THE WAY OF THE CRAFTSMAN W. Kirk MacNulty. Central Regalia, London, 2002. Paperback,160 pages, £11.95. ISBN 0-9542516-0-1

The fact that Freemasonry has no dogma is at once liberating and confusing: liberating because, unlike the institutional religions, Freemasonry has the freedom of interpretation that its intricate ritual allows, without an imposed doctrine in ritual matters, and confusing because, with sometimes conflicting or non-existent signposts, it can be difficult to perceive how to relate the symbolism to individual life and growth. Indeed, masonic symbols have often remained just that – symbols, without a serious commitment to realising their true import, a sort of outward sign without the inner meaning.
    This new edition of Kirk MacNulty’s The Way of the Craftsman is an invaluable tool for those Freemasons who need some light to illumine their path. Although he insists that this work is his personal view based on individual experience and is not the ‘one true’ interpretation, it nevertheless opens up rich seams for exploration. Many readers are used to considering Freemasonry within the rationalist framework of the Age of Enlightenment. Here we are invited to regard Freemasonry as a codification of the essential philosophy of the Renaissance identifiable, alongside the Catholic and Humanist philosophies of that age, with the third and largely ignored strand, that of the Hermeticists.
    MacNulty views the Craft as a psychology, an approach to normal human development, not to be confused with a means for treating psychological conditions. In each of the degrees the consciousness of the candidate is seen to expand to embrace a new level in the Temple of the psyche. The lodge is presented as the model of an individual’s interior being. Through feeling and awakening, MacNulty conducts the reader in the erection of a temple, through the four stages of action, emotion, intellect and the Divinity There is a need perhaps to distil much of what he writes in order to focus, step by step, on what the ritual is saying.
    This book is an invaluable first step and ought to be recommended reading for the new Master Mason, despite the faulty proof-reading, which only slightly mars an otherwise excellent addition to any shelf of masonic books.
    Julian Rees