The Golden Builders: Alchemists, Rosicrucians, and the First Freemasons

The Golden Builders is divided into three parts: - Part 1 presents a broad survey of the Hermetic current and its transmissions from Hellenistic Alexandria to the time of Paracelsus.- Part 2 focuses on the Rosicrucian movement as a vehicle of the Hermetic current, drawing on state-of-the-art research, such as the works of Spanish scholar Carlos Gilly.- Part 3 concentrates mainly on one man, the English polymath, antiquarian, collector, alchemist, astrologer, and early Freemason, Elias Ashmole, after whom the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is named, and one of many Renaissance figures who carried the Hermetic current forward.- Unlocks the secret to Hiram's Key.- A crucial pre-history of modern Freemasonry from its Alchemical and Hermetic origins in ancient Alexandria through the Rosicrucian Order of the 18th century.