Quick Answer
Freemasonry and Hermeticism share deep common roots in the Renaissance revival of ancient wisdom. Speculative Freemasonry (founded 1717) emerged from the same intellectual environment as the Rosicrucian movement and drew on Hermetic principles including the macrocosm-microcosm correspondence, polarity symbolism in the pillars Jachin and Boaz, and the three-stage initiatory structure of death, underworld passage, and resurrection. Its esoteric content was not incidental but structurally embedded in the ritual from the beginning.
Key Takeaways
- Operative vs. speculative: The shift from working stonemasons' guilds to philosophical fraternity in 1717 embedded Hermetic and Rosicrucian ideas into Masonic ritual from the start.
- Hermetic principles in Masonry: The pillars Jachin and Boaz encode the Hermetic principle of polarity; the Lodge layout maps the macrocosm-microcosm; the degrees follow the death-resurrection initiatory pattern.
- Rosicrucian connection: The Rosicrucian manifestos appeared exactly one century before speculative Freemasonry was founded, and key figures moved between both currents.
- Key hermetic Masons: Elias Ashmole, Robert Fludd, and Francis Bacon all connected Hermetic philosophy to the nascent Masonic tradition.
- Steiner's membership: Rudolf Steiner was initiated into the Rite of Memphis-Misraim (an Egyptian-themed irregular Masonic rite) and worked with it from 1906 to 1914.
- Limits of Masonry: Freemasonry preserved Hermetic symbolism but stripped the systematic Hermetic philosophy that gives it meaning. The symbols survive; the doctrine that explains them must be sought elsewhere.
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Operative vs. Speculative Masonry: The 1717 Transformation
To understand the Hermetic dimension of Freemasonry, it is necessary to understand the moment of transformation from which speculative Masonry emerged. Operative masonry was the guild tradition of working stonemasons, the craftsmen who built the cathedrals, castles, and civic buildings of medieval Europe. The guilds had their own signs, words, and customs for recognizing fellow craftsmen and protecting trade secrets. Their symbolism was practical: the square, the compasses, the level, and the plumb line were tools of the building trade.
Speculative Masonry, which formally organized with the founding of the Grand Lodge of England in London in 1717, retained all of this working-mason symbolism but transformed its meaning. The square and compasses became symbols of moral virtue. The level became a symbol of equality before the law. The building of Solomon's Temple became the central mythological narrative, with the Lodge itself as a symbolic representation of the Temple and every Mason as a laborer on its construction.
Why 1717 Was Not a Clean Break
The founding of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717 was a formalization, not a creation from nothing. Elias Ashmole had been initiated into a lodge in Warrington in 1646, nearly 70 years earlier, as a non-operative member. The lodge he joined had no apparent connection to the building trade; it was already a speculative philosophical fraternity. The transformation from operative to speculative was therefore gradual, occurring through the 17th century as intellectuals fascinated by Hermetic and Rosicrucian ideas adopted the stonemason guild structure as a ready-made vehicle for an initiatory society. The 1717 date marks the moment when these informal gatherings consolidated into a formal institution with standardized ritual and governance.
The intellectual environment of the late 17th century English men who created speculative Masonry was saturated with Hermetic thought. The Royal Society, founded in 1660 as England's scientific academy, included as founding members men deeply influenced by Hermetic natural philosophy: Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Christopher Wren (who was almost certainly a Mason). The boundary between Hermetic philosophy, natural philosophy (proto-science), and Masonic fraternity was not sharply drawn in this period. Men like Ashmole inhabited all three spaces simultaneously.
The Hermetic Roots of Masonic Ritual
The Hermetic content of Masonic ritual is not merely decorative. Several core Hermetic principles are structurally embedded in the ritual in ways that function whether or not individual Masons understand them as Hermetic.
The most fundamental is the macrocosm-microcosm correspondence, the Hermetic principle encoded in "as above, so below." The Masonic Lodge is explicitly described as a model of the universe: its floor represents the earth, its ceiling represents the heavens, its east-west orientation mirrors the path of the sun. The Mason who enters the Lodge enters a cosmos in miniature. The work done within the Lodge, both the ritual work and the moral work of "improving yourself in Masonry," is understood to have consequences beyond the Lodge: inner transformation produces outer change. This is Hermetic correspondence in practice.
