Conversations on the Craft, the symbol,
and the long work within.
"Astrology in the Western Esoteric Traditions" Bro. Jaime Paul Lamb at EFC2022
with Bro. Jaimie Paul Lamb
Recorded at the Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference 2022, this throwback episode features Br. Jaime Paul Lamb, professional astrologer and author. Recently uncovered from an archive of conference recordings, this presentation is titled Astrology in the Western Esoteric Traditions. Please forgive any audio irregularities, as this was captured live at the event. Slides are available to follow along on our YouTube channel. Br. Lamb opens with a personal story: two weeks after being raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason, he came across Robert Hewitt Brown's Stellar Theology and Masonic Astronomy, a book he describes as producing a kind of Sixth Sense moment, where the symbolic architecture of the Craft suddenly resolved into something far larger. That book remains a touchstone for everything that follows. The presentation offers a definition of astrology as the study of the mirroring of celestial events on the terrestrial sphere, the sympathetic resonant relationship between microcosm and macrocosm. Lamb draws a structural analogy: astrology is to astronomy as alchemy is to chemistry, as magic is to technology. What separates the pairs, he argues, is the quality of enchantment, the qualitative dimension that the Enlightenment stripped from the quantitative sciences and which he identifies as a genuine cultural loss.
Selected dispatches
Freemasonry in Academic Studies of Western Esotericism with Bro. Doug Russel | EFC 2022
with Bro. Doug Russel
The conversation digs into why academics are only now beginning to take Freemasonry seriously as a subject of study, how the craft intersects with broader currents in Western Esoteric thought, and what it means for brethren when scholars start examining the traditions from the outside looking in.
“Elias Ashmole, Initiation, and Freemasonry” w/ Bro. Richard Harris Throwback Episode
with Bro. Richard Harris
Recorded in support of the Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference 2022, this throwback episode features Grand Lodge of Washington State brother Richard Harris in conversation with Troy about his conference presentation on Elias Ashmole, initiation, alchemy, and Freemasonry.
Essays & notes
The Lion, the Ox, the Eagle, and the Man: The Zodiac Hidden in the Royal Arch Banners
Walk into a Royal Arch chapter and look up at the banners. Four of them carry a strange menagerie: a lion, an ox, an eagle, and a man. Most Companions can tell you these come from the tribes of Israel, or from the vision of Ezekiel, and leave it there. But the Royal Arch banners hold an older secret than most of us are taught. Those four creatures are a star map. They are the four fixed signs of the zodiac, and the trail they leave runs back through Ezekiel's exile in Babylon to the winged guardians that stood at the gates of Assyrian palaces. This idea took center stage in a talk by Bro. Jaime Paul Lamb at the Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference in 2022, recently uncovered and released as Episode 43 of The Mystic Tye.1 Lamb is a professional astrologer and Masonic author, and his argument reframes a piece of furniture most brethren walk past without a second glance. Here is how the pieces fit.
By Troy Spreeuw