Ritual , Secrecy , and Civil Society
of stonemasons . We inevitably wonder where these ancient secrets come from and what their beginnings were . This search is made more febrile by the conviction that freemasonry hands down a hidden secret . Freemasons from James Anderson to Chevalier Ramsay , William Preston and George Oliver have fruitlessly used many different methods to try and discover this secret , and perhaps every masonic researcher is driven by the inner belief that , somehow , they will show what is all about . The idol of origins means masonic researchers too often prefer to speculate on the findings of previous researchers rather than go in search of new evidence . Pontification of the sort beloved of many freemasons feeds the appetite of the idol of origins and makes it more powerful , whereas the study of primary sources often denies the idol its sustenance .
The idol of origins is not only about a misplaced belief that finding the beginning will explain everything . It is also about power . Power of course permeates history , but expressions of power go beyond politics , diplomacy and war . Cultural power can be the most oppressive and destructive of all . Myths of origin are an important weapon of cultural power . They help keep nations together and monarchs on their thrones . Marc Bloch pointed out how history concerned with origins is frequently invoked to support value judgements . As he put it , whether the subject is the Germanic invasions of the Roman Empire or the Norman Conquest of England , the past is used as an explanation of the present in order that the present might be better justified or condemned . 14 The search for origins is a means of developing histories which reinforce existing power structures in society .
Many things that we think of as age-old traditions are recent inventions , frequently intended to bolster nationalism . A famous collection of essays edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Trevor Aston is called The Invention of Tradition . 15 The contributors to this book argue that many of the traditions thought to characterise the British nation are of very recent origin and were often deliberately manufactured . The British enthusiasm for royal ceremonial was an imperial creation of the early twentieth century , 16 while many aspects of the Scottish ‘ highland tradition ’ date back no further than the beginning of the nineteenth century . 17 The Welsh Druid ceremonies of the Gorsedd were invented by the opium addict Iolo Morgannwg in the early nineteenth century as a means of protecting the Welsh language in an increasingly industrialised society . 18
14 Bloch , Historian ' s Craft , p . 26 .
15 The Invention of Tradition , ed . Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger ( Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 1983 ).
16 David Cannadine , ' The Context , Performance and Meaning of Ritual : The British Monarchy and the " Invention of Tradition "' in Invention of Tradition , ed . Hobsbawm and Ranger , pp . 101-64 .
17 Hugh Trevor-Roper , ' The Invention of Tradition : The Highland Tradition of Scotland ' in Invention of Tradition , ed . Hobsbawm and Ranger , pp . 15-42 ; Hugh Trevor-Roper , The Invention of Scotland : Myth and History , ed . Jeremy J . Cater ( New Haven : Yale University Press , 2008 ).
18 Prys Morgan , ' From a Death to a View : the Hunt for the Welsh Past in the Romantic Period ' in
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