‘1764 MM° in November’

     

This sounds like a great day!

I don’t think I’m familiar with the “Book of Hiram.” A ritual exposure, I’ll guess.

I’ll see if Ben mentions it at The ALR on Tuesday.

     

‘1730 Fellow-Craft’s Degree’

     

Thank you for reading The Magpie Mason. Today, we begin our fifteenth year together.

Publicity Lodge 1000 returned from its Summer Refreshment on Monday the twelfth, beginning a new year of Masonic labor. The Magpie Mason was scheduled to present a discussion of Masonic educational value, so, with a Ceremony of Passing on the trestleboard for an upcoming meeting, I chose the Fellow Craft Degree as that topic of conversation. And not just any second degree, but the one printed in 1730 by one Samuel Prichard in his essential ritual exposure Masonry Dissected, newly published by the Masonic Book Club. Masonic rituals, Masonic lodges, Masonic grand lodges, Masonic everythings were very different 300 years ago. All of it was very basic compared to what we have today.

I explained how when Masons think of lodges, we understandably envision the modern lodge room, with its varied furniture, seating arrangement, equipment, décor, etc., but things were primitive in the early eighteenth century when lodges met in tavern dining rooms or in private homes. There were no tall pillars flanking the Inner Door (there was no Inner Door!), and instead the brethren spoke ritually of J and B, explaining their purposes and describing their looks, using language similar enough to what we know today.

I told the lodge I was going to read the ritual of the degree. Read the ritual?! That could take hours! Yet the ritual of that period was very basic as well, consisting of a call-and-response dialog among the Worshipful Master and the brethren (not unlike our current Opening and Closing rituals) that spans only five pages of the MBC edition. The Fellow Craft Degree of 1730 included no elaborate floor work, no lengthy monolog lecture or other ceremonious orations, no hoodwink, nor other elements we today expect. Some of those features already were revealed to the candidate during the “Enter’d ’Prentice’s Degree,” and so went forsaken in the second degree. Anyway, reading the entire “Fellow-Craft’s Degree” ritual required only a couple of minutes. I won’t transcribe it all here, but do recommend to you the new book from the MBC. They will have more copies for sale after the subscription sales have been satisfied. (I saw Lewis Masonic had it listed for sale the other day, but it seems to be gone from their website now.)

Unsurprisingly, the letter G is very significant to the degree. I’ll share this brief passage. It rhymes and is in question-and-answer form. The dialog is between the Master and different brethren in the lodge (not the candidate, who wouldn’t be capable of answering), so you really had to know your ritual because you wouldn’t know which answers you’d be expected to recite on any given evening.

Q. Can you repeat the letter G?

A. I’ll do my endeavor. In the midst of Solomon’s Temple there stands a G, a letter fair to all to read and see, but few there be that understands what means that letter G.

Q. My friend, if you pretend to be of this fraternity, you can forthwith and rightly tell what means that letter G.

A. By sciences are brought to light bodies of various kinds, which do appear to perfect sight, but none but males shall know my mind.

Q. The Right shall.

A. If Worshipful.

Q. Both Right and Worshipful I am, to hail you I have command, that you do forthwith let me know, as I you may understand.

A. By Letters Four [the Word of EA] and Science Five [the fifth science, Geometry] this G aright does stand, in a due art and proportion, you have your answer, friend.

Q. My friend, you answer well, if Right and Free Principles you discover, I’ll change your name from friend, and henceforth call you Brother.

A. The Sciences are well composed of noble structure’s verse, a Point, a Line, and an Outside, but a Solid is the last.

Q. God’s good greeting be to this our happy meeting.

A. And all the Right Worshipful Brothers and Fellows.

Q. Of the Right Worshipful and Holy Lodge of St. John’s.

A. From whence I came.

Q. Greet you, greet you, greet you thrice, heartily well, craving your name.

A. (Candidate gives his name.)

Q. Welcome, Brother, by the grace of God.

     

‘Masonry disrupted’

    

MBC photo

Frontispiece and title page, autographed by Arturo de Hoyos and S. Brent Morris, are ready to go. That’s Harry Carr, as rendered by Travis Simpkins, at left. Carr edited the MBC’s first imprint of Masonry Dissected in the 1970s, and his commentary is updated for this edition.

