The Mystic Tye
The Mystic Tye is a podcast for Freemasons
I intend to curate a environment where brethren and other aspirants can discuss ideas in a civil and productive way. We will not be afraid to tackle controversial or difficult topics, but all discussions will be done in a respectful and understanding manner. With the forbearance exemplified by our ancient brethren we will labour in the quarry together to prepare the stones of our thoughts and actions. All these prepared for the temple not made with hands.
Find updates at www.mystictye.com and https://www.patreon.com/mystictye
The Mystic Tye
Ecossais Masonry and the "Higher" degrees w/Bro. Josef Wages and Bro. Arturo de Hoyos
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Ecossais Masonry and the "Higher" Degrees with Bro. Josef Wages and Bro. Arturo de Hoyos
This is a recording of the opening presentation from Grand Masonic Day 2026, featuring Bro. Josef Wages and Bro. Arturo de Hoyos. These respected Masonic historians ran through an impressive number of slides in record time. We join RWBro. Wes Regan for his introduction.
Bro. Wages is especially well regarded for his work publishing The Secret School of Wisdom, the authentic rituals and doctrines of the Illuminati. He is currently preparing forthcoming volumes on Écossais masonry, documenting the transformation of speculative Freemasonry into a philosophical tradition. He is a member of Plano Lodge 768 and the Scottish Rite Valley of Dallas in the Southern Masonic Jurisdiction, a member of the Society of Blue Friars, a fellow of the Philalethes Society, and a board member of the Scottish Rite Research Society.
Bro. Arturo de Hoyos is Grand Archivist and Grand Historian of the Supreme Council, 33° Southern Jurisdiction, and an executive officer at the House of the Temple in Washington, D.C. He is the author, editor, and translator of more than fifty books and articles, and is considered America's foremost scholar on the history, rituals, and symbolism of Scottish Rite Freemasonry.
In this presentation, Wages and de Hoyos trace the origins of the Élu Parfait degree system from its roots in the Irish wine trade in Bordeaux through the Atlantic networks of ships' captains and merchants who carried French high degrees to the Caribbean and North America. They examine how Stephen Morin's capture at sea in 1744 led to an unlikely chain of Masonic authority, how the original Scots Master degree forked into what became the Royal Arch, and how Laurence Dermott strategically appropriated French high degree material to build the Ancients Grand Lodge system that ultimately won the day in the Union of 1813.
Please forgive the occasional audio issues and edits, as this was recorded at a live event.
Links and resources
- Esotericism in Freemasonry Conference: masonicconferences.com
- RSVP for the upcoming conference: esotericmasonry@gmail.com
- Mystic Tye website and event calendar: mystictye.com
- Patreon (early episodes, extended cuts, artwork, extras): patreon.com/mystictye
Support the show
If this episode resonated with you, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. We are also building a directory of Freemasonic events and publications. If you know of something coming up, send Troy an email at troy@mystictye.com.
Graphics and web hosting by Art Szabo Creative. Theme music by Organist.
Happy to meet, sorry to part, happy to meet again.
Welcome to Mystic Tie. A podcast for Freemasons. I am your host, Troy Sprout. You could find us online at Mystictie.com. You could support us on Patreon at patreon.com slash Mystictie. Email me feedback, guest suggestions, and any other questions. At Troy at Mystictie.com. This is a recording of the opening presentation from Grand Masonic Day 2026, featuring Brother Joseph Wages and Brother Arturo De Hoyos. These respected Masonic historians ran through an impressive number of slides in record time. We joined rightworshipful brother Wes Regan for his introduction.
SPEAKER_04Joseph Wages is especially well regarded for his work publishing The Secret School of Wisdom, The Authentic Rituals and Doctrines of the Illuminati, where he created a full working manual of the rituals and history of the Illuminati Society. He is currently preparing forthcoming books. These might have been out already already. Are they Equise's? This is an old bio, I think. Other works include Equise's Masonry, A History of the High Degrees from Scott's Master to the Order of the Royal Secret, and for uh Rituals of the Gold and Rosy Cross. And Brother Wages combines a breadth of detailed knowledge about Freemasonry with expertise in non-Masonic secret societies that should lend to fascinating discussion wherever he goes. He is a member of Plano Lodge 768 and Scottish Rite Valley of Dallas in the Southern Masonic jurisdiction, and he is a member of the Society of Blue Friars, and a fellow of the Philolathe Society, and a board member of Scottish Rite Research Society. And he has been the editor of several prominent publications over the years and highly regarded as a Masonic researcher and author. We are very happy to have him here today with us. Arturo de Hoyos is grand archivist and grand historian of the Supreme Council, 33rd degree, Southern jurisdiction, and an executive officer at the Scottish Rights Headquarters, the House of the Temple, in Washington, D.C. That is the one with the Sphinxes out in the front for those of you who might not be familiar with it. He is the author, editor, and translator of more than 50 books and articles and considered America's foremost scholar on the history, rituals, and symbolism of Scottish Rite Freemasonry and most other Masonic orders, rites, and systems. He's traveled and lectured extensively on Freemasonry and been featured on numerous television and radio programs, which many of you have probably seen, including The Unexplained with William Shatner, Brad Meltzer's Decoded, NBC Dateline's Secrets of the Lost Symbol, CNN's The Situation Room, ABC Nightly News, and others. Brethren and guests, please welcome to the stage Joseph Wages and Arturo De Hoyos.
SPEAKER_07Well, I have to say that of all the introductions we've received, that was probably the most recent. Joe's gonna do the majority of the talking because you're probably gonna hear more from me afterwards. Uh more than you might want to hear from me. And uh this is uh really uh a bulk of this was uh work that was initiated by Joe. And um, so I'm gonna let him, like I say, just do a majority of it. And then every once in a while I'll throw in some comments from the peanut gallery. Oh. If that's okay, we'll do it like we kind of did in France together. Sounds good. But this is really an exciting topic. Uh Joe and I have a particular interest in the evolution of ritual, all types of Masonic ritual. It doesn't matter whether it's craft or royal art or Scottish Rite or whatever it is. We want to know how things developed and why they did. Nothing developed in a cultural vacuum in Freemasonry. And that's one of the keys to understanding why ritual evolved in the way that it did. And so this is truly an exciting story, is and I'll allude to some of this also in my presentation, hit some of the same points. But this really speaks to not just the nature of Freemasonry in the time in which these degrees developed, but speaks to the way that the world was and the way that people were able to use Freemasonry within the culture, uh, just like we do today. Um, in many regards, Freemasonry has not evolved because Masons have become uh interested in it for many of the same reasons. But if we look backward in time, we can see that they were very clever in making good use of the materials and the resources that were available to them. And sometimes they succeeded beyond what their expectations were. Uh, this is especially true in the case of Stephen Moran, uh, who became one of many of what we call um uh a Masonic entrepreneur, perhaps, uh somebody who, like the creators of the Swedish right and some of these other systems, had far more success than he would have anticipated. So let me step aside, Joan, and we'll let you start and start here.
