5. The Mason Word

Faerie Queene

Before he became King James I of England, James the “Mason King,” was preceded by Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603), during whose reign occult philosophy was a dominant influence.[1] It is known that later German Rosicrucian authors associated the Faerie Queene—Spenser’s poem dedicated to Elizabeth I and featuring the Redcrosse Knight—with their movement.[2] The legendary Christian Rosencreutz is not only a Red Cross knight, but also a knight of the Golden Fleece.[3] The alchemical symbolism of the dragon and the Golden Fleece was alluded to by Ben Johnson in The Alchemist (1610), a satiric play where Sir Epicure Mammon utters the following lines:

I have a piece of Jason’s fleece, too,
Which was no other than a book of alchemy,
Writ in large sheep-skin, a good fat ram-vellum.
Such was Pythagoras’ thigh, Pandora’s tub,
And, all that fable of Medea’s charms,
The manner of our work; the bulls, our furnace,
Still breathing fire; our argent-vive, the dragon:
The dragon’s teeth, mercury sublimate,
That keeps the whiteness, hardness, and the biting;
And they are gathered into Jason’s helm,
The alembic, and then sow’d in Mars his field,
And thence sublimed so often, till they’re fixed.
Both this, the Hesperian garden, Cadmus’ story,
Jove’s shower, the boon of Midas, Argus’ eyes,
Boccace his Demogorgon, thousands more,
All abstract riddles of our stone.[4]

Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife. Henry VIII famously had  Anne beheaded for treason when Elizabeth was two years old. Anne’s marriage to Henry VIII was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. In 1544, when she was eleven, Elizabeth gave her step-mother Catherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII’s six wives, a manuscript book titled The Miroir or Glasse of the Synneful Soul. Elizabeth translated the poem into English from the French work Miroir de l'âme pécheresse by Marguerite de Navarre, the sister of Francis I, and wrote the manuscript with her own hand, dedicating it with the words, “From Assherige, the last daye of the yeare of our Lord God 1544… To our most noble and vertuous Quene Katherin, Elizabeth her humble daughter wisheth perpetuall felicitie and everlasting joye.”

As demonstrated by Frances Yates in The Occult of the Elizabethan Age, Giorgi’s De harmonia mundi exercised a very great influence on the era of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603), which was “was populated, not only by tough seamen, hard-headed politicians, serious theologians. It was a world of spirits, good and bad, fairies, demons, witches, ghosts, conjurors.”[5] According to Yates, Giorgi’s influence might have had its roots when he was consulted along with the Jewish Rabbis of Venice by Richard Croke, in support of Henry VIII’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, an affair that ultimately led to the English Reformation and the establishment of the Church England, which separated itself from the Catholic Church in Rome.

In 1588, in his capacity as royal astrologer, the infamous sorcerer John Dee (1527 – 1608 or 1609), who possessed copies of Giorgi’s works, was asked to choose the most favorable date for the coronation of Elizabeth, and subsequently tutored the new queen in the understanding of his mystical writings. In his own time, Dee was one of England’s most sought-after scholars, recognized for his opinions on a wide range of topics. Dee was influenced not only by Giorgi but also by Llull, Pico, Reuchlin and Agrippa. Dee immersed himself in the worlds of magic, astrology and Hermeticism, and believed that he found the secret of conjuring angels by numerical configurations in the tradition of the Kabbalah. Dee and his pupil Edward Kelley’s acquaintances included Sendivogius.

Historians often depict the period is as the golden age in English history, representing the height of the English Renaissance with the flowering of poetry, music and literature.[6] It is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and Edmund Spenser, who was heavily influenced by Giorgi.[7] Spenser inherited not only Neoplatonic influence from the Renaissance magicians Ficino and Pico, but the Christian Kabbalism of Reuchlin, Giorgi, Agrippa.[8] Spenser was also in contact with Philip Sidney and Edward Dyer, pupils of John Dee.

As Yates has indicated, “Giorgi’s De harmonia mundi, with its ‘Judaising’ tendency, might have provided a bridge to conversion for the English Marrano.”[9] Although there is little evidence for the existence of Marranos in England during the reign of Elizabeth I, as elsewhere, their surreptitious presence was felt through the influence of the Christian Kabbalah.[10] Christopher Marlowe (1564 – 1593) wrote Doctor Faustus (1592), a play developed from the Faust legend in which a man sells his soul to the devil for power and knowledge. Marlowe’s Faustus says, possibly referring to Giorgi, as Yates suggests, “Go and returne an old Franciscan Frier; That holy shape becomes a devill best.” After the appearance of the diabolical Franciscan Friar, Faustus rejects Christ and the Trinity, as Mephistopheles has demanded. Some critics argue that Marlowe’s play inspired Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, dated to the 1588–92 period, a fictional story about the feats of magic performed by the Franciscan friars Roger Bacon (1219/20 – c. 1292) and Thomas Bungay (c. 1214 – c. 1294).

As she grew older, Elizabeth became celebrated for her virginity. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the last of the five monarchs of the House of Tudor. A cult grew around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day. As Elizabeth aged her image gradually changed, and she was portrayed as characters from Spenser’s magical and Neoplatonic poem The Faerie Queene, including Belphoebe or Astraea, and after the Armada, as Gloriana, the eternally youthful Faerie Queene. Spenser’s poem and his Neoplatonic hymns in Elizabeth’s honor, published in the 1590’s, were a direct challenge to the Counter Reformation and their attitude to Renaissance philosophy. The poem, inspired by the Order of the Garter, describes the allegorical presentation of virtues through Arthurian knights in the mythical “Faerieland,” and follows several knights, like the Redcrosse Knight, the hero of Book One who bears the emblem of Saint George.

During the reign of Elizabeth I, Gray’s Inn rose in prominence, and that period is considered the “golden age” of the Inn, with Elizabeth serving as the Patron Lady.[11] Gray’s Inn is one of the four Inns of Court, professional associations for barristers in England and Wales. The four Inns, established between 1310 and 1357, are Lincoln’s Inn, Gray’s Inn, the Middle Temple and the Inner Temple. The Temples takes their name from the Knights Templar, who originally leased the land to the Temple’s inhabitants (Templars) until their abolition in 1312.[12] After the Templars were dissolved in 1312, their land was seized by the king and granted to the Knights Hospitaller. With the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, the Hospitallers’ properties were confiscated by the king, who leased them to the Inner and Middle Temples until 1573. King James granted the land to a group of noted lawyers and Benchers, including Sir Julius Caesar and Henry Montague, and to “their heirs and assignees for ever.”[13]

The intellectual development of dramas in schools, universities, and Inns of Court in Europe allowed the emergence of the great playwrights of the late sixteenth century.[14] Academic drama stems from late medieval and early modern practices of miracles and morality plays as well as the Feast of Fools and the election of a Lord of Misrule, a role inherited from the Saturnalia, dedicated to Saturn, or Satan, believed to be the origin of the twelve days of Christmastide and modern Christmas.[15] The Feast of Fools includes mummer plays, folk plays performed by troupes of amateur actors, traditionally all male, known as mummers or guisers. Early scholars of folk drama, influenced by James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, tended to view these plays as survivals of pre-Christian fertility ritual.[16]

