ROSE CROIX ESSAYS John Mandleberg, Lewis Masonic, Hersham, 2005. Paperback, 208 pages, £19.99. ISBN 0-85318-246-9.

This is a collection of essays on the Ancient and Accepted Rite. Part One explores the evolution and establishment of the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree; Part Two explores the ‘Rose Croix’ Degree itself.
    No dates are given for the writing of each of the essays and it would seem that some are written rather earlier than the publication date might suggest. The first, ‘The Birth of Higher Degrees,’ for example, appears to have been written before the recent discoveries of the contents of the masonic files held by the KGB and returned to France in 2000. One large text was found in this collection which detailed the foundation of a chivalric masonic ‘Society of Scottish Masters’ or ‘Ordre de Saint-André’ in 1742, and contained their laws, statutes, minutes and membership records as explained by Pierre Mollier in his La Chevalerie Maçonnique (2005). In his essay Mandleberg avoids giving any credence to the idea that the Jacobite exiles in France might have had any links with these ‘Scottish’ higher degrees. I suspect that this position will prove increasingly difficult to maintain in the light of further discoveries. Mandleberg himself admits this in a footnote, stating that his ‘dogmatic statement…may have to be modified’ due to these returned archives. His honesty is commendable, but why was this important data relegated to a footnote and not included in the text and its implications explored further?
    There are a number of interesting essays on the ‘Early High Degrees’ as they developed during the eighteenth century and they provide a very comprehensible description of a field so often rendered over-complicated. One particularly interesting essay, ‘Degrees “Beyond the Craft” in England before the Union in 1813’ is marred only by his repeating the negative attitude which it has become fashionable to place upon Freiherr von Hund, founder of the ‘Strict Observance’ rite: ‘a Freemason, whose antecedents were, to say the least, dubious...his own account of how he had come by his knowledge of the Order is inherently unlikely, if not historically impossible.’
    Quite apart from the gratuitous insult to an honest and well-meaning Freemason, I suspect that this position too will prove difficult to maintain.
    It is a pity that Mandleberg allowed such slippage in his exposition because his essays are fascinating and deserve a wide readership.
    Michael Baigent