SPEAKER_01Oh, sounds good, brother. Okay, brethren. So, kind of just to outline this stuff, we're gonna be looking at some of these very, very early rituals. Um, and to just understand the significance of it, like what we're doing is we're putting this together in a volume of series of books. This is the first one on the Alu Parfae, and really it's one of the most influential systems that nobody really knows anything about. And we'll get into why it's influential later on in the talk. The main thing to kind of keep in mind though is that um it's gonna document the transformation from speculative Freemasonry into a philosophical tradition. It's gonna chronicle uh Atlantic Masonic Networks, and it's gonna really reveal like some of the sophisticated organizational structures. So it's a very early system, but we're already seeing like cross-nation like uh collaboration here. And it's really understanding the baseline for getting the uh rite of perfection and what evolves into the Scottish Rite tradition. Um, so really like it what it is, what it's going to do is it's going to establish chronological priority. So we're gonna work from the earliest degrees and work our way through the system so that way it naturally flows, and you can see how these rituals develop. It's also gonna talk about um some of the network uh documentation. We've got a lot of these lodge lists, so now we know who the members are, what their professions were, what they were doing. So it's gonna kind of frame that network. And it's also gonna show like the organizational sophistication of it, not just operating really within a fraternity, but in a larger trade and financial network, right? And we're gonna see theological evolution. Uh it's got, you know, from simple haramic legends to complex Jewish and Christian symbols. And then it also talks about material culture like the regalia and this sort of thing, too. So to understand this, really, we need to talk about the genesis of Bordeaux Masonry. Uh, so Freemasonry in Bordeaux gets established in 1732 under the Premier Grand Lodge of England. They weren't the Lodge Langlais. Um, the Lodge is constituted April 27, 1732, by an Irish sea captain, Martin Kelly. And so the Irish influence here is very important because all of these first lodge members are all Irish and English Masons and they're operating in France in English, uh, and they're all merchants, more or less, right? Uh by August 29, 1740, they're now chartering their first daughter lodge, La Francaise. So if uh Langlaise is the English lodge, this is the French lodge. And so it's a lot of Catholic Jacobites are the members of this one. Um, and then in uh July 2nd, 1744, they have a second daughter lodge they charter called La Parfite Harmonie or the perfect harmony. To understand why this works, though, is like you really need to look at the trade network data, right? So like the Irish wine trade is dominant in Bordeaux, and we can see really what's going on is that they have lower import tariffs in Ireland versus Britain. So we look at London, they import 300 tons in 1740, Ireland does 4,000. In London, it's 1,500 livre per ton. In Ireland, it's 400. So they're they're bringing in lots more volume because they've got, you know, a lower price as the idea. But so really longlays, in this sense, in addition to being set up by the English, it's acting as like a hub of commercial and Masonic activity. So Longlaise it goes from basically like a mother lodge to like a grand lodge, and we see like in the records a linguistic transition. So from 1732 to 43, like I'd mentioned before, the records are in English, meetings are English and Irish, and also French merchants. Uh, what ends up happening though is October 11, 1743, and the larger backstory is the whole Jacobite uprising is happening, right? Um, so uh Louis Bourbon de Combe de Clermont is elected Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of France, and so by June uh of 16, 1743, in anticipation of this, the records are already switched into French. And so they're now working in French, and then all the original English regulations have been translated into French as well. By 1746, it becomes a de facto provincial Grand Lodge. Um and what we see is on the meeting of December 26, 1746, all the local lodges are now sending deputies and they're meeting as a Grand Lodge on St. John's Day with a unified governance structure and constitution. So Marin, this is where he first makes his Masonic appearance that we see in any records at all. Um he shows up on February the 13th as uh a visitor to Longlays. And what's interesting is there's two Marins on this list. So it's Marin and possibly a relative, though it really doesn't say who it is. Um by March the 3rd of 1746, he comes back again with La Francaise, which that's his lodge, um, and they're defending against accusations. Um in July 25th, 1747, he becomes the deputy of the Alu Parfait. And then by June the 30th, 1750, um, he's deputized by his lodge, uh Lafrancaise, along with Brother Chappuy. So if we see in the list up here, I'm not sure if you're able to see that, but um, look in the very middle column, you'll see a Marin, and then just a few down, you'll also see another Marin. So there's two Marins on that first appearance. So really what Marin's doing, though, is he's operating like a dual constitutional framework. So we're seeing uh both English and French authorities working together. Under the English authority, they're doing these symbolic lodges. Um, they're all named the uh perfect harmony or perfect uh parfite harmonie. And when you look on the patents, it gives the geographical coordinates of London as the uh mother lodge. Largely it's just a regular three-degree thing. So what we're seeing is English authority used to establish symbolic lodges, and then the French authority used to us to work these high degrees, and that's largely what's happening. But this authority's enabling like rapid dissemination of French high-degree materials throughout Anglophone Masonic communities is the main theme here. Um, we'd mentioned before about that dual uh constitutional framework. This lodge is a little bit further up the coast, and if you look at the coordinates on here, it's giving it as uh perfect harmony in London, is what it's doing. So, like really when we're talking about here, we're talking about in a Masonic uh both trade and mace Masonic network, and we're looking at like its uh geographical reach. Um, it's in France, Paris, Abbeville, Toulouse, Marseille, Montpierre, and the Caribbean, in uh Martinique, Saint-Domingue. Uh it's got several lodges in Saint-Domingue. Also in North America, there's an Alou Parfait lodge set up in Louisiana in 1752, and there has to be one operating in 1750 in Bristol, roughly about that time, because Marin, he gets uh brought up on accusations in the records. Uh how did they go again, Art?
SPEAKER_07Is that he had uh he they accused him of actually conferring degrees, but he was uh simply acting as the translator.
SPEAKER_01That's right. That's right. And that's how he defends himself in these allegations. But there's records of Marin and these French records working in Bristol in uh in England, so more evidence of the same, really. But um overall though, like when you look at the members of these lists, like Marin is operating like in a network with uh 18 ships captains, and that's really what's spreading this ritual around the world. So uh basically Marin, um, he gets captured in 1744, and like like you were talking about before about these unlikely outcomes that um he translates basically fortune from misfortune into a fortune. That's right.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_07I was just thinking it it reminds me of the Latin phrase, the Felix Culpa, where they they fought like Adam, he fell upward.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And so what what we're talking about is in 1744, he goes from Bordeaux to Martinique on the merchant vessel La Pala, uh, and they stop in Martinique, and while they're reloading the ship, he's able to uh uh hitch another ship over to Antigua, so probably under a different flag, and he's initiated by Scots uh as a Scots master, uh which Art's gonna talk on a little bit more later, uh really the first high degree, and uh he's initiated by Governor William Matthew, and that name William Matthew is going to appear a lot in this stuff as well because he's kind of like the one of the central figures in this network. And what ends up happening is he's captured, he's taken to London, and he receives authority in uh from the from the Grand Lodge in 1745 to set up uh Scots Masonry in Bordeaux. And that's really what is the foundation of the Lou Parfait system. So all these French high degrees, it all rests upon this one unfortunate accident of him being uh captured at sea, but because he's a mason, uh he's treated quite well. And quite.
