Unlocking the Masonic Code: The Secrets of the Solomon Key

Furthermore, the guilds operated on a strictly hierarchical basis. Students admitted to the fraternity, who were often as young as twelve, were schooled both in theory and on the job by Master Masons. As these Masons continued their training they were allowed privileges along the way, such as the right to carve their own identifying ‘mark’ into some cathedral stones.

However, even the most gifted student was highly unlikely to become a Master Mason in less than ten years. Were he to divulge even the most minor trade secret to an outsider, he would be instantly banished from the guild and ostracized by all Master Masons.

As Church and State became aware of the existence of stonemasons’ guilds, there were attempts to legislate them out of existence. In 1360, King Edward III passed a law banning all secret Masonic pledges and societies, and sixty-five years later the Regency Government forbade Masons to gather in numbers in any circumstances. This law was soon deemed unworkable and was rarely applied.

The twelfth to fourteenth centuries saw Freemasons scale new heights of influence and importance. As Gothic cathedrals sprang up across Europe, their services were in sharp demand. Masons rebuilt Canterbury Cathedral along Gothic lines in 1174 after its eastern wing was destroyed by fire. However, Wells Cathedral, where construction work began in 1180, is generally regarded as the first major English cathedral built entirely in the Gothic style.

Westminster Abbey, York Minster, Ely Cathedral and Winchester Cathedral all had Gothic devices added to their existing edifices, and across the Channel in France imposing structures arose at Notre-Dame in Paris, Chartres, Amiens and Rouen. Unsurprisingly, the Catholic Church also built cathedrals nearer to home, in Milan, Florence and Siena, as well as across the Low Countries and Spain.

Yet despite their elevated social and occupational status, Freemasons were largely far from venal and self-serving. The stonemasons’ guilds may have been formed partly to protect their members’ business interests, but these bodies also strove to inculcate high standards of moral and personal behaviour amongst practitioners of the trade. Various rules, or ‘Charges’, urged Masons to render their own lives as noble and upright as the cathedrals they built—not a concern that you can imagine troubling the labour unions of today.

The Regius Manuscript

The Regius Manuscript is one of the most significant documents in Masonic history. Presented to the British Museum by King George II in 1757, it was written in 1390, possibly by a priest, although numerous clues within the text suggest that it was copied from even earlier documents, possibly dating from around 950-1000 AD. Entitled ‘A Poem of Moral Duties’, this 794-line loosely rhyming piece of verse summarized the professional, moral and philosophical levels of behaviour expected of Masons, as well as making some extravagant and fanciful historical claims.

The Regius Manuscript (also called the Halliwell Manuscript after James Halliwell, who translated it from the original Old English in 1840) opens with a Latin inscription: Hic incipiunt constitutiones artis gemetrioe secundum Euclydum. Translating as ‘Here begin the constitutions of geometry according to Euclid’, the motto shows the importance given to the science of geometry in Masonic theory and ritual: after all, these precise calculations enabled the building of their trademark towering cathedrals.

This elongated meditation on spirituality and Masonry (‘the most honest craft of all’) opens with the claim that Euclid, in addition to inventing geometry, was also the first Master Mason and had, indeed, founded the entire Craft in ancient Egypt. Scarcely missing a beat, the poem goes on to claim that Freemasonry was imported to England by King Athelstan, who instigated Masonic meetings and ‘loved this craft full well’.

The poem claims that King Athelstan called a vast meeting of Freemasons from the length of Britain, which was also attended by ‘Lords in their state / Dukes, earls and barons too’. This august assembly drew up the rules and strictures that

King Athelstan

The grandson of Alfred the Great, King Athelstan (895-939 AD) was the first king of all England. Taking York from the Danes, he also forced the surrender of King Constantine of Scotland, united Britain beneath his command and repelled all invasions. This otherwise little-celebrated historical figure occupies a crucial place in Masonic history.

The Regius Manuscript claims that King Athelstan was a keen supporter of Masonry and in 926 AD, one year after he came to the throne, called the very first Grand Lodge of Masons at York. Appointing his brother Edwin the Lodge Grand Master, he commanded it to convene annually thereafter, and also supported Freemasonry by commissioning a constant stream of new forts, castles and monasteries.

There is no doubt that Freemasonry’s York Rite takes its cue from the Regius Manuscript and the supposed 926 adYork Assembly. It is likely, however, that the document adds a few imaginative flourishes to the actual contribution to Masonry of King Athelstan.

were to govern the stonemasons’ guilds, dividing them into fifteen regulatory ‘articles’ and a further fifteen philosophical ‘points’, and looked to correct ‘defaults’ that Athelstan had noted in Masons’ work standards and general comportment.

The fifteen articles outline the basic requirements and responsibilities of a Master Mason. The first two explain that he should be honest (‘as a judge stand upright’), reliable, and pay his workmen fairly and on time. He should also attend every meeting of his chapter of Masons, unless ‘sickness hath him so strong / That he may not come them among’.