Masonry Dissected, the 1730 English ritual exposure to be published anew this month by the Masonic Book Club, is delayed, according to an email sent today to us subscribers.

Shortages of both white paper and colored binding materials are disruptive enough, but a ransomware attack on the printing company delayed the job. If you’ve been waiting with anticipation, you may remember yesterday would have been the shipping date but, as Brent Morris explained in today’s email newsletter, the printer now says July 19 sometime in August.

“We haven’t yet decided on the 2023 volume because we want to see the costs of paper, ink, and other materials,” he also said. “As a point of reference, the manufacturing costs today for [last year’s book] are about 70 percent higher than they were in 2021!”

And so it goes.

Click here for some background.

      

‘This mighty Secret’

    

The Masonic Book Club announced today how its second offering to subscribers will be Masonry Dissected, that early ritual exposure from 1730 that gives us the first evidence of a Master’s Degree.

To recap: The MBC is no longer organized for dues-paying members, but instead now publishes books in limited runs predicated on advance sales. Pre-paid orders, at $30 per copy, are being accepted now through February 28. We can expect to receive our books in the mail in June. Those who decline to purchase in advance are to be pitied, and therefore will have a slight chance of obtaining the book at $40 a copy. Don’t be one of those guys.

Samuel Prichard is unknown to history save for the publication of this book, the full title of which is:

Masonry Dissected; being a Universal and Genuine Description Of all its Branches from the Original to this Present Time. As it is deliver’d in the Constituted, Regular Lodges, Both in the City and Country, According to the Several Degrees of Admission; Giving an Impartial Account of their Regular Proceedings in Initiating their New Members in the whole Three Degrees of Masonry, viz. I. Entered ’Prentice; II. Fellow Craft; III. Master. To which is added, The Author’s Vindication of himself. By Samuel Prichard, late member of a Constituted Lodge. London; Printed for J. Wilford, at the Three Flower-de-Luces behind the Chapter-house near St. Paul’s. 1730 (price 6 d).

And that vindication?

If all the Impositions that have appear’d amongst Mankind, none are so ridiculous as the Mystery of Masonry, which has amus’d the World, and caused various Constructions and these Pretences of Secrecy, invalid, has (tho’ not perfectly) been revealed, and the grand Article, viz. the Obligation, has several Times been printed in the Publick Papers, but is entirely genuine in the Daily Journal of Saturday, Aug. 22, 1730, which agrees in its Veracity with that deliver’d in this Pamphlet; and consequently when the Obligation of Secrecy is abrogated, the aforesaid Secret becomes of no Effect, and must be quite extinct; for some Operative Masons (but according to the polite way of Expression, Accepted Masons) made a Visitation from the first and oldest constituted Lodge (according to the Lodge Book in London) to a noted Lodge in this City, and was denied Admittance, because their old Lodge was removed to another House, which, tho’ contradictory to this great Mystery, requires another Constitution, at no less Expense than two Guineas, with an elegant Entertainment, under the Denomination of being put to Charitable uses, which if justly applied, will give great Encomiums to so worthy an Undertaking, but it is very much doubted, and most remarkable to think it will be expended towards the forming another System of Masonry, the old Fabric being so ruinous, that unless repair’d by some occult Mystery, will soon be annihilated.

I was induced to publish this mighty Secret for the public Good at the Request of several Masons, and it will, I hope, give entire Satisfaction, and have its desired Effect in preventing so many credulous Persons being drawn into so pernicious a Society.

Cazart! That guy needed an editor. We today are lucky to have Brent Morris and Arturo de Hoyos, who are reprinting the MBC’s earlier imprint of Masonry Dissected, and augmenting Harry Carr’s commentary.

I’ve always wondered somewhat if the author truly intended to harm the Craft, because what actually happened was our ancient brethren were able to obtain a ritual book for use as a guide. Grand lodges wouldn’t publish such books officially for about another 200 years, so I figure it’s possible that Prichard deserves some credit for promulgating and proliferating the Third Degree. In addition to being reprinted twenty-one times up to 1787, Masonry Dissected also was translated into Dutch, French, and German in the 1730s, when Freemasonry took root across Europe. Unintended consequences? Coincidences? I wonder.

