Masons & Freemasons

Secret Societies

Progressive Steps / Degrees IV through XXXIII - part 2 of 2

XXIII CHIEF OF THE TABERNACEE:

"Among most of the Ancient Nations there was, in addition to their public worship, a private one styled the Mysteries; to which those only were admitted who had been prepared by certain ceremonies called initiations.

"The most widely disseminated of the ancient worships were those of Isis, Orpheus, Dionusos, Ceres and Mithras. Many barbarous nations received the knowledge of the Mysteries in honor of these divinities from the Egyptians, before they arrived in Greece, and even in the British Isles the Druids celebrated those of Dionusos, learned by them from the Egyptians.

"The Mysteries of Eleusis, celebrated at Athens in honor of Ceres, swallowed up, as it were all the others. All the neighboring nations neglected their own, to celebrate those of Eleusis, and in a little while all Greece and Asia Minor were filled with the Initiates. They spread into the Roman Empire, and even beyond its limits, those holy and august Eleusinian Mysteries,' said Cicero, 'in which the people of the remotest lands are initiated.' Zosimus says that they embraced the whole human race; and Aristides termed them the common temple of the whole world."

XXIV PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE:

"Symbols were the almost universal language of ancient theology. They were the most obvious method of instruction; for, like nature herself, they addressed the understanding through the eye; and the most ancient expressions denoting communication of religious knowlge, signify ocular exhibition. The first teachers of mankind borrowed this method of instruction; and it comprised an endless store of pregnant hieroglyphics. These lessons of the olden time were b riddles of the Sphynx, tempting the curious by their quaintness but involving the personal risk of the adventurous interpreter. 'The Gods themselves,' it was said, 'disclose their intentions to the wise, but fools their teaching is unintelligible;' and the King of the Delphic Oracle was said not to declare, not on the other hand to conceal; but emphatically to 'intimate or signify.'

The Ancient Sages, both barbarian and Greek, involved their meaning in similar indirections and enigmas; their lessons were conveyed either in viable symbols or in those 'parables and dark sayings of old,' which the Israelites considered it a sacred duty to wn unchanged to successive generations."

XXV KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT:

"This Degree is both philosophical and moral. While the necessity of reformation as well as reyentance, as a [unk] obtaining mercy and forgiveness, it is also devoted to an exhibit of the symbols of Masonry; and especially to those which connected with that ancient and universal legend, of which the Om Abi is but a variation; that legend which, representing order or a death, and a restoration of life, by a drama in which Osiris, Isis and Horus, Atys and Cybele, Adonis and Venus, Cabiri, Dionusos, and many another representative of th~e all passive Powers of Nature, taught the Initiates in the Mystery, the rule of Evil and Darkness is but temporary, and that and Good will be eternal."

XXVI PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN:

"While you were veiled [n darkness, you heard repeated Voice of the Great Past its most ancient doctrines. None right to object, if the Christian Mason sees foreshadowed in Sosiosch, in Mithras and Osiris, the Divine Word that believes, became Man, and died upon the cross to redeem the race. Nor can he object if others see reproduced, in the Words of beloved Disciple, that that was in the beginning with God, a God, and by Whom eversthing was made, only the Logos and the Word or Uttered Thought or first Emanation of the Perfect Reason of the Great, Silent, Supreme, Uncreated believed in and adored by all.

"We do not undervalue the importance of any Truth. When no word that can be deemed irreverent by any one of another. We do not tell the Moslem that it is only important for one to believe that there is but one God, and wholly unessential Mahomet was His prophet. We do not tell the Hebrew that Messiah whom he expects was born in Bethlehem nearly two thousand years ago; and that he is a heretic because he will believe. And as little do we tell the sincere Christian that his Nazareth was but a man like us, or His history but a revival of an older legend. To do either is beyond our jurisditive Masonry, of no one age, belongs to all time; of no one it finds its great truths in all.

"To every Mason, there is a God; One, Supreme, Infinite, Wisdom, Foresight, Justice, and Benevolence; Creator, Composer, and Preserver of all things. How, or by what intemediate He creates and acts and in what way He unfolds and manifestation of self, Masonry leaves to creeds and Religions to inquire.

