Masonry Dissected Being An Universal And Genuine Description Of All Its Branches From The Original To The Present Time As It Is Delivered In The Constituded Regular Lodges Both In City And Country According To The Several Degrees Of Admissions With A New And Exact List Of Regular Lodges By Samuel Prichard To Which Is Added The Author S Vindication Of Himself The Twenty First Editon

The fathers of modern freemasonry sought a classical pedigree for their rituals and forms of association. This volume offers the first academic study of how freemasons writing in the first half of the 18th century deployed their knowledge of antiquity to bolster this claim and how the creative literature of the period reflected their ideas. The scholarly investigation of freemasonry is a relatively new phenomenon. The writings of active freemasons tend either to generate new masonic myths or to focus on the minutiae of insignia, rank, and ritual. Only in the last 50 years have non-masons given serious thought to freemasonry as a social practice and to its place within the intellectual and political life of Enlightenment Europe and beyond. Study of masonic elements in literary texts lags much further behind. This volume offers the first English translations of three mid-18th century comedies on female curiosity about this exclusively male order and shows how they reflect contemporary attempts to forge a link with ancient mystery cult. The theatrical aspect of masonic ritual and the ancient mysteries is examined in depth. This volume opens up important new ground in classical reception and 18th century theatre history.

This book analyses the influence of the Jesuits on the symbolic degrees of freemasonry, the myths of the Templars and their doctrine of revenge, based on the "crime" of their destruction, and the four vows of the Templars included in their higher degrees. The historical observations and research of the Bonneville appears of a worthy interest. The praises of Histoire des religions et des moeurs de tous lespays du monde, of Mirabeau, of Mackey, of J. Bilington, of Mallet du-Pan, and those of one of the German translators easily identified as one of the heads of the Highest Masonry, prove the merit of the work, for which no writer has dared answer for the last thirty years, and where the true Masons go to seek the Ariadne's thread to help them walk in this inextricable labyrinth.