Scottish Rite Freemasonary
Secret Societies
Scottish Rite Freemasonry - part 1 of 2
A Political Force
(1) Chevalier Andrew Ramsay
"...There was a bitter conflict between England and Scotland
around the turn of the fourteenth century, and from that time Scotland's
cultural orientation shifted from England to the Continent. This change in
perspective is observable in the Scottish architecture of the period - Melrose
Abbey, for example, exhibits much French influence; and it is likely that the
French masons involved would have come with their philosophical as well as their
practical workings." "Decades before the English Grand Lodge was created, many Masons
in Scotland were already known to be helping the Stuarts. These Scottish
loyalists used their lodges as secret meeting places in which to hatch political
intrigues. Pro-Stuart Masonic activity may go as far back as 1660 - the year of
the Stuart Restoration (when the Stuarts took the throne back from the
Puritans). According to some early Masons, the Restoration was largely a Masonic
feat. General Monk, who played such a pivotal role in the Restoration, was
reported to be a Freemason."
Michael "Ramsey was a Scottish mystic who had been hired by James
III to tutor James' two sons in France. Ramsey's goal was to re-establish the
disgraced Templar Knights in Europe. To accomplish this, Ramsey adopted the same
approach used by the Mother Grand Lodge system of London: the resurrected
knights Templar were to be a secret mystical/fraternal society open to men of
varied occupations. The old knightly titles, uniforms, and 'tools of the trade'
were to be used for symbolic, fraternal and ritual purposes within a Masonic
context." Charles Radclyffe, an alleged Grand Master of the Priory of Sion,
presided over the Freemason lodge at which Chevalier Andrew Ramsay (a friend of
Newton- Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
"From its beginnings, which only shortly antedated Ramsay's
intervention in 1736, French Masonry had been patronized by the highest
aristocracy; this may have owed something to the Jacobite Scottish peers who had
been Grand Masters of some early French lodges. The craft was supposed to have
grown from 'operative' stonemasons, but in addressing a noble audience Ramsay
naturally looked for something more dignified than a lineage of humble British
artisans. So he gave Freemasonry a fictitious crusading parentage, suggesting
that some medieval Crusaders had been both stoneworkers and knightly warriors."
"It was Ramsay, in a speech to French Freemasons ['Apology for the Free and
Accepted Masons'], who suggested "that the Freemasons had access to ancient
wisdom which was partly biblical in origin, and connected with the Old Testament
patriarchs and the builders of the Temple, but which also reflected Egyptian and
Greek mysteries, and other hidden secrets of the pagan world....He did not refer
to the Masons of crusading times as a class of humble artisans but as 'religious
and warlike princes who wished to enlighten, edify and build up the living
Temples of the Most High'...The apparent literalness of his earlier reference to
the 'Temple of Solomon' has been dropped in favor of a transparent metaphor for
nobility of character and aims." "It was Ramsay's conceit that the Crusaders were Masons as well as
Templars and that the secret words of Freemasonry originated as the watchwords
of military camps. He said that by the end of the Crusades, several Masonic
lodges had already been built on the European continent. Prince Edward, son of
the English king Henry III, allegedly took pity on the vanquished Christian
armies in Palestine after the last Crusade and brought them back to Britain in
the thirteenth century. In his homeland, according to Ramsay, the prince - who
later reigned as Edward I - established a colony of brothers renaming themselves
Freemasons." "Of the Templars Ramsay did not breathe a word. On the contrary,
he spoke of intimacy between the Crusader Masons and the Knights of St John of
Jerusalem, who were said to have been the occasion of giving the Masonic lodges
the title of 'Lodges of St John'." (2) Jacobite Freemasonry
"The esoteric element was more prominent in the 'Red' Masonry than
in the 'Blue'. But Red or Scottish Masonry can also be seen as a return to more
traditional ideas of hierarchy and social order....But the Scottish higher