SPEAKER_07He's introduced to the English grandmaster of the moderns, that's right, who countersigns his patents, which are taken as giving him additional authority.
SPEAKER_01That's right. And then he uses that authority to go and establish um the uh the perfect Scottish Lodge in Bordeaux, which becomes the mother lodge of the Alu Parfait. And so that really um that perfect Scottish Lodge or Parfite Loges de Cos becomes uh the Lodge of Perfection. So that's like the the original like naming of it. So perfect elect or a loup parfait, that's it's the uh first system, is what it is. Okay. And so to kind of look at some of these degrees, maybe you want to talk about them art like what's in the uh set.
SPEAKER_07Well, this is really the the first time that we have uh the degrees laid out uh in what would later become the Rite to Perfection, then the Order of the Royal Secret, and then the Scottish Rite, is that there's an expansion of the material in the degrees following the craft degrees. And this is an early attempt to link the degrees together, and it pretty much sticks. Um it's successful. Uh, although all of the degrees are not conferred, what we think happened was is that even as it is today, uh, where the degrees are divided into bodies, uh, Moran was content to confer this perfect elect degree and that that gave you the authority to cover those other degrees.
SPEAKER_01So really it's like a terminal degree system.
SPEAKER_07It's a terminal degree system.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Okay. So what we're talking about from that Scots master degree, we're gonna transition from a single degree to a degree system. So from one high degree to a high degree system where that original degree now becomes the top degree and allowing the authority to confer all the subordinate degrees underneath it. So we're seeing this organizational strategy um set up roughly about 1746-47. And what what they're doing is they're putting them into a coherent system, um, and the mother lodge for these high degrees is operating out out of Bordeaux. And so, like we have um in what's called the Sharp documents, um, all of this correspondence from its uh, you know, its daughters in the colonies, Louisiana, San Domingue, Martinique, we have the collected correspondence that was sent back to Bordeaux, and that's what all this is based on, all those early communications.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01So um roughly Marin's operating in the Caribbean, like in 1748, he's requesting uh constitutions for uh Saint Jean de Jerusalem Ecossaise in Cap Francais. Um in March 1st of 49, he's co-signing patents from the Alu Parfait to Cap Francais. And then uh in March of 17 uh 52, he's in the position as grand orator working in the Lodge of Perfection in Cap Francais. So he's got he's he's established at this point in time in the most prosperous trade city of all of San Domingo. And by June the 26th of 1757, um, even though he's lost his authority as a as an inspector in 1742 or 1752, he's still working because he's he's basically a Masonic founding father there. He sets up most of the lodges and the high degree systems. So even though he's not the uh the inspector, so to speak, he's setting up uh a Knight of the East chapter and uh a lodge of Knights of the Sun in uh the South Part in La Concorde.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I think that it's interesting that the lodges that he erected had more of an attachment to him than they did authorities far away in France. Aaron Ross Powell That's right.
SPEAKER_01And then so also to keep in mind, too, authorities in France at this point, like there's a grand lodge in Paris, but it's not the only body that's operating. And so what they're doing, instead of picking allegiance in one uh commercial place, they're basically making their own system, is what ends up happening. We also have evidence, too, that the the network's bigger than Marin, though. Like he's a figure in it, but he's not the node. He's he's uh or he's not the hub, he's a node in the system, right? And we have evidence of of this in uh 1752 in New Orleans, there's a lodge Parfite Armoni, that same name again, uh founded by Paul Fuchs and Pierre Caresse. They're members of the Perfect Scottish Lodge in uh Saint-Pierre Martinique, and they end up because they're doing trade, they relocate to Louisiana. Um, and so we see this same dual constitutional pattern. Um the symbolic uh lodge is uh confirmed by uh William Matthew from uh working out of the lodge in St. Eustatius, and then the perfect Scottish Lodge comes from the perfect Scottish Lodge in Martinique, itself, a daughter of Bordeaux. And so what we're seeing is even without Marin, the English Symbolic Lodge and the French high degree lodge system are are being used as a template in other places. And just a little example of that. The uh image on the left there, that is the uh perfect Scottish Lodge uh constitution, and then the uh symbolic lodge constitution, that's in English, although it's rather hard to read. On the right-hand side, um that that's uh the the uh document for that. So as we'd mentioned a moment ago, Marin lost his deputy powers in 1752. We'll dig into that for a second. So it there's really a controversy of the founding of this lodge, St. Mark. So on March 1st of 49, he he he again sets up that perfect Scottish Lodge uh in uh Cop Francais without notifying them, but they look the other way, he's the deputy, it's not a big deal. Um But then Cop Francais now founds a daughter lodge uh at St. Mark. So we're talking maybe 60, 70 kilometers to the west is this city. Um not I'm not I'm sorry about that. Uh what town was it? It was Portuguese, that was the one. That's right. Maybe I wrote it down wrong. Well, anyways, it was supposed to be Por de Pay there. But uh uh Cop Francais ends up deputizing Marin to act on their behalf, and they send notice of this to the Alu Parfay, and that's what ends up making him lose his powers because he's the deputy of the perfect Scottish Lodge of Bordeaux, and now he's being deputized by the local symbolic lodge to act as their representative to establish the same in the uh a lodge the next town over. And that's what ends up uh causing him to lose his deputy powers, but definitely not his influence. Okay, and so they say at the end there on January 6, 53, wrote to Brother Marin that we would recognize this lodge after it's been constituted by the respectable brother Foya of our of our network. And interestingly enough, uh his replacement, Lenelaire de Foya, he really doesn't do very much and he delegates his powers to Bertrand Bertome, who is also another Marin acolyte. So what we're really talking about then is influence beyond official authority, and he's he's basically enabling them to work like in the 1757 letter that he's saying, Well, hey, look, I allowed this lodge at La Concorde to uh to work on this like that. And here's the reason why, because you made me the deputy on July 25th, 1747, even though he's not the deputy anymore. But more importantly, because I set up this lodge based on the authority of London on the 25th of June, 1745, and that's what it is. So it's hard like when you found the system to be brought to task, isn't it? It is. And so he he loses his uh deputy status and uh ends up still working after that, and they they end up establishing a few more lodges. So what ends up happening though, like in the larger Caribbean, though, is we have the Seven Years' War, or like as they call it in the US, the French and Indian War. Um, really colonial masonry is under siege. So when we're at a time of war like that, people aren't really focusing too much on the lodges and stuff like that. They have a little bit more to worry about. And then this is also true here. So we see a total disruption of like uh the Atlantic trade networks. Um, on the English side, I found the records where Marin was interdicted in 1745 and 1762. Um, I had to go through about a Almost 1900 records. So in those records that I went to, there's roughly 1,875 ships that the English seized and they took all the cargo, sold all the things off. The point is that it's disrupted the Masonic activity so much in San Domingue that no lodges are established for roughly a uh a decade period. And it's also a complete disruption of the flow of goods between the mother countries and the colonies. This and, you know, but also communication issues leads to the decline of the Alupar phase. So by 1760, there's no more correspondence from France. Uh Louisiana still writes as late as 1764, but we don't have any uh clues on what the replies back and forth might have been. But the last document from Bordeaux is a speech, and it's like it's basically indicating that the lodge is on the verge of ruin. We all have to come together, we're all brothers, that kind of thing. And so what we're doing is we have a sneak peek into the collapse of this system, but largely it's because of the results of the forces of the Seven Years' War. So I can we kind of talk about like the evolution in general of Masonic ritual. Maybe you want to pick this one up here, or like, but just how we go from guilds of fraternity.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I'm gonna treat that actually in my other.
