Three weeks out from the Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference, Bro. Ike Baker joins Troy for a preview of a very full Seattle weekend, and a tour of everything else the man some call omnipresent has going on.

Ike opens with his Friday night talk at Verity Lodge: the tracing board of Walter Leslie Wilmshurst, author of The Meaning of Masonry and founder of the Lodge of the Living Stones in Leeds. Found by Robert Lomas in one of Wilmshurst's personal notebooks and posted online at a resolution too poor to read, the board is almost rudimentary, communicating in pure geometry rather than beautiful imagery. Ike restored it and deciphered nearly the entirety of the chart, working through The Meaning of Masonry with a brother out of Montana along the way.

Then the Saturday EFC talk: Conversations in the House of Life, the new public translation of the ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth by Richard Jasnow and Karl-Theodor Zauzich. Reading it line by line with the academic advisory board of the newly launching Hermopolis Academy (alongside Dr. Aaron Cheak, Dr. Shannon Grimes, Dr. Charles Stang, and Wouter Hanegraaff), Ike found the correlations to Freemasonic ritual startling: the text works as an initiation ritual for the scribe-priests of Thoth, structured like an entered apprentice degree, catechism and all.

The conversation ranges from there into Ike's sold-out week in the South of France with Magical Retreats: Cathar strongholds, consecrated caves, Templar country, the cult of the Black Madonna, Martinism and the Élus Coëns, Rosicrucian France, and the Dan Brown history that needs dispelling along the way. Plus the story of how a hidden page on the band Tool's website about Bérenger Saunière and Rennes-le-Château set a teenage Ike on this path in the first place.

Also in this episode: Ike's new book Esoteric Mythology, coming from Inner Traditions in November, and the number theology hiding inside the world's cosmological myths; the book tour through the Adocentyn Research Library, the Philosophical Research Society, and the Embassy of the Free Mind in Amsterdam; his public courses on Rosicrucian ceremonial evocation, astral travel, and the magic of Dion Fortune; the one-on-one trajectory through the seven classical liberal arts; freedom of conscience in the craft; and Troy's very full September, including a cornerstone relaying at the rebuilt Lynn Valley Masonic building and his first official visit as District Deputy Grand Master.

EFC 2026 has record advance attendance and may sell out. Tickets at esotericmasonry.com.

Books mentioned in this episode

The Meaning of Masonry, Walter Leslie Wilmshurst Conversations in the House of Life, translated by Richard Jasnow and Karl-Theodor Zauzich Stellar Theology and Masonic Astronomy, Robert Hewitt Brown The Secret Freemasonry of a Priest in the Temple of Nature, edited by Josef Wäges Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln The Temple and the Lodge, Baigent and Leigh The Templar Revelation, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince Esoteric Mythology, Ike Baker (Inner Traditions, November)

Coming up on The Mystic Tye: the Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference, Saturday September 19th, Ballard, Seattle.

Links and resources

• Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference: masonicconferences.com
• RSVP for the upcoming conference: esotericmasonry@gmail.com
• Mystic Tye website and event calendar: mystictye.com
• Patreon (early episodes, extended cuts, artwork, extras): patreon.com/mystictye

Support the show

If this episode resonated with you, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. We are also building a directory of Freemasonic events and publications. If you know of something coming up, send Troy an email at troy@mystictye.com.

Graphics and web hosting by Art Szabo Creative. Theme music by Organist.

Happy to meet, sorry to part, happy to meet again.

Fifty episodes. For this milestone we do things a little differently, in two parts.

First, Troy sits down with his fellow organizers Brett Wolfe and Ken Lane for a quick update on the Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference 2026, coming to Ballard, Seattle on September 19th. The lineup is the strongest yet: keynote Lon Milo DuQuette in person, plus Ike Baker, Dago Rodriguez of Fraternal Review, Josef Wäges, and Doug Russell, with lunch once again courtesy of the brethren of Occidental Lodge No. 72. Tickets are at esotericmasonry.com, and if you cannot make it, buy a ticket anyway and call it a donation.

