board’ as it is called), it is stated in lodge instruction that a member may ‘offer opinions on such subjects as are regularly introduced in our lectures’. The claim is that this ‘privilege’ enables one to ‘strive through researching the more hidden paths of nature and science’. But in my own experience of some 20 years of lodge attendance, I never heard anyone discussing nature or science. Moreover, if one were to make a headline discovery that rocked the world of science and changed the course of history, it would not make one iota of difference to the lodge workings. The basic precepts in such matters have been fixed (albeit loosely) since the revisions of United Grand Lodge were introduced in 1816. The most up-to-date scientific statement in modern Craft ritual is that the Earth revolves, on its own axis, around the Sun, which is at the centre!
Although such a statement (which the 2nd-degree candidate is obliged to announce to the lodge as the required answer to an explicit question) is wholly naive by today’s standards, it does pose an interesting scenario. It is the Copernican heliocentric principle as put forward by Galileo in 1632, and for which he was summoned before the Inquisition and imprisoned for 10 years until he died. In this respect, if we think in terms of the same question and answer in 1641, when Sir Robert Moray was installed, it would have held tremendous significance. To gain Fellow Craft masonic status on those terms meant that one was risking life and limb by admitting to such an heretical concept! This also demonstrates that progression through the degrees would have been impossible unless one was a scientific heretic. That is why Freemasonry was secretive and relied on brotherly support and loyalty. Outside the lodge confines one would know to discuss such punishable matters only with those who knew the signs and passwords of the fraternity. In short, Freemasonry true and proper, in its original uncorrupted form, was about liberal arts, science and natural philosophy.
The Invisible College
Science in the 1600s was concerned, in the main, with natural philosophy. Chemistry fell within the scope of this, but was a lowly art since chemists worked as assistants to the more experienced alchemists, who were practitioners of the senior profession, although detested by the Church. Scotland had a strong tradition in hermetic alchemy, and its research was subsidized from the royal purse as far back as the days of King James IV (1488-1513). Since masonic lodges were concerned with scientific experimentation, alchemy had a powerful and permanent influence on lodge operations.4 One of the foremost collectors of alchemical manuscripts was Lord Balcarres, whose daughter was married to Sir Robert Moray. In turn, Moray was the patron of England’s most notable 17th-century alchemist, Eirenaeus Philalethes, the revered mentor of Robert Boyle and others of the masonic Royal Society.
Although the Renaissance had brought a great flourish to academic and creative interests, throwing off the superstitious shackles of the Church in favour of reviving classical philosophy and literature, in this respect Britain fell into a repressed doldrums during the Cromwellian era. Following Cromwell’s military overthrow and the 1649 execution of King Charles I, this hitherto rural politician became so powerful that in 1653 he chose to rule by martial force alone. He dissolved Parliament and appointed himself Lord Protector, with greater dictatorial powers than any king had ever known. He then sought to demolish the activities of the Anglican Church. At his order, the Book of Common Prayer was forbidden, as were the celebrations of Christmas and Easter. His dictatorship was more severe than any previous regime, and his puritanical directives lasted throughout the 1650s. Games, sports and entertainment were restricted, dissenters were tortured and banished, houses were sequestrated, punitive taxes were levied, universities were constrained, theatres and inns were closed, freedom of speech was denied, adultery was made a capital offence and mothers of illegitimate children were imprisoned. No one was safe even at home, and any unwitting group of family or friends could be charged with plotting against an establishment that empowered crushing fines to be imposed at will by the military.
This was the environment which brought enterprising university students such as Christopher Wren and Robert Boyle together as pioneers of an undercover society of subversive academics, which grew to become the foremost scientific academy. It began at Oxford University during the 1650s, at a time when Oxford was in a state of restlessness. Having been the capital of Royalist England during the Civil War, Cromwell had appointed himself Chancellor of the University and the once lively streets were subdued and an air of general oppression prevailed.
Within the University, subjects such as astronomy and mathematics were considered demonic and were expressly forbidden by the Puritan commissioners. In fact, learning in general was frowned upon, for scholars were the greatest of all threats to the regime. There was, however, one man who stood apart from his colleagues on the University staff—an unusually freethinking churchman, Dr John Wilkins. He was the maverick Warden of Wadham College, a future bishop who studied the wisdoms of the ancient world. At Oxford, Wilkins ran a philosophical group who met secretly by night in a local apothecary’s house to discuss prohibited subjects. In fact, he was a positive enigma since he was married to Oliver Cromwell’s sister, Robina, but fronted a secret society in blatant opposition to his brother-in-law’s dictatorship. The Cromwell family was very mixed in outlook, however, and Elizabeth, another of the sisters, was a Stuart supporting Royalist.5
Immediately before coming to Wadham in 1648, Wilkins had published his controversial book Mathematicall Magick, which the Puritans considered wholly satanic. For a churchman even to acknowledge the notion of magic was inconceivable, especially when allied to numerology, the most diabolical of all occult aberrations!
Members of Wilkins’ clandestine group, which became known as the Invisible College, included the young Christopher Wren, along with Robert Boyle (son of the Earl of Cork), the anatomist William Petty, and a technically-minded student called Robert Hooke. Other participants were the noted theologian Seth Ward—an older man who encouraged Wren’s interest in astronomy—along with the cryptologist John Wallis and the physician Thomas Willis. The term Invisible, as applied to the group, was first used in a letter written by Robert Boyle,6 but it was common in covert Rosicrucian circles. Rosicrucianism was directly allied to Freemasonry in Scotland, and the two were shown as synonymous in a metrical account of Perth, published in Edinburgh in 1638:
For we be brethren of the Rosie Crosse;
We have the Mason Word and the second sight.7
In order to fulfil their overriding scientific objectives, the fraternity was in no doubt as to the key that would unlock the doors of enlightenment. They knew that in order to advance science and medicine beyond the bounds of academic constraint, they had to discover the alchemical secrets of the ancient and medieval masters.
Among the more prominent alchemists of the day was the inscrutable Thomas Vaughan (brother of the poet Henry Vaughan), who styled himself Eirenaeus Philalethes. His writings on the subject of chemical hermeticism were no less confusing than those of any alchemist through the ages, but he was rather more forthcoming to his friends. In contrast to the general presumption that alchemy was about making gold from base metals by use of the Philosophers’ Stone, Philalethes made it clear that the Stone was itself made from gold, ‘but not common gold’. He stated that it was called a Stone because of its fixed nature and its resistance to fire, but that ‘its appearance is that of a very fine powder’.8 The French chemist, Nicolas Flamel, had written much the same back in 1416, referring to ‘a fine powder of gold, which is the Stone’.
What especially intrigued the Oxford fraternity was that the Philosophers’ Stone was traditionally associated with the defiance of gravity, and this compelling subject was a primary focus of their study. It had been stated in an old Alexandrian document, the Iter Alexandri ad Paradisium, that the Stone gave youth to the old, and that although outweighing its own quantity of gold, even a feather could tip the scales against it!9
The students could not imagine why the universities were not encouraged towards such research. Instead,