SPEAKER_01We're gonna skip right past that one.
SPEAKER_07A little bit anyway. Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_01But like what we're really what it is is like the the low the larger idea is it's a gentleman's fraternity that transitions it or it's uh an operative guild that transitions into a gentleman's fraternity, and really like there's like some mythology that happens together. Yeah, there's a bit of piracy involved in that also. Yes, there is, and I unfortunately covered some of that stuff, so maybe we'll blast through it. But um in any case, like um here's an idea. In the 1723 edition of Anderson's, the term grandmaster appears only in new regulations. Um, there's no historical lineage, and the the focus is really on the current organization. And yet in the reprint in 1738, he's now identifying a lineage back to Anigo Jones, Christopher Wren. Um, and then he even says that Charles II was privately made a Freemason.
SPEAKER_07The larger thing is that they're distinguishing the the defunct uh they're they're building the mythology to tie them back to the founders or or their supposed founders, exactly.
SPEAKER_01And at the same point in time, too, to minimize uh Scottish King James II's role during the Jacobite. That's right. Not a big fan. Okay. So really like we kind of go from like the original like guild system of two degrees to a three-degree system, roughly 1721 to 1725. Um, and it's largely uh Desigoulier's like innovation, right? And we we have that from several documents. Yeah. But but but it's not based on nothing, right? So it's like it's like the maybe like the things that are communicated to an operative master of an operative lodge, like that, these things like get transplanted, become formal like elements of an actual ritual they build later. Okay. And so really like roughly about 1724 to 25 is when we start having clues that that first uh Master Mason degree is there. Okay, and we'll talk about another one here too. Uh the Simon and Philip manuscript. We're seeing like it's documenting like a ritual trans uh transition, and it's got the haramic lock, uh it's got the haramic legend in there. Um, but it uh it says that he's taken out by apprentices.
SPEAKER_07That's right. It's it's probably the first reference that we have to that. That's right. So it's probably dated incorrectly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it may be earlier. That's right. But that's that's roughly the idea, is that um it's under his regulation. And then just so you can see an image, here's um on the left you're seeing like the form of the old lodges, and then that second image on the bottom, it says this lodge is the new lodge under the Desigoulier regulation. And then um it also says there in the middle that Note Bene, the circle and holy flame is added when masons are taken or masters are taken up, and you can make of that of what you will. So then like masonry dissected, and that it's the standardization, it's an it's an expose, but really it has a longer impact than um than what you would have thought. Like if there's several pirate editions, maybe you might want to say something about it.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, um, masonry dissected, um, it's it's not really a ritual, it's a catechism. Um, and um Nuke Jones and Hamer were very clear in their opinion that as as good as it was, and it was the best thing that had come out, it really didn't represent the full ritual. And we know that there are prayers that were recorded, for example, that that aren't there. But what it did do uh was to give the first printed, discrete description of the three degrees in the form of a catechism. And it was so successful um that it was used by lodges and that the Grand Lodge itself had to change its ritual in response, even though they said it was a thing that wasn't to be taken seriously.
SPEAKER_01Maybe it was a little bit more seriously.
SPEAKER_07That's right.
SPEAKER_01Well, and it's interesting too because like this also becomes the foundation, both in French and German, for the uh symbolic degrees. And many of the lodges that appeared on the continent, several of them didn't have any kind of papers to document it, but they used the English translation, which was then translated into French and German, as the foundation for their new ritual. That's right.
SPEAKER_07Um in fact, um, some of the earliest description that we have of ritual in the United States is from that um prisoner of war camp during the Revolutionary War that was held in um Charlottesville, Virginia in the 1770s. And that ritual was uh we have a translation, a partial translation of it uh from German into English, and a fair bit of it matches masonry dissect it still, you know.
SPEAKER_01And it's it's just fascinating to see these things. Okay. So really masonry to dissect it, even though it's an exposure, it has a lot to do with the standardization of ritual, is the point. Um we've also got some other uh manuscripts, uh Trinity College manuscript. Uh the idea isn't really to get so much into the rituals themselves, but just to understand that there's a ritual continuum that's happening here. And uh so this is an Irish manuscript. They say it's dated February 1711, but I think it's much later. Yeah, because it divides the degrees.
SPEAKER_07That's right. And we know that didn't happen until February 1725.
SPEAKER_01That's right. And then uh here's uh an image of that text. And if you look on the uh image on the left, you'll see what looks to be a royal art symbol at the top. But look closely at the weight of the pen and the handwriting on it, and also the note on the right on the right image where it says uh Freemasonry, February 1711. These are handwriting pieces that have been added after the fact. So whether it's someone's bad memory or someone fortifying uh some lineages or whatever it is they're doing, we can't be certain. But what we do know is that the handwriting changes, and so these are two different periods of time. So, really, like when we talk about um we were talking about that uh ritual, like it's really like the transition of like the Scots Master and some of its earliest traditions. Um really it's the first the the first time we see the a lot of these things is in that gram manuscript. Yeah, I'm gonna touch a little bit on that also. Okay. Okay. Moving right along. Right. Okay. So the there there's there's four traditions in here, and Art will get into quite a bit more on the gram manuscript itself, but it's another one that's like a continuum in this series. Here's an interesting one, and Art will touch more on this, is there's a Scottsmaster ritual. Uh, we were in where were we at? Was it Sweden?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, Stockholm.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we were in Stockholm, and we were getting on the plane, and then Reinhardt at the last minute sends us this ritual that I think he'd been sitting on the whole time. But he he'd found um uh the first German translation of this ritual from French. So this lodge in Berlin in 42 is chartered from London, working in French, and then um about 46 or so, like they have the ritual translated into German, and so we got to see this this really neat little deal. And so, like it in total, like when you look at the the tracing boards of the lodge, the three globes in Berlin, um, these images were drawn on the left in the 1750s, and then on the right is 1746, but you can see like even the iconography, like how it how it transitions over time is the main point. So, really, like the the Scots master degree itself, like that, it it's a lot like um the regular symbolic degrees that are just adding the next step into it, right? And really, it's got a recovery narrative too, um, because they're saying like at the time when the restoration of the temple by the Christians in Jerusalem was being worked on, they found three cubicle stones together and three round stones. The last of these stones, they found the word uh Jehovah, which in reference to deity is pronounced Adonai as the true word of Master Hiram. And so what we're seeing really, though, is that that Scott's master degree, it may be the parent of what becomes the royal arch degree later. And so the net not really to focus on the royal arts part of it, but what we're seeing is that um a really a fork, and it's the Jacobite revolution that's driving this stuff. And so the original degree is Scots Master. The version of the degree that Marin receives later, though, is what's called the true Scots Master. And really the difference between the two uh degrees is this is that in the Scots Master, it's got a crusader legend. Um, and it's but more importantly, these crusaders are Scottish knights, right? And so if you're at war with Scotland at this point, you probably want to excise this from the text. So they've cut out the whole crusader legend. Um they also have the thing about the Scottish Knights finding it. They can't be doing that in this ritual now, so they're going to have only the biblical framework. Um, then