Walter Leslie Wilmshurst (22 June 1867 - 10 July 1939) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 author and Freemason

Freemasonry

Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...

. He published four books on English Freemasonry and submitted articles to The Occult Review

The Occult Review

The Occult Review was a British illustrated monthly magazine published between 1905 and 1951 containing articles & correspondence by many notable occultists and authors of the day, including Aleister Crowley, Meredith Starr, Walter Leslie Wilmshurst, Arthur Edward Waite, Franz Hartmann, Florence...

magazine.

Life

Born in Chichester

Chichester

Chichester is a cathedral city in West Sussex, within the historic County of Sussex, South-East England. It has a long history as a settlement; its Roman past and its subsequent importance in Anglo-Saxon times are only its beginnings...

, Wilmshurst was initiated as a Mason in the Huddersfield

Huddersfield

Huddersfield is a large market town within the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England, situated halfway between Leeds and Manchester. It lies north of London, and south of Bradford, the nearest city....

 lodge in 1889, having moved to the town to become a solicitor

Solicitor

Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...

, for a time becoming president of the Huddersfield Law Society. He died in Huddersfield.

Books

• The Meaning of Masonry
• The Ceremony of Initiation
• The Ceremony of Passing
• Notes on Cosmic Consciousness

Articles and papers

• "The Fundamental Philosophic Secrets Within Masonry"
• "The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal"
• "The Mystical Basis of Freemasonry"
• "Reason and Vision"
• "The Working Tools of an Old York Master"
• "Spurious Ecstasy and Ceremonial Magic"