The Shadow of Solomon: The Lost Secret of the Freemasons Revealed

It is, therefore, clearly incorrect to claim that Freemasonry in England began when four gentlemen’s tavern clubs amalgamated to form a Grand Lodge in 1717.

Ashmole’s keen interest and involvement in hermetic magic is not generally mentioned in masonic works concerning him, since a practising alchemist is not the desired image of England’s first Freemason. In contrast, however, the Ashmolean Museum has no problem with the subject, and makes the point that Ashmole used the pseudonym James Hasolle for his first book on alchemy, Fasciculus chemicus.

The fact that Ashmole was also Windsor Herald and Treasurer of the College of Arms holds a far greater appeal for idealized masonic society, but in Restoration times these two seemingly diverse facets would have been unremarkable. His Theatrum chemichum Britannicum, published in 1652, was of primary importance to the Rosicrucian movement (see page 49) in that it was a collated synthesis of English alchemical texts, and became a valuable reference source for manuscripts otherwise hard to access.

It is beyond dispute that Freemasonry of a ‘speculative’ style came into England from Scotland when the two Crowns were united in 1603. But it is also apparent that in ‘operative’ terms the London Company of Freemasons was granted a coat of arms as far back as 1472. Equally interesting is the fact that in 1655 the name was changed to the London Company of Masons. This appears to indicate that the word Freemason had taken on a new connotation—relating now more to a speculative craft, rather than to a particular form of operative stonemasonry. This still does not explain why the word Freemason is not found in etymological dictionaries of the early 1700s, but it does suggest that a key operative guild wished to draw a distinction between its own membership and that of the speculative lodges.

It appears that Freemasonry has been portrayed very strangely since 1723—a hotchpotch of disconnected legends and a general lack of cohesion, with the reason given that the truly enigmatic secrets had been lost. The actual reason for the vagueness of otherwise intellectual men was not so much that everything had gone missing after the 1688 Revolution. It was more a question of their obstinacy in not acknowledging the facts of the matter. Information was there to find if Anderson and his allies had cared to look, but the political situation was such that they preferred not to do so.

This attitude arose after 1715, when James Francis Edward Stuart, the son of the exiled King James II (VII) made a bid to regain the crowns of his ancestral heritage. Soon after the coronation of George I, James Francis was proclaimed as the rightful King James VIII of Scots by Stuart adherents in Aberdeen, Brechin, Dundee, Montrose, Perth, St Andrews and Edinburgh. He then sailed to Scotland from Dunkirk, and in September that year his standard was raised at Braemar. His supporters seized Inverness and Perth from the Hanoverian guard, but they failed to take Edinburgh and Stirling castles, and their advance was halted at Sherriffmuir. South of the Border their penetration was feeble, and within a few weeks the 1715 Rising was terminated by a surrender at Preston, Lancashire, on 14 November. Soon afterwards, the deflated James Francis returned to France.

Despite its initial enthusiasm, the 1715 rebellion was one of the worst campaigns ever organized. But it was not destined to be the last Stuart attempt at restoration, and the people of Britain began to question their personal loyalties and sympathies: Were they Stuart or Hanover supporters?

In Latin, the name James is rendered as Jacobus—and from the time of the Stuart exile, their supporters had become known as Jacobites. Pre-1688 Freemasonry in Scotland and England had ostensibly been a Jacobite institution. But the post-1717 English variety of Anderson and his friends was essentially Hanoverian—a newly devised pseudo-masonry with no real provenance of its own. Whatever information might have been available from previous sources, it would have been unacceptable to the hard-line Hanoverians because it was of Scottish origin. Consequently, much of the new-style English Freemasonry has since bewildered masons and non-masons alike because its weak, often incomprehensible, tradition leaves so much to be desired. Only the introduction of charitable objectives and precepts of moral idealism appear to give it any meaningful substance, but we should not judge too hastily in this regard since there is a good deal more to uncover. Meanwhile, back in 1738, since Christopher Wren was a deceased mason of the old school it was convenient to blame him for spoiling everything!

Heresy

So, what was Christopher Wren’s ‘old school’ of masonry? The picture comes together easily by looking at those few men of his acquaintance whom we have met already: King Charles II, Sir Robert Moray and Elias Ashmole—Freemasons all, but what was their communal meeting ground? It was the Royal Society at Gresham College in London. The Royal Society was, and is, a scientific academy for the purpose of studying natural philosophies. Freemasonry had the very same objectives and, even today, the ritual makes it clear that members are encouraged to ‘devote time to the study of such liberal arts and sciences as may be within the compass of your attainments’.

