Altar of Freemasonry, first published in 1919, is a compact but remarkably rich exploration of the symbolism of the First Degree. Beginning with the altar at which the Initiate kneels, Harvey gradually expands his attention across the whole symbolic landscape of the Lodge: the Volume of the Sacred Law, Square and Compasses,…
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Freemasonry has long claimed that it makes good men better. But what, in practical terms, might that actually mean? In From Good Men to Great Men: The Lodge as a Flywheel, we examine the Lodge as a developmental institution: a place in which character, discipline, mentorship, fellowship, responsibility and service accumulate over time. Drawing on…
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In The Mystical Basis of Masonry, W. L. Wilmshurst argues that Freemasonry is far more than a social, charitable or moral institution. Beneath its ceremonies and architectural symbolism, he sees an initiatory system concerned with the transformation of the individual and the reconstruction of the human soul. Drawing upon the work of A. E. Waite…
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Freemasonry has accumulated around itself a remarkable collection of symbols, traditions, forgotten customs and persistent legends. In this compendium edition of From the Quarries, we revisit three of its more curious corners: the enduring myth of the Masonic Goat, the once-important Twelve Original Points of Freemasonry, and the origins and symbolism of Masonic Blue. Taken…
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What if the ancient Art of Memory was about far more than remembering? For classical and Renaissance thinkers, memory could be constructed as an architecture: familiar places filled with vivid images, through which knowledge could be stored, ordered and recovered. But during the Renaissance, this ancient mnemonic technique developed into something considerably more ambitious. In…
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What can a handful of magnetised needles reveal about the structure of initiation? In this presentation, we explore Arithmetical, Geometrical and Masonic Symbolism by Bro. Leslie S. Weatherstone. Beginning with a simple experiment involving magnetised needles floating freely upon water, the paper traces a progressive sequence from the point and line to the triangle, square,…
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To mark the Fourth of July, this FTQ compendium gathers together a selection of archive episodes exploring Freemasonry and the American imagination. The collection moves from the revolutionary world of the Green Dragon Tavern, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Prince Hall, through the later controversies and constructions of American Masonry in Albert Pike and the…
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At the heart of Craft Freemasonry stands a great symbolic architecture: the Temple of King Solomon, the figure of Hiram Abiff, the twin pillars at the entrance, and the later recovery tradition of the Holy Royal Arch. This compilation gathers four lectures exploring that central imaginative world: the story of the Master Builder, the sacred…
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This weekend’s compilation gathers together some of Freemasonry’s most enduring symbolic architecture: the Temple as sacred pattern, the Pillars as threshold and teaching, Hiram as both craftsman and allegorical figure, and the Royal Arch as a movement from loss toward recovery. Rather than treating these as separate curiosities, the video follows a single underlying thread:…
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A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing W Bro John Bishop deliver a striking and provocative paper at Lodge Toowoomba. The paper, ‘Deists, Theists, Atheists, Agnostics, Pagans and Pantheists‘, takes up one of the most delicate questions in Freemasonry: what does the Craft actually require when it speaks of belief in the…
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Most Masonic history is populated by kings, architects, philosophers, and grand theories of origin. This week, we’re looking instead at the odd corners of the Craft. Join me as we open A Cabinet of Masonic Curiosities and explore a collection of strange words, forgotten characters, improbable legends, celebrated hoaxes, unusual lodges, and historical oddities accumulated…
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The Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences occupy a familiar place within the symbolic world of Freemasonry, yet their original purpose is often only dimly understood. Far from being decorative remnants of a medieval curriculum, they once formed a complete architecture of intellectual and moral formation: a disciplined ascent from language and reasoning to number, harmony,…
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Good Morning Quarrymen and a warm welcome to our new YouTube Channel Members *Bj Johnson*, *Jackson Smith*, *Stories with the b’ys*, and *Will*. This weekend … For centuries, Freemasonry preserved a vision of knowledge very different from our own: not information as accumulation, but education as formation. This week’s lecture explores the hidden architecture behind…