they got the Order of St. Andrew connection and the celebration on November 30th. All this goes away. And then they say instead of the Scottish Knights finding it, it's the Gabyons that find it, or the Gibeonites, I guess, if you want to go out of the Bible. Um, and there's really no Scottish military orders, and it's it's all like because they want to minimize the active Jacobite Revolution. And so what you're seeing here are two different versions of that original Alu Parfait tracing board. I'd uh like to point your attention to those working tools that you see on that tracing board as well as the jewel in the top right corner, and and keep in mind that all these are like 1743, 1744. So it's preceding like the royal art system, too. Might be something worth uh paying attention to in addition to the rituals when you get to read them. So largely what ends up happening though is these things like they they have a great influence, not just on like uh high-degree masonry, but it has a great influence also on uh symbolic masonry, particularly with the ancients. And the so the ancients they get formed in 1751. Um they're really a grand committee, though, and then they become a grand lodge. And Lawrence Dermott, like what happens is he replaces the original secretary, Jonathan Morgan, who was also a ship's captain. Um, and that's what ends up uh really he becomes the driving force for the ancients. Um the main the main thing though is that um they need to start chartering these lodges, and so they're warning that the ancient craft might dwindle to nothing in 1752, um, and they end up creating the first six lodges on the first day, and the eighth lodge warranted uh days before the February 5th, 1752 meeting. And really it's to their it the whole purpose is to issue their warrants retroactively because they've already formed these lodges that are already meeting, but they have to legalize uh the creation of these.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, just to comment on the ancient lodges, it's important to remember that uh the the so-called modern Scrand Lodge or the Premier Grand Lodge of England is the one that we traditionally say is 1717, that the ancient Scrodge was actually formed by unattached Irish Masons living in London. And so these are people that believe that they had the truer traditions, and when you there look at their documents, uh they kind of use the term moderns in a disparaging way. So they they profess to have the true, true, true type of masonry.
SPEAKER_01We have the original masonry.
SPEAKER_07That's right. Because we said so. And because they're Irish, of course, they did have access to some of that higher degree material via France.
SPEAKER_01Exactly right. And it's that same uh merchant network we talked about where they're they're already doing these things. Dermote was the son of a Dublin merchant, um, and he himself becomes a merchant, wine merchant after relocating to London in 1748. More importantly, he receives the Royal Arts degree in Dublin in 1746, and he brought his Irish Masonic credentials with him. And so what he's doing is he's he's effectively like they go to try to attend these English lodges, they don't let him in because they're like, hey, look, these Irish guys are gonna bankrupt us. We can't have any of that. And so they they return in kind by chartering their own lodges and making their own system. Um what they have to do to do it though, because they're Irish Masons and they're working under the Premier Grand Lodge framework, you have to borrow resources. And so he's taking parts of Anderson's constitution of 1738, stripping out uh when these things happen, so the chronology is removed and also the uh the dates are removed. So it looks like it's more of the same thing. But it it's basically all these things we're about to see is he's basically making his new thing um the superior ancient system versus these moderns, and that's why he calls them moderns to denigrate them effectively. So, really, the royal arch itself, like from what we're seeing in the ritual itself, it's an Irish innovation. Like one of the first exposures is uh Fifold Dassinee's exposure. Um what's interesting to note here is this line where it says, imposed upon several very worthy men under a pretense of being master of the royal arch, which he asserted he had brought with him from the city of York, till at length his fallacious art was discovered by a brother of Proberty and Wisdom who had made some small space before attained that excellent part of masonry in London and plainly proved that his doctrine was false. What he's talking about is he's re Dassinese recognized that it's really the Scott's master degree and that these guys are not working this thing exactly. And this is uh, you know, keep in mind 1744, so over seven years before Dermot founds his system. Um interestingly enough, like uh Dermot, he uh in his first version of Aheman Razon, um, he quotes Dassini, but he he strips out the part where um it looks like he's condemning it and like he's uh endorsing the royal arts effectively. And uh so he's saying it's an organized body of men who have passed the chair and given undeniable proofs of their skill, their behavior is judicious and unexceptionable. They are most excellent Masons. So the part where it talks about it's a fraud, it comes from London, and I know better, that that all disappears. And you can see it here. Um we're looking at the the underlying portion of the bottom is the actual text, and then the uh the portion above that is the excise text from Dassiny. So, really what we're seeing then is French perfect elect elements that become the royal arts degree because we've already established that it's coming from Bordeaux to Ireland. Um, one of the things to think about is in French they have the vote sacrees or the sacred vault. In uh the royal arts, it's just the vault, companions versus companions. It's actually an artifact because companion or companion in French is uh fellows or fellow craft. Um and so it that's an artifact that doesn't get translated. And then the actual uh name in the ritual versus the one in the royal arch, it's a phonetic corruption as well. The the tools are the same too. Le pelle la ponce de marteaux, uh the spade crowbar and pickaxe, identical working tools, right? And this is all like years before the royal arts degree happens. So it's a semantic transformation. We're seeing like that the French terms uh bous sacre becomes the royal arch itself, right? So it doesn't necessarily mean like underground chambers, it just means like a vault. Right. Then that's why it's still called the holy royal arch in English chapters. Yeah, so it's a so substitute sacred and holy, and you get the idea. So we're looking at a translation issue. So basically it's it's got like little things of incomplete naturalization, and it that's one of the things that's a clue that in the chronology that it's got continental origins, uh not English origins, right? Okay. Same thing with the working tools as well, right? So like we see identical working tools across the thing, and really it's like a functional like inversion. So like in operative masonry, the tools are for construction of the temple, right? But in these high degrees now, it's a tools for recovery, right? Exactly. And so like the tools, like instead of building the temple, now that that's past that part of the legend, now we're going to uh recover what was lost is the idea. And so really it's like a it's a systematic appropriation. Again, that word kind of gets uh messed up a little bit here. Um, but really like again, it's just showing that the the meaning wasn't understood in the original term, and they so they just did a a phonetical approximation is roughly what it gets to. Same thing with like the uh in the uh moderns ritual, you don't get the uh the names of the villains, right? You only get the story. That's right. And it comes from its artifacts in the French high degrees, too, and that's how it makes it into uh the ancient ritual. And so we're just looking at a few things, but like you can see it here, and this is uh from like 1742, this ritual, um, and we're seeing like it's a it's a Ecose de Paris or like a like a a s a Parisian Scots master. I was looking for the word. Um, but what you see is that it's the same names too, and the same signs that um that that are working in here. You're just seeing like a a little bit of the changing of the structure. So really uh companions or fellows, it's a it's a linguistic artifact. Um and it uh it's you usually more in the uh the guild system, right? But um it's it's retained, so it's another one of these little clues that's in here. This one's interesting to me because like what they're calling um in the actual uh true Scots Master ritual, they call it Lancia Matrice or the uh the ancient mastery or the ancient mastership, if you want to look at it a different way. Um and really what's what ends up happening is this is the the key part that Dermot takes, and like so he's like he's talking about his ancient mace masonry. This is