THE LECTURES OF THE THREE DEGREES IN CRAFT MASONRY Emulation Lodge of Improvement, Lewis Masonic, 1994. Hardback, 208 pages, £13.

Freemasons who have been exalted into the Holy Royal Arch will be acquainted with the small amount of ritual which is carried out at the Festive Board. What they may not readily appreciate is that this is the remaining vestige of a very old practice of working educational lectures at the dining table. Certainly in the early years of the nineteenth century instruction of the candidate (as opposed to the conferring of degrees) took place in this way, by means of a system of catechisms, where the candidate had to commit to memory passages, some of which derived from the degree ritual itself, some containing moral and philosophical concepts issuing from that ritual. Here, many matters briefly passed over in the degree itself, were expanded and illustrated, so that these lectures became the cornerstone of a newly-made mason’s progress. It seems strange that we make, pass and raise masons without any work being required of them as qualification for the next. ‘You are now enabled to extend your researches into the hidden mysteries of nature and science’ thus becomes an empty invitation. Our candidate may be forgiven for wondering about the words
    ‘ . . . you were led, in the second degree, to contemplate the intellectual faculty’.
    This little book contains three lectures, regularly worked in London at the Emulation Lodge of Improvement, which derive from William Preston’s work at the end of the eighteenth century and demonstrated by the Grand Stewards Lodge at its public nights at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Many of the sections are pure degree ritual word for word, but many are crucial to our understanding. We learn of the importance of geometry, ‘the fifth science on which Masonry is founded’. We learn of the significance of Jacob’s ladder, of the relevance of the six periods of the Creation, of the true import of the Five Noble Orders of Architecture. Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence and Justice cease to be empty words. The movable and immovable jewels are restored to their rightful place in our understanding of Masonry and we are given a glimpse of what divinity can mean to us.
    Julian Rees