“Building, or creating, is the centerpiece of Freemasonry, and it was said for generations that the origin of the fraternity was to be found in the medieval building guilds. Oral traditions state that Freemasons, or their predecessors, were said to have possessed some occult secret carried back from Jerusalem or elsewhere and encapsulated it into the iconography of the great Gothic cathedrals. This theme was particularly expounded upon by the mysterious twentieth century French alchemist Fulcanelli in The Mystery of the Cathedrals, wherein he states that the entire alchemical corpus can be found in the stonework of cathedrals such as Notre Dame and Chartres.” - The Path of Freemasonry, Mark Stavish
“Not so long ago, architecture was typically the highest and most complete artistic expression of a sophisticated civilization. It provided the framework within which the other arts forms manifested. It was where the lion’s share of any given society’s creativity was directed; the architecture expressed and enshrined the soul. In fact, if we had no written history at all, we would be able to get a very good idea of the living essence of any given civilization simply by looking closely at where its creative energy is expended: Ancient Egypt’s creative energy went into its temples, pyramids, and tombs; Rome’s went into its roads, massive civic projects, and coliseums; our today goes into an elaborate missile defense system and disposable products designed to feed our materialistic, consumer-driven culture.” - John Anthony West, in the foreword to The Return of Sacred Architecture: The Golden Ratio and the End of Modernism by Herbert Bangs