The Order Of The Secret Monitor

Members like to explain the difference this way. A Freemason who keeps his Craft promises will reach out to pull a brother from the mire once he has fallen into it. A Secret Monitor tries to reach him before he falls, with a timely warning or a word of advice when he seems to be heading for trouble. The bond is meant to go deeper into ordinary human life than most Masonic ties.

The story of David and Jonathan

The legend comes from 1 Samuel chapter 20. Jonathan was the son of King Saul. David had won fame as one of Saul’s warriors, most famously against Goliath, and Saul came to see him as a rival for the throne and tried more than once to have him killed. Jonathan stayed loyal to his friend in spite of his father’s hatred. Because every meeting between the two put them both at risk, they agreed on a private way for Jonathan to warn David of danger without anyone else understanding the message. Masonic writers since Mackey have pointed to the relevant passages of 1 Samuel 20 as the scriptural basis of the degree. The lesson the Order draws from them is simple: a true friend warns, protects and stands by his brother, whatever it costs him.

Origins and history

The earliest traces are Dutch. A society called the Order of Jonathan and David existed in Holland by 1778, when, as the German bibliographer Georg Kloss recorded, a book of its statutes and reception ceremony was published in Amsterdam. Mackey’s Encyclopedia passes on the research of W. C. Spratling, Grand Recorder of the English Order. Spratling found Amsterdam statutes dated 1773 which suggested the society had been founded three years earlier. Nobody knows what became of the society in the Netherlands.

The Masonic degree as we know it grew up in the United States, apparently carried there by Dutch emigrants. By around 1850 it was being worked as a side degree under a variety of names, among them “Brotherly Love”, “Jonathan and David” and finally “Secret Monitor”. It had no central organisation and little ceremony. Any Mason who had received it could take another aside, without fee or record, and pass it on. Mackey’s Encyclopedia lists several men who received it this way, starting with Dr Issachar Zacharie in California in 1840.

Zacharie is the key figure in the Order’s modern history. An Englishman who settled in America, he practised as a chiropodist in California and served on the Federal side during the American Civil War. The Order’s traditional account says his work took him among the soldiers of both armies, and that he saw at first hand how Masonic friendship could soften the cruelty of a war that set brother against brother. The Secret Monitor struck him as the ideal means of binding Masons more closely together, if only it could be given proper organisation. He returned to London in 1875 to practise as a surgeon in Brook Street, Mayfair. There he met other brethren who had picked up the degree on their travels, mostly in America.

In 1887 Zacharie and his friends formed the first Conclave, the Alfred Meadows Conclave, soon renamed Premier Conclave No. 1, which still meets in London. A Grand Council was constituted on 17 June 1887 with Zacharie as its first Supreme Ruler. Five warrants had been issued by the end of that year, one of them for Penang. From 1888 more followed for southern and eastern India, Burma, Jamaica, Singapore, South Africa and Australia. During these first two years the Order also expanded the simple American ceremony into the three-degree system it still uses. In 1889 it created an appendant order, the Order of the Scarlet Cord, and in 1901 it set up a Benevolent Fund.

Success brought a dispute. The Grand Council of the Allied Masonic Degrees also claimed the Secret Monitor and worked its own version of the degree. The Allied Council brought the Order under its aegis in 1898, yet the separate Secret Monitor organisation carried on. Writing in 1921, J. S. M. Ward called it the only degree in English Freemasonry controlled by two separate bodies. The quarrel ended in 1931, when Charles Napier-Clavering, then head of both bodies, confirmed that the Allied Council recognised the Order of the Secret Monitor as an independent order and gave up the degree.

Membership

The only Masonic qualification is to be a Master Mason in good standing in a regular lodge. In England the Order is administered from Mark Masons’ Hall in London, and a candidate is usually invited by a member who knows him. Some jurisdictions are more open: in the Grand Council for Southern Australia, any interested Master Mason may petition a convenient Conclave. Because the Order’s purpose is mutual care, the founders’ constitutions made clear that the right kind of member mattered more than large numbers.

