“So Mote It Be”. The Surprising History. Freemasons? Though often used in modern witchcraft, the phrase originates from the Freemasons, a group with no historical ties to witchcraft. It appears in the Regius Poem, also known as the Halliwell Manuscript, written around 1390—the oldest known document related to the society of stonemasons in England. The ideas in this text later influenced the formation of Freemasonry in the early 1700s. When Gerald Gardner introduced Wicca in the mid-20th century,