Gray’s Inn, as well as the other Inns of Court, became noted for the parties and festivals it hosted. The entertainment would have included drinking the health of the Prince of Purpoole, usually a student elected Lord of Misrule for the duration of the Festival.[17]  The Lord of Misrule, who presided over the festivities in grand houses, university colleges and Inns of Court, was sometimes called “Captain Christmas,” “Prince Christmas” or “The Christmas Lord,” being the origin of Father Christmas, and later Santa Claus.[18] The Lord of Misrule to John Milton, in a masque of the same name, was the pagan god Comus. In Greek mythology, Comus is the god of festivity and revelry, and the root of the word “comedy.” Ben Jonson associated Comus with Bacchus in Poetaster (1602): “we must live and honor the Gods sometimes, now Bacchus, now Comus, now Priapus.”[19] The pagan fertility god Priapus was the ugly son of Dionysus and Aphrodite, whose symbol was a huge erect penis, and the Greek, half man—half goat god, Pan. According to Henry Cornelius Agrippa in Chapter 39 of his book De Occulta Philosophia published in 1531–1533:

Everyone knows that evil spirits can be summoned through evil and profane practices (similar to those that Gnostic magicians used to engage in, according to Psellus), and filthy abominations would occur in their presence, as during the rites of Priapus in times past or in the worship of the idol named Panor to whom one sacrificed having bared shameful parts. Nor is any different from this (if only it is truth and not fiction) what we read about the detestable heresy of the Knights Templar, as well as similar notions that have been established about witches, whose senile womanish dementia is often caught causing them to wander astray into shameful deeds of the same variety.

Under Elizabeth’s successor, King James I of England, the “Golden Age” of Elizabethan literature and drama continued, with writers such as William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Sir Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) contributing to a flourishing literary culture, who laid the groundwork for the advent of Freemasonry. Francis Bacon is typically celebrated by Masonic and occult historians as having been a Rosicrucian and as the real author of Shakespeare’s plays. Bacon was the first recipient of the Elizabeth’s counsel designation, which was conferred in 1597 when she reserved Bacon as her legal advisor. There are also theories that Bacon was the illegitimate son of Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley, the First Earl of Leicester, a Knight of the Garter.[20]

Bacon studied law at Gray’s Inn, where he became a prominent member. On 28 January 1594, Bacon took over the role of Treasurer of Gray’s Inn, where he was responsible for the revels. Printed in 1688 from a manuscript apparently passed down from the 1590s, the Gesta Grayorum is an account of the Christmas revels by the law students at Gray’s Inn in 1594. It was decided that the Inn was to be turned into a mock royal court and kingdom, ruled by a “Prince,” in jesting imitation of the royal court of Queen Elizabeth, complete with masques, plays, dances, pageants, ceremonial. The revels, which took place over the Twelve Days of Christmas, were called The Prince of Purpoole and the Honourable Order of the Knights of the Helmet. The title referred to the Manor of Purpoole or Portpoole, the original name of Gray’s Inn. Like the mummers, the theme of these revels centered around the idea of errors being committed, disorder ensuing, and a trial held of the “Sorcerer” responsible, who then restores order.[21]

Dame Frances Yates observed in The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, “Shakespeare’s preoccupation with the occult, with ghosts, witches, fairies, is understood as deriving less from popular tradition than from deep-rooted affinity with the learned occult philosophy and its religious implications.”[22] A Midsummer Night’s Dream is replete with occult symbolism. The play also intertwines the Midsummer Eve, referring to the traditional pagan holiday of the summer solstice, and May Day. Both David Wiles of the University of London and Harold Bloom of Yale University have strongly endorsed the reading of this play under the themes of Carnivalesque, Bacchanalia, and Saturnalia.[23] The idea of the mischievous Puck, like Comus, also inspired the archetype of the wise fool, which Shakespeare greatly helped popularize. The paradox of the wise fool is famously demonstrated through the jester in Shakespeare’s King Lear, who works in the royal court and remains the only character who Lear does not severely punish for speaking his mind about the king and his precarious situations. Early editors of Shakespeare also saw echoes of Rabelais in As You Like It, which features many of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches such as “All the world’s a stage,” “too much of a good thing” and “A fool! A fool! I met a fool in the forest.”[24]

Mother Lodge of Kilwinning

It had long been believed that Freemasonry derived from “operative” masonry, or craft guilds of masons, and then evolved into “speculative” masonry or a secret society, with the formation of the of Lodge of London in 1717. However, in 1988, the Scottish historian David Stevenson established the connection between the birth craft of stonemasonry in Scotland and modern Freemasonry, in The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland’s Century, 1590 to 1710. It was King James IV of Scotland (1566 – 1625)—from the Stuart dynasty often accused of Jewish descent—who in 1603 became King James I of England, of the King James Bible, who brought the Scottish heritage of Freemasonry to his new kingdom.

James II of Scotland (1430 – 1460) made the St Clairs of Roslin the hereditary Grand Masters of Scotland.[25] In 1128, soon after the Council of Troyes, Hugh de Payens, the Templars’ first Grand Master, met with David I of Scotland. According to a contemporary chronicler, David “surrounding himself with very fine brothers of the illustrious knighthood of the Temple of Jerusalem, he made them guardians of his morals by day and by night.”[26] David granted the Templars the lands of Balantrodach, by the Firth of Forth, but now renamed Temple, near the site of Rosslyn, where the order established a seat. Balantrodach became their principal Templar seat and preceptory in Scotland until the suppression of the order between 1307 and 1312. The Templars in Scotland were also to have assisted the excommunicated King of Scotland, Robert the Bruce (1274 – 1329), at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, which resulted in a significant victory against the army of Edward and Eleanor’s son, King Edward II of England (1284 – 1327), in the First War of Scottish Independence, establishing Scotland’s de facto independence. Robert the Bruce claimed the Scottish throne as a direct descendant of David I.

According to M. Thory, the French annalist of Freemasonry, Robert the Bruce founded the Masonic Order of Heredum de Kilwinning after the battle of Bannockburn, reserving to himself and successors on the throne of Scotland the office and title of Grand Master.[27] Lodge Mother Kilwinning is a Masonic Lodge in Kilwinning, Scotland, under the auspices of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, and is reputed to be the oldest Lodge in the world. The Abbey of Kilwinning was supposedly constructed by foreign free Masons, assisted by Scottish masons.[28] In Born in Blood, American historian John J. Robinson found evidence that the Knights Templar sought refuge with the monks of Kilwinning who lived in the Abbey, a ruined abbey located in the center of the town of Kilwinning, North Ayrshire.