Degrees and ceremonies

The Order has its own vocabulary. Its lodges are called Conclaves and usually meet four times a year. Its three ceremonies are:

• Brother of the Secret Monitor: the candidate is “inducted”, and the ceremony presents the friendship of David and Jonathan and the value of true friendship.
• Prince: the brother is “admitted” in a ceremony that also draws on the Books of Samuel and stresses fidelity to one’s brethren.
• Supreme Ruler: the chair degree, in which the new head of a Conclave is “commissioned” and installed, usually once a year, and prepared for the duties of leadership.

Outside England the degree has had a varied life. In the United States the Allied Masonic Degrees still confer it, using an original American ritual first worked in 1896, and since 2000 they have allowed the English ritual as an option. In Scotland the Early Grand Rite once worked a version as its sixteenth degree under the name “Order of Brotherly Love”. Ward, who took the degree himself, did not think its ceremonies held much hidden meaning. He did note that its Conclaves often had more warmth than the average London lodge.

The Visiting Deacons

The office that sets the Order apart is that of Visiting Deacon, which has no exact equivalent anywhere else in Freemasonry. The constitutions allow each Conclave up to four Visiting Deacons, and every member is placed in the care of one of them. Between meetings the Deacon keeps in touch with the brethren in his charge. He seeks out anyone who is ill, in danger or in distress, or who needs friendly advice, comfort or practical help, and he reports on their welfare at each meeting. A brother in trouble is expected to turn first to his Deacon, who is bound to do all he can. Every Conclave must write this duty into its by-laws, and each new Supreme Ruler is told at his installation that the Grand Council will hold him responsible for seeing it done.

The Order’s leaders have long summed up this principle in the old question “Am I my brother’s keeper?”, and the Order’s answer is yes. As the earlier version of this page put it, the scheme is admirable, but its success depends almost entirely on how conscientious the Deacons are.

The videos below, made by brethren of the Order, explain it in more detail.

Regalia

Members attend in normal Masonic dress and wear a breast jewel and gloves; they also carry a sword. The jewel of the English Order shows two interlaced triangles laid over three arrows, with the letters D and J (for David and Jonathan) in gold. The older American jewel was a hackle beneath a crown, hung from a black ribbon edged with white. A Supreme Ruler wears a robe and sash of office, and Past Supreme Rulers exchange the breast jewel for one worn on a collarette. Grand officers wear sashes or collars appropriate to their rank.

The Order today

The Order is governed in England by a Grand Supreme Ruler and Grand Council, with Provincial and District Grand Conclaves below them. The Provincial Grand Conclave of London and Middlesex describes it as one of the fastest-growing Masonic orders in the United Kingdom. Independent Grand bodies work in several other countries. In Australia the first Conclave, Southern Cross, was formed for brethren in Geelong in 1895 but soon faltered, and the Order took firm root only after a revival in 1924. A Grand Council for Southern Australia was constituted on 31 October 1966 and at the time of writing oversees eighteen Conclaves in Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia. A separate Grand Conclave covers Northern Australia and Papua New Guinea, and Canada has its own Grand Conclave with Conclaves from Nova Scotia to Vancouver Island. Its appendant Order of the Scarlet Cord, revived in 2010, is now a thriving order in its own right.

For more information or if you would like to join, please visit the following URLs:
– https://markmasonshall.org/orders/secret-monitor
– https://osmnorthernaustralia.org.au/
– https://beyondthecraft.net.au/the-order-of-the-secret-monitor-osm/
– https://orderofthesecretmonitor.ca/
– http://www.orderofthesecretmonitor.co.uk/history.html
– https://sunshinecoastfreemasons.com/orders/order-of-the-secret-monitor/
– https://osmlondonmiddlesex.org.uk/
– https://www.amdusa.org/degrees/DJ.html

Or ask the Secretary of your own Lodge, who can put you in touch with a Conclave in your jurisdiction.