31st° Degree – Inspector Inquisitor

The Inspector Inquisitor is the 31st degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite and the first of the two degrees of the Consistory. Set in the Hall of Judgment of ancient Egypt, it shows a man’s soul being weighed after death and asks every member to turn the same scrutiny on himself: to judge his own actions and motives as carefully as he would judge anyone else’s, and to temper justice with mercy. This page introduces the Consistory and then the 31st degree itself.

The Consistory

The Consistory is the fourth body of the Rite in the Southern Jurisdiction, and the name used for a meeting of Inspectors Inquisitor and Masters of the Royal Secret. Its two degrees are, as Rex Hutchens puts it in A Bridge to Light, “very different in form and content” from everything that comes before them. The 31st degree explores the long relationship between human law, as a means of achieving justice, and divine justice as an ideal, and teaches that the road to immortality takes more than an outward show of piety. The 32nd degree then reviews the whole Rite, from the Lodge of Perfection to the Council of Kadosh, and reveals what Pike called the Royal Secret, the capstone of the Rite’s teaching. Together they try to show how the spiritual and the practical sides of life can be held in balance.

In the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction the Consistory confers the 19th to 32nd degrees, and its 31° is a different degree called “My Brother’s Keeper”, in which the members of a lodge face a moral dilemma.

The degree at a glance

• Body: Consistory (31°–32°). A meeting of this degree is called a Tribunal.
• Degree: 31°, Inspector Inquisitor; Pike’s full title is Grand Inspector Inquisitor Commander, which most other jurisdictions still use in some form.
• Setting: the Court of the Dead of Egyptian mythology, the “Hall of Two Truths”, where Osiris and the other gods weigh a soul in the balance against the figure of Maat, goddess of truth and justice.
• The candidate: represents Cheres, an architect of ancient Egypt, who has died and must be judged.
• Historical role: Hutchens describes the Tribunals as the philosophical equivalent of the Rite’s supreme court; they were originally given the right to judge the lower bodies, which is why justice is the theme of the lecture.

The lesson

Egyptian religion, Hutchens explains, was centred on eternal life, visible in the pyramids, in mummification and in amulets such as the scarab beetle, symbol of rebirth. The texts placed in tombs to guide the dead, which we call the Book of the Dead, are better translated as “coming forth by day”. Many writers have tried to trace Freemasonry back to Egypt, and Hutchens is frank that the historical evidence for such a link is “entirely lacking”. The Rite uses the Egyptian setting not as history but because it dramatises so vividly the idea of a soul being judged.

In the drama the dead architect claims to have lived a virtuous life, and the evidence is laid out before the gods: he obeyed the laws of his land, kept the requirements of his religion, dealt honestly in money and was faithful to his family. When these outward virtues are placed on the scales, the pan barely moves. He is then examined, more searchingly, on his morality, his piety, his honesty and his selflessness, and given a chance to correct any answer that was less than truthful. Only then do the scales come close to balance, and the assessors are divided. The final judgment rests with Osiris, who, having once lived as a man, understands human weakness and admits the soul to the realm of light.

The point is the “two truths” of the hall’s name. One is the truth of our conduct as others see it; the other is the absolute truth of what we really did and why, with all excuses stripped away. Someone may keep every law only from fear of punishment, give to charity only when it costs nothing and attend worship to be seen there. None of that, the degree teaches, is enough for a truly good person, whose respect for law comes from its moral worth and whose charity sometimes hurts. Hutchens suggests reading the title as “Introspector”: the duty of an Inspector Inquisitor is not to judge other men but to inspect his own words and acts and inquire into his own motives.

Albert Pike’s lecture in Morals and Dogma begins with a definition every judge could keep on his desk: “To hear patiently, to weigh deliberately and dispassionately, and to decide impartially; these are the chief duties of a Judge.” He goes on to warn that human laws are only pale shadows of divine justice, and that we are always tempted to mistake our own notions of right for God’s law.

Duties of the degree

• Duty: judge yourself by the same standard you apply to others, weighing both your actions and your motives.
• Lesson: a good person can point to the good he has done, not merely to the absence of wrong in his life.
• Lesson: justice and mercy are opposites that unite in the harmony of equity.
• Lesson: to aim at the best but be content with the best possible is true wisdom.

Hutchens adds a gentler corollary: in learning to judge ourselves honestly we also learn to be compassionate with ourselves, and that teaches us to show compassion to others. The mistakes of today should not be repeated tomorrow.

Symbols and regalia

Reflections

A Bridge to Light chooses a hard question for this degree: is a man a thief if he steals a loaf of bread for his hungry children? The law may say yes; equity asks about need, motive and mercy. The degree does not give a neat answer. It asks the member to hold justice and mercy together, as the Egyptian judges did in the story.

Pike’s lecture ends with advice that sums up the whole Consistory: we must strive towards the ideal of justice without forgetting what is possible here and now, because “to aim at the best, but be content with the best possible, is the only true wisdom” (Morals and Dogma, lecture XXXI).