The three-degree structure of the Blue Lodge (Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft, Master Mason) follows the Egyptian and Hermetic initiatory pattern of death, underworld passage, and resurrection. The Third Degree is explicit about this: the candidate undergoes a ritual death representing the murder of the legendary architect Hiram Abiff, is placed in a symbolic grave, and is raised by the Worshipful Master using the "strong grip" (the Lion's Paw). The raising of Hiram is structurally identical to the raising of Osiris in the Egyptian mystery tradition and the raising of the Hermetic initiate described in the Poimandres.
The Lost Word
One of the central mysteries of Freemasonry is the "lost word," also called the Master Mason's word. According to Masonic legend, the genuine name of God (the Master Mason's word) was lost at the death of Hiram Abiff and has never been recovered. The search for the lost word gives the entire Masonic system its forward momentum: each higher degree is, in part, a search for what was lost. In Hermetic terms, the lost word is the divine name or formula that gives complete knowledge of the cosmos: the word that, in the Gospel of John, was "in the beginning" and through which "all things were made." The Hermetic tradition's concept of logos, the divine word as creative principle, is the theological background against which the Masonic lost word makes most sense.
The use of sacred geometry throughout Masonic Lodge design and ritual also reflects the Hermetic-Pythagorean tradition in which mathematical relationships encode cosmic law. The 47th Proposition of Euclid (the Pythagorean theorem) appears as a Masonic symbol. The square and compasses, used together, generate the basic geometric forms that Hermetic tradition treats as the foundation of material reality. The Fellow Craft degree's instruction in the seven liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) is a direct preservation of the medieval curriculum that the Renaissance Hermetic tradition treated as the pathway to esoteric knowledge.
The Pillars Jachin and Boaz: Hermetic and Kabbalistic Meaning
The two bronze pillars that stood at the entrance to Solomon's Temple, described in 1 Kings 7:15-22, are among the most symbolically rich elements of the Masonic system. They are present in every regular Masonic Lodge: one on the left, one on the right, flanking the Tyler's station or the entrance. Their presence in every Lodge is not accidental ornament; they carry layers of meaning that connect to Hermetic, Kabbalistic, and alchemical traditions.
The name Jachin (right pillar) is sometimes interpreted as "he will establish" or "he establishes." The name Boaz (left pillar) is interpreted as "in strength" or "strength." Together they are read as "in strength he establishes" or "he establishes in strength." The poles of their meaning correspond to the masculine and feminine principles in Hermetic alchemy: Boaz as the active, solar, masculine principle; Jachin as the receptive, lunar, feminine principle. Their juxtaposition encodes the Hermetic principle of gender: "gender is in all things; everything has its masculine and feminine principles."
The Pillars on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life
In Hermetic Qabalah, which synthesizes Kabbalistic and Hermetic teaching, the Tree of Life has three pillars: the Pillar of Severity (left), the Pillar of Mercy (right), and the Middle Pillar of Mildness or Balance. The Masonic pillars Boaz and Jachin correspond to the Pillars of Severity and Mercy respectively, with the space between them, the archway through which the initiate passes, representing the Middle Pillar: the integrated, balanced path through which esoteric development proceeds. The candidate who walks between the two pillars and enters the Lodge is symbolically choosing the Middle Path between the opposing forces they represent, the same choice that Hermetic alchemical work demands.
The alchemical reading of the pillars sees them as sulfur and mercury, the active and passive principles whose conjunction produces the philosopher's stone. In this reading, the Lodge itself is the alembic, the vessel in which the alchemical work occurs, and the Mason is simultaneously the alchemist and the material being transmuted. The third element, the philosopher's stone or the regenerated Mason, emerges from the correct balance of the two opposing principles embodied in the pillars.
Freemasonry and the Renaissance Hermetic Revival
The Rosicrucian manifestos, three texts published in Germany between 1614 and 1617, announced the existence of a secret brotherhood possessing ancient wisdom. The Fama Fraternitatis (1614) described the Order's founder, a Christian Rosenkreutz, who had studied with Arabic masters in the Middle East before founding a brotherhood of physicians and philosophers in Europe. The Confessio Fraternitatis (1615) elaborated the Order's theological and philosophical position. The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (1616) described an initiatory alchemical allegory.
