Every Scottish Rite Mason begins his journey in the same place: the Lodge of Perfection, the body that confers the 4th to the 14th degrees. This page introduces the Lodge of Perfection and its place among the bodies of the Rite, and then looks in detail at its first degree, the 4° Secret Master, which lays the foundation for everything that follows.
The bodies of the Scottish Rite
In the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States, whose rituals are followed on these pages, the degrees above Master Mason are grouped into five parts:
- Lodge of Perfection, 4° to 14°
- Chapter of Rose Croix, 15° to 18°
- Council of Kadosh, 19° to 30°
- Consistory (Masters of the Royal Secret), 31° to 32°
- The 33°, conferred as an honour by the Supreme Council
The Northern Masonic Jurisdiction groups the same 4° to 32° differently: Lodge of Perfection (4°–14°), Council of Princes of Jerusalem (15°–16°), Chapter of Rose Croix (17°–18°) and Consistory (19°–32°).
Lodge of Perfection
4th° to 14th°
The Lodge of Perfection
The eleven degrees of the Lodge of Perfection are known as the Ineffable Degrees. “Ineffable” comes from the Latin ineffabilis, something that cannot or should not be spoken. Rex Hutchens explains in A Bridge to Light that the name refers to the ancient Jewish custom of never pronouncing the name of God, and that the Rite uses this as a metaphor for a deeper idea: that the true nature of God is beyond anything human language can describe. The Northern Masonic Jurisdiction makes the same point, describing these as degrees that contemplate the unutterable name of God and apply the lessons of the Blue Lodge to everyday life.
The degrees pick up exactly where the Master Mason degree leaves off. Hiram, the master builder of King Solomon’s Temple, is dead. Over the course of the Lodge of Perfection his death is mourned, the work on the Temple is reorganised and completed, and the search for what was lost with him is carried on. That story is later joined to an even older legend about the patriarch Enoch and a vault beneath the Temple, and it ends, in the 14th degree, with both triumph and disaster: the Temple is finished, but Solomon falls away from the faith and Jerusalem is eventually destroyed. Hutchens is careful to note that this is Masonic tradition, not history; it borrows from the Bible to build characters and settings, and sometimes departs from it, because its purpose is moral instruction.
The name of the body carries its philosophy. Scottish Rite Masons do not claim to be perfect. The Northern Jurisdiction describes the name as expressing the belief that there is nevertheless a path towards perfection, and Hutchens calls perfection a goal that, precisely because it can never be fully reached, always gives a man something to strive for. Twenty-seven, the cube of three, is the traditional number of members of a Lodge of Perfection.
Lodges of Perfection are older than the Scottish Rite itself. The Ineffable Lodge of Perfection at Albany, New York, was chartered by Henry Andrew Francken on 26 December 1767, the first time these degrees were worked in the British colonies of North America; it was revived around 1820 and still exists. The Supreme Council that created the Rite in its 33-degree form was not opened until 1801, in Charleston, South Carolina (see The Origins of the Scottish Rite).
The degrees of the Lodge of Perfection in the Southern Jurisdiction are: 4° Secret Master (below), 5° Perfect Master, 6° Intimate Secretary, 7° Provost and Judge, 8° Intendant of the Building, 9° Elu of the Nine, 10° Elu of the Fifteen, 11° Elu of the Twelve, 12° Master Architect, 13° Royal Arch of Solomon and 14° Perfect Elu. Several carry different names and stories in the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, which has revised its rituals more extensively; each degree page notes the difference.
The 4th degree at a glance: Secret Master
- Body: Lodge of Perfection (4°–14°); the first Scottish Rite degree a Master Mason receives.
- Degree: 4°, Secret Master.
- Setting: the princes of Israel gathered after Hiram’s death. The lodge is hung in black strewn with silver tears, and because work on the Temple has stopped, no working tools are seen.
- Principal figures: King Solomon and Adoniram, the officer whom the Bible places “over the tribute” (1 Kings 4:6), that is, in charge of the conscripted labourers.
- In the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction: the 4th degree is now called the Builder. In it a Master Mason seeks divine guidance and learns to honour his relationships with God, family, country and Freemasonry. A member there becomes a Scottish Rite Mason once he has witnessed the 4°.
The lesson
Unusually, the Secret Master has almost no plot. Hutchens explains why: its purpose is less to act out a virtue than to lay the foundation for the whole Scottish Rite system. Its great theme is duty. Every later degree returns to it, whether directly or through heroic figures such as Hiram, Solomon or Jacques de Molay, and the Rite treats duty as the thread running through the teachings of the great moral teachers of history. The titles Scottish Rite Masons later carry, Prince, Knight, Master, are not meant as marks of rank over other men; in Hutchens’ words they are taken on together with “the duties inherent in them”.
