Freemasonry: A Very Short Introduction - Andreas Önnerfors 2017

Development and motives of higher degrees
From darkness to light

The narrative of the Hiramic legend obviously has the potential for further progressive elaboration. The degrees described in the following section are historically the first continuations from which all other higher degree systems evolved. Some varieties of third-degree rituals already included the search for and punishment of the perpetrators. This part of the extended legend was isolated and turned into a separate degree (’Maître Elu’ or Elect Master). Solomon elects a number of Master Masons to the task of searching for Hiram, sending them out to find his murderers and avenge the crime committed. Eventually, the content of this vengeance degree, also called Kadosh, was merged with a chivalric and—more specifically—a Templar motif (the Sublime Order of Elect Knights). This degree reveals that the elected masters are in fact the surviving members of the Knights Templar, who had been disbanded as a result of an injustice. In parallel to the vengeance of Hiram, the sublime knights now promise to avenge the death of their innocent grand master, Jacques de Molay, burned at the stake in Paris in March 1314.

However, the Hiramic legend also continued in a different manner. The Temple of Solomon was eventually destroyed. After seventy years of captivity in Babylon, King Cyrus allowed the Israelites to return and to re-build the Temple under the leadership of Zerubbabel. This Biblical episode forms the backdrop to another (fourth) degree of freemasonry, the ’Royal Arch’ or ’Scottish Master’, which overlap in apocryphal and mythical content. In the ritual legend, the Royal Arch initiate is identified with three so-called ’sojourners’ of noble (possibly Kohen) origin, who offer Zerubbabel assistance in re-building the temple. While clearing the temple grounds, they discover pillars and eventually an archway under which a secret vault is located.

Lifting two keystones, one of the sojourners is lowered into the vault with a rope and discovers a scroll. When more sunlight allows it, he also finds a pedestal in the form of an altar ’with certain mystic characters engraven thereupon’ and a veil covering the upper part of the altar. The sojourner lifts the veil and assumes that he now has discovered the ’Sacred and Mysterious Name itself’ (which, according to one reading, was lost with the Babylonian Captivity). The ritual confirms that it is indeed the name of God, to be pronounced by the High Priest on Yom Kippur, and that the candidate is thus initiated into sacerdotal knowledge. Although firmly based on the imaginative world of the Old Testament, there are hints forecasting a Christian reading. In the lodge room of the Royal Arch, the insignia of the twelve tribes of Israel are displayed; among these are four principal banners with four winged creatures: man, lion, ox, and eagle, symbols that were associated with the Four Evangelists. It is also explained that the symbols of the pickaxe, crow, and shovel used during the ritual point to the final judgement.

The earliest known so-called ’Scottish Master’ degrees tell a slightly different story. The candidate is informed that Hiram was in fact a priest. During the ritual, the candidate is purified like a Levite and finally—like a (Kohen) High Priest—admitted to the Sanctum Sanctorum. Asked by the master of the lodge, ’Are you a Scottish Master?’, the candidate replies ’No one prevents me from walking into the Sanctum Sanctorum whenever I wish to’. The setting of the ritual is the destroyed temple, symbolized by two broken columns that form a St Andrew’s cross, beneath which is placed a symbol with four circles and squares. In the next part of the intricate ritual, the candidate is dubbed a knight of St Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland. The mythological legend of the degree is told in a similar fashion to that of the Royal Arch, but with a completely different setting. The search for the lost Master’s Word also forms the centrepiece of the ritual; however, it takes place during the time of the Crusades.

In Jerusalem, the freemasons unite themselves with the Order of St John and together clear up the site of the Old Temple. As in the Royal Arch legend, in the midst of the rubble they find the original location of the Sanctum Sanctorum, with four square and four circular stones, four cups of pure gold, and four pillars of ore. Under the last of the stones, the lost Master’s Word is inscribed. These stones, the legendary account goes on to say, were transported to Scotland after the Crusades. In evolved versions of the Scottish Master’s degree, the chivalric Masons find a vault and from there exhume the coffin of Hiram, which contains a number of items such as the original blueprint of the Temple.

A further development of the Hiramic legend unfolds in so-called Mark Masonry, which was practised for the first time around 1770. In fact, the Mark degree is strictly seen only as a continuation of the Fellow degree, ritualizing the account of 1 Kings (and The Constitutions) and appointing Fellow Masons as overseers of the work, or ’Harodim’. A Mark Mason also chooses his individual masonic mark (referring back to the praxis of medieval masons, which was to carve a symbolic sign into the stones they worked with).

Taken together, the ritual continuations of the Hiramic legend build a bridge from its Old Testament origins straight into the Middle Ages and the Knights Templar mythology in freemasonry. Whereas the Elect Master and Royal Arch can be understood as a religious sequel within the framework of sacred mythology, the Scottish Master and Elect Knights create a link to the secular history of pretended or real orders of medieval knighthood. The underlying narrative pattern is that of progression combined with the promise of potential transformation, ennoblement, and redemption. Higher degrees thus offer refined knowledge in a principally spiritual quest as well as an artificial or substitute mythology and religion (compared to mainstream Catholic or Protestant religion), paired with latent societal activism. With chivalric and sacerdotal elements thus in place, the foundation was laid for the future development of an innumerable variety of higher degrees. A masonic encyclopaedia published in 1961 lists the names of more than a thousand degrees, although most of these are no longer practised.