These texts caused a sensation across Protestant Europe. Hundreds of responses were published by people attempting to contact the brotherhood or presenting their own credentials for membership. Whether the Rosicrucian brotherhood actually existed as a physical organization or whether the manifestos were a sophisticated literary-philosophical project (the Chymical Wedding is now attributed to the Lutheran theologian Johann Valentin Andreae) is still debated. What is not debated is that the manifestos crystallized and circulated a specific set of ideas: the existence of an ancient wisdom tradition, the possibility of organized initiatory transmission of that wisdom, and the use of alchemical-Hermetic symbolism as the language of that transmission.
When speculative Freemasonry formalized in 1717, it was operating in an intellectual environment shaped by a century of Rosicrucian influence. The Rosicrucian manifestos had appeared exactly 100 years before. Many of the key figures who shaped early speculative Masonry had engaged deeply with Rosicrucian ideas. The structural similarities between Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry are not coincidental: both use initiatory degrees to reveal knowledge progressively, both employ craft or labor metaphors for spiritual development, both draw on Hermetic and Kabbalistic symbolism, and both present themselves as custodians of an ancient wisdom that has survived intact through transmission from master to student.
Key Hermetic Masons: Bacon, Ashmole, and Fludd
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was not a Mason in any documentable sense, but his influence on the Hermetic-Masonic milieu was profound. His utopian work New Atlantis (1627), published posthumously, described an ideal society organized around a secret college of natural philosophers called Solomon's House, whose members conducted organized research into the secrets of nature and transmitted their findings in a structured, hierarchical institution with degrees of knowledge corresponding to degrees of initiation. This was essentially a description of what Freemasonry would become: a fraternal organization dedicated to the improvement of humanity through the cultivation of knowledge, organized on an initiatory model. The degree of Bacon's direct influence on the founders of speculative Masonry is debated, but the structural homology is striking.
Robert Fludd (1574-1637) was one of the most prominent defenders of Rosicrucianism in England and one of the most sophisticated Hermetic philosophers of his era. His encyclopedic work Utriusque Cosmi Historia (History of the Two Worlds) presented a complete Hermetic cosmology incorporating Kabbalah, sacred geometry, music theory, and alchemical philosophy. Fludd was closely connected to the intellectual circles from which early speculative Masonry emerged, and his use of Temple of Solomon symbolism in his cosmological diagrams anticipates the Masonic use of the Temple as a model of the universe.
Elias Ashmole: The First Documented Speculative Mason
Elias Ashmole (1617-1692) is the most important connecting figure between Hermeticism and speculative Freemasonry. His diary records his initiation into a Freemasons' lodge in Warrington in 1646, the earliest documented initiation of a non-operative Mason in England. Ashmole was simultaneously a serious alchemical scholar (his Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum compiled the major English alchemical texts), a collector of antiquities (the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford was founded on his collection), a student of astrology and Hermetic philosophy, and a Royalist political figure. His initiation into Freemasonry was not a casual social act; it was the action of a man deeply committed to the idea that the ancient wisdom survived in initiatory transmission, and who recognized Freemasonry as a vehicle for that survival.
The Royal Arch and the Enochian Tradition
The Royal Arch degree, which in English Freemasonry is considered the completion of the Master Mason degree, introduces a layer of Hermetic content not present in the basic three degrees. The Royal Arch narrates the discovery, during the rebuilding of Solomon's Temple after the Babylonian exile, of a subterranean vault containing the name of God engraved on a golden plate. The recovery of this name completes what was lost at Hiram Abiff's death.
The Enochian tradition is relevant here because it also centers on recovered divine knowledge. The apocryphal Book of Enoch describes the antediluvian patriarch Enoch being taken up to heaven and given complete knowledge of the cosmos, which he inscribes on two pillars before the Flood so that this knowledge will survive. In some Masonic traditions, the two pillars Jachin and Boaz are identified as the two pillars of Enoch, with the implication that the knowledge they contain is the antediluvian wisdom that Freemasonry preserves.
The connection to John Dee's Enochian system (the elaborate angelic communication system Dee developed in the 1580s with his scryer Edward Kelley) runs through the broader Hermetic-Masonic milieu. Dee's work influenced Rosicrucianism, which influenced speculative Masonry. The specific claim of angelic or divine knowledge transmitted through an initiatory system is common to all three traditions. Whether this represents a genuine unified tradition or the parallel development of similar ideas in response to similar intellectual pressures is a question that historians of esotericism continue to debate.
