CRACKING THE FREEMASON’S CODE Robert L. D. Cooper, Rider (Random House), London, 2006. Paperback, xvi and 240 pages, £9.99. ISBN 1-8460-4049-3

There is a great interest, amongst publishers at least, in books dealing with Freemasonry, driven in all likelihood, by rumours that the next adventure of the Da Vinci Code’s protagonist will involve Freemasonry.
    Given the title and publisher involved Robert Cooper’s book appears designed to fit into this context; and as Curator of the Scottish Masonic Museum and Library and member of the English Quatuor Coronati research lodge, one would expect him to provide sound information.
    But it is difficult to sense for whom this book was written; it reads like a technical manual for those already converted rather than something to fascinate those beyond the lodge. It assumes an interest in the material explored - thus avoiding any need to enthuse the reader.
    It makes little effort to address the question of why anyone should bother to become a Freemason? What role has Freemasonry played in social development over the last few centuries? What role does Freemasonry’s journey play in the nonsectarian search for spirituality and meaning? Instead, we get a Scottish centred approach to the history of Freemasonry which too frequently comes across as contentious partisan point-scoring.
    There are too a number of basic errors and misunderstandings: Cooper attempts to deal with Hermetic thought in the Renaissance without exploring Iamblichus and the theurgic background to the use of symbolism – which was the whole point.
    Cooper also states that the early admission of men with no connection to stone masonry into lodges ‘can only be traced within Scotland.’ Neville Cryer has found such occurrences in 1569 and 1571 in lodges in York. He also claims that the English trade guilds – unlike those in Scotland – were suppressed by King Henry VIII in 1540. In fact it was the religious confraternities and their Chantry chapels which were dissolved – in 1547 – not the guilds, which still exist today. And when he speaks of the famous ‘Oration’ by Chevalier Ramsay he insists that it was never actually delivered. In fact this Oration was delivered to a ‘Lodge of Saint-John’ on 26 December 1736; the original manuscript is in the municipal archives of Epernay.
    This book was a good idea which was executed without the required amount of care. Robert Cooper is a very busy man and his book seems to have paid the price.

Michael Baigent