what he's kind of going with. So really we also see um that York legend. Maybe you want to talk about that for a second. Go for it. Okay, all right, yeah. So on the Lansown manuscript, um, that's the first time we hear the story of York. So he says uh Prince Evan was made a Mason at Windsor and obtained from the king his father a charter to have an assembly once every year, which was held at York. That's roughly 1550 to 1600. That's all we hear about York and the old documents. Anderson in 1723, he adds in uh some Greek records, some Latin records, some French records, and he's uh framing it as uh the origin of English lodge constitutions, and he extends it back to 926. Darmid does the same thing again, except for he's now going to rename the organization Ancient York Masons. This now becomes the legitimacy and the foundation of his system, and he takes this narrative and puts it into the 1764, not the 56 edition of Ahiman Razon, and he uh he's claiming superior preservation, but also borrowing Anderson's constitutions, which is I think it's quite funny. So really, like Ahimon Razon, like uh uh decontextualize. Um, if you look at between the 1756 and the 1738, Dermot's strategy is this he's only going to keep 27 of the original regulations. He's going to, you know, versus the 41 from Anderson. He's going to remove all 11 specific historical dates. He's going to excise historical figures, like mainly like uh Grand Lodge officers, uh people who nominated motion things. He's going to take that stuff out. And he's changed uh the Grand Lodge to some Grand Lodges because he's talking about the opposition here. And these little textual markers are connecting the regulations to the premier Grand Lodge. These are what are going to be removed because he's establishing a new system. Just as an example, like we mentioned that some Grand Lodges, so uh in Anderson, like we see on March 17, 1735, the Grand Lodge, Dermot changes it to some Grand Lodges. And it's this is just a larger pattern.
SPEAKER_07Well, I mean, he had political reasons for doing this, is that the old charges, the all the old charges that we have were of English origin, and he needed a way to legitimize this Irish tradition. So he removed anything that would have given some credence to the English system and and just said, well, you know, this is the way that it is, but without showing where that it came from.
SPEAKER_01That's right. And so is it more it's more of a not necessarily like a lie, but it's like an omission. Yeah. Yeah. Right? So it's a it's a different way of looking at it. So but he needed Anderson ultimately though, because he had to add that institutional genealogy. That's right. And so that's really what it is. Um Where am I going with this here? Um basically, like what I what I think is fascinating about this also is that um on June 26, 1725, the Grand Lodge of Ireland, it's installed uh by the Duke of Richmond himself, right? And it's that's not really seen out, and we'll we'll flesh that more out in the book. So not really a major point here, but something interesting. Um but what I do find interesting though is that the Irish Grand Lodge, it reprints Anderson's 1738 constitutions in 1744 and 1751. And so what it's showing is is that uh Dermot and his Irish Masons that come to England, they're still operating under the authority of the Grand Lodge of Ireland itself suffrage into the Premier Grand Lodge of England because it works identically the same rituals. And but the thing is, like ultimately he has to do it because it's the only constitutional model that's legitimate. And Dermot's uh tradition was produced by unfortunately by the very organization he came to oppose. So kind of reverse it. Engineering some of this stuff, it's actually like the royal arch itself, like that it devolves into a set of symbolic degrees. And so we see like again more of that strategic appropriation, um, grip sequences, catechism dialogues, a few very, very distinctive passwords and major words, um, also the punishments of the ruffians. All these things fundamentally change that original master mason degree, and it's interesting because it all comes from the high degrees, so it's it's working backwards from the high degrees back down to the symbolic degrees. But I think um really what he's trying to do when he changes the actual original rituals, he's also creating a firewall here because he needs to keep the existing modern Masons out of his ancients' lodge. Um, in some cases, when they want to switch over, he makes them take all the rituals over again. And so, like what we see like structurally, he changes the structure of the lodge. In the moderns, he's got both wardens in the west and the ancients, he's got senior ward in the west, junior ward in the south. So he's moving position. Um he's changing uh apprentice, fellowcraft words, he adds passwords, he changes the original master's word.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, well what he does is he emulates the French in preserving the original order of the words, which because after Masonry dissected, of course, the the Premier Grand Lodge reversed the words of the first and second degrees.
SPEAKER_01That's right. So he he undoes it.
SPEAKER_07So he kind of undoes it to as proof that they are in fact ancient.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's that that's what's interesting too, is he uses their own evidence against it.
SPEAKER_05That's right.
SPEAKER_01So he's he's a very crafty individual. But um the net result is that Premier Grand Lodge Masons couldn't navigate the ancients' ritual without revealing that they're moderns and they're not ancients. And so it's uh these little changes and stuff too help them to identify these guys that need to be healed. Okay, so TDK like that, it may be more of a deliberate exposure. And the reason I'm saying this is because you look at like the location of publishers and you look at the way that all of this stuff comes out. I think that because just looking at the records, like you don't see a lot of ancient rituals, do you? That's right. Yeah, so there's really like not very many ancient ritual manuscripts. I think we know of a couple. Yeah. And that, but so what I think it is, I think that the the three distinct knocks is less an exposure and more of a it's it's the vehicle for delivering this new ritual, and it accounts for how they it expands so quickly, too. And so, like um what's interesting in that 1761, it's dedicated to the right uh worshipful company of Irish masters. Um, the author's explicitly Irish, despite living in London. So we're getting clues of who who may have wrote this thing that we just talked about, uh, or at least had a hand in, right? And so the interesting part too, though, is it's coordinated with Ahimon Razone in Dublin, and they released the same year, the same edition. Um, and these two print shops are like on the same riverfront, maybe 200 feet down the road from each other. It's not conclusive proof, but it definitely shows um they were swimming in the same waters. They were swimming in the same waters. That's right. Okay. So ultimately, like what we're talking about then is like that these early French high degrees, they have an effect on the symbolic degrees, and it ultimately leads to like kind of like an institutional replacement. And um, what we see is in that union of 1813 that the the ancients end up getting the upper hand with respect to their form of ritual. Um, and it's just funny to me because like he beat them at their own game, didn't he? Pretty much did.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, you can see that also as thinking about because um T D or Three Distinct Knox is published first, followed by Jock and Boaz. And what do you find is that when you analyze that, you can see that the the producer of Jock and Boaz must have had a copy of Three Distinct Knox in front of him because he copies so many things verbatim. So Ancients Ritual stole from modern's ritual, and then it goes vice versa. And then the moderns pirate the ancients were pirate the ancients were so it's it's it's one big uh swamp effectively.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So really like we're this whole kind of uh transmission pathway, uh at least as far as this degree, as it goes from French to Irish to English. Um so the French French perfect elect degree in Marin's network in 45, um, by 1744-ish, um the Irish are doing it. Um Dharmitt's gonna appropriate it, then that is gonna become the ancient symbolic ritual he's going to create, and they're going to add on the royal arts degree because you also have to add value because these guys he basically takes that same uh true Scott's master degree, makes it the royal arts, and makes it part of his three-degree system, effectively a four-degree system.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, well, it makes sense because as we know, the Scott's master degree did have a particular popularity prior to the Jacobite Rebellion. Right. And so what they did is they kind of kept it there to wrap everything up.