degrees meant the implied rejection of at least a part of the ideal of
egalitarianism. The higher grades involved the subordination of the lower, and
also the ignorance on the part of the lower grades of the wisdom enjoyed by the
higher." "To affect their pro-Stuart political aims, the Scottish lodges
changed the Biblical symbolism of the third Blue Degree into political symbolism
to represent the House of Stuart. Ramsey's 'higher' degrees contained additional
symbolism 'revealing' why Freemasons had a duty to help the Stuarts against the
throne of England. Because of this, manly people viewed Scottish Freemasonry as
a clever attempt to lure freemasons away from the Mother Grand Lodge system
which supported the Hanoverian monarchy and turn the new converts into
pro-Stuart Masons. "The Stuarts themselves joined Ramsey's organization. James
III adopted the Templar title 'Chevalier St. George'. His son, Charles Edward,
was initiated into the Order of Knights Templar on Setember 24, 1745, the same
year in which he led a major Jacobite invasion of Scotland. Two years later, on
April 15, 1747, Charles Edward established a masonic 'Scottish Jacobite Chapter'
in the French city of Arras." "We, Charles Edward, King of England, France, Scotland, and
Ireland, and as such Substitute Grand Master of the Chapter of H., known by the
title of Knight of the Eagle and Pelican..." During their stay in France in 1745, the "Young Pretender" Bonnie
Prince Charlie and other Stuarts "had become deeply involved in the
dissemination of Freemasonry. Indeed they are generally regarded as the source
of the particular form of Freemasonry known as 'Scottish Rite'. 'Scottish Rite'
Freemasonry introduced higher degrees than those offered by other Masonic
systems at the time. It promised initiation into greater and more profound
mysteries - mysteries supposedly preserved and handed down in Scotland. It
established more direct connections between Freemasonry and the various
activities - alchemy, Cabalism and Hermetic thought, for instance - which were
regarded as 'Rosecrucian'. And it elaborated not only on the antiquity but also
on the illustrious pedigree of the 'craft'."
"...It did not, like many rites of Freemasonry, consist primarily
of free-thinkers and atheists. On the contrary, it seems to have been deeply
religious and magically oriented - emphasizing a sacred social and political
hierarchy, a divine order, an underlying cosmic plan. And the upper grades or
degrees of this Freemasonry, according to M. Chaumeil [Le Tresor du triangle
d'or] were the lower grades or degrees of the Prieure de Sion." "In the aftermath of the 1745 rebellion, Jacobite Freemasonry as
such, with its specific political orientation and allegiance to the Stuart
bloodline, effectively died out. Variations of it, however, purged of political
content and tempered by the moderation of the Grand Lodge of England, survived.
They survived in part through the so-called 'higher' degrees' offered by such
institutions as Irish Grand Lodge. Most important, however, they survived within
the Strict Observance promulgated by Hund - of which the highest degree was that
of 'Knight Templar'. The Strict Observance was to spread throughout
Europe." (3) The Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite
"The rite in its present form of thirty-three degrees was
reorganized at the end of the eighteenth century by some half dozen Masonic
adventurers at Charleston, South Carolina." The Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite (AASR) "is an appendant body of
Masonry, meaning that it is not part of the Blue Lodge per se, but closely
associated with Masonry. It requires that a man be a Master Mason before joining
the Scottish Rite. The Scottish Rite confers the 4th through 32nd degrees. The
degree work may be, but is not necessarily, completed at one time. Any Master
Mason is eligible to join the Scottish Rite. The degrees of the Scottish Rite
continue the symbolism of the first three Masonic degrees." "The Scottish Rite
awards a special honorary degree, the 33rd, to those it feels has made an
outstanding contribution to Masonry, the community as a whole, and to mankind.
There is no way to 'achieve' this degree or 'take' it, in the sense that one
takes the 4th through 32nd degrees in the Scottish Rite. It is a singular honor,
rarely bestowed, and greatly admired." "Scottish Rite Masonry has almost a million members in America..."
