When we turn to the Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite we once again enter a new world in Masonry with its own lands and horizons, its own skies. The historical clue to it is found in the word European; the clue to the interpretation of its Degrees is in the word philosophic. The Scottish Rite in the United States divides the nation into a Northern jurisdiction including the States east of the Mississippi River and north of the Ohio River, and a Southern jurisdiction including all of the other states. The Sovereign Grand Commander of the latter jurisdiction has his seat in Washington, D.C.; of the Northern, in Boston, Massachusetts. The governing Grand Body is a Supreme Council. The two jurisdictions differ from each other only as two Grand Lodges differ. The Rite is as a whole organized in six bodies, but the first of these called the Symbolic Lodge, and containing Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and Master Mason Degrees, is not practiced in the United States or where there are regular Grand Lodges. The Lodge of Perfection includes the Degrees from 4 to 14 inclusive; the Chapter of Rose Croix, from 15 to 18 inclusive; the Council of Kadosh, from 19 to 30 inclusive; the Consistory, includes Degrees 31 and 32; the Supreme Council confers the Thirty-third Degree. The Supreme Council of the Southern jurisdiction is also the Mother Supreme Council of the world, and has been in continuous activity since it was constituted in Charleston, S.C., in 1801 A.D., a date which is to Scottish Rite Masonry what 1717 A.D., is to Ancient Craft Masonry.
When the first Lodges in France were constituted in the decade between 1720 A.D., and 1730 A.D., they worked under warrants from the Mother Grand Lodge at London, but they did not continue to do so for long. France and Britain had been at war, in small wars and large, for centuries (one lasted 100 years) and would continue to be until 1815 A.D., and it therefore did not sit well with French Lodge members to feel that they were subordinate to London. By another decade or two they cast loose from England, and began to set up Lodges of their own, as there was no reason why they should not, provided the Ancient Landmarks were observed, since the Grand Lodge at London had no jurisdiction over France. In Britain the new Speculative Lodges were not a new kind of Freemasonry but a new use of the Ancient Masonry. They grew up in the midst of Operative Masonry, and the first Speculative Lodges either contained many Operative members, or worked alongside Operative Lodges; therefore the Speculative Lodges did constitute a break in Masonic history, but in a form suitable to themselves, they continued to practice the ancient customs and usages, so that the Landmarks of Speculative Masonry were in literal fact ancient Landmarks; the thousands of new men who came into the Craft after 1717 A.D., brought no understanding of Freemasonry with them and they not infrequently tried new experiments which proved unlawful, but in due course they came to understand the Craft because they had the old Craft close at hand to teach them. When the "new men" (non-Operatives) came into Lodges in France after French Lodges had cut their tie with the Grand Lodges in Britain they did not have close-at-hand old Lodges and ancient customs and usages to guide or to restrain them; in consequence they indulged in a large number of experiments, created new Rites (wrote new Degrees out of hand) and at one time they had as many as 150 Degrees in operation. Many of these French Degrees were carried into other European countries; and those countries in turn (as far away as Russia) created new Rites and Degrees of their own. A number of these Degrees were in accord with the Ancient Landmarks; a number of them were legitimate elaborations of elements in the Ritual of the Ancient Craft in Britain, the homeland of Speculative Freemasonry; many were not. To step off the main highway of Masonic history, to have no official relations with the regular Grand Lodges in the English-speaking world, to experiment without restraint, these were among the characteristics of early European Freemasonry.
The widest divergence between French Masonry and the original Speculative Freemasonry in Britain, one which was not to be healed until the early Twentieth Century and then in part only, arose at the point of the aristocracy, and arose in the earliest Lodges in France. The chasm between the French aristocrat and the French commoner was wider and deeper than in any other Christian land, and since the earliest Lodges, most of them, were founded and officered by aristocrats it went against the grain to practice a Freemasonry which had been founded by workingmen, and it went still more against the grain to meet commoners on the level. A body of French Masons fathered and fostered the legend that Freemasonry had been founded by the Crusaders; they created new Degrees around emperors, kings, and princes; they made their Lodges as exclusive as possible; and they did not hesitate to use their Lodges for ecclesiastical and political purposes.
Among the many Rites and Degrees in France a number, as already said, were in conformity with the Ancient Landmarks and at the same time, like the Royal: Arch, were larger or more elaborate developments of that which had long been in the Craft. In 1758 A.D., a Council of Emperors of the East and the West was organized, and it selected twenty-five of the Degrees in a system called The Rite of Perfection. This Council is said to have deputized Stephen Morin to set up Councils in the Western Hemisphere, and he said they gave hire a Deputation dated 1761 A.D. (He exhibited a copy; the original was never seen by any one.) Among the Inspectors appointed by him or by his appointees, were John s1 it( hell and Frederick Dalcho; they established a Supreme Council in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1801 A.D.; which later transferred its seat to Washington, D.C. It was in this latter city, in 1854 that Albert Pike was elected Sovereign Grand Commander, and it was under his administration and under his august leadership, which lasted until his death in 1891 A.D., that the Rite became a Masonic World Power. He reorganized the Rite, purged it of irregularities, revised or rewrote its Degrees, wrote for its use his Morals and Dogma, and, as was said in a eulogy which is so often quoted, "found the Rite in a log-cabin and left it in a marble palace." It was initially from this Mother Supreme Council, and then from both it and the Northern Jurisdiction (1813 A.D.), that regular Supreme Councils throughout the world were authorized. This means that the United States is the home land of one of the five great Rites of the Craft; it also means that the name "Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite" can be properly used only of such Bodies as are recognized by the two American Supreme Councils.