Walter Stewart, the 6th High Steward of Scotland (c. 1296 – 1327), who played an important part in the Battle of Bannockburn, married Marjory, daughter of Robert the Bruce. Thus was founded the House of Stuart, when their son Robert II of Scotland eventually inherited the Scottish throne after his uncle David II of Scotland died. It has often been asserted that the Stuarts and Sinclairs, who became hereditary Grand Master of Freemasonry, were descendants from Jews who escaped the Edict of Expulsion issued in 1290 by King Edward I.[29] As Marsha Keith Schuchard has also pointed out, there were persistent claims that not only Templars, but Jews as well were expelled to Scotland. The first significant Jewish communities had come to England with William the Conqueror in 1066. Only sixteen years after being expelled from England by Edward I, France likewise expelled its Jewish population in 1306 AD, a year before the arrest of the Templars. According to James Howell’s History of the Latter Times of the Jews, published in 1653:

The first Christian Prince that expelled the Jews out of his territories, was that heroic King, our Edward the First, who was such a scourge also to the Scots; and it is thought diverse families of the banished Jews then fled to Scotland, where they have propagated since in great numbers; witness the aversion that nation hath above all others to hogs-flesh.[30]

The chiefs of Clan Sinclair, the Earls of Caithness, descend from William St. Clair, 6th Baron of Rosslyn (d. 1297), who was sheriff of Edinburgh and who was granted the barony of Rosslyn in 1280.[31] William St. Clair, 6th Baron of Roslin was the grandfather of Sir William St Clair, who was supposedly the leader of the Templar force at the Battle of Bannockburn. Sir William St Clair’s grandson was Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney (c. 1345 – c. 1400), who is known for legend of explorations of Greenland and North America a century before Columbus. The most sacred site in Freemasonry, Rosslyn Chapel, was famously designed by Henry’s grandson, William Sinclair (1410 – 1480), the third Earl of Orkney, first Earl of Caithness, High Chancellor of Scotland, and knight of the Order of Santiago and the Order of the Golden Fleece.[32] The Da Vinci Code, following on the Holy Blood Holy Grail, popularized the legend that Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland was a repository of occult wisdom, and built by William Sinclair, whose sacred descent from Jesus and Mary Magdalene was symbolized by the Holy Grail, and recognized by their red hair, and whose descendants became for a long time hereditary Grand Masters of Freemasonry in Scotland.

House of Guise

King Robert II Stewart (1316 – 1390), the son of Walter Stewart and of Marjorie Bruce, granted the Abbey of Kilwinning a charter, which was ratified by Robert II’s son, Robert III (c.1337/40 – 1406).[33] King James I (1394 – 1437) of Scotland, the youngest son of Robert III, was a patron of the mother lodge of Kilwinning and presided as Grand Master while staying at the abbey.[34] James I married Joan Beaufort (d. 1445), a daughter of John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset, a legitimated son of John of Gaunt by his third wife Catherine Swynford, Their descendants were members of the Beaufort family, which played a major role in the Wars of the Roses. Joan’s mother was Margaret Holland, a member of the Order of the Garter, and the granddaughter of Joan of Kent, wife of Edward the Black Prince and mother of Richard II of England.

Two of the children of James I and Joan included Eleanor and James II of Scotland. Eleanor married Sigismund (1427 – 1496), Archduke of Austria of the House of Habsburg, grandson of Ernest the Iron, a member of the Order of the Dragon. Sigismund’s uncle was Emperor Frederick III, whose son Maximilian I became Grand Master of the Oder of the Golden Fleece after he married Mary of Burgundy, the granddaughter of the Order’s founder, Phillip the Good. James II married Philip the Good’s great-niece, Marie of Guelders, from among the families who claimed descent from the Knight Swan. James II’s wife Marie was the daughter of Adolph I, Duke of Cleves, who was raised by Emperor Sigismund as duke and a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire in 1417, and Catherine of Cleves, who commissioned the Hours of Catherine of Cleves.  Marie’s brother, Adolf, Duke of Guelders, was the father of Phillipa of Guelders, the second wife of René II of Lorraine.

James II and Marie’s son, James III of Scotland (1452 – 1488) married Margaret of Denmark. Their son, James IV of Scotland (1473 – 1513), married Margaret Tudor, the daughter of Henry VII of England, a knight of the Golden Fleece, and Elizabeth of York. daughter of Elizabeth Woodville, whose mother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, was a fourth cousin twice removed of Emperor Sigismund. Elizabeth Woodville was a key figure in the Wars of the Roses, a dynastic civil war between the Lancastrian and the Yorkist factions between 1455 and 1487. Elizabeth Woodville was widely believed to have been a witch and Edward IV’s brother Richard III of England tried to show there had never been any valid marriage between her and Edward, and that it was the result of love magic perpetrated by Elizabeth and her mother Jacquetta.[35]

According to the order’s own history, an important event in the history of the Order of the Fleur de Lys was the marriage of Marie de Guise to James V of Scotland (1512 – 1542), a member of the Order of the Garter and knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Marie’ father, Claude, Duke of Guise (1496 – 1550), was the founder of a cadet branch of the House of Lorraine, the House of Guise. Claude was the second son of René II of Lorraine, grandson of René of Anjou, and became Grand Master of the Order of the Fleur de Lys. Claude of Guise’s brother was Jean, Cardinal of Lorraine (1498 – 1550), who was named Abbot Commendatory of the Abbey of Cluny by his friend Francis I of France. Jean was also a friend of Erasmus of Rotterdam and François Rabelais, author of Gargantua and Pantagruel. It has been argued that the character of Panurge in Rebelais’s most famous work, Gargantua and Pantagruel, is based on Jean, Cardinal of Lorraine, and his residence at Cluny.[36]  Jean was succeeded by Claude’s son and Marie’s brother, Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine (1524 – 1574), who was Rabelais’ protector.

Their brother, Francis, Duke of Guise (1519 – 1563), married Anna d’Este, daughter of the Ercole II d’Este and Renée. In L’Auguste Maison de Lorraine, by J. de Pange, with introduction by Otto von Habsburg, whose ancient titles included Duke of Lorraine and King of Jerusalem, records that Francis’s and Anna d’Este’s son Henry I, Duke of Guise (1550 – 1588), was welcomed by cries of Hosanna filio David (“Hosanna the son of David”) on entering the town of Joinville in Champagne.[37] In 1548, Marie de Guise had been brought to France under the escort of the Scots Guard, whose captain, Gabriel de Montgomery (1530 – 1574), a senior member of the Order of the Fleur de Lys, was a close friend of Henry II of France, the son of Francis I and husband of Catherine de Medici.[38] Revealing her affiliation to the bloodline, in 1546, Marie de Guise had signed an unusual Bond and Obligation to Sir William Sinclair: “In likewise that we sall be Leal and trew Maistres to him, his Counsill and Secret shewn to us we sall keep secret, and in all mattres gif to him the best and trewest Counsell we can as we sall be requirite thereto… and sall be reddy att all tymes to maintain and defend him…”[39]