Although Freemasonry is a secretive society, this does not mean that the secrets held amount to anything that would benefit any outsider to discover. All lodge ceremonies and rituals are scripted and rigorously repetitive. Nearly everything in those rituals is publicly available. The secrets are nothing more than the signs, tokens and passwords of recognition by way of which one mason knows the degree status of another. These words and definitions are left as blanks in the published rituals—and that is the full extent of it.

The Liberal Arts (see page 23) are not taught as subjects within the lodge environment, they are only alluded to. Neither are the sciences (as cited in the lodge dialogue), nor any natural philosophies taught or discussed. There are allegorical, illustrated lectures which point members towards an awareness of spiritual and philosophical enlightenment, but there is no practical instruction given. The lectures are delivered by way of rote, not by way of any qualified professional experience, and the lectures for each grade are not based on any ongoing research. They are fixed, rigid and the same, word-for-word, time after time. Thus, what it all amounts to these days is a ‘role play’, a costumed re-enactment of operating procedures that were followed in lodges at a time when new material was introduced and debated at each meeting. Freemasonry today exists as a framework for something that used to be a cumulative and progressive work experience. But the only ‘work’ necessary for lodge performance these days is that of learning scripted text off by heart.

Outside the formal lodge environment, in what are styled the ‘private assemblies’ (such as around the dinner table, or ‘festive board’ as it is called), it is stated in lodge instruction that a member may ‘offer opinions on such subjects as are regularly introduced in our lectures’. The claim is that this ‘privilege’ enables one to ‘strive through researching the more hidden paths of nature and science’. But in my own experience of some 20 years of lodge attendance, I never heard anyone discussing nature or science. Moreover, if one were to make a headline discovery that rocked the world of science and changed the course of history, it would not make one iota of difference to the lodge workings. The basic precepts in such matters have been fixed (albeit loosely) since the revisions of United Grand Lodge were introduced in 1816. The most up-to-date scientific statement in modern Craft ritual is that the Earth revolves, on its own axis, around the Sun, which is at the centre!

Although such a statement (which the 2nd-degree candidate is obliged to announce to the lodge as the required answer to an explicit question) is wholly naive by today’s standards, it does pose an interesting scenario. It is the Copernican heliocentric principle as put forward by Galileo in 1632, and for which he was summoned before the Inquisition and imprisoned for 10 years until he died. In this respect, if we think in terms of the same question and answer in 1641, when Sir Robert Moray was installed, it would have held tremendous significance. To gain Fellow Craft masonic status on those terms meant that one was risking life and limb by admitting to such an heretical concept! This also demonstrates that progression through the degrees would have been impossible unless one was a scientific heretic. That is why Freemasonry was secretive and relied on brotherly support and loyalty. Outside the lodge confines one would know to discuss such punishable matters only with those who knew the signs and passwords of the fraternity. In short, Freemasonry true and proper, in its original uncorrupted form, was about liberal arts, science and natural philosophy.

The Invisible College

Science in the 1600s was concerned, in the main, with natural philosophy. Chemistry fell within the scope of this, but was a lowly art since chemists worked as assistants to the more experienced alchemists, who were practitioners of the senior profession, although detested by the Church. Scotland had a strong tradition in hermetic alchemy, and its research was subsidized from the royal purse as far back as the days of King James IV (1488-1513). Since masonic lodges were concerned with scientific experimentation, alchemy had a powerful and permanent influence on lodge operations.

One of the foremost collectors of alchemical manuscripts was Lord Balcarres, whose daughter was married to Sir Robert Moray. In turn, Moray was the patron of England’s most notable 17th-century alchemist, Eirenaeus Philalethes, the revered mentor of Robert Boyle and others of the masonic Royal Society.

Although the Renaissance had brought a great flourish to academic and creative interests, throwing off the superstitious shackles of the Church in favour of reviving classical philosophy and literature, in this respect Britain fell into a repressed doldrums during the Cromwellian era. Following Cromwell’s military overthrow and the 1649 execution of King Charles I, this hitherto rural politician became so powerful that in 1653 he chose to rule by martial force alone. He dissolved Parliament and appointed himself Lord Protector, with greater dictatorial powers than any king had ever known. He then sought to demolish the activities of the Anglican Church. At his order, the Book of Common Prayer was forbidden, as were the celebrations of Christmas and Easter. His dictatorship was more severe than any previous regime, and his puritanical directives lasted throughout the 1650s. Games, sports and entertainment were restricted, dissenters were tortured and banished, houses were sequestrated, punitive taxes were levied, universities were constrained, theatres and inns were closed, freedom of speech was denied, adultery was made a capital offence and mothers of illegitimate children were imprisoned. No one was safe even at home, and any unwitting group of family or friends could be charged with plotting against an establishment that empowered crushing fines to be imposed at will by the military.