Freemasonry vs. Pure Hermeticism: What Was Preserved and What Was Lost
One of the most important things to understand about the Hermetic content of Freemasonry is that it is partial and encoded. Freemasonry preserved the symbolism of the Hermetic tradition but not the systematic philosophical doctrine that gives that symbolism its meaning. This is not an accident; it reflects the deliberate choice, evident from the very beginning of speculative Masonry, to make the fraternity accessible to men of different religious and philosophical backgrounds.
The most significant casualty of this accommodation was the systematic Hermetic cosmology. The seven hermetic principles, the specific cosmological model of the Hermetic texts, and the philosophical framework for understanding how the initiatory experience produces genuine knowledge: all of these were suppressed or left implicit in Masonic ritual. What survived was the structure (the degrees, the ritual drama, the symbols) without the doctrine (the explicit philosophical explanation of what the structure means).
Albert Pike's Attempt to Restore the Doctrine
The most ambitious attempt to restore the Hermetic doctrine to Masonic ritual was Albert Pike's Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (1871). Pike, Sovereign Grand Commander of the Southern Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite, wrote this 861-page work as an official commentary on the 33 degrees of the Scottish Rite. He drew extensively on Hermetic, Kabbalistic, Neoplatonic, Zoroastrian, and Gnostic sources in an attempt to provide the philosophical context that the ritual alone could not convey. Morals and Dogma was for decades distributed to Scottish Rite Masons in the Southern Jurisdiction, though it was withdrawn from automatic distribution in the 1970s. It remains the most extensive attempt to articulate the Hermetic philosophy embedded in Masonic symbolism.
The practical consequence of this split between Hermetic symbol and Hermetic doctrine is that Freemasonry is simultaneously a genuine vehicle for Hermetic wisdom (for those who know how to read it) and a largely opaque collection of interesting but unexplained symbols (for those who do not). A Mason who approaches the Third Degree without knowledge of the Osiris myth, the Hermetic alchemical tradition, and the initiatory philosophy that gives the raising of Hiram its full meaning will experience a moving ritual drama whose deeper significance remains inaccessible. A Mason who brings that knowledge to the ritual finds it illuminated in ways that a purely literary reading of the Hermetic texts cannot provide.
The Hermetic Wisdom Behind Masonic Symbolism
Freemasonry preserved hermetic knowledge in symbolic form, accessible only to those who could decode it. Our Hermetic Synthesis course makes that knowledge explicit: the seven universal laws explained directly, without symbolic encoding.
The Scottish Rite and Its Hermetic Degrees
The Scottish Rite, whose 33 degrees extend far beyond the basic three degrees of the Blue Lodge, contains the most explicitly philosophical and esoteric content in mainstream Freemasonry. The higher degrees of the Scottish Rite were developed primarily in France in the mid-18th century, during a period of intense Hermetic and occultist interest in Masonic circles, and they show that influence clearly.
The philosophical degrees of the Scottish Rite (generally the 19th through 33rd degrees in the Southern Jurisdiction) deal with themes drawn from Hermeticism, Kabbalah, Neoplatonism, and Gnosticism. The 28th Degree (Knight of the Sun, or Prince Adept) is the most explicitly Hermetic: it is structured as a series of questions and answers about the nature of God, the soul, and the universe, drawing on the Hermetic cosmological tradition and using the sun as the central symbol of divine intelligence. Albert Pike described this degree as "the apotheosis of the degrees of the Scottish Rite" and devoted the longest single chapter of Morals and Dogma to its explanation.
The Rose Croix degrees (17th and 18th degrees) blend Hermetic and Christian symbolism in ways that reflect the Rosicrucian synthesis of the 17th century. The 17th Degree (Knight of the East and West) deals with the symbolism of the Book of Revelation, read as an esoteric cosmological text. The 18th Degree (Knight Rose Croix) presents an initiatory drama of death and resurrection explicitly connected to the Rosicrucian tradition and the Hermetic concept of regeneration through the Great Work.
Rudolf Steiner and Freemasonry
Rudolf Steiner's engagement with Freemasonry is one of the less-discussed aspects of his career, but it is historically documented and philosophically significant. In 1906, Steiner received a charter from the Rite of Memphis-Misraim (an irregular Masonic rite with Egyptian and Hermetic symbolism throughout its 90+ degrees) and established a lodge called Mystica Aeterna in Berlin. He worked with this rite until approximately 1914, when he formally severed his connection to it.