SPEAKER_01And it makes a lot of sense too, because you've already got like a pattern of doing these things. And it also could be a value add too, where it's like, hey, if you'll come join this new system, you get this additional degree that comes with it that's part of the system, right? So the all these things together could be uh reasons for why this would happen. But I think ultimately, though, like there's going to be implications for Masonic scholarship, not just from this book, for the whole next series of stuff that we're about to do. We we've got some pretty heavy material. Um and so what we're kind of like there's some lessons to be learned though. I think that like one, um, I think claims of antiquity often serve as strategic legitimacy construction. So just because they say they're the oldest doesn't necessarily mean it's true, right? Like uh maybe like uh the the American president Ronald Reagan said, trust but verify. And that's what these type of things are. It's like take a take a person at their word but look into the matter, is the thought. Um another thing.
SPEAKER_07I was just thinking, you know, they're lying when they say Masonic tradition informs us.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. When you hear that line, uh know that you're you're hearing something else. So the other thing is that manuscript dating requires rigorous eternal analysis, right? So it's not just looking at the paper, it's not just looking at the handwriting. More importantly, it's the content and the context of it. Yeah. And then also um linguistic artifacts reveal translate uh translation appropriation processes. So if you see artifacts of uh foreign words in this text, start looking at that language and start looking for that original text, is the idea. And then ultimately, like um, I think the final most important lesson is that institutional success derives from strategic positioning, not chronological priority. And we see it the ancients come later and yet they win the day. Yep. And so really it's it's the it's that in this type of work, we have to have like a real critical approach of it. We need documentary evidence, um, and it needs to be uh, you know, proof of these ancients' origins may actually constitute elements of legitimacy construction strategy. So it's not literally a true story, but it's how they won the battle effectively. And so what we're seeing then is the transmi uh transformation of speculative Freemasonry, uh, you know, all together with this stuff, and then that really that like marin systems providing like the ritual architecture, ceremonial vocabulary, organizational structures, and legitimacy frameworks that shapes again today modern Masonic practice across multiple constitutional jurisdictions. And I think really understanding this pathway requires acknowledging that contemporary Freemasonry represents eighteenth century innovation packaged as an ancient tradition, effectively. That's all I have.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, all right.
SPEAKER_04So we do have some time for QA. Well, in that case, I hope to come back up.
SPEAKER_08Hi, thank you for such a great presentation. The Mark is seen as the first degree of the royal arts system in North America. It's seen as the fourth degree in Scottish Freemasonry if you work under the Scottish Constitution. And yet in England it's seen as a totally separate institution in its own right.
SPEAKER_01And I just wondered from your opinion, how does the marked degree fit into the whole systematic deb development of the Well, uh think first to start with, so the marked degree, its first earliest appearance, I believe, is 1769. Um largely I'm of the opinion, this is just an opinion, I don't know if that's a fact, but I'm of the opinion um that uh William Dunkerly is responsible not only for this, but for a lot of things. Um Art and I, when we were in Sweden, we've got uh not one, but two different copies of uh some texts that are basically the oldest English high degrees that are. Um and a lot of these are going back to the grand chapter, and so we see these rituals, including the royal arch, um, going much further back. So roughly from the about the formation of the grand chapter in 1766, uh, you know, through the union itself, like that, we're we're seeing that um that the high degrees really are more like a liminal space for working out the differences between ancients and moderns. And you see affiliation and memberships of both ancients and moderns within these high degree bodies, but largely I think that uh the mark degree is a later thing that comes some 20 years later, largely Thomas Dunkerly, is my opinion.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, just to just add to that also, is that because the degree was imported into grand jurisdictions at various times, they dealt with it in different ways. So when it came into Pennsylvania, for example, it became part of what they called their ancient York Masonry. And fortunately, we have copies of this. This is the system that went down into the Caribbean, but uh, because it went into the Caribbean, it was preserved in manuscript in French. These are the same degrees that Thomas Smith Webb modified to create the so-called York Rite, and he stole the name, York, from Pennsylvania. So it had nothing to do with England. It's because they called their system Ancient York Masonry. So the mark had a place in that, and because it had a place in this um degree structure that was approved by the Grand Lodge, that's how it found itself into the American system in the way that it was. But again, a lot, a lot of it is that uh that when the degree was imported into another country, they had to deal with it the way that they would. And I'll give you an example also as how this kind of thing happens. Remember that Freemasonry entered France about 1732, and the French had received their Freemasonry from England, uh, and this is only two years after Masonry dissected. Masonry dissect it ends the Master Mason's degree with the death and raising of Hiram, but it has nothing about any search for any ruffians that doesn't appear in English manuscripts or documents until the 1760s, although, as Joe pointed out, we believe it was actually in a manuscript by 1740. So the French find out about this addition to the Master Mason's degree, and because it's, as we all know, it's not in the power of any man to make innovations in body of mastery, they leave it alone, but they still want the material. So they have to invent the Alu degrees in order to tell that version of the story. And so again, this it speaks to the way also like with the Mark Master, you have to deal with the ritual material in a way that makes sense to you at the time that it's imported. So this is why if you've you know witnessed those degrees, what we call, you know, you know, the French right or even the Scottish right, craft degrees, they end in a way different than you'll find in in other systems. They needed to deal with that material in a way that made sense to them. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00So in early research, discover how Freemasons did business each other. They do business with each other. I mean, like throughout all the lodges and so on, because it's a trusted network.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Like that's one of the things that we were touching on in that presentation. And what you see, like, let's take, we'll we'll just pick a random city in Sandomang in the 1750s, right? If you look at the membership list of these lodges, uh you're going to see people that are both merchants, ships captains, you're going to see people that are members of the military, uh, a few clergy members, but largely it's it's merchants and government official type people. So the people building the stability and the cohesion of like the actual local society. And that's what we're seeing is that um really this network of uh trade, um, so in Marin's network itself, there's 18 ships captains, and that's not counting all the different merchants and stuff. So do we have financial transactions? No, but it stands to reason that just by looking at the associations of these people that they're all they are operating within a network, and it can be fleshed out from several different angles as well, but as far as receipts, no. But it's there.
