The Ordine Iniziatico dei Cavalieri della Luce (O.I.C.L.) was legally and ritually established on 30 April 1993 under the aegis of the "Grande Oriente Italiano" (G.O.I.). The nine founders, among the best and most experienced members of the Obedience, are all long-time Freemasons. The initiator (already entrusted with the highest duties within the institution) draws his ideals from his unbroken engagement within the world of Tradition (begun in 1970).
 
In the light of its manifest incompatibility with the cultural, ethical and spiritual orientation of the new leadership of the G.O.I. (utterly prey to the deviant principles of profane speculative freemasonry) in 1996 the O.I.C.L. unanimously chose to quit the Obedience. After 185 days of independence, having turned down the pressing requests made by all the largest masonic families in Italy, which sought to absorb or co-opt the group, the Order joined the “Serenissima Gran Loggia Nazionale degli A.L.A.M. – Piazza del Gesù”, headed by Grand Master Vincenzo Milone (while preserving its operative and spiritual independence).
 
In 2006, as G.M. Milone had passed away a few years earlier and the new, controversial Grand Master was clearly bent on pursuing anti-traditional aims, barring the access to any genuine initiatory Path, the O.I.C.L. chose to publicly withdraw its membership to the “Serenissima Gran Loggia Nazionale Italiana degli A.L.A.M. - Piazza del Gesù”. For its leading exponents, this meant resigning from the positions that had been assigned to them over the years (that of Honorary Grand Master in the case of the First Knight of the Order, and that Dignitaries of the Grand Lodge in the case of other O.I.C.L. members).
 
On 4 June 2006, the Ordine Iniziatico dei Cavalieri della Luce unanimously proclaimed its state of Sovereign Autonomy and Independence – both ritually and officially. A few months earlier (on 21 April, the founding day of Rome), “Massoneria Antica Universale” was formally established in Genoa through a notary deed (although it had already been nominally established in 1993). This marked the ultimate rejection and disavowal of any activity or authority linked to profane speculative freemasonry (which was invented from scratch in June 1717 by four English Lodges – mere ghosts or corpses of higher organizations). The latter illegitimately continues to flaunt a pseudo-initiatory character, despite the fact that it has embraced the worst reforms introduced by the Enlightenment and extreme rationalist philosophy, thereby abandoning all its original principles, to the point of inverting its polarity.
 
The O.I.C.L. has clearly distanced itself from all those masonic associations which, in an extremely contradictory manner, feign to carry on hierarchical-symbolical and initiatory rituals (while giving the all-clear to the profession of opposite minor ideologies) and which to this day – according to a narrowly speculative or, worse still, socio-political vision – employ different strategies and suggestions to conceal the genuine vision upheld by initiatory “Brotherhoods”. The dark anti-traditional forces they spawn inevitably lead unaware individuals wrenched from the profane world towards counter-initiation.