This was the environment which brought enterprising university students such as Christopher Wren and Robert Boyle together as pioneers of an undercover society of subversive academics, which grew to become the foremost scientific academy. It began at Oxford University during the 1650s, at a time when Oxford was in a state of restlessness. Having been the capital of Royalist England during the Civil War, Cromwell had appointed himself Chancellor of the University and the once lively streets were subdued and an air of general oppression prevailed.

Within the University, subjects such as astronomy and mathematics were considered demonic and were expressly forbidden by the Puritan commissioners. In fact, learning in general was frowned upon, for scholars were the greatest of all threats to the regime. There was, however, one man who stood apart from his colleagues on the University staff—an unusually freethinking churchman, Dr John Wilkins. He was the maverick Warden of Wadham College, a future bishop who studied the wisdoms of the ancient world. At Oxford, Wilkins ran a philosophical group who met secretly by night in a local apothecary’s house to discuss prohibited subjects. In fact, he was a positive enigma since he was married to Oliver Cromwell’s sister, Robina, but fronted a secret society in blatant opposition to his brother-in-law’s dictatorship. The Cromwell family was very mixed in outlook, however, and Elizabeth, another of the sisters, was a Stuart supporting Royalist.

Immediately before coming to Wadham in 1648, Wilkins had published his controversial book Mathematicall Magick, which the Puritans considered wholly satanic. For a churchman even to acknowledge the notion of magic was inconceivable, especially when allied to numerology, the most diabolical of all occult aberrations!

Members of Wilkins’ clandestine group, which became known as the Invisible College, included the young Christopher Wren, along with Robert Boyle (son of the Earl of Cork), the anatomist William Petty, and a technically-minded student called Robert Hooke. Other participants were the noted theologian Seth Ward—an older man who encouraged Wren’s interest in astronomy—along with the cryptologist John Wallis and the physician Thomas Willis. The term Invisible, as applied to the group, was first used in a letter written by Robert Boyle,

but it was common in covert Rosicrucian circles. Rosicrucianism was directly allied to Freemasonry in Scotland, and the two were shown as synonymous in a metrical account of Perth, published in Edinburgh in 1638:

For we be brethren of the Rosie Crosse;

We have the Mason Word and the second sight.

In order to fulfil their overriding scientific objectives, the fraternity was in no doubt as to the key that would unlock the doors of enlightenment. They knew that in order to advance science and medicine beyond the bounds of academic constraint, they had to discover the alchemical secrets of the ancient and medieval masters.

Among the more prominent alchemists of the day was the inscrutable Thomas Vaughan (brother of the poet Henry Vaughan), who styled himself Eirenaeus Philalethes. His writings on the subject of chemical hermeticism were no less confusing than those of any alchemist through the ages, but he was rather more forthcoming to his friends. In contrast to the general presumption that alchemy was about making gold from base metals by use of the Philosophers’ Stone, Philalethes made it clear that the Stone was itself made from gold, ‘but not common gold’. He stated that it was called a Stone because of its fixed nature and its resistance to fire, but that ‘its appearance is that of a very fine powder’.

The French chemist, Nicolas Flamel, had written much the same back in 1416, referring to ‘a fine powder of gold, which is the Stone’.

What especially intrigued the Oxford fraternity was that the Philosophers’ Stone was traditionally associated with the defiance of gravity, and this compelling subject was a primary focus of their study. It had been stated in an old Alexandrian document, the Iter Alexandri ad Paradisium, that the Stone gave youth to the old, and that although outweighing its own quantity of gold, even a feather could tip the scales against it!

The students could not imagine why the universities were not encouraged towards such research. Instead, their textbooks were substantially out of date, and the majority of schooling was vested in long outmoded principles. The 2nd-century Alexandrian work of Ptolemy was considered a good enough guide to the celestial system, expounding the notion that the Earth was the fixed centre of the Universe, while in matters of natural philosophy Aristotle prevailed. They were taught nothing of atomic structure, only that everything existed in varying combinations of the four basic elements: earth, water, fire and air. It did not take them long, however, to recognize that true alchemy was far from being a foolish medieval cult. Moreover, it emerged that geometry and numerology were at the hub of all alchemical learning. They were not taught mathematics since it was not in the interests of their masters that they learn anything of real consequence.