Upon Henry II’s death in 1559, Catherine de Medici became regent of their sons in succession, Francis II, and King Charles IX, and she played a key role in the reign of her third son, Henry III of France (1551 – 1589). During Francis II’s reign, the House of Guise attained supreme power, and sought to convert it to true kingship by eradicating the House of Bourbon. Although Francis II was then only fifteen years old, the House of Guise had an advantage in his marriage to Mary, Queen of Scots, who was their niece, as the daughter of James V and Marie Guise. Within days of the Francis II’s accession, the English ambassador reported that “the house of Guise ruleth and doth all about the French King.”[40]

Francis II’s ascension to the throne began a period of political instability that ultimately led to the French Wars of Religion, a prolonged period of war and popular unrest between Catholics and Huguenots in the Kingdom of France between 1562 and 1598. It is considered the second deadliest religious war in European history, after the Thirty Years’ War. Foreign allies provided financing and other assistance to both sides, with Habsburg Spain and the Duchy of Savoy supporting the Guises. Much of the conflict took place during the long regency of Catherine de Medici, widow of Henry II, for her minor sons, the last Valois kings: Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III. Catherine, who was initially lenient towards the Protestants, later hardened her stance and, at the time of the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572, sided with the Guises. Modern estimates for the number of dead across France vary widely, from 5,000 to 30,000.

Elias Artista

Marie de Guise’s father, Claude, Duke of Guise was made a duke by Francis I of France. The Christian Kabbalist Guillaume Postel (1510 – 1581), who would become an important influence on the Rosicrucian movement, came to the attention of Francis I, and especially to his sister Marguerite of Navarre, a patron of Rabelais. Postel was introduced to Marguerite and to the French court by the famous Byzantine scholar John Lascaris (1445 – 1535) who had escaped the fall of Constantinople as a child in 1453.[41] When still quite young, he came to Venice where Bessarion (1403 – 1472), the titular Latin Patriarch of Constantinople, became his patron, and sent him to learn Latin at the University of Padua. Before becoming a cardinal, Bessarion was educated by Gemistus Pletho, who influenced Cosimo the Elder de Medici to found a new Platonic Academy.

In 1536, when Francis I sought a Franco-Ottoman alliance with the Ottoman Turks, he sent Postel as the official interpreter of the French embassy of Jean de La Forêt to the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in Constantinople. Postel’s mission was to collect oriental manuscripts to enrich the library al Fontainebleau. Postel is believed to have spent the years 1548 to 1551 on a trip to the East, traveling to the Holy Land—during the period when Isaac Luria was still a young man living in Jerusalem—and Syria to collect manuscripts. Postel’s trip was sponsored by Daniel Bomberg (c. 1483 – c. 1549), the famous printer of Hebrew books who employed rabbis, scholars and apostates in his Venice publishing house.[42] Bomberg befriended Felix Pratensis (Felice da Prato), an Augustinian friar who had converted from Judaism, who encouraged Bomberg to print Hebrew books.[43] Probably Bomberg’s most impressive accomplishment is his publication of the first printed edition of the complete Babylonian Talmud, with the Talmud text in the middle of the page and the commentaries of Rashi and Tosfot surrounding it. Published with the approval of the Medici Pope, Leo X, with editing was overseen by Pratensis, this edition became the standard format, which all later editions have followed.[44] Rashi’s commentary has been included in every edition of the Talmud ever since.

Through his efforts, Postel brought many Greek, Hebrew and Arabic texts into European intellectual discourse in the Late Renaissance and Early Modern periods. Among them were Euclid’s Elements, astronomical works by al-Tusi and other Arabic astronomers, and Latin translations of the Zohar, the Sefer Yetzirah, and the Sefer ha-Bahir, even before they had been printed in the original, and accompanied his translations with a lengthy exposition of his own views.[45]

Guillaume Postel identified himself with the prophet Elijah, or Elias Artista.[46] Like, the medieval millenarian Joachim di Fiore, Postel believed in the coming of the third Elijah mentioned in the Talmud and its exposition of Daniel 12:7, the times, time, and half a time before the end.[47] According to scripture, Enoch was joined in Paradise by another figure prominent in the angel conversations: the prophet Elias (also known as Elijah), whose story was told in 1 Kings 17-19. Elias, like Enoch, was transported to heaven prior to death.[48] He was especially revered in the Jewish tradition, because references in Malachi 4:5-6 suggested that Elias would return from heaven before the Final Judgment to bring the Israelites to repentance.[49]

Plantin Press

While studying at the Collège Sainte-Barbe, Postel became acquainted with Ignatius of Loyola, and held a lifelong affiliation with the Jesuits. One of Postel’s disciples, Guy Lefèvre de La Boderie (1541 – 1598) translated Giorgi’s De Harmonia Mundi into French. Postel was also associated with the press of Christophe Plantin (1568 - 1571), one of the focal centers of the fine printed book in the sixteenth century. Many historians have argued that Plantin Press operated as a front for a kind of “pre-Freemasonry.”[50] Plantin named the press “The Golden Compasses,” and his publications featured the motto Labore e Constantia, represented by a compass. Plantin published works by the Family of Love, an international secret society that included Protestants, Catholics, and Marranos, and which maintained strong Llullist interests.[51] While Plantin published many heretical works, including Kabbalistic treatises, he was also protected by a network of wealthy Marranos and Calvinists.[52]

Plantin’s most important work is considered to be the Biblia Regia (“King’s Bible”), also known as the Plantin Polyglot. Having faced increasing pressure in the Netherlands, Plantin needed to find a patron who would not be at risk of accusations of heresy or being a Protestant sympathizer. Through the Familist connections, Plantin learned of the Llullist interests of the Spanish king Philip II, Grand Master of the Order of Santiago. In spite of opposition from clerics, Plantin received the support of Philip II, who sent him the learned Benito Arias Montano (1527 – 1598), a fellow member of the Order of Santiago, to lead the editorship. Postel’s disciples, La Boderie participated in the publication of Plantin’s most important work, the Biblia Regia (King’s Bible), also known as the Plantin Polyglot Bible. For printing the Hebrew text, Plantin used among others Daniel Bomberg’s Hebrew type, which he had received from his friends, Bomberg’s two grand-nephews.[53] Postel’s role in the publication of the Bible was kept secret due to his reputation as a revolutionary Kabbalist.[54] As explained by Marsha Keith Schuchard:

Among later Freemasons, the sections written by Montano on the architecture of the Tabernacle and Temple were of particular interest, for they believed that the distinctive Plantin images on the title-pages (hand with compass emerging from cloud to draw a three-quarter circle, square, glove, astrolabe, etc.) were fraught with Masonic import.[55]

In 1591, Joseph Scaliger (1540 – 1609) took a position at the University of Leiden and utilized Plantin Press.[56] In 1531, Nostradamus was invited by Joseph’s father, Italian scholar and physician Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484 – 1558), to come to Agen, France.[57] Scaliger was a classical scholar and philologist, who is regarded by many of his time as the most learned man in Europe. Scaliger was inspired by his meeting with Postel to learn Hebrew and discussed mystical topics with various rabbis. Scaliger considered Postel the most learned man in Europe..[58]

