En: Anno Lucis

Anno Lucis

Source: Phoenixmasonry

The Masonic calendar traditionally dated from 4004 BCE; the creation of the universe, Anno Mundi, as computed by Bishop Ussher in 1650-54 and stated in the margins of older printings of the Authorized King James Bible. This was replaced in Masonic documents by the year of light, Anno Lucis, which dates from 4000 BCE. There is no Masonic significance to either date, other than a desire by early Masonic writers to create as ancient a lineage for Freemasonry as their imaginations would allow.

"Bro. John J. Bond, in his Handy Book of Rules and Tables, to our mind gives a clue to this difference, which we never remember seeing noted elsewhere, as applicable to the subject. 'The birth of our Lord took place in the 28th year of the reign of Augustus; and Dionysius, by reckoning from 727 A.U.C., the year in which the Emperor took the name of Augustus, made the 28th year fall to 754 A.U.C., four years short of the date observed by the early Christians, who reckoning their years of the Emperor from the date of the battle of Actium (723 A.U.C.). to commemorate which the era of the Roman Emperors was founded, made the 28th year of Augustus fall to 750 A.U.C. for the birth of our Lord, or "Anno Christi.'" Kenning's Masonic Cyclopaedia and Handbook of Masonic Archaeology, History and Biography. A.F.A. Woodford, ed. George Kenning, London: 1878. p. 650.