John Wilkins knew that within his circle were some of the most inventive young minds in Britain—minds that should not be confined to shady backroom sessions. It was determined, therefore, that they must come out into the open with something to transform philosophy into an accredited science. Undoubtedly, what they needed were precedents—new scientific laws that would rock the establishment to its foundation. Christopher Wren and his friend Robert Hooke were especially fascinated by the stars and, in due course, the pair were destined to become the foremost masters of astronomy since Galileo. Indeed, eventually their pioneering approach was to demolish and overawe the restrictive teaching methods of all the major academies.

In 1657, wonderful news arrived from London, when Christopher Wren (still only 27) was offered the position as Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College in Bishopsgate. Astronomy, though regarded with suspicion at Oxford, was now officially recognized at Gresham despite the punitive regulations that applied. The college founder Sir Thomas Gresham (the Tudor royal agent in Antwerp) stated in the early 1600s that no more than 10 thinkers in Europe were prepared to accept the heliocentric principle of Nicolas Copernicus!

Established in 1597, Gresham College was associated from the outset with cutting-edge research, and Sir Thomas’s daughter Anne was married to Nathaniel, brother of the Rosicrucian Grand Master, Sir Francis Bacon.

After Wren’s lecture, members of a London-based philosophical group explained to their Oxford counterparts that life had been tough for them in the City. Cromwell’s soldiers had invaded and disrupted their meetings, filling them with trepidation and fear for their lives. They had moved the venue numerous times to settle at the Bull’s Head tavern in Cheapside, but now the Gresham College door was opened by virtue of Wren’s fortuitous appointment. The New Philosophy, declared Wren, had been constrained for long enough. It was now time to straddle the divide and put science firmly on the map of academia.

Through the use of books brought in from Europe, they discovered the existence of theorems from ancient times—general propositions which were not self-evident (as conventional science was supposed to be), but were proven by chains of reasoning. They learned too about problems which could be expressed as symbols or formulae and solved by algebraic application. They found that astronomers such as Copernicus and Galileo had made revelations concerning the sun and the solar system, without the help of official tutoring, along with a new celestial concept of the heavenly bodies which completely overturned what they had been taught by the university clerics. In the event, it was not long before Robert Hooke (by then Professor of Geometry at Gresham College) reinvented the telescope with his own uniquely manufactured lenses, discovering not only the secret of Orion’s alignment, but emerging as the first to determine sun-spots and Jupiter’s rings, and to calculate Jupiter’s rotation.

In all this, a prevailing mystery was the anomalous nature of their founder John Wilkins, for he was a reverend gentleman quite unlike any other. He had taken Holy Orders before 1645, but his Mathematicall Magick had a strong alchemical flavour which flew in the face of Church doctrine. Even more baffling to the group (considering his family alliance with Cromwell) was that Wilkins was chaplain to Charles Louis, Prince Palatine of the Rhine—eldest son of the King and Queen of Bohemia,

and a sworn enemy of the Lord Protector. Moreover, the Palatinate was steeped in Rosicrucian alchemy.

Rosicrucians were, by Inquisitional definition, heretics and meddlers in the occult. Back in the days of Elizabeth I, the Queen’s adviser John Dee was a noted Rosicrucian,

as was the hermetic philosopher Robert Fludd who aided the translation (from Greek into English) of the King James Bible. In practice, however, Rosicrucians were student chevaliers of the Rosi-crucis—the enigmatic symbol of the grand enlightenment (see chapter 13).

An intriguing, but poignant, aspect of post-1723 Freemasonry is that, whilst Euclid is revered in the Charges (although wrongly dated) there is no mention of John Dee. He had written the famous preface to the English translation of Euclid—the most remarkable monument to sacred geometry in which he urged the revival of the Euclidian art. James Anderson clearly knew of this work since he almost quotes from it on occasions. For example, concerning the 1stcentury reign of Augustus Caesar, Dee wrote: ‘…in whose days our heavenly Archmaster was born’. On the same subject of Emperor Augustus, Anderson wrote: ‘…when the great Architect of the Church was born’. Just as Hanoverian Freemasonry ignored Elias Ashmole’s hermetic interests, it also paid no heed to the work of John Dee, even though the 47th Proposition of the 1st Book of Euclid (the Pythagoras Theorem) is pictorially demonstrated (bottom centre) in Anderson’s 1723 frontispiece (see plate 5), and is a traditional symbol of masonic perfection. The reason once again is that Dee’s Rosicrucian connection was anathema to the newly devised straitlaced Freemasonry of Georgian times.

