What a breath of fresh air this book is after all the dreck I’ve read on Freemasonry in recent years! The author is curator of the Scottish Masonic Museum and Library at Freemason’s Hall in Edinburgh. This means he knows what he’s talking about, and isn’t bound by the party line of the United Grand Lodge in London, who still seem to try to pretend that Freemasonry was created there in 1717. Cooper spends his first few chapters giving convincing evidence of Freemasonry’s Scottish origins.

He excels at putting rewriters of history in their place. From the early 18th century onwards, Freemasonry has given itself the most glorious historical heritage, most of which is bunkum. One reason for this, usually missed, is the creation of “a traditional history as a basis for their ritual, lectures and moral lessons”. Critics of Freemasonry, especially Christian opponents, often think the stories enacted in masonic rituals are meant to be taken literally rather than symbolically, but Cooper explains that even the supposed ‘history’ of different Orders within Freemasonry is invented for a teaching purpose.

He neatly disposes of two myths beloved by speculative ‘historians’. The first is that the Knights Templar became the Scottish Freemasons. This is where the deliberate creation of a symbolic history comes in. The famous Ramsay’s Oration of 1737, although probably never actually ‘orated’, planted seeds which grew into fully formed fictions; a century later one James Burnes (distantly related to Rabbie) wrote A Sketch of the History of the Knights Templars, setting out the Templar-origin myth more or less as it is still cited by people who really should have more sense.

The reality is that the Scottish Masonic Order of the Knights Templar, founded around 1808, didn’t have a traditional history, and was struggling without one. “Burnes supplied them with exactly what was required, in the form of a history that blended historical fact with considerable fiction. He gave this a Scottish setting.”

The various Orders, including Scottish Craft Freemasonry, each had their own traditional ‘history’ enacted in their rituals; “they were not intended to be taken as literally true nor was it ever intended that they be lumped together,” says Cooper. “However, in recent years a variety of writers have taken the separate and distinct histories, made them out to be factually correct and then rolled them all together to make one grandiose story – a story which our forebears would simply not have recognised and would probably have laughed at!” As that’s what most of us already do with the books of such creative writers as Knight & Lomas, Laurence Gardner and the spurious ‘HRH Prince Michael of Albany’, that’s okay by me.

Writer Andrew Sinclair, amongst others, loves to claim that his ancestors the St Clairs of Roslyn are the hereditary grand masters of Scottish Freemasonry; this is the second myth which Cooper debunks. In fact, the much-vaunted ‘Charter’ of 1601 supposedly re-establishing them in this role simply asked William St Clair “to become the arbitrator of their internal disputes and nothing else,” says Cooper. In fact their supposed new patron and protector wasn’t much use to them: “Following an extra-marital affair with a miller’s daughter, he ran away to Ireland and there is no trace of him doing anything of note to assist the stonemasons.”

There was a second ‘Charter’ of 1628, which claims that the rights of the St Clairs were granted by the king. Again, not so, as King Charles I angrily made clear, referring to St Clair “pretending ane heritable charge of the Maissones of our said kingdom [Scotland], though we [the crown] have nevir gevin warrant for strengthening of aney heritable right.” So there!

Today’s speculative “historians” get their erroneous beliefs from a faulty interpretation of the so-called ‘Charters’ in a 1904 History of Freemasonry. “This is not surprising,” says Cooper, “given that no popular author has been to Freemasons’ Hall to read the original documents.”

My only quibble with this book is its title. ‘Cracking’ and ‘Code’ these days suggest a connection with a certain best-selling thriller of dubious historical accuracy, while ‘The Truth about Solomon’s Key’ might be seen to refer to the same author’s heavily-touted but unaccountably delayed next novel. Neither is the case, thank the Great Architect of the Universe – or, as Cooper includes a fascinating chapter on the almost unknown Order of the Free Gardeners, the Great Gardener of the Universe!