SPEAKER_04Thank you. Uh I'm gonna use my prerogative of MC to ask a question as well. I'm curious, you know, you you do this very meticulous, very detailed, you know, fact-finding Masonic research about where these degrees come from, and you've noted people copying other people exposes, uh, you know, things finding their way somewhere, things being incorrectly dated, people wanting ownership, people wanting legitimacy. So there's um, I don't I mean, I wouldn't I don't want to use the word like cynicism to it, but these are very mundane, very political types of things. And I'm curious about how this type of research um affects your personal relationship with the rituals and their teachings over time.
SPEAKER_01Question.
SPEAKER_04Okay, that was a deep one.
SPEAKER_01Um well for me, like I I find interest in a lot of these things where I see like a lot of like in every jurisdiction is gonna have its issues, right? You're going to have like power issues, control issues, these sorts of things, organizational issues. And what's funny is is like you read a lot of these things in the past, right, and you quickly discover that nothing is new under the sun. Like I I remember reading several different like uh, you know, French documents in this, and they're these are just pieces of correspondence, but they're lamenting that the good old days of Masonry are over. But like if we were to look retroactively at it, we're probably thinking the 1760s, why that's the apex of Freemasonry. And it's and it's funny because nothing new is under the sun, nothing really changes. Because essentially, right, we're talking about in a human association. So people, though the times change, their basic motivations, interests, and desires never change. And so for me, like it's it's touching to see that like you see that type of continuity and that um really things never were this golden age. We just think they were. And that that's kind of one of the things I take from it.
SPEAKER_07Well, a couple of things come to mind. Um, I enjoyed the study of watch uh the evolution of ritual, and I kind of look at it like if you're looking through a photo album of your ancestors and you see some familiar features on an ancestor and are able to say, that looks like my sister, or that looks like my brother, something like this. It's nice to be able to see that. But I I view it the same way that I view studying, you know, either uh political or religious history, is that you can see that there are changes made, but what's the impact that religion has on you today? You know, what's your personal attachment to it? So it's really more what do you get out of it? Uh, because the ritual is simply the vehicle, of course, that unites us as Masons gives us a common shared experience and also passes on the the the Masonic philosophy. Um, so you know, sometimes the language is important, other times it's not. But for me, it's absolutely fascinating to see how this creature evolved, you know. So uh it I think that um for me personally, uh I know Joe also, is that being able to go back to the earliest forms and watch how this creature matures and changes and adapts is is absolutely fascinating. And if we look at the state of masonry and our rituals or what we're doing today and we're happy with it, we owe it to that evolution.
SPEAKER_08I think so.
SPEAKER_01It's also interesting to me too to like to recover like things that were lost and to to really like the the things that we think like all this came out of chaos and there wasn't any rhyme or reason to it. And there was perfect rhyme or reason, you just gotta uh be obsessive and dig really hard.
SPEAKER_02Were you able to go back in time even further? Medieval times analyze perhaps uh medieval documents, uh, operative masons and how did that perhaps has a connection and translation into ritual and things like that.
SPEAKER_07That's more of brother art specialization. Yeah. As I'll mention in in my presentation, the oldest copy that we have of a Masonic ritual is um 1659. So um there's not really a lot that we can point to there. Uh in what in the introduction to one of my books, um, though I don't know if you're familiar with it, I published a book called The Porch in the Middle Chamber, in which uh I follow the way that the guilds evolved, the guild systems. And although Freemasonry was uh one of the latest guilds to be created, we believe that they followed the pattern of the other guild systems. And we do have surviving copies of some of the rituals of these older systems. And what it frequently was, uh, that the guild system initiation ritual consisted of an emulation or a reenactment of the practice of the guild itself. So that uh, for example, that people that that if you were a planer or wood planer or whatnot, uh the ritual would involve having the candidate laid down and symbolically planed with large wooden tools, and he was compared to the uh to the wood that needed to be uh made smooth, and it was that it referred to the rough character of his life that needed to be improved. And then there were the bookbinders, had a deposition ritual. There were all sorts of these things. So Masonry followed suit. So this, you know, like uh as I'd said before, you know, if this is true, if if Masons followed the practice of these other, what they called fraternities or these other crafts uh for their initiation rituals, then we would expect our ritual to have memories of actual guilt practices, where the candidate might represent an unhewn stone that is you know pulled to the works by using ropes. He may be, you know, have working tools applied to him, he may be appropriately inspected by the workman. He would uh you would expect it to be dressed and found a proper place, you know, in in the in its temple. And so to me that's that's a type of natural symbolism that just makes sense.
SPEAKER_09I recently read I was investigating a lodge in the United States, and it ended with a gratuitous remark that there are more irregular Masonic lodges in the United States than regular ones. And my other question is the excellent presentation from uh the di Days uh is that can that be found in book form, please? Thank you.
SPEAKER_07Uh there are probably more irregular grand lodges, but not more irregular lodges in in and of themselves. Um and in fact, uh it I it it's kind of amusing to me. Um I I've met people who profess to be masons, and when I ask them what Grand Lodge they belong to, they'll they'll tell me, you know, you know, King Hiram's Grand Lodge or whatever, and I'll ask them where it's located. Uh and they'll tell me, I say, well, you know, how large is your Grand Lodge? And I've had people tell me what that they think that there were maybe 20 members. So, you know, that's a grant that that's the way that it is.
SPEAKER_01So for the second part of that question too, all that material is gonna be in a book that we've actually got it written now, but Art's uh working on the introduction still.
SPEAKER_00Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_06Ready? Uh just in terms of origins of uh speculative masonry, uh, what's your take on the Athelstanian uh t version of it with uh King Outstand King of England and and his and the guilds being told by I think one of his relatives to get their act together basically and giving them a manner of comportment and then having that uh evolve.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, Rick Berman uh of QC Lodge has has written some really good evidence to show that a lot of these traditions were simply invented uh to give support um to uh uh working masons is that following the Black Plague, uh and when they there was a dearth of skilled craftsmen, and the uh the king was basically worried that these people would try to gouge the market with exorbitant prices for their work. And so some of the legends that we have in Masonry that stretch us way back when were to add a fictitious support to the right of Masons to practice and basically set their own wages. So, and they've become traditional and we've passed them on without really realizing that they had an ulterior motive in it to creating those legends.
SPEAKER_04Thank you very much, brethren. Can I please have a round of applause for our turon for Joseph?
SPEAKER_03Thanks for listening today. You can support the show by liking, sharing, and subscribing on your favorite podcast indicator. Even more helpful, leave us a review. We are looking to create a directory of Freemasonic events and publications. If you are aware of something coming up, please let me know by email. In the meantime, check out the Masonic Conferences website at Masonic Conferences.com. Esotericism and Freemasonry Conference will be held on Saturday, September 19th. Our keynote speaker will be none other than Lon Milo Duquette, author of The Tarot Architect. Get your tickets in advance by RSVP to esotericmasonry at gmail.com. For other events, check out our calendar at Mystictie.com and don't forget to sign up for our newsletter while you are there. Graphics and web hosting are by Art Cebo Creative. A special thanks to Organist for our theme music. Happy to meet. Story to part. And happy to meet again.