Scaliger owned a copy of the Sefer Hasidim, the foundation work of the Ashkenazi Hasidim.[59] The “Hasideans” of the Bible, also known as Kasideans, are identified by the Freemasons with the Essenes, who hold a particular place of importance in the order. Scaliger asserted that the ancient Hasidaeans (Hasidim) became the Essenes.[60] Citing Scaliger, in The History of Free Masonry, published in 1804, Alexander Lawrie, who is regarded as an excellent authority on Scottish Freemasonry, writes:

The Kasideans were a religious Fraternity, or an Order of the Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem, who bound themselves to adorn the porches of that magnificent structure, and to preserve it from injury and decay. This association was composed of the greatest men of Israel, who were distinguished for their charitable and peaceful dispositions, and always signalized themselves by their ardent zeal for the purity and preservation of the Temple. From these facts it appears, that the Essenes were not only an ancient fraternity, but that they originated from an association of architects, who were connected with the building of Solomon’s temple. Nor was this order confined to the Holy Land. Like the fraternities of the Dionysiacs, the Free Masons, it existed in all parts of the world; and though the lodges in Judea were chiefly, if not wholly, composed of Jews, yet the Essenes admitted into their order men of every religion, and every rank in life. They adopted many Egyptian mysteries; and, like the priests of that country, the Magi of Persia, and the Gymnosophists in India, they united study of moral, with that of natural philosophy. [61]

Later Plantins were friends of the Dutch painter Peter Paul Rubens—who was also commissioned by Marie de Medici—who did drawings for illustrations and also some portraits of the Plantin-Moretus family. Margaretha Plantin married Franciscus Raphelengius, who led the Leiden branch of the house. They stayed printers in Leiden for two more generations of Van Ravelinge, until 1619. A great-granddaughter of the last Van Ravelinge printer married in 1685 Jordaen Luchtmans, founder of what would become later the still existing Brill Publishers. Christophe’s daughter Margaretha married Franciscus Raphelengius, who led the Leiden branch of the house. They stayed printers in Leiden for two more generations of Van Ravelinge, until 1619. A great-granddaughter of the last Van Ravelinge printer married in 1685 Jordaen Luchtmans, founder of what would become later the still existing Brill Publishers, who had published extensively on Rosicrucian history.

Schaw Statutes

The presence of Scottish Freemasonry had begun in Ulster when William Sinclair of Roslin, hereditary patron of the Scottish Masons, had emigrated there in 1617.[62] Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745), author of Gulliver’s Travels, drew upon his experiences in Dublin and Ulster to describe the Kabbalistic, Llullist, and Rosicrucian interests of Scots-Irish Freemasonry. While he conversed with Muslim Sufis and Jewish Kabbalists, Llull also studied the writings of John Scotus Erigena (c. 815 – c. 877), whom medieval commentators believed to be Scottish, considered the greatest Christian philosopher of the Dark Ages. Fascinated by mathematics and geometry, Erigena developed “a mystic sense of the building of the Temple of Solomon,” which contains “the measure by which all things (in the eschaton) are measured.”[63] Erigena’s theosophy influenced Azriel of Gerona 1160 – c. 1238) and other Jewish Kabbalists, who perceived similarities between his Temple mysticism and that of the Sefer Yetzirah.[64] In A Letter from the Grand Mistress, Swift revealed the developments in an “ancient” Masonic tradition in the 1690s:

The Branch of the Lodge of Solomon’s Temple, afterwards call’d the Lodge of St. John of Jerusalem… is… the Antientest and Purest now on Earth. The famous old Scottish lodge of Kilwinnin of which all the Kings of Scotland have been from Time to Time Grand Masters without Interruption, down from the days of Fergus, who Reign’d there more than 2000 Years ago, long before the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem or the Knights of Maltha, to which two Lodges I must nevertheless allow the Honour of having adorn’d the Antient Jewish and Pagan Masonry with many Religious and Christian Rules.

Fergus being the eldest Son to the chief King of Ireland, was carefully instructed in all the Arts and Sciences, especially in the natural Magick, and the Caballistical Philosophy (afterwards called the Rosecrution)…[65]

Joseph Scaliger paid an influential visit to Scotland, in which he reinforced the interests in Jewish learning of George Buchanan (1506 – 1582) and other courtiers. George Buchanan was the chief tutor of James VI of Scotland (1566 – 1625),  and would subsequently influence the Judaizing trend of James’ studies and religious practices.[66] The daughter of James V and Marie Guise was Mary Queen of Scots (1542 – 1587), who married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (1545 – 1567), to father James VI, later King James I of England.

Plantin Press also published Buchanan’s Judaized drama of Jephtes and his paraphrases of the Hebrew psalms in 1566. In “British Israel and Roman Britain,” Arthur H. Williamson argues that Buchanan was influenced by his Parisian contacts with Iberian Marranos. As Williamson observed, Buchanan experienced a “significantly crypto-Jewish” environment, which appeared publicly as “faultlessly Catholic” but was privately “informed by elements of Jewish religion and identity.”[67] When Buchanan urged the king to eat “the paschal lamb,” critics charged that he wanted James “to become a Jew and live as Jews do.”[68] Throughout this period, explains Schuchard, many important Scots studied in Paris and participated in the “tremendous revival of Lullism” led by Buchanan’s teacher, Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (c. 1450 – 1536), who established a chair of Llullist studies at the Sorbonne.[69] Lefèvre had met in Italy with Pico della Mirandola, who argued that Llullism was a form of Kabbalah.[70]

David Seton of Parbroath (d. 1601), Grand Master of the Order of the Fleur de Lys, was made Chamberlain of Dunfermline for James VI’s wife Anne of Denmark, an office which passed to William Schaw (c. 1550 – 1602), a founding figure in the development of Freemasonry in Scotland. The Setons were at one time considered one of the most influential families in Scotland. In 1345, Alexander de Seton is mentioned in a charter as a Templar knight. When the Templars were deprived of their patrimonial interest by their last Grand Master, Sir James Sandilands (c. 1511 – c. 1579 or c. 1596), they parted as a separate body, with David Seton, Grand Prior of Scotland at their head.[71] James VI appointed Schaw, as King’s Master of Works, and he worked closely with him in architectural, political, and diplomatic affairs.[72]

Since his youth at Marie de Guise’s court, Schaw was familiar with the works of astrologer Girolamo Cardano (1501 – 1576) and his advocacy of the importance of the work of Llull.[73] Marie de Guise had recruited the chemist and astrology Cardano, hoping to make use of his expertise in Hermetic medicine, military engineering, and masonic fortification in her struggle against England.[74] Cardano was one of the most influential mathematicians of the Renaissance. He was born in Pavia, Lombardy, the illegitimate child of Fazio Cardano, a close personal friend of Leonardo da Vinci. Cardano met Nostradamus and was aware of his Jewish ancestry and of his boast that he inherited the prophetic powers of the “tribe of Issacher.”[75] Cardano himself explored Kabbalistic theosophy, which he utilized for magical experiments.[76] In the nineteenth century, Masonic historian J.M. Ragon, would claim that Cardano made a significant contribution to Masonic “science.”[77]

