This Is A New Release Of The Original 1656 Edition.

This is an essential book for anyone interested in Rosicrucian philosophy, esoteric philosophy, and the history of medicine. This edition has a new preface, new typeset, and has been completely revised to improve readability.

As no rational man can deny the absolute necessity of good laws; so it is most fit that such laws should have their due praise and commendations; that the sluggard hereby might be pricked on to virtue, and the diligent might have his deserved reward. Seeing therefore that these positions or laws, laid down by the father of the honourable Fraternity are worthy of special view, we shall truly according to their nature, and the advantages men may receive from them, Crown them with due commendations, counting them not only worthy of acceptance, but an Encomium. First it is most reasonable that every society if it be good, should be governed by good laws; if otherwise, by bad: but that this society is good and lawful, we do not only suppose, but may gather from particular circumstances to which their positions are agreeable.

This book uncovers the early Jewish, Scottish, and Stuart sources of "ancient" Cabalistic Freemasonry that flourished in Écossais lodges in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Drawing on architectural, technological, political, and religious documents, it provides 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.

A collection of writings based on the Rosicrucian Enlightenment, a movement which went underground during the Thirty Years' War and lives on today as part of contemporary spiritual movements.