Degrees of exclusivity?

Many masons flock to join the so-called Masonic Orders of Chivalry, keen to give themselves honours, medals, stars, robes, sashes, baldrics, swords and, above all, extravagant titles. My wife started to become a bit sceptical when she discovered that I was not so much a school-teacher or an historian, but in fact had been created a Knight of the Pelican and Eagle and Sovereign Prince Rose Croix of H.R.D.M. She soon became aware that she was married to a Knight of the United Religious, Military and Masonic Orders of The Temple and of St. John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes and Malta, as well as living in the same house as a Knight of the Masonic and Military Order of the Red Cross of Constantine and of the Appendant Orders of the Holy Sepulchre and of St. John the Evangelist. All this and she couldn’t even take the title of Lady! One can see why many people find masons quite absurd. If it is the kit and the titles which matter to some masons, then I can see why. It is rather like kids getting costumes out of the dressing-up box. For adults, what is the point?
    Much more seriously, other masons worry about the whole idea of ‘Degrees of Knighthood’. A distinguished Freemason and a member of all the above orders, Christopher Haffner, in his excellent book, Workman Unashamed - the testimony of a Christian Freemason, writes that the very existence of ‘Christian degrees’ remains in many respects “a denial of a fundamental tenet of Freemasonry: that all good men and true are acceptable as members, irrespective of their specific religious faith”. He has got a point. I am always somewhat embarrassed when I chat to a Jewish friend and fellow mason who is in several of the same degrees with me and ask if he is going to be at KT (Knights Templar) next week - and then remember that he cannot join that order. I suppose he could join the Order of the Secret Monitor with its second degree, the Prince, being in many ways a Degree of Knighthood. The popularity of the OSM may have a lot to do with the fact that it welcomes with open arms of fraternal affection those masons who cannot join the Rose Croix, the Royal Order of Scotland, the Knights Templar or the Red Cross of Constantine by reason of their faith. A great many masons who are not Christians, particularly Jewish brethren, find in this Brotherhood of David and Jonathan a useful way of making a daily advancement in masonic knowledge. But does this justify the Christian orders’ existence within the body of Masonry?

Why Trinitarian Christian Degrees?

Once the Craft was ‘de-Christianised’ following the 1723 Constitutions, there is no doubt that many masons wanted to create masonic systems which championed the Christian Faith. The Royal Order of Scotland makes this clear when the candidate is first received, that the Order was to correct so-called errors and abuses which had crept into the three degrees. Secondly, there is no doubt that many masons wanted not only more elaborate degrees, but also desired to give Freemasonry a link with Ancient Rome. Others desired roots in the romance of the Crusades and, particularly with that order which continues to fascinate so many and to be the catalyst of so many weird and wonderful theories, the Knights Templar.
    Certainly, from the 1730s, a number of degrees with a Christian background appeared in France and gradually spread all over Europe before crossing the Channel to the British Isles where they were often adopted by Royal Arch Chapters and worked under their existing warrants. The ensuing wrangles and eventual creation of the United Grand Lodge of England, as well as the establishment of the current long list of sovereign bodies to administer these other orders is, as they say, history, and I am not going to discuss that aspect here. Suffice it to say that all of these ‘Degrees of Knighthood’ with their long names are relatively modern creations with no claim to be the descendants of the Roman or crusading orders. So what is their point? Is there more to them than dressing up, grand titles and the wish for ancient roots?
    I believe that there is.

In search of the Lost Word

In the ‘Solomonic Degrees’ (see the last issue), a candidate is engaged in an allegorical and symbolic journey, a search for masonic light in the quest for the Lost Word. So also, in the various ‘Degrees of Knighthood’, masons become pilgrims and Christian knights seeking to re-interpret the search for that Word in a Christian sense. When the candidate seeks to be enrolled as a Guardian Knight of the Holy Sepulchre (KHS), he hears the following exchange:

“What art do you profess?”
“Masonry.”
“What edifices do you build?”
“Temples and Tabernacles.”
“Where do you raise them?”
“For want of territory, we build them in our hearts.”

