On Jul 15, 2007, at 11:12 AM, Rory Goff wrote:
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Jul 14, 2007, at 8:56 PM, off_world_beings wrote:
This is the tip of the iceberg of the strange history of
Freemasonry. I am not interested in this as a conspiracy theory,
but
it is some fascinating history.
Fortunately, from the POV of Masonic scholarship--which Europe has
several endowed chairs for Masonic research at major universities--
the presentation and arrangements of facts are far from the real
truth of the matter, which is much less fanciful, but the truth
(being better than fiction) is IMO much more interesting.
For authentic input on the broader Masonic phenomenon going on
back
then, check out the work of late great scholar Dame Frances Yates
like The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, The Rosicrucian
Enlightenment--and if you really want to grasp the origins, The
Art
of Memory (which is on the ancient art of ars memoria). If you'd
like
to grasp that such sciences existed in medieval Scotland, read
Scottish professor emeritus David Stevenson's The Origins of
Freemasonry: Scotland's Century, 1590-1710. These are all modern
classics.
If you want to grok how Freemasonry helped put an end to the
feudal
system, check out Born In Blood by Robinson. It also goes on to
show
how the same principle of universal freedom exemplified by the
craft
in Europe, was brought to the US.
The great operative (as opposed to speculative) Freemasonic
monuments, many became the first universities of the western world
which gave rise to the idea of the arts liberale and free
education
for all.
YES -- I greatly enjoyed Robinson's book, as well as everything
Frances Yates wrote -- including, also, Theatre of the World,
Shakespeare's Last Plays: A New Approach, and Giordano Bruno and the
Hermetic Tradition.
Haven't read Stevenson yet; thanks for the recommendation :-)
Stevenson's scholarship is the one that actually connected ars
memoria to Scottish Freemasonry by finding passing reference to it in
the early Schaw Statutes--but he also sees (thanks to Dame Yates) the
connection to the neoplatonic hierarchies of Iamblichus' De
Mysteriis. That mixture, along with a Christian and a Jewish
Kabbalah, was what was to become Europe's divine theurgy: ceremonial
magick.