1. The historians of Freemasonry in the United States follow a picture of Masonic origins which has become orthodox-with few exceptions the new historian repeats in his own words the picture already drawn by his predecessors: present day American Freemasonry, so this picture goes, had its origin in the Lodges and Grand Lodges of the Colonial Period; those Bodies in turn had their own origin in Lodges and Grand Lodges in Britain: therefore American Freemasonry is in its origin not. only AngloSaxon but is British Anglo-Saxon. In its general argument this, account of our origins is sound because Speculative Freemasonry was undoubtedly of British origin. But the picture omits one of the five Rites, and therefore ceases to be a true picture; for the Scottish Rite is as integral a part of our Masonic Fraternity as is a Craft Lodge or a Royal Arch Chapter, anti its origins were in Europe! And this is not merely one of those facts which satisfied, only a curious interest; it is a fact of the first importance, and it it is overlooked there can never be either a true or an adequate history or philosophy of the Fraternity. The Anglo-Saxon mind! is a great mind no greater has ever appeared in the world; but there are many other minds in the world, and among these some four or five are its equals the Latin mind, the Norse mind, the Teutonic mind, the Slavic mind, the Chinese mind. The historic, mission of those Degrees which were organized in the Scottish Rite ("Scottish" has no reference to Scotland) was to incorporateinto the Fraternity the Latin, the Teutonic, and the Norse minds. If this had not been done it is doubtful if at any time since Freemasonry ever could have become a World Masonry, just as it is doubtful, and for the same reasons, that the Anglo-Saxon mind could ever become a world mind.
2. The early French Lodges crystallized around the idea of aristocracy an aristocracy in the form of a caste system; in the Revolutionary period this idea was enlarged and generalized to become an aristocracy of thought, learning, talents, abilities. (The central problem of democracy is how to pay men of extraordinary ability their full wages, without granting them undemocratic privileges.) When the Rite of Perfection was transplanted to America this "idea of aristocracy" was further transformed and enlarged into the idea of "the highest to which men can attain," and since this means any man it is a reconciliation of the idea of a kind of aristocracy with democracy. To Albert Pike the highest attainments are the things of the mind, and in his Morals and Dogma the mind of man, as it is in men as thinkers, is the hero throughout his pages. This is the limitation of the Pikean vision, and in a sense it is the limitation of the Scottish Rite, because manifestly there also are "highest attainments" in the fine arts, in righteousness, in religion, and in public life. The greatest man of a people is not always the greatest thinker. There is a Masonry of the Mind, and the Scottish Rite is its prophet, and is the bearer of its message; there is a Masonry of the Heart also, and of the Conscience, and of the Masonic Community. It is only a way of saying that the Scottish Rite is not the whole of Freemasonry; that saying is not iconoclastic because it is another way of saying that Freemasonry without philosophy is unthinkable. Of the Five Masonic Rites, only the Scottish Rite is not democratic in its organization and government. Its supreme governing body, The Supreme Council is, has always been self perpetuating, and the members do not select or have any control over it.
3. That which most strikes the mind of a
Mason or Scottish Rite Mason, is what appears to be the extraordinary
contrast between the Scottish Rite and the Masonry of the Lodges
in Ancient Craft Masonry. That contrast, once a Mason grasps the
whole meaning and history of Freemasonry, vanishes away. A Medieval
Operative Mason at work on a cathedral said to himself; "We
need a large understanding of the arts and sciences to
know how to design and to construct such a building as this; we
must work together in harmony, and to work as a body we need a
Lodge and Rules and regulations; and since we will go elsewhere
to work when this building is completed we must be a Fraternity."
A Scottish Rite Mason, if that Operative could have made his statement
to one, would have replied: "Yes, what you say is true. But
why not go a step farther and ask why the men in this country
wanted a cathedral in the first place?" Men in the world
of work erect buildings, build ships and railways, erect churches,
hospitals, schools, and colleges, work farms, construct factories;
why, in the first place, do men need such things? That question
also must be asked and answered in Freemasonry's philosophy of
work unless that philosophy is incomplete. Men are at work in
religion; why do we need religion? They are at work in government;
why do we need government? They are at work in schools; why do
we need education? Men are at work on farms and in stores and
in factories; why do we need them? The Thirty Degrees conferred
in the five Scottish Rite Bodies are in reality nothing more than
dramatizations or enacted ideas, which are in number possibly
fifty or sixty. These ideas, without exception, are in the region
of these questions. Operative Masonry was an answer to the question,
How have architecture; Scottish Rite Masonry gives an answer to
the question, Why have architecture. The answer to such a question
can be found only by means of thought, and it is because it asks
this "Why" that Scottish Rite Masonry is philosophic
Masonry. Once we see this to be true we find ourselves in possession
of the answer to another question which often perplexes Masons
and Scottish Rite Masons: Why does the Scottish Rite repeat in
versions of its own a number of Degrees already found in Ancient
Craft Masonry, Capitular, Cryptic, and Templar Masonry? It repeats
them, but it does not duplicate them; it repeats them with a difference,
and that differ ence brings out of those Degrees the philosophic
ideas which they contain.
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