At the reception of a Knight-Companion of the Red Cross of Constantine (RCC), the candidate is asked if he is willing to take up the Cross and follow in the footsteps of the Lamb so as to rebuild in his heart the Temple of God, at other times referred to as the Mystic Temple. As a masonic Knight Templar (KT), one affirms trust in Christ for eternal salvation and seeks admission as a Soldier of the Cross, while as a Knight of Malta (KM), one takes part in a ritual which is clearly concerned with mystical resurrection in a Christian sense. In the 18th Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Rite (RC), the journey is clearest of all as one moves from Solomonic masonry through darkness, avoiding death and other perils, into the light, with perhaps the most important words being spoken in almost complete darkness to the candidate by Raphael: “I am come to conduct you from the depths of darkness and the Valley of the Shadow of Death to the Mansions of Light…whither our Heavenly Sovereign has gone before. Approach and come with me.” It is an offer that many Christian masons rightly wish to take up. This same idea is echoed and succinctly explained in the closing of a Priory of Malta.
    Whilst all masons would acknowledge the universality of Freemasonry and accept that the three degrees of the Craft and the Royal Arch contain all the essential secrets of Masonry, the Christian ‘Degrees of Knighthood’ reflect the need which many Christians feel to interpret those secrets in a Trinitarian sense. The Royal Order of Scotland makes this clear as it seeks to interpret the Temple of Solomon as the mystical temple that is the Body of Christ, as does the 4th Degree of that most exclusive rite, the Holy Order of Knights Beneficent of the Holy City (otherwise known as the Chevaliers Bienfaisant de la Cité Sainte or CBCS for short). The CBCS is unfortunately restricted in this country to the most eminent few of the Great Priory of the Temple and few outside its membership even know of its existence, but in its degree of Perfect Master of St. Andrew, the candidate is shown the allegorical personality of the Master Builder revealed as the risen Christ. Time and circumstances thus restore the genuine secrets of a Master Mason. A pity that most English masons have to go to Belgium to receive this degree. A pity also that even members of the so-called Appendant Orders (KHS and KJE) see them so rarely as they tend to be confirmed but once a year in each province as part of the annual provincial meeting. In many ways, along with the Rose Croix, they are the most significant and esoterically profound of the ‘Degrees of Knighthood’: they point to a time without “toil and blood … the light of the Lord universally diffused, and the world (has) become one holy house of wisdom”(KJE). The Royal Order of Scotland is also relatively small and rather select in its membership and, in addition, its length of ceremonies, doggerel-verse and catechetical form put many off and tend to obscure the message its two degrees contain.

All Roads lead to Rome

In considering those Christian degrees which I have taken (not counting the Mediterranean Pass which leads from KT to Knight of Malta and which does not seem to contain anything of import), there are clearly very many common themes, theological virtues and symbols which closely link them all together and demonstrate that these degrees’ inventors were very much engaged on the same quest. What we have are a variety of different journeys, but ones which all lead to the same discovery and to the fundamental truth of Christianity.
    These degrees have much in common. For many of the orders, one is required to be a Royal Arch Mason, important if the discovery of the Lost Word in a Trinitarian sense is that which is sought. All involve the candidate embarking on a journey, whether he is described as a pilgrim (KT) or a soldier of the Cross (KM and KHS), clad in the clothing of toil and care (RCC). Certainly, there is the idea that the mason seeking admittance to these degrees has only incomplete, pre-Christian knowledge, as with the candidate described as a Knight of the East and West (RC) or, in a ritual commemorating the conversion of the pagan Constantine following a heavenly vision of a cross in the sky, he is seemingly a Knight of Rome (RCC). In the two most similar degrees (KT and RCC), the candidate is given a cross before being entrusted with a sword to enable him to wage spiritual warfare, as written by St Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians VI.10-17, whilst in another he goes forth with a sword similarly described and preceded by the Banner of the Cross so as to subdue the enemies of truth (KHS). Indeed in the Transactions of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge (Vol. 76, 1963), Bro. Pechover, was quite correct when wrote that “the RCC and the KHS are essentially Templar degrees”.