The majority of the articles thereafter deal with the relationship between the Master Mason and the Fellows of the Craft and Entered Apprentices beneath his command. The Mason should ensure that every apprentice is willing and able to study for seven years. He should not recruit a servant, lest his owner should remove him from service of the Craft, nor should he hire or initiate an apprentice who is ‘deformed’ or ‘maimed’ (in 1390, the more politically correct phrase ‘physically challenged’ clearly had yet to enter the lexicon).

The articles further inform the Mason not to recruit thieves, and swiftly to replace any Entered Apprentices who fall short of the Craft’s high standards. The Master Mason should not accept commissions that he knows he cannot fulfil, nor steal work from a fellow Mason. Nor should he withhold any trade secrets from his apprentices, but rather ensure that he ‘the craft ably may know / Wheresoever he go under the sun’.

The Regius Manuscript’s fifteen ‘points’ are of a more general nature, urging the Masons towards serene and contemplative behaviour. The Mason must ‘love God and holy church always / and his master also’, be discreet, treat all men equally and receive his pay and rewards ‘meekly’. He should also be a peace-maker and steer well clear of the ‘foul deadly sin’ of sleeping with a fellow Mason’s wife. He should be a patriot (‘To his liege lord the King…be true to him over all thing’) and, crucially, be willing to swear an oath of his commitment to the Craft before the Master Mason and fellow members.

The Manuscript then veers off into a fable of four Masons who refused to make monuments of false gods at the behest of a Roman emperor and so were martyred (see page 81), before recapping Christian fables such as Noah’s Ark and the Tower of Babel and identifying seven ‘sciences’ in which the civilized Mason should be adept: grammar, dialect, rhetoric, music, astronomy, arithmetic and geometry. The poem ends by reminding the Mason once again of the virtues of truth, honesty and humility.

The Regius Manuscript emphasizes that Middle Ages Masonry had its self-improvement and spiritual aspects, but nevertheless the stonemasons’ guilds remained largely professional organizations-cum-trade unions. However, events at the start of the sixteenth century conspired to ensure that Freemasons would henceforth have far more time on their hands to consider matters of a more abstract, philosophical nature.

The 1500s saw Masonry hit with a devastating triple blow. Firstly, the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment meant it was harder for Masons to jealously guard their trade secrets. With the advent of the printing presses, Gothic cathedrals could no longer be seen as God-made-stone via divine powers: instead, the mechanics of the

The Cooke Manuscript

The second most important medieval document in Freemasonry is the Cooke Manuscript, named after its 1861 translator and editor, Matthew Cooke. Written around 1450, this instructional tome was penned by a Mason rather that a priest, and contains many of the central pillars of Masonic lore. As well as describing the building of King Solomon’s Temple, the manuscript also concerns itself with Masonic symbolism and ritual and was clearly highly influential on the philosophy and minutiae of modern Freemasonry.

no-longer-mysterious flying buttress were laid bare for all to see.

As the Masons came to terms with no longer being workers of modern miracles, their chief patron was also in trouble. The Roman Catholic Church, for so long all-conquering across Europe, faced dissent wherever it turned, with Martin Luther sparking the Protestant Reformation in Germany in 1517 and King Henry VIII breaking all British ties with Rome in 1534. The Church was suddenly in no position to order more cathedrals to be built.

Even if they had done so, they might not have been Gothic ones. The third and final blow to Freemasonry’s standing was that the Gothic style, so dominant since the 1100s, was being supplanted by a return to the simpler classicist values of Roman architecture. Suddenly Masons were running short of work. They would never again recover their position as the most elevated and valued manual workers in the land.

From Operative to Speculative

The Masons’ financial fortunes might have declined during the Renaissance period but the Craft still maintained an enviable social status. The covert fraternity was admired both for its architectural and geometric knowledge and its lofty aims of self-improvement, and as the sixteenth century neared its close there was a tendency for Masonic lodges to admit non-stonemasons—who tended mainly to be sympathetic aristocrats—as honorary members.

This trend began in Scotland, where Freemasonry had long been firmly established: indeed, the world’s oldest surviving Masonic lodge, Kilwinning Lodge No 0, was formed there in 1140. At the end of the 1500s it was even rumoured that King James VI of Scotland had become an honorary Mason. Clearly, membership was no longer restricted to architects and stonecutters.

This was the crucial period in history when Freemasonry underwent a sea change from an elevated series of trade union guilds to a philosophical and moral fraternity open—in theory, at least—to all who wanted to join. This process was largely put on hold in the first part of the seventeenth century, as the English Civil Wars rent the country asunder, but as the Age of Reason dawned in the 1640s and 1650s, Freemasonry truly came into its own.

