18th° Degree – Knight Rose Croix

The Knight Rose Croix is one of the best known and most widely worked degrees in all of Freemasonry. It is the summit of the Chapter of Rose Croix, and in several countries its name has become shorthand for the whole Scottish Rite. Its subject is the coming of a “New Law”, the law of love, and its great themes are faith, hope and charity, joined to a tolerance that Albert Pike regarded as the heart of the Rite.

The degree at a glance

• Number and title: 18th degree. The Southern Jurisdiction of the United States (S.J.) calls it Knight Rose Croix; the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction (N.M.J.) calls it Knight of the Rose Croix of H.R.D.M.; in England and Wales the recipient becomes a Sovereign Prince Rose Croix, also known as Knight of the Pelican and Eagle.
• Body: the Chapter of Rose Croix, presided over by a Most Wise Master. In the S.J. the Chapter confers the 15th to 18th degrees, in the N.M.J. the 17th and 18th.
• Setting: no historical scene as such. Like the 14th degree, it moves the candidate through a series of symbolic chambers rather than telling a story.
• Name: “Rose Croix” is French for “rose cross”, the rose set at the centre of a cross that appears on the jewel.

A short history

Albert Mackey counted the Rose Croix as the most widely spread of all the advanced degrees. It was the 18th degree of the Rite of Perfection, the 7th and highest degree of the French Rite, and it appeared in the Royal Order of Scotland and in a number of other systems. At one time it was even conferred in some Knights Templar encampments, such as the Encampment of Baldwyn at Bristol. Mackey warned that the Masonic Rose Croix should not be confused with the Rosicrucians, the Hermetic and alchemical society of the seventeenth century, even though the N.M.J. notes that the degree did borrow ideas from that tradition along with the name.

Its exact birthplace has never been settled. Mackey, after a lifetime of research, admitted he could not say where or when it took shape as a Masonic degree. He recorded the tradition that Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Jacobite pretender, set up a “Primordial Chapter” of Rose Croix at Arras in France in 1747, and he believed the degree had earlier been known as the Knight of the Eagle and Pelican, a name it still carries in some jurisdictions.

In its early form the degree was openly Christian, an attempt, as Mackey put it, to apply the symbols of the Craft to the Christian dispensation. That raised a difficulty for a Rite whose only religious test is belief in God. Between 1859 and 1891 Pike rewrote the rituals of the Southern Jurisdiction, and in the 18th degree he removed the requirement for the candidate to take on a specifically Christian duty while keeping the character of the ceremony. The N.M.J. took a different path for a time, and its own history describes more than seventy years of debate before a revision in 1942 opened the degree to men of all faiths; the version it uses today dates from 1964.

Outside the United States the degree keeps a special place. In England and Wales the Rite is generally known simply as “the Rose Croix”: candidates are perfected in the 18th degree, with the intermediate degrees conferred by name only, and must have been Master Masons for at least six months. In Scotland the 18th and 30th are the degrees actually worked.

The lesson

Rex Hutchens sums up the degree’s message as the proclamation of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, set out in its plainest form by Jesus of Nazareth after a long age of spiritual darkness. He is careful to add that this is not the endorsement of any particular creed. The degree surveys the beliefs of many ancient peoples to show that neither the cross as a symbol nor the hope of a redeemer belongs to one religion alone, and from that it draws its conclusion that tolerance is not merely a duty but the only reasonable position.

The ceremony moves through three chambers. The first represents a world in ruin, where the officers sit among broken columns and scattered working tools, mourning a Word that has been lost once again. The Lost Word here stands for the loss of reason, of moral sense and of a true idea of God. Faith, Hope and Charity then appear to lead the way out of the darkness, only to fade again, as faith and doubt alternate in every human life. The second chamber, in the north, shows the torments of the underworld in the manner of Dante or Milton. Hutchens notes that some will read these literally and others as an image of life’s own consequences, but that for everyone they illustrate the law of cause and effect. The third chamber is a universe filled with light and free of evil, where the New Law of Love is recognised.

The degree does not pretend to solve the problem of evil. It sets out the ways in which philosophers and theologians have tried to explain why suffering exists, and leaves each member to find the reading closest to his own faith. What it asks of everyone is practical: much evil can be overcome by human effort, and the task is to struggle against it and make the world as good as we are able.

Duties of the degree

According to A Bridge to Light, a Knight Rose Croix should:

• practise virtue so that it bears fruit;
• work to remove vice and to purify humanity;
• be tolerant of the faith and creed of others.

The lessons attached to these duties are the three great virtues of the degree. Faith is faith in God, in humanity and in ourselves. Hope is hope in the victory over evil, in the progress of humanity and in a life to come. Charity means relieving the wants of others and bearing patiently with their errors and faults.

Symbols and regalia

The apron is white satin, bordered with crimson on one side and black on the other. The white side carries the pelican from the jewel; the black side a large red passion cross. The cordon, worn from left to right, is of velvet or silk, plain crimson on one face and black on the other, with a red passion cross embroidered on the black side so that it lies over the heart. Hutchens explains the white and crimson as light and the dawn of day, standing for faith, hope and charity.

The jewel is a pair of compasses opened to sixty degrees on a segment of a graduated circle, with an antique crown at the top. On one side is an eagle with outspread wings and lowered head; on the other a pelican wounding its breast to feed its seven young in the nest below. A crimson cross shows on both sides, and on the pelican side a crimson rose blooms where the arms of the cross meet. The jewel is gold, with the eagle and pelican in silver. Red gloves complete the regalia shown here.

A Bridge to Light gives each emblem a layered meaning:

• The rose, anciently sacred to the sun and the dawn, stands for morning light, renewal of life and immortality.
• The cross, pointing to the four quarters with arms that would never meet if extended forever, is an emblem of space and infinity, and a sacred sign in many cultures long before Christianity. Together, rose and cross speak of immortality won through suffering.
• The pelican, an early Christian image of Christ, represents devotion and self-sacrifice: every reformer and benefactor who has given his life for others, and the generosity of nature itself.
• The eagle, the bird that soars nearest the sun, stands for wisdom and reason, and for Pike also for liberty.
• The three pillars of Faith, Hope and Charity correspond to the Beauty, Strength and Wisdom that support the Craft lodge.

Hutchens also links the degree back to the three principles of the Craft: the pelican stands for relief, the rose and cross united for brotherly love, and the Lost Word for truth.

Reflections

Pike’s lecture for the degree is one of the longest in Morals and Dogma, and its keynote is tolerance. He writes that “No Mason has the right to interpret the symbols of this Degree for another, or to refuse him its mysteries,” and that any degree that shuts its doors on a man who believes in one God and the immortality of the soul, because of the other tenets of his faith, “is Masonry no longer.”

He gathers the meaning of the emblems into a single sentence:

“The Eagle is to us the symbol of Liberty, the Compasses of Equality, the Pelican of Humanity, and our order of Fraternity.”

Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, 18° Knight Rose Croix

And he gives each of the three virtues a short saying that is easy to carry away: “there is no beauty like a firm faith in God, our fellows and ourself”; “He only is strong who is hopeful”; and “he only is wise who judges others charitably.”

Rex Hutchens offers two questions for reflection that go to the core of the degree: do evil and calamity exist to give us the chance to practise virtue? And do your own attitudes and actions reflect faith, hope and charity?

Please view the video on the left, for a more detailed explanation of the 18th° Degree.

Left: A hypothesis on the use of the Acacia within ancient Freemasonry, a book written by Bro. P.D. Newman

Right: An interview with Bro. P.D. Newman regarding the hypothesis of the use of Acacia in Ancient Freemasonry as well as other interesting information.