In 1716 four Lodges of Operative Masons met at the Apple Tree Tavern in London and decided to create a “Grand Lodge” to reorganize Freemasonry, which was slowly dying out. After the establishment of the Premier Grand Lodge the next year, 1717, one of the Lodges, the Rummer and Grapes, took a decidedly new direction that resulted in the creation of what would later become known as Speculative Freemasonry, the basis of modern Freemasonry. However, as there is very little documentation from this period, many questions are left unanswered: •Why three educated and busy men decided to rewrite the ritual of a stonemasons’ guild, when they were neither stonemasons nor manual workers. •Why the first three Grand Masters gave eight years of their lives to this cause. Not only that, but why they thought it necessary to add a third degree to the ritual. •Why the literati and aristocracy of Europe were motivated to join these three men, an antiquarian, a Huguenot priest and a possible alchemist, in a room above a tavern to study the new degrees. •Why there is a “key to the rituals” that Desaguliers referred to in the Constitutions of 1723. •Why the first three Grand Masters were interested in “making good men better,” when they were also not philanthropists. •Why the first three Grand Masters used steganography to hide secrets in the rituals, making them a puzzle for Freemasons to discover. •Lastly, and probably most importantly, why the English nobility (and later royalty) believed so strongly in what these three men had conceived that they lent their names to the enterprise by becoming its figurehead, Grand Masters. This book answers these questions, and more! "An interesting theory how alchemy may have influenced early Freemasonry." United Grand Lodge of England's magazine FMT Dec 2019 "factual, well-researched and well-referenced." United Grand Lodge of England's magazine FMT Dec 2019 "By making the arcane subjects of alchemy, Rosicrucianism and the topics of Renaissance education so lucid and accessible, Brother Earnshaw succeeds in providing Master Masons with valuable and additional Light in Masonry." Scottish Rite Journal May/June 2020 "Earnshaw's work wedges an extraordinary amount of detail into a relatively small space." Scottish Rite Journal May/June 2020 "Each of Brother Earnshaw's works begins with extensive and detailed histories of Grand Lodge Masonry that emerged during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. These histories alone repay the price of admission." The Virginia Masonic Herald-Fall 2020 "In Freemasonry: Spiritual Alchemy , Brother Earnshaw guides his readers through the intellectual, philosophical, religious, and scientific turmoil of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." The Virginia Masonic Herald-Fall 2020 Christopher J. Earnshaw PhD 33° Past Grand Historian, Grand Lodge of Japan. Past Master of the Research Lodge, Grand Lodge of Japan. Scottish Rite 33° IGH, Past-Chairman of Education Committee. Recipient of the Order of Merit, Grand Lodge of Japan, for educational activities. Past Master of Sinim Lodge, Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. Private Life: BA in Japanese and Chinese from London University, S.O.A.S. PhD in neuroscience and CEO of a medical device manufacturer, living in Tokyo, Japan.  Amateur cellist. Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences, Waseda University, Tokyo Former Professor of Asian Studies, Daito Bunka University, Tokyo Other Books by C. Earnshaw: Freemasonry: Royal Arch (pub. March  2021) Freemasonry: Quest for Immortality (pub. December 2019) Freemasonry: Initiation by Light (pub. March 2020) The Tarot of the Revelation Sho: Japanese Calligraphy