Restoring the Temple of Vision: Cabalistic Freemasonry and Stuart Culture

This text seeks to uncover the early Jewish, Scottish and Stuart sources of ancient Cabalistic Freemasonry that flourished in Ecossais lodges in the 18th and 19th centuries. Drawing on architectural, technological, political and religious documents, it offers real-world, historical grounding for the flights of visionary Temple building described in the rituals and symbolism of high-degree Masonry. The roots of mystical male bonding, accomplished through progressive initiation, are found in Stuart notions of intellectual and spiritual amicitia . Despite the expulsion of the Stuart dynasty in 1688 and the establishment of a rival modern system of Hanoverian-Whig Masonry in 1717, the influence of ancient Scottish-Stuart Masonry on Solomonic architecture, Hermetic masques, and Rosicrucian science was preserved in lodges maintained by Jacobite partisans and exiles in Britain, Europe, and the New World.