PART IV.

ANCIENT AND ACCEPTED SCOTTISH RITE OF FREEMASONRY.

DIVISION XVIII.

SCOTTISH degrees, 4° TO 33°, INCLUSIVE.

History of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry: its Government by Supreme Councils, Consistories, Chapters of Rose Croix, Councils of Princes of Jerusalem, and Lodges of Perfection.

BY JOSIAH H. DRUMMOND, 33°,

Past Sovereign Grand Commander for the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction of the United States of America.

CHAPTER I.

ORIGIN, HISTORY, AND PRESENT STATUS.

Rites and their Signification. The word Rite, in its application to Freemasonry, has come to mean something more than a ceremony, or mode of working. It is now applied to distinctive organizations of a Masonic character, or, more strictly speaking, to the Masonry practised by those organizations, as well as to systems which are assumed to be parts of one whole. Thus we speak of Symbolic Masonry as the Symbolic Rite; Royal Arch Masonry as the Capitular Rite; and Cryptic Masonry as the Cryptic Rite; and we speak of all three together as the "York Rite."

The term "Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite" is applied to that system which was first definitively organized at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1801. Like the Capitular Rite, it is founded upon the Symbolic degrees; its postulants must be Master Masons of the Symbolic Rite in good standing. It

recognizes the first three degrees as the foundation of all higher degrees of whatever system or Rite; and Grand Lodges as the exclusive, supreme governors of those degrees, with the absolute power to fix the status of Master Masons by laws, decisions, and judgments conclusively binding upon all bodies and individuals practising any other Rite.

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Degrees of the Scottish Rite. Its degrees, conferred in a series of subordinate bodies, number from the Fourth to the Thirty-second inclusive. It has an Official degree, the Thirty-third, formerly conferred only upon the members of its Supreme Governing body as a qualification for membership therein. That body in each jurisdiction is composed of a limited number of members entitled to vote and is termed the Supreme Council. The practice has grown up of conferring the Thirty-third degree, as an Honorary degree, upon those who may be deemed to merit it by distinguished services in the Rite or in Freemasonry: those receiving it thereby become Honorary members of the Supreme Council with such rights, powers, and privileges as are fixed by the laws of the particular body to which they are attached. While all Supreme Councils recognize the rank of all Sovereign Grand Inspectors-General of the Thirty-third degree, whether Active or Honorary, they have no powers outside of the jurisdiction in which they receive the rank and continue to reside, except such as may be given to them by the laws of a Supreme Council in whose jurisdiction they subsequently take up their residence. But members of this Rite, of whatever degree, visiting in any jurisdiction, are received with the same honors as those of the same rank and official position in the jurisdiction visited.

Organization. There is not entire uniformity in the organization of the bodies subordinate to the Supreme Councils; in most jurisdictions, the degrees from the Fourth to the Fourteenth inclusive are conferred in “Lodges of Perfection"; the Fifteenth and Sixteenth in "Councils of Jerusalem"; the Sixteenth and Seventeenth in " Chapters of Rose Croix," and the Nineteenth to the Thirty-second, inclusive, in "Consistories of Sublime Princes of the Royal Secret"; in one Jurisdiction the degrees from the Nineteenth to the Thirtieth are conferred in a "Council of Kadosh," and only the Thirty-first and Thirty-second in the Consistory. In some jurisdictions there is a Grand Consistory and in one, a “Council of Deliberation," as governing bodies with limited powers, intermediate between the Supreme Council and the working bodies.

Historic Summary. After the organization of the Grand Lodge of England, in 1717, Masonry soon acquired a high degree of popularity. Degrees, almost numberless, were invented and termed Masonic; there was apparently no governing authority for very many of them, but they were what are now known as "side degrees." In 1754 twenty-five of them (including the three Symbolic degrees) were arranged in a series called the Rite of Perfection; a governing body was apparently formed, but it either died

or changed its name in 1759, for in that year the same series of degrees was under the authority of a body calling itself "Council of the Emperors of the East and West." In 1761 this body commissioned Stephen Morin to introduce the Rite into America; he established bodies in San Domingo and Jamaica, in the latter of which Henry Andrew Francken was admitted; he in turn was commissioned by Morin to establish the Rite in the (now) United States. Francken came to New York, and in 1767 established a Lodge of Perfection in Albany, in that State.

In 1762 the Council of Emperors adopted "Grand Constitutions" (more generally called "the Constitutions of 1762"), a copy of which Francken brought with him; he left a copy with the Lodge of Perfection at Albany and undoubtedly gave out others.

Both Morin and Francken had power, not only to organize bodies of the Rite, but also to appoint Inspectors possessing equal power with themselves. Francken appointed Moses M. Hayes of Massachusetts, two at Albany and perhaps others, as quite a number were appointed, but by whom no record shows, so far as known. A Lodge of Perfection was organized in Philadelphia, in 1781, a part of the record of which has been preserved. The Inspectors, Deputies for different States, held meetings there also. In 1783 a Lodge of Perfection was established in Charleston, South Carolina, by Isaac Da Costa, a Deputy Inspector appointed by Hayes; but its records were destroyed by fire in 1796, and apparently it became extinct. Evidence has recently been discovered that a Lodge of Perfection was established at Baltimore, in 1792, by Henry Wilmans: he was a Prussian and, as no connection has been traced between him and the other Inspectors, some have believed that he brought his authority with him; but as, in 1782, Joseph M. Meyers was Deputy for Maryland (appointed by Hayes), the source of the authority of Wilmans is exceedingly doubtful. Schultz, in his "History of Masonry in Maryland," gives a list of seventy-six members of this lodge. Joseph M. Meyers, on February 20, 1788, established a Council of Princes of Jerusalem at Charleston and on January 13, 1797, a Grand Council of Princes of the Royal Secret was established at the same place under the authority of a body of the same grade at Kingston, in Jamaica.

The Lodges of Perfection at Albany and Philadelphia were in full accord with the Symbolic lodges; they assumed, as a matter of course, that they had no jurisdiction over the Symbolic degrees, and invariably commenced with the Fourth degree: the records of the other two lodges are lost, but, judging from their members, who were active in Symbolic Masonry, the same was true of the Charleston and Baltimore lodges.

The "Constitutions.". Such was the condition of affairs in this country in the closing years of the last century. Early in 1803 a circular, dated December 4, 1802, was published announcing the organization, on May 31, 1801, of a new governing body of a new rite, into which the Rite of Perfection had