In 1583, Schaw had accompanied the Scottish alchemist Alexander Seton (1555 – 1622) on his father’s embassy to France. Seton’s assistant was William Hamilton, whose red hair provoked attention because of the European tradition that red hair and freckles were signs of Jewishness.[78] Seton’s fame led to his imprisonment and torture by Christian II, Elector of Saxony (1583 – 1611), who was determined to acquire the secret of his alchemical powder. After the frightened Hamilton escaped and returned to Scotland, Seton was rescued by the famous alchemist Michael Sendivogius (1566 – 1636), who carried him off to Krakow. It was thanks to their acquaintance with Sendivogius that Stephen Bathory agreed to finance the experiments of John Dee and his assistant Edward Kelley.[79] Sendivogius married Seton’s widow, who handed over her husband’s alchemical manuscript, which Sendivogius published as Novum Lumen Chymicum.

Sir William Sinclair, who was Lord Justice General of Scotland at the time, did not agree with persecutions meted against the Gypsies, and defied a ban and allowed their plays to continue in Roslin Glen. The connection would later fuel speculation of the Gypsies’ association with the Tarot, first examples of which were the Visconti-Sforza deck. As noted by Marsha Keith Schuchard, “It is perhaps relevant that the gypsies were believed to possess the occult secrets of the ancient Egyptians, which they preserved through the Middle Ages.”[80] It is well documented that the Sinclairs allowed gypsies to live on their land in Midlothian at a time when they were outlawed elsewhere in Scotland.[81] Sinclair was documented to have “delivered once ane Egyptian from the gibbet.”[82]

Today a permanent exhibition at Rosslyn is devoted to this unusual relationship. In May of each year, until the Protestant Reformation in the mid-sixteenth century, the Sinclairs sponsored an annual festival held in Roslin Glen. A variety of plays, in particular, Robin Hood and Little John, were performed by Gypsies. Rosslyn Castle had two towers, one named Robin Hood and the other Little John. In 1555, the Scottish Parliament passed severe legislation against the gypsies, including a ban on the play Robin Hood and Little John. On Corpus Christi Day in 1584, a number of Gypsies, fleeing persecution, sought refuge with the knights of the Order Santiago, of which Rosslyn Chapel’s founder, Sir William St. Clair, was a member.[83]

In 1599, two lodges, Aitchison’s Haven and Edinburgh were incepted and the Lodge of Haddington appears on records. In the same year, a second code of statues by Schaw was issued partly addressed to the Kilwinning Lodge and mentioning also the lodges of Edinburgh and Stirling. In 1600 or 1601, Schaw and representatives of the five lodges confirmed the position of William Sinclair of Roslin as hereditary patron of the craft. After presiding over the order for many years, William Sinclair went to Ireland, and in 1630 a second charter was issued, granting to his son, Sir William Sinclair, the same power with which his father had been invested. James VI was initiated in the lodge at Perth around 1600, and brought Scottish Masonic interests to London.[84]

King James

Joseph Scaliger’s subsequent studies of ancient Jewish mystical fraternities and masonic guilds, explains Schuchard, would have a significant influence on James VI when he undertook the revival of royalist masonry.[85] After becoming king, James proclaimed himself “Great Britain’s Solomon.” Many of James’ new English subjects openly ridiculed his Jewish identification and mocked his aversion to pork; and his natural magic and second sight.[86] James VI had translated the poetry of Guillaume de Salluste, Sieur de Bartas (1544 – 1590, a French Protestant, who included the Solomonic themes and terminology of operative masonry in his magnum opus, the Semaines (“Weeks”), two epic poems which freely expand on the account in the Book of Genesis of the creation of the world and the first eras of world history. James VI translated Du Bartas’ Uranie, which reinforced for his conceptions of architectural and masonic revival:

...Hirams holy help it war unknowne
What he in building Izraels Temple had showne,
Without Gods Ark Beseleel Jewe had bene
In everlasting silence buried clene.
Then, since the bewty of those works most rare
Hath after death made live all them that ware
Their builders; though them selves with tyme be failde,
By spoils, by fyres, by warres, and tempests quailde.[87]

Of particular relevance was the section of Semaines called “The Columnes,” in which Du Bartas argued that the masonic traditions of Seth’s two pillars were preserved by the Jewish Kabbalists. Drawing on the Sefer Yetzirah, Du Bartas described the number mysticism which could produce great architecture. In 1587, James VI invited Du Bartas to Scotland, where they translated each other’s works and exchanged ideas about God as Divine Architect, Solomon as visionary architect, and Kabbalists as masonic word-builders.[88] James VI was at the time reading French editions of the Book of Maccabees, Philo, Josephus, and Leo Hebraeus, or Judah Leon Abravanel ((c. 1460 – c. 1530), the son of Isaac Abarbanel.[89] When Du Bartas returned to France, he praised James VI as the embodiment of the great Jewish kings, referring to him as “the Scottish, or rather th' Hebrew David,” whose religious poetry “shal sound in high-built Temples”:

For He (I hope) who no lesse good then wise,
First stirr'd us up to this great Enterprise,
And gave us hart to take the same in hand,
For Levell, Compasse, Rule, and Squire will stand;
And will not suffer in this pretious Frame
Ought that a skilfull Builders eye may blame...[90]

James was defended by John Gordon (1544 – 1619), a Scottish Hebraist and friend of Du Bartas, who was named Dean of Salisbury by the king.[91] In 1565, Gordon had been sent to pursue his education in France, having a yearly pension granted him by Mary, Queen of Scots. In June 1565 he was sent to pursue his education in France, having a yearly pension granted him by Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary commended him to the French king, and he enjoyed the post of gentleman ordinary of the privy chamber to Charles IX, Henry III, and Henry IV. In 1574, he exhibited his Hebrew learning in a public disputation at Avignon with the chief rabbi Benetrius. His second wife Genevieve Petau de Maulette taught French to James’ daughter Princess Elizabeth.