Steiner was explicit about the reasons for his Masonic involvement and its limits. He was interested in the esoteric content preserved in Masonic symbolism, specifically the Egyptian mystery school elements preserved in the Rite of Memphis-Misraim, but not in Freemasonry as a social or political institution. He described the Masonic ritual forms as genuine, if incomplete, containers for spiritual knowledge that had survived from the ancient mystery traditions, and he attempted to develop a renewal of this initiatory content appropriate to modern consciousness.
Steiner's Critique of Masonic Esotericism
Steiner's critique of Freemasonry, expressed in lectures including GA044 (The Temple Legend) and GA093 (The Berlin Lectures on Occult Science), was not that Masonry contained no genuine esoteric content but that it had preserved the forms without fully understanding what they contained. The symbols were genuine transmissions from the ancient mystery traditions, but the doctrine that would allow a Mason to understand what the symbols meant had been largely lost. Steiner saw his own spiritual scientific work as providing the doctrinal content that the Masonic symbolism required but could not by itself generate. This is why he worked within Masonic forms briefly: to use genuine initiatory vessels while providing them with the intellectual-spiritual content they lacked.
Steiner's lectures on the Temple Legend (GA044) include several lectures specifically on the Hiram Abiff legend, which he read as an encoded account of human spiritual evolution. In his interpretation, Hiram represents the human being's capacity for self-directed spiritual development, the Cain-impulse of craftsmanship and creative intelligence, as opposed to the Abel-impulse of receptive devotion. The murder of Hiram by the three ruffians (representing lower impulses of materialism, fanaticism, and desire) and his burial represent the suppression of this impulse in modern civilization. The Masonic ritual of raising Hiram represents the esoteric task of the present age: to recover and resurrect this creative spiritual capacity.
What Serious Students of Hermeticism Take from Masonry
For students of Hermeticism, Freemasonry offers several things that pure literary engagement with the Hermetic texts does not. The most important is the experience of initiatory ritual: the difference between reading about the three-stage initiatory process and actually undergoing a ritual enactment of it, even a partial one, is real. The Masonic Third Degree, when properly worked, produces a genuine psychological impact that reading about the Osiris myth or the Hermetic Great Work cannot replicate.
Freemasonry also preserves the principle of oral transmission. The Masonic obligation to preserve certain words and signs as oral secrets, never to be written down, reflects the ancient mystery school understanding that certain knowledge changes in transmission and can only be accurately passed in person, from mouth to ear, from one who knows to one who is ready to receive. The Egyptian mystery schools operated on the same principle, and the Hermetic texts themselves consistently distinguish between the outer teaching available in writing and the inner teaching available only through direct transmission.
What Freemasonry cannot provide, and what the Hermetic tradition proper can, is the systematic philosophical framework that makes the symbols intelligible. A Mason who also studies the seven hermetic principles, the Hermetic texts, the Kabbalistic tradition, and the history of the Western mystery schools will find Masonic ritual far more meaningful than one who approaches it without this preparation. In the other direction, a student of Hermeticism who examines Masonic ritual with knowledge of its sources will find in it a living enactment of principles they have encountered only in text.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the connection between Freemasonry and Hermeticism?
Freemasonry and Hermeticism share a common intellectual environment: both emerged from the Renaissance revival of ancient wisdom, both use the Temple of Solomon as a central symbolic framework, and both organize their teachings through progressive initiatory revelation. Speculative Freemasonry (founded 1717) drew heavily on the Hermetic and Rosicrucian currents of the preceding century. The Hermetic principle of "as above, so below" is embedded in Masonic ritual through the symbolism of the two pillars, the tracing boards, and the Royal Arch degree.
What do the Masonic pillars Jachin and Boaz mean?
Jachin and Boaz are the two bronze pillars from Solomon's Temple. In Freemasonry they flank the Lodge entrance and carry multiple layers of meaning. Their primary Hermetic meaning is polarity: two opposing principles that must be held in balance. In Hermetic Qabalah they correspond to the Pillars of Mercy and Severity on the Tree of Life, with the Middle Pillar (the balanced initiatory path) represented by the space between them through which the candidate passes. In alchemical reading they represent sulfur and mercury, the active and passive principles whose correct balance produces the philosopher's stone.