Then the tables are turned. Art Szabo, the designer behind all of the Mystic Tye artwork, takes over the microphone and puts Troy in the guest chair. They cover the road that led here: a small-town bookstore in Powell River, a Golden Dawn paperback lost on a train and returned ten years later with the bookplate still inside, discovering Aleister Crowley's The Book of Lies in a New Westminster bookshop, initiations and Gnostic Masses between Vancouver and Seattle, and the path into the craft at Duke of Connaught Lodge, where Troy now serves as District Deputy Grand Master for District 17.

They also get into why a podcast at all (a certain talk radio host is to blame), what fifty conversations with authors and scholars have changed about Troy's own practice, and where this is all going: a monthly online class on the rudiments of tarot and Kabbalah, in-person salons for supporters in the Lower Mainland, a published proceedings collecting ten years of EFC talks, and a community for Freemasons drawn to the contemplative side of the craft.

Books mentioned in this episode

The Book of Lies and The Book of the Law, Aleister Crowley
A Garden of Pomegranates and The Golden Dawn, Israel Regardie
The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford and The Tarot Architect, Lon Milo DuQuette
The Templar Revelation, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince

Coming up on The Mystic Tye: EFC keynote Brother Lon Milo DuQuette, and Brother Ike Baker previews his talk at the Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference.

Links and resources

• Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference: masonicconferences.com
• RSVP for the upcoming conference: esotericmasonry@gmail.com
• Mystic Tye website and event calendar: mystictye.com
• Patreon (early episodes, extended cuts, artwork, extras): patreon.com/mystictye

Support the show

If this episode resonated with you, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. We are also building a directory of Freemasonic events and publications. If you know of something coming up, send Troy an email at troy@mystictye.com.

Graphics and web hosting by Art Szabo Creative. Theme music by Organist.

Happy to meet, sorry to part, happy to meet again.

What happens when the symbolic language of Freemasonry is taken off the tracing board and placed directly into your hands? This episode, I'm joined by Jonti Marks and Bridie Blaze, creators of the Masonic Wisdom Cards, A Deck for Daily Reflection, a 78-card illustrated deck exploring Masonic symbols, working tools, virtues, and sacred geometry as prompts for contemplation rather than divination.

We talk through Bridie's folk-art-inspired illustration process, built from a hand-chiselled, linocut-style technique that echoes the working tools themselves, and Jonti's approach to writing a companion booklet that invites quiet reflection rather than instruction. Given that the deck shares its 78-card count with a tarot deck, we spend real time on the comparison: where the two overlap as tools for memory and self-examination, and where the Masonic Wisdom Cards depart from tarot entirely, since there is no divination and no fortune telling built into the design.

The conversation also opens into the art of memory more broadly, how Freemasonry, Kabbalah, and tarot all draw on the same rhetorical memory tradition, and how a deck of cards can work as a modern entry point into lodge education and personal study. Jonti and Bridie close out talking about how the two of them came to collaborate, the year and a half it took to bring the deck from idea to print, and the early feedback coming in from the first backers.

Books mentioned in this episode

A Mosaic Palace, Freemasonry and the Art of Memory by Martin Faulks (Lewis Masonic, 2018).

The Masonic Wisdom Cards are distributed through Lewis Masonic. Find them at lewismasonic.co.uk.

Links and resources

• Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference: masonicconferences.com
• RSVP for the upcoming conference: esotericmasonry@gmail.com
• Mystic Tye website and event calendar: mystictye.com
• Patreon (early episodes, extended cuts, artwork, extras): patreon.com/mystictye

Support the show

If this episode resonated with you, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. We are also building a directory of Freemasonic events and publications. If you know of something coming up, send Troy an email at troy@mystictye.com.

Graphics and web hosting by Art Szabo Creative. Theme music by Organist.

Happy to meet, sorry to part, happy to meet again.