"To every Mason, the soul of man is immortal. Whether [unk]anates from and will return to God, and what its continued of existence hereafter, each judges for himself. Masonry was made to settle that.

"To every Mason, Wisdom or Intelligence, Force, or Strenght, Harmony, or Fitness and Beauty, are the Trinity of the attributes of God."

XXVII KNIGHT COMMANDER OF THE TEMPLE:

"This is the first of the really Chivalric Degrees of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite. It occupies this place in the Calendar of Degrees between the 26th and the last of the Philosophical Degrees in order, by breaking the continuity of these, to relieve what otherwise become wearisome; and also to remind you that when engaged with the speculations and abstractions of philosophical creeds, the Mason is also to continue engaged in the active work of this great warfare of life. He is not only a Moralist and Philosopher, but a Soldier, the Successor of those Knights of M[unk] the Age, who, while they wore the Cross, also wielded the Sword were the Soldiers of Honor, Loyalty, and Duty.

"Times change, and circumstances; but Virtue and Duty repeat the same. The Evils to be warred against but take another slave and are developed in a different form.

"There is the same need now of truth and loyalty as in the da[unk] Frederick Barbarossa."

"The characters, religious and military, attention to the sick and wounded in the Hospital, and war against the Infidel in the field, are no longer blended; but the same duties, to be performed in another shape, continue to exist and to environ us all."

XXVIII KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT:

"God is the author of everything that existeth; the Eternal, the Supreme, the Living, and Awful Being; from Whom nothing in the Universe is hidden. Make of Him no idols and visible images; but rather worship him in the deep solitudes of sequestered forests; for He is invisible, and fills the Universe as its soul, and liveth not in any Temple!

"Light and Darkness are the World's Eternal ways. God is the principle of everything that exists, and the Father of all Beings. He is eternal, immovable, and Self-Existent. There are no bounds to his power. At one glance He sees the Past, the Present, and the Future; and the procession of the builders of the Pyramids, with us and our remotest Descendants, is now passing before Him. He reads our thoughts before they are known to ourselves. He rules the movements of the Universe, and all events and resolutions are the creatures of His will. For He is the Infinite Mind and Supreme Intelligence."

XXIX GRAND SCOTTISH KNIGHT OF ST. ANDREW:

"A MIRACULOUS tradition, something like that connected with the laboarum of Constantine, hallows the Ancient Cross of St. Andrew. Hungus, who in the ninth century reigned over the Picts in Scotland, is said to have seen in a vision, on the night before a battle, the Apostle Saint Andrew, who promised him the victory; and for an assured token thereof, he told him that there should appear over the Pictish host, in the air, such a fashioned cross in the air, such a fashioned cross as he had suffered upon. Hungus, awakened, looking up at the sky, saw the promised cross, as did all of both armies; and Hungus and the Picts, after rendering thanks to the Apostle for their Yictory, and making their offerings with humble devotion, vowed that from thenceforth, as well they as their posterity, in time of war, would wear a cross of St. Andrew for their badge and cognizance.

"John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, says that this cross appeared to Achaius, King of the Scots, and Hungus, King of the Picts, the night before the battle was fought between them and Athelstane King of England, as they were on their knees at prayer.

"Every cross of Knighthood is a symbol of the nine qualities of a Knight of St. Andrew of Scotland; for every order of chivalry required of its votaries the same virtues and the same excellencies.

"Humility, Patience, and Self-denial are the three essential qualities of a Knight of St. Andrew of Scotland. The Cross, sanctified by the blood of the holy ones who have died upon it; the Cross, which Jesus of Nazareth bore, fainting, along the streets of Jerusalem and up to Calvary, upon which He cried, 'Not My will, O Father! but Thine be done,' is an unmistakable and eloquent symbol of these three virtues. He suffered upon it, because He consorted with and taught the poor and lowly, and found His disciples among the fishermen of Galilee and the despised publicans. His life was one of Humility, Patience, and Self-denial."