"In one jurisdiction, the Scottish Rite Mason is made a 'Knight Kadosh'. Kadosh
is direct from the Hebrew, and means 'holy'. The 'Holy Knight' of this degree is
the Knight Templar. The story of the final days of Grand Master Jacques de
Molay, along with a brief history of the Templar order, is recounted to the
candidate for the degree. The spirit of the degree is to call upon the initiate
to be aware of, and to resolutely oppose, all forms of personal and religious
injustice." (4) Templarism
"The birthplace of Templarism was Germany, where the egalitarian
and rationalist thrust of Freemasonry was resisted by an old-fashioned and
rank-dominated society, and there was a demand for a version of the Masonic
craft acceptable to conservative doctrine and Gothic taste. During the Seven
Years War a French prisoner in Germany co-operated with a German pastor who went
under the name of Samuel Rosa to concoct a Templar myth to serve the ritual
needs of the Masonic lodges." "According to their story the Grand Masters of the
Order had been in possession of special spiritual illumination deriving from the
Jewish sect of the Essenes. This had passed through the control of the Canons of
the Holy Sepulcher at Jerusalem, and had gone thence to the Order of the Temple.
Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master, was by these story-writers given the
Masonic name of Hiram, which according to Masonic lore had been the name of the
murdered builder of the Temple of Solomon."
"The idea of vengeance to be exacted for a wronged and murdered
magus was embedded in orthodox Masonic lore in the form of the myth of the
murder of the Temple-builder, Hiram, and of the despatch by Solomon of chosen
masters to avenge his death. There was originally no particular political
context for this supposed murder and its atonement, though the paraphernalia of
swords, skeletons, and decapitated dolls which was used in some lodges to
represent the events was already alarming enough."
"The idea of the Masonic 'grades of vengeance' was that certain
enlightened persons, each step in enlightenment being the object of a 'grade',
were formally committed to avenge the sacrilegious murder of the Temple-builder,
Hiram. The thirtieth grade, for example, was that of the 'Knight Kadosch', who
played at being the medieval Justiciar or Chief Justice. If Hiram was to be
identified with Jacques de Molay, certain Masonic Templar knights could be
regarded as pledged to revenge the Order on the French monarchy."
"The most successful organizer of German Templarism, who came for
a time close to controlling the whole apparatus of German Freemasonry, was Karl
Gotthelf von Hund, a substantial landowner in north-east Electoral Saxony. Hund
was very different from the self-seeking charlatans such as Johnson and Rosa; he
was much more of a self-deluded fanatic, said to have gone through life almost
like a sleepwalker. He had begun his Masonic studies in France, and at about the
same time as the invention of the other Templar myths he had produced his own."
"At the summit of Hund's organization stood an authority which could never be
identified, that of the 'Unknown Superiors'. To these mysterious and in fact
non-existent persons Hund demanded complete and unquestioning obedience,
especially as regards the delivery of scientific information about alchemical
operations. Hund appears genuinely to have believed that the Young Pretender was
the Unknown head of his Order, and though, erroneously, that he had met him when
he had himself been 'professed' or initiated in France. In fact, so far as is
known, the Young Pretender was unaware of Hund's existence, and the Comte de
Clermonot in France, to whom Hund also professed obedience, seems to have paid
no more attention to him. As a further extension to the "Scottish Rite", the "Strict
Observance" demanded "an oath of unswerving, unquestioning obedience to the
mysterious 'unknown superiors'. And the basic tenet of the 'Strict Observance'
was that it had descended directly from the Knights Templar, some of whom had
purportedly survived the purge of 1307-14 and perpetuated their Order in
Scotland." "In 1782 [the Duke of] Brunswick decided to solve his doubts by
holding a final Conference or Convent of the Order at Wilhelmsbad, near Hanau in
Hessen. True to its aristocratic origins, the last gathering of the Strict
Observance was a blue-blooded affair. But disillusion and decay were patent. The
successively unveiled mysteries of the Order had yielded nothing but boring
ritual; the alchemists had made no discoveries, the Templar lands would never be
returned. No one expected to identify the long-concealed Unknown Superiors. The
thirst for mystical illumination remained, but hope of quenching it at the
Templar spring was over." (end of part 1)