Striking Similarities

In attaining admission to these ‘Degrees of Knighthood’, a candidate may be asked to journey or fight for a symbolic number of years (7 in KT or 33 in RC), to perambulate the room a number of times with esoteric meaning (3 in ROS and 7 in RC) or to travel to different points of the compass seeking after truth (RC and RCC). On his way, he will become aware that this knowledge is either guarded (the Sepulchre in KT, KHS and KJE), will be perilous to discover (the Tower in ROS and the C of D in RC) or is currently lost (KJE). He will need penance, humility and meditation in order to prepare himself (RC, KT and KHS) and on his esoteric journey he will discover and, subsequently, be aided and sustained by theological virtues, such as Faith, Hope and Charity (RC, KHS and ROS), as well as by powers such as Raphael (RC) and the Harbinger (KJE).
    Likewise, the pilgrim will be called upon to possess Temperance, Fortitude and Justice (ROS), as well as Constancy and Prudence (RCC), to exercise Zeal, Piety and Fidelity and to be Loyal, Brave and True (KT), as well as to act in Faith, Unity and Zeal (RCC). In common with other initiatory rites, he will more likely than not be called upon to enter a darkened place (RC, KT and KHS), to go through purification (RCC) and to need to cross obstacles (the bridge in ROS), before ascending into light (the ladder in RC and the Cabinet of Wisdom in ROS). He will have had to obligate himself, such as accepting banishment to “a place of perpetual darkness and silence where the Light of Masonry exists not, and the voice of the True Word is not heard” (RCC), should he break his knightly vows. Refreshment on the journey will be simple (KT) or non-existent, but, having attained what he has sought, our brother may be fortunate to be invited to join in a feast of fraternal affection (RC and KJE). Brethren familiar with the ‘Solomonic Degrees’, such as the Red Cross of Babylon, or with ‘Degrees of Priesthood’, such as The Holy Order of Grand High Priest, (both governed by the Grand Council of the Allied Masonic Degrees) will see many connections here : different entry-points, but similar routes, to masonic understanding.

From Loss to Enlightenment

In those Degrees of Knighthood which are truly initiatory rites, our candidate is finally brought, not merely before a pedestal in the East, but before the altar of God (KT, RC, RCC, KHS and KJE) and it is here that the Lost Word is revealed. Crucially in all these degrees, the Word is of the same Christian import and in some of the degrees is actually the same (KT, ROS and RC). Symbols will be found to be held in common: the rose and the lily being the most striking (RC, KHS, KJE, RCC and KT) with their clear esoteric and biblical significance. Readings from both the prophets of the Old Testament and the writers of the New Testament will be familiar to the candidate. Perhaps most significantly of all, the candidates, sometimes described as being of a symbolic age (RC), seek admission at times of distress and, in achieving what they seek, attain the perfection of Masonry. In the Rose Croix and the Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, the ceremonies commence with startling imagery: the veil of the Temple rent in twain, darkness over the earth, true Light departed, altars thrown down, the Blazing Star eclipsed, the Cubic Stone having poured forth blood and water and the True Word lost in the gloomy mansions of the grave. However, they end with the Word found, the Cubic Stone changed into the Mysterious Rose, the Blazing Star in all its splendour, altars renewed and the Temple rebuilt, the true Light restored, darkness dispersed and the New Commandment to love one another. Truly it has become “the hour of a Perfect Knight-Mason” (RCC).
    This reward is far more important that being dubbed with a sword, being given a new apron or sash and declared a knight, albeit the ritual clothing of the newly admitted is important in itself. The candidates will have taken an important step on their masonic journey. There are, naturally enough, other forms which that journey can take and the so-called Priesthood Rites are of real importance in this masonic progression and are not exclusively for Christian brethren alone. The fourth and final article in this series will explore these ‘Degrees of Priesthood’ before attempting to bring all these ideas together.