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Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Cambridge : CUP, 1990.
Description
This is a classic account of the origins of freemasonry, a brotherhood of men bound together by secret initiatives, secret rituals and secret modes of identification with ideals of fraternity, equality, toleration and reason. Beginning in Britain, freemasonry swept across Europe in the mid-eighteenth century in astonishing fashion yet its origins are still hotly debated today. The prevailing assumption has been that it emerged in England around 1700, but David Stevenson demonstrates that the real origins of modern freemasonry lie in Scotland around 1600, when the system of lodges was created by stonemasons with rituals and secrets blending medieval mythology with Renaissance and seventeenth-century history. This fascinating work of historical detection will be essential reading for anyone interested in Renaissance and seventeenth-century history, for freemasons themselves, and for those readers captivated by the secret societies at the heart of the bestselling Da Vinci Code.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member Alba1302
A book which opened the eys of many people. A detailed account of how Freemasonry came from Scotland written by a non-Mason who is a professor of Scottish History.
LibraryThing member kukulaj
Why should anyone care? Probably some folks have a family connection to Freemasonry. I put this on roughly the same shelf as Swedenborgism. But there are excellent grounds for broader interest beyond such vestiges. For starters, the influence of some now marginal groups is a lot deeper than might
I should confess that I know practically nothing about Freemasonry! I have read a bit of Guenon so I have seen some of his references, along with the odd signs alongside those of Kiwanis etc. on town boundaries. Stevenson's book was a good introduction for me. OK and I have heard about Freemasons and the founders of the USA and the pyramid and eye on the dollar bill. Stevenson barely mentions the USA but his overall thesis fits in well enough. His thesis, roughly, is that Freemasonry provided a sort of tunnel by which Renaissance ideas could pass safely through the turmoil of the Reformation, in order to reemerge into the light of the Enlightenment. Since the USA is largely an Enlightenment project, the importance of Freemasonry becomes understandable.
What about us now? Perhaps the age of Enlightenment and Science began its decline with World War 1 and is now entering the intense phase with the Taliban and the Tea Party, with al Qaeda and UKIP. I was stunned to see how 9/11 swept the bookstore shelves clear of Heidegger and Derrida. We need a tunnel if these ideas are to survive in order to reemerge in whatever light our great great grandchildren might manage to bring forth out of the bleakness before us. Might any tunnel building structures lie at hand that could parallel those Stevenson outlines?
Stevenson talks a lot about the parallel structures of Lodge and Incorporation. Look at corporations and professional societies today. Of course that parallel structure has really grown out of the Lodge and Incorporation discussed by Stevenson - it is no mere coincidence! But an intriguing source of possibilities all the same. Take a book like Mathematics and the Roots of Postmodern Thought by Vladimir Tasic. Darwin's Theory of Evolution, Goedel's Theorem. Bell's Theorem in quantum mechanics.... this is the kind of thinking to whose destruction the Taliban and the Tea Party are dedicated. It just might be that societies like the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Physical Society, etc. become the tunnel by which these deep ideas can be kept alive. David Loy, in his book A Buddhist History of the West, portrays modern science as the fragment of Renaissance thinking that survived the brutality of the Thirty Years War. Modern Science has grown and blossomed into a new and different sort of richness. What of that will survive the new brutality?
What is really important to think about is how these professional societies need to adapt to changing circumstances. Of course the political swing, the new Jesuits and Calvinists with their Inquisitions, Iconoclasts, etc., that is part of the change we face. But the broader collapse of the American Empire and of industrial civilization as a whole, that fills out the bigger picture. Science has been spoiled! The time is upon us when science budgets will be slashed, for political reasons and also for economic reasons. The resources just won't be there! And of course too much science budget will be tainted by the interests of the funding sources.
The general approach of most professional societies will be to mimic the usual "deep government" approach, i.e. to abandon their true mission in order to preserve their privileges. Somehow we need to start building small splinter groups that can prepare for the harsh winter coming and preserve seeds from the rich harvest we have enjoyed. Most of the harvest of course will be consumed or left to rot.
There is urgent work to be done! Can recognition of the challenge come in time? Glimmers exist, e.g. a book like Muddling Through: Pursuing Science and Truth in the Twenty-first Century, by Michael Fortun and Herbert Bernstein. Let us fan these sparks and build at least a modest fire to keep lit in a protected space!
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first appear. Beyond that, the patterns displayed here may well have occurred elsewhere, indeed may yet occur again. Indeed, cultivating such an occurrence might be a worthwhile project!I should confess that I know practically nothing about Freemasonry! I have read a bit of Guenon so I have seen some of his references, along with the odd signs alongside those of Kiwanis etc. on town boundaries. Stevenson's book was a good introduction for me. OK and I have heard about Freemasons and the founders of the USA and the pyramid and eye on the dollar bill. Stevenson barely mentions the USA but his overall thesis fits in well enough. His thesis, roughly, is that Freemasonry provided a sort of tunnel by which Renaissance ideas could pass safely through the turmoil of the Reformation, in order to reemerge into the light of the Enlightenment. Since the USA is largely an Enlightenment project, the importance of Freemasonry becomes understandable.
What about us now? Perhaps the age of Enlightenment and Science began its decline with World War 1 and is now entering the intense phase with the Taliban and the Tea Party, with al Qaeda and UKIP. I was stunned to see how 9/11 swept the bookstore shelves clear of Heidegger and Derrida. We need a tunnel if these ideas are to survive in order to reemerge in whatever light our great great grandchildren might manage to bring forth out of the bleakness before us. Might any tunnel building structures lie at hand that could parallel those Stevenson outlines?
Stevenson talks a lot about the parallel structures of Lodge and Incorporation. Look at corporations and professional societies today. Of course that parallel structure has really grown out of the Lodge and Incorporation discussed by Stevenson - it is no mere coincidence! But an intriguing source of possibilities all the same. Take a book like Mathematics and the Roots of Postmodern Thought by Vladimir Tasic. Darwin's Theory of Evolution, Goedel's Theorem. Bell's Theorem in quantum mechanics.... this is the kind of thinking to whose destruction the Taliban and the Tea Party are dedicated. It just might be that societies like the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Physical Society, etc. become the tunnel by which these deep ideas can be kept alive. David Loy, in his book A Buddhist History of the West, portrays modern science as the fragment of Renaissance thinking that survived the brutality of the Thirty Years War. Modern Science has grown and blossomed into a new and different sort of richness. What of that will survive the new brutality?
What is really important to think about is how these professional societies need to adapt to changing circumstances. Of course the political swing, the new Jesuits and Calvinists with their Inquisitions, Iconoclasts, etc., that is part of the change we face. But the broader collapse of the American Empire and of industrial civilization as a whole, that fills out the bigger picture. Science has been spoiled! The time is upon us when science budgets will be slashed, for political reasons and also for economic reasons. The resources just won't be there! And of course too much science budget will be tainted by the interests of the funding sources.
The general approach of most professional societies will be to mimic the usual "deep government" approach, i.e. to abandon their true mission in order to preserve their privileges. Somehow we need to start building small splinter groups that can prepare for the harsh winter coming and preserve seeds from the rich harvest we have enjoyed. Most of the harvest of course will be consumed or left to rot.
There is urgent work to be done! Can recognition of the challenge come in time? Glimmers exist, e.g. a book like Muddling Through: Pursuing Science and Truth in the Twenty-first Century, by Michael Fortun and Herbert Bernstein. Let us fan these sparks and build at least a modest fire to keep lit in a protected space!
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Subjects
Language
Original publication date
1988
ISBN
0521396549 / 9780521396547
Other editions
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