Knight Of The Red Cross Of Babylon

Origins and history

Nobody can point to a single founding date. The degree grew out of the cluster of “Babylonian” ceremonies that circulated in the eighteenth century alongside the early Royal Arch, and Masonic writers have long treated it as genuinely old. The Higher Degrees Handbook (1921) calls the Red Cross of Babylon “undoubtedly old”, notes that the sixteenth degree of the Ancient and Accepted Rite (Prince of Jerusalem) treats the same theme, and observes that similar incidents appear in the Royal Order of Scotland. The Grand Council of the Allied Masonic Degrees in Australia suggests that the English form probably descends from degrees of the long-extinct Rite of Perfection and that it predates 1754.

From there the ceremony took different paths in different countries:

• Scotland. Here it is known as the Babylonish Pass and belongs to the Royal Arch. Mackey’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry records it as a degree given under the authority of the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Scotland, also called the Red Cross of Babylon. The Pocket History of Freemasonry adds that in 1845 the Supreme Grand Chapter formally declared its Chapters entitled to confer the Mark, Past, Excellent and Royal Arch degrees, the Royal Ark Mariner and the Babylonish Pass.
• Ireland. The three degrees were for many years conferred inside Irish Knights Templar Preceptories. Because the Irish ceremonies were unusually full and elaborate, they were given a governing body of their own, and the Grand Council of Knight Masons first met at Freemasons’ Hall, Dublin, in 1923.
• United States. Mackey describes an almost identical “Knight of the Red Cross” conferred in Commanderies of Knights Templar as a preparatory step. It survives as the Illustrious Order of the Red Cross, the first of the three Orders worked in a York Rite Commandery. American Councils of Knight Masons now have their own Grand Council, while those in Ohio chose to stay under the Irish Grand Council.
• England and Wales. The Red Cross of Babylon is one of the five degrees controlled by the Grand Council of the Allied Masonic Degrees, set up in 1879 and based at Mark Masons’ Hall in London. The Pocket History describes it as derived from ceremonial that once formed part of the Royal Arch in the United States, and Wikipedia’s account of the Allied Degrees calls it a shortened version of the Scottish Babylonish Pass. The full ceremony is also still worked in Bristol’s Baldwyn Rite, according to the Allied Masonic Degrees in Australia.

The story behind the degree

Each version tells its own share of the story, but the published outline draws on the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah and on the apocryphal book of 1 Esdras. The Mark and Royal Arch Masons of New South Wales and the ACT describe the series as covering about twenty years, from the release of the captives in Babylon to the completion of the Second Temple. The public outline runs as follows:

• In the first year of his reign, Cyrus, King of Persia, frees the Jews, hands back the sacred vessels taken from King Solomon’s Temple, and allows the exiles to go home and rebuild.
• Zerubbabel, Prince of Judah, is made the king’s commissioner for Judea, with Jerusalem as its centre, and he and his companions begin preparing to rebuild.
• The Samaritans write to Cambyses, Cyrus’s successor, warning that a rebuilt Jerusalem could again become strong enough to demand tribute from its neighbours, and Cambyses orders the work to stop.
• After Cambyses dies, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah stir the people back into action in the second year of King Darius, and building resumes.
• Zerubbabel travels to Babylon to ask for help from Darius, an old friend. He serves as one of the king’s bodyguards, wins the king’s favour by answering a question the king has set, and is sent back to Jerusalem with the remaining Temple treasures.

That last episode echoes the “Tale of the Three Guardsmen” in 1 Esdras 3:1 to 4:42, where three young members of Darius’s guard debate what is the strongest thing in the world and Zerubbabel’s speech in praise of truth earns him his reward. The Allied Masonic Degrees in Australia say openly that their degree is partly based on 1 Esdras, and the York Rite Order of the Red Cross describes its lesson as the triumph of truth. The motto traditionally linked with the degree, recorded by Mackey, is Magna est veritas et praevalebit: “Truth is mighty, and will prevail.”

Lessons and symbolism

The New South Wales Royal Arch presents the degree as a lesson in perseverance and in zeal for one’s duties. Its most striking emblem is the sword, a surprising thing to find in a Mason’s hand. The degree explains that the sword may be drawn only in the service of God, in the cause of justice, or in self-defence, a principle it traces to Nehemiah chapter 4, where the builders of Jerusalem’s walls worked with a tool in one hand and a weapon in the other. The Australian Allied Masonic Degrees add that the degree stresses fidelity, integrity and truth and teaches its members to resist temptation.

Two colours belong to the degree. Green recalls the ribbon of King Cyrus’s Knights of the Sword, and crimson recalls the cross on the banners of King Darius’s Knights of the East. The red cross that gives the degree its name has nothing to do with the humanitarian Red Cross, nor with the Order of the Red Cross of Constantine, a separate Christian order built around the Emperor Constantine. The Higher Degrees Handbook describes the English jewel as two crossed swords on a dark green enamel ground.

Membership

The degree continues the Royal Arch story, so every version expects candidates to be Royal Arch Masons, and most also require the Mark degree:

• Allied Masonic Degrees (England and Wales, Australia and elsewhere): candidates must be Mark Master Masons and Royal Arch Companions, and they first take the degree of St Lawrence the Martyr. The remaining four degrees, the Red Cross of Babylon among them, can then be taken in any order. Membership is by invitation.
• Knight Masons (Ireland and its councils abroad): Master Masons who are also members of a Mark Lodge and a Royal Arch Chapter. In the United States, councils are entered by invitation within the York Rite.
• Scotland: the Babylonish Pass is worked within Royal Arch Chapters under the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter.
• York Rite Commanderies: the Order of the Red Cross is the first step a Royal Arch Mason takes on the way to becoming a Knight Templar.

The degree today

The degree is worked very widely. Knight Masons councils meet in Ireland, the United States, England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Israel and Greece, and in Israel the three degrees are conferred in both English and Hebrew as the “Degrees of Captivity”. The Allied Masonic Degrees work it through councils in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Canada and beyond, and the Grand Council of England and Wales has been recognised since 2004 as a body in amity with the Grand Lodge of Scotland. In New South Wales and the ACT, the Mark and Royal Arch Masons work the three Knights Mason degrees as part of their own sequence. Whatever name it goes by, the degree remains a link between the Royal Arch and the Christian orders of knighthood, and it is valued for one memorable idea: that truth is stronger than any earthly power.

For more information or if you would like to join, please visit the following URLs:
– https://markandroyalarch.au/degrees/excellent-master-degree-8mahc (Mark and Royal Arch Masons of NSW & ACT, formerly usgcnsw.org.au)
– https://freemasonrymatters.co.uk/allied-masonic-degrees/the-allied-masonic-degrees/
– https://initiatorysubculture.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-red-cross-degrees-of-babylon-and.html

Or ask the Secretary of your own Lodge or Royal Arch Chapter, who can put you in touch with the body that works this degree in your jurisdiction.