History
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Solomon’s Temple occupies a central place in Masonic symbolism, yet it did not emerge from a vacuum. Behind Jerusalem’s most famous sanctuary stood a wider world of Phoenician trade, diplomacy, craftsmanship, and sacred architecture. In this lecture, we journey to the ancient city of Tyre and explore the Temple of Melqart, one of the most…
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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…
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Do you want to dive even deeper into the Western Esoteric Tradition?Visit https://www.subumbra.net In this lecture, we examine one of the more persistent and beguiling claims in Masonic literature: that Freemasonry inherited something from the ancient Druids. The evidence does not support a direct descent, and Stonehenge was not built by Druids, inconvenient though that…
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Egypt, Mithras, and the Hidden Wisdom of Freemasonry brings together four earlier From the Quarries lectures into a single long-form compendium exploring Freemasonry’s symbolic relationship with the ancient mysteries. This extended presentation considers the enduring fascination with Egypt, Greece, Mithraism, and the wisdom traditions of antiquity, not as evidence of simple institutional descent, but as…
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Step into the “First Restoration” and journey beyond the “starry-decked heaven” of the Temple ceiling. This presentation explores the deep esoteric architecture of the Craft, moving from the “uninstructed” view of the Zodiac as mere decoration to its true purpose: an initiatic map of human development.In this video, we delve into:The Living System: Understanding the…
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The Square: More than just a tool, it is the “Great Symbol” of Freemasonry and a universal emblem of truth that predates history itself. In this video, we explore why the Square has been denominated by legends like Mackey and Newton as the most vital landmark of the ancient Craft. We journey from the prehistoric,…
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Long before the grand lodges of the 18th century and the elaborate rituals of modern Masonry, a mysterious poem was penned that would define the “Honest Craft” forever. Dating back to approximately 1390, the Regius Manuscript (also known as the Halliwell Manuscript) is the oldest surviving document of the “Old Charges.” It is not just…
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The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite is often described as the pinnacle of Masonic education—but what lies behind its famous 33 degrees? In this lecture, we trace the Rite from its eighteenth-century Caribbean origins under Étienne Morin, through the formation of the first Supreme Council in Charleston in 1801, to its evolution into a global…
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This lecture introduces Harold W. Percival’s Masonry and Its Symbols (1952), a distinctive twentieth-century interpretation of Freemasonry that approaches the Craft through the lens of symbolic philosophy rather than institutional history. Percival presents Masonic ritual and imagery as expressions of a broader metaphysical system, centred on the concept of consciousness and articulated through his model…
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Good evening Quarrymen This weekend I’ll be taking a closer look at Manly P. Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928), a work that has shaped how many modern readers understand the symbolic traditions of the West. Hall attempted something rather ambitious: to gather Hermeticism, Pythagorean philosophy, Kabbalah, alchemy, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry into a…
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In this video I try something a little different from the usual From the Quarries format: a tier list of Masonic authors. A tier list is simply a ranked set of categories, from S (exceptional) down through A, B, C, and D. I’m judging these writers by a mix of usefulness to serious Masonic study,…
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Good evening Quarrymen A slightly different kind of video is coming to From the Quarries this weekend. This time, instead of a formal lecture or deep historical treatment, I’ve put together something more conversational: a tier list of Masonic authors. After well over 1,400 videos on the channel, I thought it might be interesting to…
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This omnibus explores one of the longest and most misunderstood tensions in modern religious and Masonic history: the relationship between the Church and the Craft. Drawing together three earlier talks, it examines the Catholic Church’s condemnations of Freemasonry, the question of whether Freemasonry is a religion, and the issue of its compatibility with Christianity. Grounded…
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This compilation offers concise, historically grounded introductions to major Masonic traditions—Russia, Japan, Ireland, Sweden, and Prince Hall (USA)—tracing their origins, key turning points, and the distinctive features of their rites and lodge culture, so you can see how the Craft expresses itself differently across jurisdictions while remaining recognisably Masonic.
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The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, first published in Strasbourg in 1616 and attributed to Johann Valentin Andreae, is the most elaborate of the Rosicrucian manifestos, presenting a seven-day allegorical narrative that fuses Lutheran theology, Renaissance alchemy, and Hermetic symbolism. Though sometimes read as a literal esoteric revelation, Andreae later described the work as a…
From the Quarries 