Every Masonic lodge closes with the same three words: So, Mote It Be. In Great Bridge, Virginia, someone is about to find out what they're really for.
Great Bridge, Virginia, December 1775. William is the best blacksmith left in a village that no longer has the luxury of choosing. Every able man has gone off to fight, and the war everyone swore would never come is standing at the edge of the marsh. He is also, without knowing it yet, about to inherit a brotherhood far older than the one he thinks he's joining.
The Blue Lodge Order is a secret brotherhood as old as Solomon's Temple, sworn to a duty most Freemasons never learn is real: standing watch over the seventy-two spirits bound in the Ars Goetia, hidden inside a book disguised as an ancient palimpsest. When Lord Dunmore marches on Great Bridge, he brings a general's army and something with a demon's patience wearing his face.
William is initiated into a fraternity of ritual, symbol, and blood he never asked to join. Bound by the same words spoken in lodges the world over, So Mote It Be and armed with a blade that remembers more than he does. What follows is a battle fought twice: once with muskets and bayonets on a Virginia bridge that really existed, and once in the older, unseen war between angels, demons, and the men sworn to stand between them.
The Blue Lodge Order is a Masonic historical fantasy for readers who want their Freemasonry, their Revolutionary War history, and their supernatural stakes in the same book. Grounded in the real Battle of Great Bridge, built on authentic Masonic symbolism and ritual language, and driven by a spiritual war hiding in plain sight inside a lodge room.
Written by William J. Pocan - U.S. Army veteran, thirteen-year Freemason, and Past Master of Great Bridge Lodge.
