First published in Paris in 1812, Claude-Antoine Thory's Annales Originis Magni Galliarum Orientis is the foundational history of the Grand Orient of France - and one of the rarest books in Masonic literature. Written by a librarian to the Mother Lodge of the Philosophic Scottish Rite with unparalleled access to the archives and documents of his age, it chronicles the schism of 1772 that produced the Grand Orient, the decades of rivalry and revolutionary turbulence that followed, and the hard-won consolidation that shaped French Freemasonry into the nineteenth century.   But Thory's scope extends far beyond institutional history. The Annales surveys the full landscape of eighteenth-century esoteric Freemasonry: the Élus-Coëns of Martinès de Pasqually, the Illuminati of Weishaupt, the Egyptian Masonry of Cagliostro, the Philalèthes, the Modern Templars, the adoption lodges, the hermetic societies, and the initiation of Voltaire. Papal condemnations, royal edicts, statistical tables of lodges, and original documents appear alongside the narrative, making this as much a primary source collection as a history.   History of the Foundation of the Grand Orient of France is the first English translation of this essential work. When the Grand Orient of France was proclaimed in 1772, it did not emerge fully formed. It was born in schism — wrenched from the ruins of the Grand Lodge of France by a faction of eight commissioners who betrayed their mandate, installed a rival body, and set French Freemasonry on a course that would define it for generations. The decades that followed were ones of bitter rivalry, revolutionary upheaval, political maneuvering, and eventual, hard-won consolidation. No one was better placed to tell this story than Claude-Antoine Thory. A librarian to the Mother Lodge of the Philosophic Scottish Rite and an intimate of the Parisian Masonic world, Thory wrote from the inside — with access to archives, documents, and living memory that no later historian could replicate. His Annales Originis Magni Galliarum Orientis , published in 1812 and among the rarest books in Masonic literature, remains the foundational account of the Grand Orient's origins: meticulous, frank, and written with a scholar's care for evidence and a practitioner's feel for what mattered. Yet Thory's ambitions exceeded institutional history. The Annales opens onto the full panorama of eighteenth-century esoteric Freemasonry. Here are the Élus-Coëns of Martinès de Pasqually, the Illuminati of Weishaupt, the Egyptian Masonry of Cagliostro, the Philalèthes, the Modern Templars, the secret societies of women, the Compagnons du Devoir, the hermetic academies of Montpellier and Avignon. Papal bulls, royal edicts, police sentences, Masonic medals, adoption lodges, and the initiation of Voltaire — all find their place in a work that is as much a survey of an age as a history of an institution. History of the Foundation of the Grand Orient of France makes this extraordinary text available in English for the first time. It is essential reading for students of Western esotericism, for historians of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and for all who trace their initiatic lineage to the traditions Thory chronicled — and who wish to understand, from a primary source, how and why those traditions took the forms they did. Claude-Antoine Thory (1759-1827) was a Parisian scholar whose intellectual life was divided, with unusual equanimity, between two seemingly unrelated passions: the history of Freemasonry and the cultivation of roses. Born in Paris, he served as librarian to the Mother Lodge of the Philosophic Scottish Rite, where he assembled, over many years, the archival foundations for his major works. His Annales Originis Magni Galliarum Orientis (1812) — the present volume — was the first systematic history of the Grand Orient of France, and remains indispensable to any serious study of French Masonic history. Three years later he published Acta Latomorum (1815), a two-volume chronological history of French and foreign Freemasonry from antiquity to 1814, which established his reputation as the preeminent Masonic historian of his generation. His work provided source material for Ragon, influenced Mackey's Encyclopædia of Freemasonry , and continues to be cited wherever the history of the French initiatic traditions is studied with care. In the botanical world he is remembered for Les Roses (1817-1824), illustrated by Pierre-Joseph Redouté, which remains one of the finest works of horticultural illustration ever produced.