No longer willing to accept religious doctrine and dogma unquestioningly, people were now investing far more importance in scientific and cerebral analysis of the mysteries of everyday

The Schaw Statutes

In 1598, William Schaw, the Master of Works for Scottish ruler (and suspected Mason) King James VI, passed two statutes seeking clearly to define the nature of Freemasonry. The decrees stated the responsibilities and duties of lodge members and set out the punishments for unsatisfactory work and employing non-initiated Masons. They also required all lodges to keep minutes of every meeting, and obliged them to submit their members to tests of their knowledge of Masonic history and law.

life. These progressive thinkers were greatly impressed with Freemasonry’s stringent moral code and search for self-betterment: to use Masonry’s language, the way that members sought to turn themselves into beings as sturdy, worthy and inspiring as a cathedral.

The traditional operative Freemasons who worked daily with stone and gauge were thus joined in the lodges by a new wave of speculative Masons who had never wielded a chisel in their life. Some traditionalist members opposed the move, afraid that these newcomers would see no reason to keep their zealously guarded trade secrets. A few lodges even burned all written records. Yet before long such accepted or admitted Masons were accepted within the fraternity by all but the most reactionary stonecutters.

Freemasonry thus proudly took its place in the vanguard of progressive thought, alongside institutions such as the recently-formed Royal Society of London, a scientific thinking-shop: many illustrious figures such as Sir Christopher Wren and Elias Ashmole joined both organizations. Yet even amongst the hard intellectual rigour of the age, it is easy to believe such elevated men of reason must have enjoyed a private, boyish frisson at the arcane rituals and elaborate secrecy required to become a speculative Mason.

Dan Brown could be forgiven for latching eagerly onto the speculative Freemasons of the mid-seventeenth century as a plot device. Here, after all, was a covert conglomeration of the age’s greatest and most renowned free thinkers, operating within a ritualistic secret society—who knows what perfidious plots they could have been hatching?

However, such speculation appears largely misplaced. There is no evidence that the Freemasons’ lodges of this era were bent upon anything more than speculative contemplation of a fast-changing world, combined with a rigorous moral code. Members at this time still professed allegiance to God rather than a nebulous Supreme Being: their sole ‘crime’ in reactionary eyes was also to embrace the new-fangled Renaissance cult of rationalism.

Operative Masons’ fortunes also received a spectacular boost in the middle of the century. The Great Fire of London of 1666 razed 40,000 dwellings to the ground and close to 100 churches in the capital. As architects and builders flocked to London, the number of Masons’ lodges in the city rocketed accordingly. Yet this proved a short-lived gain, and by the start of the eighteenth century there were a mere six Masonic lodges in London. Other lodges were scattered across the country in an ad hoc, disjointed manner, and even within these fraternal chapters, observation of Masonic rituals and symbolism was declining. Freemasonry clearly needed to organize or it would die.

The Grand Lodges

By the early eighteenth century, Freemasonry had become so informal that most lodges met only sporadically, at a public house convenient for its members. The four most significant lodges in London regularly convened at four separate alehouses: the Goose & Gridiron, next to the recently-completed St Paul’s Cathedral; the Crown, in Parkers Lane near to Drury Lane; the Apple Tree tavern, in Charles Street on the fringes of Covent Garden’s fruit market; and the Rummer & Grapes, close by the Palace of Westminster. None of these hostelries survive today.

In February 1717, senior figures from these four lodges gathered at the Apple Tree tavern for crisis talks. Sensing that Freemasonry was at a crossroads, these elders decided to put in place a coherent structure that would unify the entire movement. They also resolved to reintroduce

Deference Within Masonry?

Despite Masonry’s claims to eschewing social snobbery and prejudice, it is notable that no working stonemason has ever been voted Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England. From 1717-21 only, the position was held by gentlemen, or speculative, Masons. Thereafter, the Grand Lodge has invariably voted aristocracy or, in recent years, royalty into its top post. The first Royal Family member to be Grand Master was King George III’s brother, the Duke of Cumberland, in 1782. The current incumbent, HRH the Duke of Kent, was appointed in 1967.

respect for the rituals and traditions that had made the fraternity unique and revered. So it was that, on 24 June 1717, London’s senior Masons gathered at the Goose & Gridiron in the courtyard of St Paul’s Cathedral, whose construction had been overseen by one of their number, Sir Christopher Wren, to form the Grand Lodge of England. As their first ever Grand Master they elected a speculative or admitted Mason, Anthony Sayer from the lodge at the Crown.

The founding of the Grand Lodge of England succeeded in giving Masonry the greater cohesion it required, but paradoxically it also caused rifts within the fraternity. Long-established lodges in Scotland and the north of England did not respond favourably to the Grand Lodge’s unilateral declaration that it alone could recognize, or charter, new lodges, and that it was henceforth in regulatory charge of all existing lodges.

In 1725, northern lodges formed a rival Grand Lodge of All England at York—a body that lasted until 1790. Scotland, ever resentful of English rule, had no truck with London and formed its own completely independent Grand Lodge of St John of Scotland in 1736. Ireland, however, fell into line with the English Grand Lodge and formed its own Grand Lodge of Ireland under a charter from London.

Antients and Moderns