Speculative Freemasonry: the first confluence

Speculative Freemasonry was founded in London in 1717 and settled its three degrees by the late 1720s. It was already a blend: the structure of the medieval stonemasons’ guild, the story of Solomon’s Temple, Hebrew and Kabbalistic ideas that arrived through Renaissance Christian writers, Rosicrucian legend, and Renaissance ideas about sacred geometry. Later layers added chivalric and Egyptian themes. Nearly every graded esoteric order founded afterwards copied its structure.