WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE ROYAL ARCH? Revd. Neville Barker Cryer, Lewis Masonic, Hersham, 2002. Paperback, 104 pages, £9.99. ISBN 0-85318-227-2.

For many Royal Arch Companions the ceremony appears a blend of several ancient legends with curious features which remain unexplained and, seemingly, unnecessary. Why, for example, do we speak of the Royal "Arch" when the ceremony clearly concerns a vault?
    Happily, as a result of this book, we need remain in ignorance for no longer. The Revd. Neville Barker Cryer is not a man who will let an apparently enigmatic or anomalous assertion rest un-researched for long. His book is a collection of ten lectures which he has presented to Royal Arch Chapters addressing curiosities of the ceremony. And it is fascinating.
    That there are anomalies in the ceremony is not in doubt. Most arose as a result of the new ceremony approved in 1834 by the Duke of Sussex (Grand Master, United Grand Lodge of England, 1813-1843). This was a compromise solution and involved the removal or alteration of significant elements of the earlier ceremony worked by the "Antients" not the "Moderns" Grand Lodges. At the union of the two in 1813 the matter needed resolving.
    Is the Royal Arch really the supreme Degree? The Revd. Cryer explains: the three Degrees of Craft Masonry involve a symbolic journey through the three courts of King Solomon’s Temple; the Royal Arch involves the symbolic entrance into the Holy of Holies wherein is discovered a "trio of Sacred Rulers whose union alone was the source of the true name and word of God".
    The book is written easily without diminishing its profundity. There is also much to glean "between the lines" leading to this reviewer, at least, often having to stop reading to ponder the implications. Reading the book leads one to lament the splitting off from the Craft Degree system of the Mark, Excellent Master and Super Excellent Master (the veils) Degrees together with the hope that these Degrees might be brought back into a unified and progressive Degree system (which would have seven stages) culminating in the Royal Arch.
    Despite its apparently simple structure, this is an important book containing the distillation of years of research and leads the reader to insight, understanding, and an increased enjoyment of the ceremony. Everyone in, or interested in, the Royal Arch should have a copy.
    Michael Baigent