Yarker, John. English Freemason, mystic and the­osophist, born 1833, died 1913. His chief Masonic connections were at Manchester but he concerned himself more or less with Freemasonry and various cults all over the world, his ideas being correspond­ingly scattered, fugitive, and vague. He was made a Mason in Integrity Lodge No. 189 (163) in 1854 and began writing in 1858 with an article on Military Masons in the Freemasons’ Magazine and Masonic Mirror. Such simple subject matter was finally ex­hausted and Yarker became an adept of various cults. In 1872, he published Notes on the Scientific and Religious Mysteries of Antiquity; The Gnosis and Secret Schools of the Middle Ages; Modern Rosicrucianism, and the various Rites and Degrees of Free and Accepted Masonry. In 1881, he published Manual of Degrees of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry, Issued by the Sovereign Sanctuary 33rd Degree in and for Great Britain and Ireland. In 1909, he published at Belfast, Arcane Schools: A Review of their Origin and Antiquity with a General History of Freemasonry and its Relation to the Theosophic, Scientific and Philosophical Mysteries. He also published Notes on the Temple and St. John, and other writings. The above titles sufficiently show the trend of Yarker’s thinking and his entry rather late into a field that had already been thoroughly exploited. Such subjects had ceased to be sensational, so that Yarker was not widely known or read outside of Britain. At approximately the height of his career, he became a promoter of the so-called Ancient and Primitive Rite, as indicated by his work of 1881 cited above, that being no more than a hopeless attempt to revive the Rite of Memphis. (See RITES II, ANTIENT AND PRIMITIVE.) From that time, Yarker was re­garded as more and more a charlatan and less and less a Freemason.