Yarker, John

John Yarker (1833 - 1913)

John Yarker (17 April 1833 - 20 March 1913) was an English Freemason, author, and occultist. He was born in Swindale, Shap, Westmorland in the north of England. He moved with his parents to Lancashire and on to Manchester in 1849. he was descended form Reinhold Yarker de Laybourne who flourished in the mid seventeenth century.

[edit] History

He was made a freemason at the age of 21 in the Lodge of Integrity, No. 189, Manchester, on the 25 October 1854, becoming a Master Mason at the beginning of 1855^[1]. Seven years later, in 1862, he demitted (resigned) from Freemasonry.^[2]

In 1872 Yarker established the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry for England and Ireland under the authority of a Patent issued by the American Grand Master of that organization, Harry Seymour. According to Gnostic Bishop Stephan A. Hoeller, Yarker also got involved with the Ordo Templi Orientis and is attributed as the link between this organization and regular Freemasonry. According to Hoeller, Yarker was bestowed with the authority to confer degrees of the Scottish Rite as well as the Rite of Memphis-Misraim.^[3]

[edit] Writings

• The Kneph - (1881–1900) (Official publication of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis-Misraïm)
• The Arcane Schools - 1909
• Masonic Charges and Lectures
• Scientific and Religious Mysteries of Antiquity
• Freemasonry in Modern Times
• Origin and Antiquity of Freemasonry
• Lectures of a Chapter, Senate and Council: According to the Forms of the Antient and Primitive Rite
• The Magian Mysteries
• Masonry and the Crusades
• Modern Rosicrucianism

[edit] References