In Enotikon, or a Sermon on Great Britain (1604), Gordon explained how “the order Architectonicke of building” is based on Hebrew traditions of Kabbalistic word-building, which justify the king’s building projects and ceremony.[92] A critic complained that “Deane Gordon, preaching before the king,” used “certain hebrue characters, and other cabalisticall collections” to approve Papist-style art and ceremonies.[93] The “Judaizing” Gordon devoted much and time expense to the masonic repair of the Gothic cathedral at Salisbury. Further support came from Joshua Sylvester, who dedicated to James his English translation of Du Bartas’ Divine Weeks (1605), which featured an architectural poem in the shape of two pillars that form a temple and another that forms a pyramid--both emblematic of the Temple of Jerusalem.[94]

James was a knowledgeable scholar in his own right, being the author of works such as Daemonologie (1597), The True Law of Free Monarchies (1598), and Basilikon Doron (1599). James’ interest in witchcraft, which he considered a branch of theology, was sparked by his visit to Denmark, which was rife with witch-trials.[95] James’ obsession with the subject was revealed in his Daemonologie, a tract inspired by his personal involvement in Scottish. Daemonologie is a philosophical dissertation on contemporary necromancy and the historical relationships between the various methods of divination used from ancient black magic. Included is a study on demonology and the methods demons used to harass human beings, also touching on topics such as werewolves and vampires. Its intended purpose was to educate Christian society on the history, practices and implications of sorcery and the reasons for persecuting witches under the rule of canonical law.

As Elizabeth did not marry, and as she had no direct heir she was therefore succeeded by King James VI of Scotland, who became King James I of England in 1603, the first Stuart king of England. King James continued to reign in all three kingdoms for twenty-two years, a period known after him as the Jacobean era, until his death in 1625. James’ Daemonologie is believed to be one of the main sources used by Shakespeare’s Macbeth.[96] Shakespeare attributed many quotes and rituals found within the book directly to the Weird Sisters, yet also attributed the Scottish themes and settings referenced from the trials in which King James was involved. A commentary on Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice by Daniel Banes, published in 1975–6, suggests the play was written with full knowledge of Giorgi’s De harmonia mundi and other Kabbalistic works.[97]


[1] Yates. The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age, p. 37, p. 88.

[2] Ibid., pp. 198-199.

[3] Frances Yates. Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), p. 93.

[4] Ben Jonson. The Alchemist, II.i.89-104, edited by H. C. Hart (London: De La More Press, 1903).

[5] Yates. The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age, p. 88.

[6] From the 1944 Clark lectures by C. S. Lewis; Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford, 1954) p. 1.

[7] Ibid., p. 90.

[8] Ibid., p. 112.

[9] Ibid., p. 131-132.

[10] Ibid., p. 131-132.

[11] “Gray’s Inn.” Bar Council. Retrieved from http://www.barcouncil.org.uk/about/innsofcourt/graysinn/

[12] William Dugdale & William Herbert. Antiquities of the Inns of court and chancery: containing historical and descriptive sketches relative to their original foundation, customs, ceremonies, buildings, government, &c., &c., with a concise history of the English law (London: Vernor and Hood, 1804), p. 191.

[13] Robert Richard Pearce. History of the Inns of Court and Chancery: With Notices of Their Ancient Discipline, Rules, Orders, and Customs, Readings, Moots, Masques, Revels, and Entertainments (R. Bentley, 1848). p. 219

[14] Tucker Brooke (December 1946). “Latin Drama in Renaissance England.” A Journal of English Literary History. 13 (4): 233–240.

[15] Ibid., p. 346.

[16] Henry Glassie. All Silver and No Brass, An Irish Christmas Mumming (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976). p. 224.

[17] “Francis Bacon and the Origins of an Ancient Toast at Gray’s Inn.” Graya no. 131, p. 41. Gray’s Inn. Retrieved from https://www.graysinn.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/members/Gray%27s%20Inn%20-%20Graya%20131%20Bacon.pdf

[18] Jacqueline Simpson & Steve Roud. A Dictionary of English Folklore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 119–120.

[19] 3.4.114-16.

[20] Amelie Deventer von Kunow. Francis Bacon, last of the Tudors (Bacon society of America, 1924).

[21] Peter Dawkins. “The Life of Sir Francis Bacon.” Francis Bacon Research Trust (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.fbrt.org.uk/pages/essays/Life_of_Sir_Francis_Bacon.pdf

[22] Yates. The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, p. 90.

[23] David Wiles. “The Carnivalesque in A Midsummer Night's Dream.” In Harold Bloom & Janyce Marson. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bloom's Shakespeare Through the Ages (New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2008), pp. 208–23.

[24] The Variorum As You Like It, ed. Horace Howard Furness, vol. 8 (Philadelphia, 1890), pp. 39, 161.

[25] Kilwinning Past and Present. Kilwinning and District Preservation Society (1990), Section 8.15.

[26] Alan Macquarrie. Scotland and the Crusades, 1095-1560 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1985), pp. 10, 14-17.

[27] Hugh Young. “A Brief History of Lodge Mother Kilwinning No. 0.” Retrieved from http://web.mit.edu/dryfoo/www/Masonry/Reports/kilw.html

[28] Mark Strachan. Saints, Monks and Knights (North Ayrshire Council, 2009) , p. 7

[29]. J. Toland. Reasons, p.37.

[30] Schuchard. Restoring the Temple of Vision, p. 61.

[31] George of Plean Way & Romilly of Rubislaw Squire. Collins Scottish Clan & Family Encyclopedia (Glasgow: HarperCollins, 1994). pp. 322–323.

[32] Ralls. The Templars and the Grail, p. 117.

[33] Francis H. Groome (ed.). Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: A Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical (Thomas C. Jack, Grange Publishing Works, Edinburgh, 1882-1885).

[34] James Paterson. History of the Counties of Ayr and Wigton. V. - II - Cunninghame. (Edinburgh: J. Stillie, 1863–66), p. 482.

[35] Tabitha Stanmore. Love Spells and Lost Treasure: Service Magic in England from the Later Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

[36] Alexandre Du Sommerard & Edmond Du Sommerard. Les arts au moyen âge: en ce qui concerne principalement le Palais romain de Paris, l'Hôtel de Cluny, issu de ses ruines, et les objets d'art de la collection classée dans cet hôtel (Paris: Hôtel de Cluny, 1838), pp. 207–214.

[37] Edward Gelles. The Jewish Journey (Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition), p. 62.

[38] Baigent & Leigh. Temple and the Lodge, p. 154.

[39] Richard Augustine Hay. Genealogie of the Sainteclaires of Rosslyn (Edinburgh: Thomas G. Stevenson, 1835), p. 134.

[40] Robert J. Knecht. The French Wars of Religion 1559–1598. Seminar Studies in History, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman., 1996), p. 195.

[41] George Saliba. “Arabic Science in Sixteenth-Century Europe: Guillaume Postel (1510-1581) and Arabic Astronomy,” in Muzaffar Iqbal, New Perspectives on the History of Islamic Science, Volume 3 (London: Routledge, 2016), p. 127.

[42] Marion Leathers Kuntz. “Guillaume Postel and the Syriac Gospels of Athanasius Kircher.” Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 3, 1987, pp. 471.

[43] Marvin J Heller (2005). “Earliest Printings of the Talmud: From Bomberg to Schottenstein.” Yeshiva University Museum: 73.

[44] Ibid.

[45] Scholem. Kabbalah, p. 199.

