Whence Came You? - Freemasonry discussed and Masonic research for today's Freemason
Jun 15, 2026 · 38 min · 9 segments
This week on Whence Came You?, we crack open a rare 1936 Masonic journal to uncover the tragic tale of a 13th-century alchemist who sacrificed everything to brew the elixir of physical immortality…
Robert JohnsonHost
This week, we are going to get into our time machines, and we're going to travel back to a place where the lines between the cradle of early science and the absolute fringe of high strangeness blur into a single intoxicating reality.
You see, in the infancy of our physical sciences, long before the laws of thermodynamics were packaged into a neat textbook definition, daring pioneers looked out at the boundless universe.
And in that wide-eyed age of romanticism, men dreamed of a medicine, a literal draft that they could strip away the infirmities of the human limiter, renew youth, and forge an earthly immortality.
It's a tale retold by past master J. Ray Shute that centers around a brilliant 13th century cavalier, a grandmaster of the palace named Raymond Lully, and a supernatural, irresistible fixation that transformed a Don Juan into an alchemist searching for the grand secrets of everlasting being.
Is it performance? Is it magic in a world that often feels cold, bare, and rigid? Well, sit back, swish your wine if you have it, and listen to the tale of the Great Elixir.
In the infancy of physical science, when the possibilities of knowledge were just being opened out by daring pioneers, when the prospect on every side appeared so boundless that no undertaking was thought beyond accomplishment, men dreamed, as we know, of an elixir which should invest them with an earthly immortality of a medical draft which should heal all diseases and renew youth.
Others aspired to the possession of a method for the multiplication of gold and silver, and the conversion of base metals into these precious substances.
Lives innumerable, talents of no common kind were expended in experiments and investigations which had these objects in view.
And wild as such quests may seem, much was incidentally discovered which proved valuable to later and more sober science.
There were some, however, who pretended to have attained the great secrets of wealth, youth, and everlasting being, and a multitude of marvelous legends collected in the popular mind around these extraordinary claimants.
Spreading over a large part of Europe, borrowing additional glamour, the natural magic of medicine, and chemical wonders, most of them ultimately passed from the plastic form of tradition into a concrete literary shape, and have been preserved in old books.
A cavalier of distinguished appearance and richly dressed who was passing at the time in the street, stopping as if thunderstruck.
She entered the church, quickly disappearing in the shadow of the great porch.
The cavalier, quite unconscious of what he did, spurred his horse and rode after her into the midst of the affrighted worshipers.
He was the Signor Raymond Lully, seneschal of the Isles of the Grand Master of the Palace.
This week, we are going to get into our time machines, and we're going to travel back to a place where the lines between the cradle of early science and the absolute fringe of high strangeness blur into a single intoxicating reality.
You see, in the infancy of our physical sciences, long before the laws of thermodynamics were packaged into a neat textbook definition, daring pioneers looked out at the boundless universe.
And in that wide-eyed age of romanticism, men dreamed of a medicine, a literal draft that they could strip away the infirmities of the human limiter, renew youth, and forge an earthly immortality.
It's a tale retold by past master J. Ray Shute that centers around a brilliant 13th century cavalier, a grandmaster of the palace named Raymond Lully, and a supernatural, irresistible fixation that transformed a Don Juan into an alchemist searching for the grand secrets of everlasting being.
Is it performance? Is it magic in a world that often feels cold, bare, and rigid? Well, sit back, swish your wine if you have it, and listen to the tale of the Great Elixir.
In the infancy of physical science, when the possibilities of knowledge were just being opened out by daring pioneers, when the prospect on every side appeared so boundless that no undertaking was thought beyond accomplishment, men dreamed, as we know, of an elixir which should invest them with an earthly immortality of a medical draft which should heal all diseases and renew youth.
Others aspired to the possession of a method for the multiplication of gold and silver, and the conversion of base metals into these precious substances.
Lives innumerable, talents of no common kind were expended in experiments and investigations which had these objects in view.
And wild as such quests may seem, much was incidentally discovered which proved valuable to later and more sober science.
There were some, however, who pretended to have attained the great secrets of wealth, youth, and everlasting being, and a multitude of marvelous legends collected in the popular mind around these extraordinary claimants.
Spreading over a large part of Europe, borrowing additional glamour, the natural magic of medicine, and chemical wonders, most of them ultimately passed from the plastic form of tradition into a concrete literary shape, and have been preserved in old books.
A cavalier of distinguished appearance and richly dressed who was passing at the time in the street, stopping as if thunderstruck.
She entered the church, quickly disappearing in the shadow of the great porch.
The cavalier, quite unconscious of what he did, spurred his horse and rode after her into the midst of the affrighted worshipers.
He was the Signor Raymond Lully, seneschal of the Isles of the Grand Master of the Palace.
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