XXX KNIGHT KADOSH:

We often profit more by our enemies than by our friends. "We Support ourselves only on that which resists," and owe our success to opposition. The best friends of Masonry in America were the Anti-Masons of 1826, and at the same time they were its worst enemies. Men are but the automata of Providence, and it uses the demagogue, the fanatic, and the knave, a common trinity in Republics, as its tools and instruments to erect that of which they do not dream, and which they imagine themselves commissioned to prevent.

"The Anti-Masons, traitors and perjurers some, and some mere political knaves, purified Masonry by persecution, and so proved to be its benefactors for that which is persecuted, grows. To them its present popularity is due, the cheapening of its Degrees, the invasion of its Lodges, that are no longer Sanctuaries, by the multitude; its pomp and pageantry and overdone display.

"An hundred years ago it had become known that the [unk] the Templars under a veil, and therefore the Degree was proscribed and, ceasing to be worked, became a mere brief and formal ceremony, under another name. Now, from the tomb in which after his murders he rotted, Clement the Fifth howls against the successors of his victims, in the Allocution of Pio Nono against the Free Masons. The ghosts of the dead Templars haunt the Vatican and disturb the slumbers of the paralyzed Papacy, which dreading the dead, shrieks out its excommumcations and impotent anathemas against the living. It is a declaration of war, and was needed to arouse apathy and inertness to action.

"An enemy of the Templars shall tell us the secret of this Papal hostility against an order that has existed for centuries in despite of its anathemas, and has its Sanctuaries and Asyla even in Rome.

"It will be easy, as we read, to separate the false from the true, the audacious conjectures from the simple facts."

XXXI GRAND INSPECTOR INQUISITOR COMMANDER:

(Inspector Inquisitor)

"To hear patiently, to weigh deliberately and dispassionately, and to decide impartially;Ñ these are the chief duties of a Judge. Afte the lessons you have received, I need not further enlarge upon them. You will be ever eloquently reminded of them by the furniture upon our Altar, and the decorations of the Tribunal.

"The Holy Bible will remind you of your obligation; and that as you judge here below, so you will be yourself judged hereafter, by One who has not to submit, like an earthly judge, to the sadn necessity of inferring the motives, intentions, and purposes of men (of which all crime essentially consists) from the uncertain and offer unsafe testimony of their acts and words; as men in thick darkness grope their way, with hands outstretched before them: but before Whom every thought, feeling, impulse, and intention of every soul that now is, or ever was, or ever will be on earth is and ever will be through the whole infinite duration of eternity, present and visible."

XXXII SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET:

(Master of Royal Secret)

"The Occult Science of the Ancient Magi was concealed under the shadows of the Ancient Mysteries: it was imperfectly revealed or rather disfigured by the Gnostics: it is guessed at under the obscurities that cover the pretended crimes of the Templars; and it found enveloped in enigmas that seem impenetrable, in the Rites of the Highest Masonry.

"Magism was the Science of Abraham and Orpheus, of Confucius and Zoroaster. It was the dogmas of this Science that were engraved on the tables of stone by Hanoch and Trismegistur. Moses purlfied and re-veiled them for that is the meaning of the word reveal. He recovered them with a new veil, when he made of the Holy Kabalah the exclusive heritage of the people of Israel, and the inviolable Secret of its priests. The Mysteries of Thebes and Eleusis preserved among the nations some symbols of it, already altered, and the mysterious key whereof was lost among the instruments of an ever growing superstition. Jerusalem, the murderess of her prophets and so often prostituted to the false gods of the Syrians and Babylonians, had at length in its turn lost the Holy Word, when Prophet announced to the Magi by the consecrated Star of Initiation, came to rend asunder the worn veil of the old Temple, in order to give the Church a new tissue of legends and symbols, that still and ever conceals from the Profane, and ever preserves to the Elect the same truths."

XXXIII KNIGHTS COMMANDER COURT OF HONOR:

This is a Rank and Decoration in recognition of services to the RITE. 33 is a conferred degree. The last in the SCOTTISH RITE.