The Order of Holy Wisdom

Origins and history

The Order of Holy Wisdom shares its early history with the Knight Templar Priests. According to the Grand College, the Knight Templar Priest degree was once known as the Priestly Order and is mentioned in Irish Templar ceremonies as early as 1755. It appeared in Scotland at Kilmarnock in 1800, and in 1812 brethren at Newcastle upon Tyne obtained a warrant for it under the name of Royal Kent Encampment. Evidence shows it was worked in England, Scotland, Ireland, Corfu, France and probably North America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It then faded away, the last known working being in Lancashire in the 1890s. On Good Friday, 23 March 1894, Henry Hotham, apparently the last surviving Knight Templar Priest, admitted nine new members, and the order was saved. After a spell under the Grand Council of the Allied Masonic Degrees, the Grand College became a sovereign body and held its first meeting at Newcastle upon Tyne on 15 May 1924.

Holy Wisdom runs through this story. The original certificates issued by the Grand College after 1924 were headed “The Holy Royal Arch Knight Templar Priest or Order of Holy Wisdom and of the Degrees appendant thereunto”. Certificates from the early Irish bodies treat the Order of Holy Wisdom as an order in its own right, and old rituals support that view. John Yarker, writing in 1882, said that the Knight Templar Priest was also known as the Knight of the Temple of Holy Wisdom and that the English Templar degree led on to the “Priestly Order of the Temple of Holy Wisdom”. The Grand College itself is today styled “The Holy Royal Arch Knight Templar Priests and Order of Wisdom”.

A similar degree once existed in America. Albert Mackey’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry records that the Sovereign College of the Allied Masonic Degrees of America governed a “Holy Order of Wisdom”, which it called one of the finest and most impressive degrees in Freemasonry. It was open only to Knights Templar of the American Rite or Knights Rose Croix of the Scottish Rite, and like the British order it was Christian and Trinitarian in character.

Decline and revival

Masonic orders, like lodges and people, come and go: some last for centuries, while others quietly fade. The Order of Holy Wisdom became one of the casualties. By tradition its Congregations met only once a year, at 11:11 on Good Friday. Working it as its old rituals required meant buying, keeping and storing a great deal of costly furniture and regalia. The ceremony called for three separate chambers. One held a grand altar raised on a flight of seven steps, and a screen of fine white linen divided the sanctuary from the body of the “church”. The regalia included cassocks and cloaks in several colours, a black velvet mantle and a Greek mitre of white silk. The Grand College notes that the eighteenth-century ceremony needed at least two rooms and much expensive equipment. Given all that, it is hardly surprising that the degree dropped out of use.

Rather than let it disappear, the Grand College had the ritual carefully rewritten. The new version keeps everything essential but can be worked far more practically. The Order was reintroduced on 14 June 2014 as an associated order, separate from the appendant degrees of the Knight Templar Priests. Every Knight Templar Priest who was a member on that date was recognised as a Knight Priest of the Order of Holy Wisdom. Those received after that date must be admitted through the ceremony itself. Much of the old furniture and regalia has been set aside, but what remains, its members say, is faithful to the original ritual of the 1790s.

Membership

Only Knight Templar Priests can join. The Grand College’s own requirements for that order are already demanding. A candidate must be a subscribing member of a Craft Lodge, a Royal Arch Chapter and a Knights Templar Preceptory, have been a Master Mason for at least three years, and profess the Trinitarian Christian faith. The Grand College adds that, unlike the appendant degrees, the Holy Wisdom ceremony itself expressly requires membership of the Knight Templar Priests.

Membership is more than an honour. A Knight Templar Priest must belong to the Order of Holy Wisdom before he can serve as High Priest of a Tabernacle. The ceremony is normally worked at District level, where the Grand Superintendent also serves as a High Prelate of the Order and decides how often and where Congregations are held. In the Scotland East District, for example, the first Congregation in April 2016 admitted nine candidates, the next in May 2017 fourteen, and a third in October 2019 nineteen. The ceremony there is now worked by Sagacity Tabernacle No. 303, the District’s Tabernacle for installed High Priests.

The ceremony

The details of the ceremony are for members, but its general purpose is openly stated. Like other Masonic rituals, it is written to make the candidate think seriously about his life on earth and how he lives it. Those who have taken it describe it as interesting, challenging and enjoyable. It draws on the same rich store of Christian, biblical and Enlightenment-era symbolism as the Knight Templar Priests, and candlelight, in both a literal and a figurative sense, plays a central part. The lantern and lit candle on the Order’s badge reflect this.

Regalia

Members show that they belong to the Order by wearing a cordelier, a knotted cord. Most members wear white, and other colours mark particular honours and offices:

• Green: recipients of the PHW honour
• Yellow: recipients of the CHW honour
• Sky blue: recipients of the KHW honour, and the brother acting as Seventh Pillar Priest in a Congregation
• Red: holders of the Certificate of Merit, and the High Priest of a Congregation
• Purple: High Prelates (and those acting as such), Grand Superintendents and Past Grand Superintendents, and holders of the GCPO, KCPO and GHP awards
• Purple and gold: the Grand High Prelate
• Red and gold: the Deputy Grand High Priest, Assistant Grand High Priests and Grand Inspectors, and past holders of those ranks
• Purple, gold and red: the Grand High Priest and Past Grand High Priests

The Order today

The Order of Holy Wisdom is found wherever the Knight Templar Priests work. The Grand College reports 273 Tabernacles on every continent, from England, Scotland and Wales to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia and South America, though there are none in Ireland, where the order is thought to have begun. Separate Grand Colleges govern the United States (recognised in 1935) and France (constituted in 2018), all three in full amity. In Canada, Tabernacles of the Knight Templar Priests and the Order of Holy Wisdom form part of the wider York Rite family. Since its revival, the Order has given a new generation of Knight Templar Priests the chance to experience a ceremony that had been silent for many years.

For more information or if you would like to join, please visit the following URLs:
– https://knighttemplarpriests.com/2014/08/22/order-of-holy-wisdom-2/
– https://knighttemplarpriests.com/memberships/
– https://www.ktpscotlandeast.com/order-of-holy-wisdom.html

Or ask a Knight Templar Priest, or the Recorder of your local Tabernacle, how to become a member.