23rd° Degree – Chief of the Tabernacle

With the Chief of the Tabernacle the Scottish Rite enters a new group of degrees, which A Bridge to Light calls the “Mystery degrees”. Over the next four degrees the Rite looks at how the ancient world taught its deepest religious ideas through initiation, symbol and drama. This first one is set among the priests of Israel in the wilderness, and it represents what the ancients called the Lesser Mysteries: the first step of initiation, open to all who were properly prepared.

The degree at a glance

• Number and title: 23rd degree, Chief of the Tabernacle, the title used in the Southern Jurisdiction (S.J.) and most other Supreme Councils.
• Body: the Council of Kadosh in the S.J. It is the first of the four Mystery degrees, the 23rd to the 26th. In the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction (N.M.J.) the 23rd degree is a completely different Consistory degree, “Knight of Valor”, based on the true story of the Four Chaplains who gave their lives in the Second World War.
• Setting: the camp of the twelve tribes of Israel in the wilderness, gathered around the Tabernacle of Moses.
• Bodies and officers: Mackey records that the degree commemorates the founding of the priesthood in Aaron and his sons Eleazar and Ithamar. Its bodies are styled Courts, presided over by a Most Excellent High Priest, also called Venerable High Priest, representing Aaron, with two Excellent Priests representing his sons.

The lesson

Pike explains that the ancient nations had, besides their public worship, a private one called the Mysteries, open only to those who had been prepared by ceremonies of initiation. The Lesser Mysteries were received by many; the Greater Mysteries by only a few. In Pike’s view the Mysteries began by teaching a few simple truths, the existence of one God, the immortality of the soul and the consequences of good and evil, but over time their rites grew more elaborate and their meaning became hidden. Masonry, he argues, still teaches as the Mysteries did, through symbols that invite the mind to search, compare and judge rather than through fixed dogma.

The set of the degree is one of the most elaborate in the Rite. The Court represents the encampment of the twelve tribes, each marked by its standard. The four principal standards bear a lion, a bull, a man and an eagle, the four creatures of Ezekiel’s vision and of the Book of Revelation, which together also make up the Sphinx, the ancient emblem of a riddle. In the centre stands a model of the Tabernacle as described in Exodus, with its altar, basin, table of showbread, altar of incense, Ark of the Covenant and seven-branched lampstand. Its curtains are woven of white, blue, scarlet and purple threads so closely that the colours can be told apart only on close inspection, a symbol in themselves of the way truth is veiled.

In outline, the candidate takes the part of a Levite who seeks the lowest grade of initiation into the priesthood. He hears the story of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, who rebelled against the authority of Moses and Aaron and were destroyed (Numbers 16). Hutchens observes that the God of this story is stern and unforgiving, and that the degree then deliberately moves on: a faint light enters the darkness, the candidate is urged to pray for mercy, and a gentler, more loving idea of God begins to appear. The degree thus traces how a people’s understanding of God grows with its own development. After a symbolic purification, the candidate is accepted as a Chief of the Tabernacle, and the Court is closed so that its members can reflect in silence.

Duties of the degree

A Bridge to Light lists the duties of a Chief of the Tabernacle as:

• to be devoted to the service of God;
• to work constantly to promote the welfare of mankind;
• to act with proper respect for lawful authority.

The lessons attached to the degree are that simple faith is wiser than vain philosophy, and that a society’s idea of God and of the universe reflects the stage of its own development.

Symbols and regalia

The apron is white, lined with scarlet and bordered with ribbons of red, blue and purple. In the centre is a golden seven-branched candlestick. Hutchens notes that the design comes from the Jewish historian Josephus, who explained the four colours as the elements: white for the earth that grows flax for linen, red for fire, blue for the sky and purple for the sea, since the dye came from a sea snail. The degree adds a Masonic meaning. White stands for the infinite goodness of God, blue for His perfect wisdom, red for His glory and purple for His power.

The seven lights of the candlestick represent the seven planets known to the ancients, the sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, as well as the seven archangels and the seven lower Sephiroth of the Kabbalah: Justice, Mercy, Beauty, Glory, Victory, Dominion and Kingdom. The number seven, sacred in many religions, is introduced here and explored further in later degrees.

A red leather belt, fringed with gold, carries the jewel: a small silver censer with a long handle that ends in the shape of an open hand. It is a reminder to offer to God, without ceasing, the incense of good deeds and charitable acts that spring from a pure heart. Red gloves complete the regalia shown here. The other important symbols Hutchens lists are the standards of the twelve tribes, darkness and light, and the colours scarlet, white, blue and purple.

Reflections

Pike explains why the ancients, and Masonry after them, taught through ceremony rather than argument:

“The instruction now conveyed by books and letters was of old conveyed by symbols; and the priest had to invent or to perpetuate a display of rites and exhibitions, which were not only more attractive to the eye than words, but often to the mind more suggestive and pregnant with meaning.”

Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, 23° Chief of the Tabernacle

He also warns against hardening symbols into fixed doctrine:

“The alteration from symbol to dogma is as fatal to beauty of expression, as that from faith to dogma is to truth and wholesomeness of thought.”

Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, 23° Chief of the Tabernacle

The question Rex Hutchens leaves with the degree is the largest one of all, and the one the remaining Mystery degrees take up in turn: what is the nature of God?

Please view the video on the left, for a more detailed explanation of the 23rd° Degree.