[46] Andreae Christianopolis (Strasbourg, 1619). Ed. Richard van Dulmen (Stuttgart: Calw, 1972), 137-38; M.L. Kuntz. Guillaume Postel: Prophet of the Restitution of All Things His Life and Thought (Springer-Science+Business Media, 1981), p. 175.

[47] Susana Åkerman. Rose Cross over the Baltic: The Spread of Rosicrucianism in Northern Europe (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1998), p. 178.

[48] Harkness. John Dee’s Conversations with Angels (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 147.

[49] Ibid., p. 148.

[50] Schuchard. Restoring the Temple of Vision, p. 178-179.

[51]. I.D. Macfarlane. Buchanan, pp. 255, 259-60; Leon Voet. The Golden Compasses (Amsterdam: Vangendt, l969), I, v. 12-31; B. Rekers, Benito Arias Montano (1527-1598) (London: Warburg Institute, l972), 70-74, 126.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Albert van der Heide. Hebraica Verita. Christopher Plantin and the Christian Hebraists (Antwerp: Plantin-Moretus Museum, 2008, Exhibition catalogue), p. 155.

[54] Schuchard. Restoring the Temple of Vision, p. 179.

[55] Ibid., p. 180.

[56] Ron Heisler. “The Forgotten English Roots of Rosicrucianism.” The Hermetic Journal (1992)..

[57] Edgar Leroy. Nostradamus: Ses origines, sa vie, son oeuvre (Jeanne Laffitte, 1993), pp. 60–91.

[58]. Anthony Grafton. Joseph Scaliger (Oxford: Oxford UP, l983), I, 104, 275; Jacob Bernays. Joseph Justus Scaliger (1855; rpt. New York: Burt Franklin, l965), p. 139.

[59] Anthony Grafton & Joanna Weinberg. I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 289.

[60] G. Vermes. “Essenes and Therapeutia.” Revue de Qumrân, Vol. 3, No. 4 (12) (October 1962), p. 500.

[61] Alexander Lawrie. The History of Free Masonry (Edinburgh: Grand Lodge of Scotland, 1804), p. 38.

[62] Marsha Keith Schuchard. Masonic Rivalries and Literary Politics: From Jonathan Swift to Henry Fielding (CreateSpace, 2018).

[63] James McEvoy. “Biblical and Platonic Measure in John Scottus Eriugena.” in Bernard McGinn and Willemien Otten, (eds.). Eriugena: East and West (Notre Dame: Notre Dame UP, 1994), 159. Cited in Schuchard. Restoring the Temple of Vision, p. 71.

[64] Schuchard. Restoring the Temple of Vision, p. 71.

[65]. J. Swift, Works, V, 328-29.

[66]. P. Hume Brown. George Buchanan: Humanist and Reformer (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1890), 18; I.D. Macfarlane, Buchanan (London: Duckworth, 1981), 4-5, 40-41; John Durkan, "Buchanan's Judaizing Practices,” Innes Review, 15 (1964), 186-87.

[67]. Williamson. “British Israel and Roman Britain,” p. 101.

[68] Keith Schuchard. “Judaized Scots, Jacobite Jews, and the Development of Cabalistic Freemasonry.”

[69] Ibid.

[70]. J.N. Hillgarth. Ramon Lull and Lullism in Fourteenth-Century France (Oxford: Clarendon, l971), 214-15; Anthony Bonner, Selected Works of Ramon Llull (Princeton: Princeton UP, l985), I, 292n.26.

[71] George Seton. A History of the Family Seton during eight centuries (Edinburgh: T. & A. Constable, 1896).

[72]. David Stevenson. The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland's century 1590 - 1710 (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 26-28.

[73]. James VI, New Poems of James I of England, (ed.) Allan Westcott (New York: AMS, l966), xxi-xxii, 80-81; and Minor Prose Works of James VI and I, eds. James Craigie and Alexander Law (Edinburgh: Scottish Texts Society, l982), p. 9.

[74] Jerome Cardan. The Book of My Life, trans. Jean Stoner (New York: E.P. Dutton, l930), pp. 16, 97, 130, 299 n. 20.

[75]. Harry Friedenwald. The Jews and Medicine (l944; rpt. New York: Ktav, l967), I, 232, 246.

[76] Marsha Keith Schuchard. “Judaized Scots, Jacobite Jews, and the Development of Cabalistic Freemasonry.” Revision of Paper Presented at Symposium on “Western Esotericism and Jewish Mysticism,” 18th International Congress of International Association for History of Religions (Durban, South Africa, August 2000).

[77]. J.M. Ragon. De la Maçonnerie Occulte et de l'Initiation Hermétique, rev. ed. Oswald Wirth (Paris: Émile Nourry, l926), 66-67.

[78] Ibid.

[79] Andrzej Datko. “Praktyk i mistyk,” Wiedza i życie (June 12, 2012) (in Polish). Retrieved from https://www.wiz.pl/8,185.html

[80] Schuchard. Restoring the Temple of Vision, p. 236.

[81] The Newsroom. “Rosslyn, Templars, Gypsies and the Battle of Bannockburn.” The Scotsman (November 9, 2005). Retrieved from https://www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/rosslyn-templars-gypsies-and-battle-bannockburn-2463275

[82] Schuchard. Restoring the Temple of Vision, p. 236.

[83] Ralls. The Templars and the Grail.

[84] R.S. Mylne. The Master Masons to the Crown of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1893), pp. 128-30.

[85] Keith Schuchard. “Judaized Scots, Jacobite Jews, and the Development of Cabalistic Freemasonry.”

[86]. A. Williamson. “A Pil,” pp. 245-47; James Harington. The Letters and Epigrams of Sir James Harington, ed. N.E. McClure (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, l930), pp. 110-11.

[87]. James VI. The Poems of James VI of Scotland, ed. James Craigie (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, l955), I, pp. 31-32.

[88]. ibid., I, 117, 119, 218, 274-75, 295, 328; II, 431-37, 490, 673, 717.

[89]. George Warner. The Library of James VI, 1573-1583. Miscellany of Scottish Historical Society, XV (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1893), pp. xxvi, l-liii.

[90]. Du Bartas. Divine Weeks, II, pp. 490-91.

[91]. Dorothy Quinn. “The Career of John Gordon, Dean of Salsibury, 1603-1619,” The Historian, 6 (1943), pp. 76-96.

[92]. John Gordon, Enotikon (London: George Bishop, 1604), pp. 2-3, 22-26, 33-41.

[93]. V. Hart. Art and Magic, p. 111.

[94]. G. Parry. The Golden Age Restor'd: The Culture of the Stuart Court, 1603-42 (New York: St. Martin's, l983), p. 24.

[95] David Harris Willson. King James VI & I (London: Jonathan Cape 1963), p. 103.

[96] J. Keay & J. Keay. Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland (London: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 556; Willson 1963, pp. 103–105.

[97] Daniel Banes. The Provocative Merchant of Venice (Silver Springs and Chicago: Malcolm House Publications, 1975); cited in Yates. The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age, p. 151.

Zionism