Francis Bacon, at age 18, returned to England from France,  in 1579 when Nicholas Bacon died. He set up home at Gray’s Inn and established the Knights of the Helmet with his step-brother, Anthony Bacon.

This group was extended to form a new secret order called the Fra Rosi Crosse, which adopted the rituals, customs, and symbols of the Rosicrucians and the Operative Freemasons.

This later became the Order of Speculative Freemasonry, and Bacon was called their Worshipful Master and became head of all the secret societies in England. He commissioned others to head the European orders.          

Bacon didn’t want Rosicrucianism to become a religion or cult with him as the leader, so he created a mystical founder. He invented Christian Rosenkreutz, or Brother CRC.

Bacon brought together all the ideals of the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, and the Operative Freemasons into his passion to discover all of nature’s secrets through his philosophy based on Proverbs 25:2:

‘It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honour of kings to search out a matter.’

Bacon’s mission in life could be summed up by the following:

The Divine Majesty takes delight to hide his work . . . according to the innocent play of children . . . Surely for these to follow the example of the Most High God cannot be censured, therefore put away popular applause . . . and after the manner of Solomon, the king, . . . compose history of thy time and fold it into enigmatical writings . . . and cunning mixtures of the theatre.

However, this concept brought him to being equal with kings. If he couldn’t take his rightful place as king, he had to find another way to have power.

This gave birth to Speculative Freemasonry, but as with the Rosicrucians and the story of Brother CRC, this new society also required a story and a founder.          

So Bacon created Hiram Abiff, the master Mason of Solomon’s Temple, to be the founder.  Three fellow workers on the temple murdered Abiff and buried him in a shallow grave, but he was found and dug up after three days.

Masonic third-degree candidates ritualise this murder and then being raised again, but to the level of kings, making all Masons level with each other and level with kings.        

They mimic God’s Word by claiming they are raised as priests as per the order of Melchizedek, they mimic Jesus who rose from the dead after three days,  and who is the priest-king, and they mimic Christians, who are both kings and priests (Rev. 1:6).                                                      

The Order of

Speculative Freemasonry

Symbols