Not every Scottish Rite cap marks an office or an elected honour. The light blue cap honours something simpler and, in its way, just as rare: decades of loyal membership. It is worn by Scottish Rite Masons who have belonged to the Rite for half a century or more, whatever degree or rank they hold.
Blue Cap
A cap for long service
The Supreme Council’s statutes for the Southern Jurisdiction list eight official caps. Seven of them mark a degree, an honour or an office: the black cap of the 32°, the red cap of the KCCH, the white cap of the 33°, and the caps of the Grand Cross, the Deputy, the Sovereign Grand Inspector General and the Sovereign Grand Commander. The eighth is the Fifty-year Member cap, which recognises a Scottish Rite Mason who has been a member for fifty years or more. It is light blue.
The long-service cap is not elected and cannot be conferred early. It is earned only by length of membership.
The cap shown here
The cap pictured on this page is made in the same style as the Fifty-year Member cap but carries the numeral 60, for a member of sixty years’ standing. It is of round blue silk, circled by a matching blue band trimmed with gold, with a gold cord across the top fixed at each side by a gold button embossed with a double-headed eagle. Above the band is the numeral 60 within a green embroidered laurel wreath, the ancient emblem of victory. The Supreme Council’s official list names only the Fifty-year Member cap, so a sixty-year cap is best understood as a continuation of that tradition rather than a separate rank.
Sources:
– The Supreme Council, 33°, S.J., “What is the significance of the Scottish Rite cap?” (official caps, Statutes Art. XIII §§15–22).
– Nashville Scottish Rite, “Scottish Rite Hats”: https://www.nashvillescottishrite.org/?p=84
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