Dr. Ric Berman on The Genesis of American Freemasonry
Dr. Ric Berman joins us from England to talk about his new book, The Genesis of American Freemasonry, published in June and timed for the semiquincentennial. Ric is a member of Quatuor Coronati, the…
Dr. Ric Berman joins us from England to talk about his new book, The Genesis of American Freemasonry, published in June and timed for the semiquincentennial. Ric is a member of Quatuor Coronati, the premier lodge of Masonic research, and he has spent eighteen years in the archives of England, Ireland, and America.
What he has found is a story most American brethren have never been told plainly. Spy networks seeding colonial appointments, the Antients travelling down the wagon trails out of Philadelphia, and frontier towns where four in ten men belonged to the lodge.
New Episode
Episode 45: The Genesis of American Freemasonry
w/ Dr. Ric Berman | Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076
Ric Berman argues there was never an England and an America, only a greater Britain, with a few thousand men in London holding most of the levers. He traces Charles Delafaye, a Huguenot refugee who ran British intelligence and whose nephew became the first Provincial Grand Master of New York, then follows the craft west, where lodges founded burial grounds before anything else and every state but the original thirteen had a Grand Lodge before it had statehood. He closes with three words on the future of the fraternity: relevance, leadership, aspiration.
From the Blog
How Freemasonry Came to America
A fraternity chartered in a London tavern in 1717 reached nearly every frontier settlement west of the Blue Ridge inside a century. It did not travel as an idea, it travelled as a network, carried by spymasters, wagon trails, and the men who built a society where none existed. A companion piece to this episode.
In Case You Missed It
Episode 44: The Rosicrucian
w/ RW Bro. Alex Rofaila | Editor of The Rosicrucian | SRIA
The oldest Masonic Rosicrucian society in the world has stepped into the open with its first global publication. Alex Rofaila explains how the Hermeticism issue came together, from the Emerald Tablet to the Corpus Hermeticum, and the conversation ranges across the Golden Dawn, Islamic Spain, the pyramids, and the real value of secrecy for the modern seeker.
Upcoming Events
Quatuor Coronati in Sacramento
Saturday August 8th | Scottish Rite building, Sacramento, CA | 10:00 to 4:00
Our guest this week, Dr. Ric Berman, speaks alongside John Cooper and Susan Summers on the Declaration and the semiquincentennial. Three speakers plus lunch. Details and tickets through the Quatuor Coronati website.
Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference 2026
Saturday September 19th | Ballard Masonic Centre, 2006 NW Market St, Seattle, WA
Keynote: Br. Lon Milo DuQuette on "The Tarot Architect"
Also appearing: Br. Ike Baker on "Catechism in the House of Life"
$50 · Brethren and Invited Guests Only. Business casual dress.
Tickets and full details are now available at the conference website.
We are looking to create a directory of Freemasonic events and publications. If you are aware of something coming up please let me know by email. In the meantime check out the Masonic Conferences website.
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