A Sovereign Grand Inspector General (SGIG) is an active member of the Supreme Council, the governing body of the Scottish Rite. In the Southern Jurisdiction there are never more than 33 of them, and each is normally the head of the Rite in his own Orient. Their cap is violet, the colour that marks the governing members of the Supreme Council.
Violet Cap
The office
When the first Supreme Council was opened at Charleston, South Carolina, on 31 May 1801, its members were the Inspectors General of the Thirty-third Degree who governed the whole Rite. The Southern Jurisdiction still keeps that structure. Its Supreme Council has at most 33 active members; an 1890 history of the Rite already gives the same limit, while the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction allows up to 66. Every 33° Mason is an Inspector General, but only these active members carry the title Sovereign Grand Inspector General. They are chosen from among the honorary 33° Masons and, together with the Sovereign Grand Commander, they make up the Supreme Council itself.
The Southern Jurisdiction is divided into Orients, broadly the states, each made up of Valleys in which the Rite’s bodies meet. An SGIG is the highest-ranking officer of the Rite in his Orient. Where an Orient has no active member, a Deputy of the Supreme Council is appointed instead. As members of the Supreme Council, the SGIGs vote on its business, including the election each biennial session of new Knights Commander of the Court of Honour and 33° Masons.
Several of the founders of 1801–1802 bore the title, among them Emanuel de la Motta and Israel de Lieben, the Supreme Council’s first Grand Treasurer General.
The cap and signature
The SGIG’s cap is one of the eight official caps listed in the Supreme Council’s statutes. It is round and made of violet silk, circled by a band of a slightly darker violet trimmed with gold and decorated with laurel leaves and berries. A gold cord crosses the top, fixed at each side by a gold button embossed with a double-headed eagle, and the front bears a slanted purple patriarchal cross with crosslets, edged in gold bullion wire.
The same cross appears in writing. Mackey records that under the Southern Jurisdiction’s 1921 statutes a Sovereign Grand Inspector General signed his name after a cross with two bars and small cross-bars at the ends, in purple ink, followed by a rayed triangle enclosing the number 33.
Sources:
– The Supreme Council, 33°, S.J., “What is the significance of the Scottish Rite cap?” (official caps, Statutes Art. XIII §§15–22).
– Wikipedia, “Supreme Council, Scottish Rite (Southern Jurisdiction, USA)” (founders; organisation) and “Scottish Rite” (Southern and Northern Jurisdictions).
– Brief History of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1890).
– Albert G. Mackey, Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, entry “Abbreviations” (signature symbols).
– Nashville Scottish Rite, “Scottish Rite Hats”: https://www.nashvillescottishrite.org/?p=84