     

‘200-year-old French engravings’

     

While exploring with the Searchers’ Club last night in the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library, I had the chance to see the exhibition of the French antique engravings that everyone is talking about. They hang next to the door, so when you enter the library, turn around and check them out.

These were difficult to photograph. The lighting in the room comes from chandeliers, which is tricky; the engravings are framed behind glass, so please pardon the reflections; and to mitigate reflection, I shot the photos from odd angles while trying to make the best of the available light and not use a flash. I think they look okay.

The text below comes from the explanatory captions accompanying the illustrations.

Since its beginnings, Freemasonry has been labeled by its detractors as a “secret society.” While some of that accusation focuses on the use of Masonic modes of recognition, most of the opponents of Freemasonry also raise questions about what might be happening behind the closed lodge doors during degree ceremonies. For the past three hundred years, foes of the Craft have speculated about the nature of the ritual that has meant so much and continues to mean so much to Masons around the world.

Freemasons living in a free society know that the privacy maintained around lodge work exists for a number of very important, but relatively harmless, reasons. First, the degrees are used to set a state of mind in the candidate that is conducive to the learning of lessons not just on a level of logic, but at a level of emotion. By clouding the degrees in mystery, the candidate approaches the degree ceremony with a pre-existing state of wonder, which intensifies the overall experience, and hopefully establishes the lessons firmly on his conscience.

Second, Masons maintain privacy because of tradition, and frankly, Freemasonry values tradition sometimes just for the sake of tradition. In the case of the ritual, the tradition had long been that the ritual was taught mouth to ear, and not written down, not even in cipher or code. This practice existed to a large extent because of the limitations of literacy in eighteenth century Europe. On the other hand, privacy also existed to maintain the mystique, and thereby the impact, of the ritual. But from early on, probably from the morning after the first Masonic lodge meeting, people have been writing accounts of what they suspected took place during Masonic degree ceremonies.

The practice of “exposing” Masonic ritual developed into a genre of Masonic literature called “exposures.” Masonic exposures gained popularity in the mid eighteenth century, featuring the full texts of lectures, recounted by “genuine and authentic past members” of some Masonic lodge or, later, concordant order. Exposures were often published to discredit Freemasonry, or to serve as documentation for charges of Masonic involvement in political, religious, and social subterfuge. The content of Masonic exposures often included material of dubious accuracy, perhaps to further the agendas of the publishers. For example, an exposure might include a script in which Masons say sacrilegious or treasonous things, intending to embarrass or indict Freemasonry.

Here in America, we are most familiar with the exposure credited to William Morgan from the early nineteenth century, the preparation of which led to his disappearance, and to a problematic time for the Craft. But Morgan’s book, and later versions, borrow liberally from exposures printed across Europe throughout the mid and late eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century.

The Livingston Masonic Library has always included among its thousands of books a substantial collection of Masonic exposures. The contents of exposures are generally of questionable accuracy, partly because of the sensationalist motives of the authors or publishers, but also because of the fact that Masonic rituals vary depending on time and geography. However, exposures are often the only written sources of information about the rituals from centuries past.

The engravings on display represent a series of seven illustrations of a variation that first accompanied Le Catechisme des Francs-Macons, an exposure printed in 1745, credited to French writer Louis Travenol under his alias Leonard Gabanon. The original illustrations in Gabanon’s book depicted the men in the garb of France in the 1740s. Our engravings date from 1809-12, and feature variations in the clothing and manner of dress of the individuals shown.

If you watch cable television, you will be familiar with the style and composition of Gabanon’s illustrations, since they are often used in documentaries exploring the history and symbolism of Freemasonry. The illustrations are provocative, in the sense that they cause Masons to reflect on what degrees might have entailed in Europe more than two hundred years ago. They may cause the general public to be curious and interested about the nature of Masonic ceremonies, just as the same images caused curiosity and interest when published throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We may never know if they are accurate representations of Masonic ceremonies of the eighteenth century. As with many things Masonic, we are left to wonder, question, and interpret, perhaps never to know the “true” answer.