Wilkins’ Mathematicall Magick specifically referenced the sepulchre of Frater Rosicrosse, as detailed in the 1614-15 Fama Fraternitatis of the Rosicrucian Manifestos. (Also incorporating the Confessio Fraternitatis, the Manifestos were German works that announced an impending age of new enlightenment and hermetic liberation in which certain universal secrets would be unlocked and made known.) Wilkins’ work was also substantially based upon the mechanics section of Robert Fludd’s Utriusque Geomi Historia (published in the Palatinate in 1619). Additionally, Wilkins frequently cited the late Stuart Chancellor, Sir Francis Bacon, who had been a master craftsman of the Rosicrucian Order. Indeed, it was Bacon’s one-time vision of a fraternal scientific institute which led Wilkins to envisage the Oxford fraternity at a time when the Bohemian research of the Palitinate had been curtailed by the Thirty Years’ War in Europe (1618-48).

The apparent dichotomy of Dr Wilkins was a mystery to all. But for his group to thrive and survive, he made a strict masonic ruling from the outset: Whatever else might be discussed, the subjects of religion and politics were prohibited. Notwithstanding this, the Bible became a subject of continued study from the time of Wren’s Gresham College lecture in 1657, particularly in respect of chronology and astronomical time frames. In fact, this lecture was a manifesto of things to come from the group, since it referred to the tyranny of the Greek and Roman cultures upon which all 17th-century academic society was based.

Despite his scientific genius, the Eton-educated Robert Boyle was short-sighted and not particularly adept at mathematics, so Robert Hooke helped him a good deal with calculations and experiments. Both were fascinated by the power of exerted pressures, so Boyle concentrated on air pumps, while Hooke investigated springs. In the course of their collaborative work, important mathematical formulae relating to compressed air and compressed springs were discovered. They become known respectively as Boyle’s Law and Hooke’s Law—two of the most crucial precedents in the world of emergent science, and equally important today.

A Royal Charter

In time, and specifically from 1660, the Rosicrucian aims of the group emerged into the open with the Restoration of the flamboyant King Charles II. Quite suddenly, and irrespective of clerical opinion, they gained approval and recognition by way of a Stuart charter in 1662, to become known henceforth as the Royal Society. Their motto was established as Nullis in verba, which translates roughly to ‘Take no one’s word for it’—a motto which had been used previously by Sir Francis Bacon.

The Society’s new status was achieved by two influential members, namely the Scottish statesman Sir Robert Moray and the Gresham College president William, Viscount Brouncker—both of whom had direct access to the king. In the event, it was Moray who approached King Charles on behalf of the fraternity, securing his patronage and encouragement. Having been Attaché to Cardinal Richelieu in France during the Protectorate, Moray was a man of enormous influence in court and government circles, and was greatly respected by the royal household. By that time, other subsequently famous characters, such as Elias Ashmole and the diarist John Evelyn, had joined the group. Viscount Brouncker (though not a scientist) became the Society’s first President, with Robert Hooke appointed as the first Curator and, on 20 May 1663, some 150 Fellows were elected from the fastgrowing overall membership.

The House of Stuart progenitor, Robert the Bruce had inaugurated the Elder Brethren of the Rosy Cross in 1317—a Knight Templar institution

which was inherited 11 generations later by King Charles II. It is no coincidence that the first two known prominent masonic initiates in England, Sir Robert Moray and Elias Ashmole, were both foundation Fellows of the Royal Society and members of the Rosicrucian movement. The Royal Society’s New Philosophy (as Wren had dubbed it) was therefore largely Rosicrucian and, as such, was immediately concerned with matters of hermetic alchemy.

King Charles’s paternal aunt, Princess Elizabeth—the daughter of King James I (VI)—had married Frederick V, Elector Palatine, in 1613. Hence, it comes as no surprise that the House of Stuart, with its link to the Bohemian Palatinate, accompanied by John Wilkins’ own Rosicrucian chaplainship, was eager to acknowledge the enthusiastic brotherhood of the Royal Society. In so doing, King Charles effectively reconstituted the Brethren of the Rosy Cross, taking on the Grand Mastership of his family’s traditional Order.

To leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Royal Society was a Rosicrucian establishment, the Society’s historian Thomas Sprat included a descriptive frontispiece illustration in his 1667 History of the Royal Society (see plate 12). Designed by John Evelyn and engraved by Wenceslas Hollar, the Society’s inaugural picture depicts a bust of King Charles, along with Viscount Brouncker and Sir Francis Bacon who had died many years before in 1626. Also featured in the engraving is the trumpet-bearing Angel of Fame from the Fama Fraternitatis of the 1614 Rosicrucian Manifestos, along with a number of books and masonic devices.