THE NOT-SO-SECRET SOCIETY

René le Forestier, The Bavarian Illuminati: The Rise and Fall of the World’s Most Secret Society, Inner Traditions, 2022.

French historian René le Forestier’s monumental and solidly scholarly Les Illuminés de Bavière et la franc-maçonnerie allemande has been the go-to work on the original Order of the Illuminati since it came out in 1914. 

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I REMEMBER IT WELL

Charles B. Jameux, Memory Palaces and Masonic Lodges: Esoteric Secrets of the Art of Memory, Inner Traditions, 2019.

Fans of TV’s Sherlock will be familiar with the idea of the memory palace, the trick used by the great detective, in his contemporary reimagining, to mentally file away and retrieve the vast quantities of information he needs to solve crimes. 

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SPECULATIVE OR SPECULATION?

R. William Weisberger. Speculative Freemasonry and the Enlightenment: A Study of the Craft in London, Paris, Prague, Vienna and Philadelphia, McFarland & Company, 2017.

The title and subtitle succinctly encapsulates this book’s subject matter and sets the tone for what is a solidly academic and strait-laced work. It’s the second edition of a book that began life as the author’s doctoral dissertation in 1980, R. William Weisberger now being a professor of history in Pennsylvania - and a proud Freemason.

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SHORT AND NEAT

Andreas Önnerfors. Freemasonry: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press.

The challenge in writing a short introduction to any subject is in giving a complete overview without merely skimming the surface. With a subject is as complex and multi-faceted as Freemasonry that challenge is even harder.

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NOT AT ALL THAT JAZZ

Cécile Révauger. Black Freemasonry: From Prince Hall to the Giants of Jazz. Inner Traditions, 2016

This is a translation of a French work, the original of which was entitled Blacks and Freemasons: How Racial Segregation was Established Among the American Brothers. Presumably to make it more palatable to an American audience, Inner Traditions have chosen to highlight the cosier jazz angle, which not only ducks the book’s less comfortable central theme but is also, as I’ll come to, a bit of a swizz.
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WRITTEN IN STONE

Richard Cassaro. Written in Stone. Deeper Truth Books, 2011.

The ancient megalithic buildings of the world are, for the most part, a mystery to us in the current era. From Stonehenge and Avebury here in Britain to the Pyramids in Egypt and Macchu Picchu in Peru, structures built with massive stones by methods that are fiercely debated today are the subject of puzzlement and curiosity.
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BRIEF GUIDES

Malcolm Gaskill. Witchcraft, A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2010.

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John Michael Greer. Secrets of the Lost Symbol. Oxford University Press, 2010

Short it may be (just 146 small format pages), but Gaskell's book is still a very comprehensive history and analysis of witch belief in (mostly) the western world. The author is Reader in Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia, and has written extensively on witchcraft and witch trials. He is the author of Hellish Nell, an account of England's last 'witchcraft' trial in the 1940s.
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