What is the connection between Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism?
The Rosicrucian manifestos appeared in 1614-1616, exactly a century before speculative Freemasonry was founded in 1717. Both traditions use initiatory degrees, both employ Hermetic-alchemical symbolism, and both claim to preserve ancient wisdom in secret. Key figures like Elias Ashmole engaged with both currents simultaneously. Whether Rosicrucianism directly transformed into Freemasonry or whether they are parallel expressions of the same Hermetic impulse is debated, but the structural homology is genuine.
What Hermetic ideas are embedded in Masonic ritual?
Core Hermetic principles structurally embedded in Masonic ritual include: macrocosm-microcosm correspondence (the Lodge as a model of the cosmos), the three degrees following the death-resurrection initiatory pattern from Egyptian and Hermetic tradition, the lost word as the Hermetic concept of the divine creative name, sacred geometry throughout Lodge design and ritual, and the explicit goal of moral transformation as a statement of the alchemical transmutation of character. These are not decorative additions; they are constitutive of the ritual's structure.
Was Rudolf Steiner a Freemason?
Steiner was initiated into the Rite of Memphis-Misraim, an irregular Masonic rite with Egyptian and Hermetic symbolism throughout its 90+ degrees. He received a lodge charter and worked with this rite in Berlin from approximately 1906 to 1914. His interest was specifically in the esoteric content preserved in Masonic symbolism, not in Freemasonry as a fraternal or political institution. He ultimately severed his connection when he felt the Anthroposophical Society had developed its own initiatory methods adequate to the needs of modern consciousness.
Who were the most important Hermetic Freemasons?
Key figures include: Elias Ashmole (1617-1692), the first recorded speculative Mason in England and a serious Hermetic and alchemical scholar; Robert Fludd (1574-1637), a Rosicrucian defender whose Hermetic cosmology influenced early Masonic symbolism; Francis Bacon (1561-1626), whose New Atlantis describes a secret philosophical brotherhood structurally identical to Freemasonry; and Albert Pike (1809-1891), whose Morals and Dogma attempted to restore Hermetic doctrine to Scottish Rite ritual.
What is the difference between Freemasonry and Hermeticism?
Hermeticism is a philosophical and spiritual tradition based on the Hermetic texts, the seven principles, and the goal of direct gnosis. Freemasonry is a fraternal organization that uses initiatory ritual as its primary activity, with philosophical content varying significantly between individual Masons and lodges. Freemasonry preserves Hermetic symbolism in its ritual, but most Masons do not pursue the Hermetic meanings systematically. The esoteric dimension of Freemasonry has always coexisted with a social and charitable dimension that has no Hermetic content.
What is the Scottish Rite's connection to Hermeticism?
The Scottish Rite's higher degrees (28th through 33rd) contain the most explicitly philosophical and esoteric content in mainstream Freemasonry. The 28th Degree (Knight of the Sun) is structured around Hermetic cosmological questions. The Rose Croix degrees blend Hermetic and Christian symbolism in a Rosicrucian synthesis. Albert Pike's Morals and Dogma (1871) drew extensively on Hermetic, Kabbalistic, and Neoplatonic sources to explain the philosophical content of the 33 degrees.
The Symbol and the Doctrine
Freemasonry preserved something real: the initiatory structure, the symbolic vocabulary, and the principle of oral transmission that the ancient mystery schools considered essential. What it could not preserve, given its deliberate theological inclusivity, was the doctrinal framework that makes the symbols fully intelligible. For anyone who has encountered Masonic ritual and felt that something significant was being pointed toward but not quite said: the Hermetic tradition is what is being pointed toward. Its systematic study is what allows the pointing to become the knowing.
Sources & References
- Stevenson, D. (1988). The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland's Century, 1590-1710. Cambridge University Press.
- McIntosh, C. (1992). The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason. E.J. Brill.
- Yates, F. (1972). The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. Routledge.
- Pike, A. (1871). Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Supreme Council, 33rd Degree.
- Steiner, R. (1904-1908). The Temple Legend (GA044). Rudolf Steiner Press.
- Churton, T. (2016). Freemasonry: The Reality. Lewis Masonic.