The new Secret Master is pictured as someone setting out on a long journey in search of truth, symbolised by the True Word that was lost with Hiram. Hutchens summarises what the degree teaches about religion in plain terms. Freemasonry does not compete with religion or claim to save souls; it affirms that God exists, values prayer, and encourages each man to worship according to his own conscience and to study the sacred writings of his own faith. Alongside faith the degree commends reason and logic, so that a Mason can tell truth from error and form opinions of his own instead of borrowing other people’s. The Kabbalah, the mystical tradition of Judaism, is introduced as a teaching aid rather than a doctrine: its “Tree of Life” is compared with the three pillars of a lodge, Wisdom, Strength and Beauty, which in this degree are renamed Wisdom, Power and Harmony.
Albert Pike’s lecture for the degree in Morals and Dogma (1871) develops three virtues. Of silence he writes that “Secrecy is indispensable in a Mason of whatever Degree”, explaining it partly as protection against impostors who might exploit a brother’s obligations. Obedience, he insists, “does not mean submission to tyranny”, but the willing acceptance of the just laws any society needs. Fidelity he calls one of the oldest virtues, quoting the Latin maxim fides servanda est, faith once pledged must be kept.
Duties of the degree
According to A Bridge to Light, the Secret Master is taught to practise silence, obedience and fidelity, and the degree teaches three lessons:
- The teachings of Masonry are not to be taken lightly. They are learned through study and reflection, not absorbed by sitting through a ceremony.
- Learning far outlasts physical monuments. Temples fall; what is understood and taught survives.
- Duties are not done in the hope of reward, but for the satisfaction of doing right. Honours and recognition are beside the point.
Adoniram, who in the Bible served for decades and died at his post (1 Kings 12:18), is the degree’s picture of fidelity, a man faithful unto death.
Symbols and regalia
The apron is white, edged and tied in black. Hutchens explains the two colours in two ways: as the grief of the craftsmen at Hiram’s death and the loss of the Word, and as a picture of the dual nature of the world, with its light and darkness, good and evil, truth and error. The sky-blue flap carries an open eye in gold, here representing the sun as the great source of light and an emblem of the Deity, surrounded by crossed wreaths of laurel and olive, the symbols of hope for success in the search for truth.
The jewel is a small ivory key, worn on a broad yellow ribbon edged in deep blue or black; the gold-yellow stands for light emerging from darkness. The key bears the initials C.a.M., for Clavis ad Mysterium, “the key to the mystery”. As an emblem it speaks of secrecy and of the duty to keep safe what has been entrusted to us. The Master of the lodge wears a different jewel, a small gold triangle bearing the Greek letters iota, alpha and omega, which Pike notes was a three-letter form of the divine name among the Greeks. On its reverse are the Samaritan letters yod, he and vav, from which, with the he repeated, the four-letter name of God (the Tetragrammaton) is formed.
Other important symbols listed by Hutchens include the black hangings with silver tears, the figure of Adoniram, the ivory key, the blazing star (the search for truth), the wreath of laurel and olive, the great Masonic camp, the three pillars and the nine Masonic virtues. The lodge’s eight lights form the first cube, two times two times two, which the ancients associated with perfection, friendship, prudence, counsel and justice.
Reflections
The question A Bridge to Light poses for the Secret Master is an old one: may one command who does not know how to obey?
It is a fitting first question for a system of degrees that will later give its members grand-sounding titles. Leadership, on this view, is earned by first learning to serve, to keep one’s word and to hold one’s tongue. Pike put the matter of fidelity bluntly: “Faith plighted is ever to be kept” (Morals and Dogma, lecture IV). A man who cannot be trusted with small promises will not be trusted with large ones, and the Secret Master begins the Scottish Rite by asking every member to be trustworthy first.
Please view the video on the left, for a more detailed explanation of the 4th° Degree.
Sources:
– Rex R. Hutchens, A Bridge to Light: The Revised Standard Pike Ritual, 4th edition, edited by Arturo de Hoyos (Washington, D.C.: The Supreme Council, 33°, S.J., 2010), “Introduction”, “Introduction to the Ineffable Degrees” and chapter “The 4th Degree – Secret Master”. Purchase ‘A Bridge To Light‘ by Rex R. Hutchens
– Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), lecture IV “Secret Master”. Purchase ‘Morals & Dogma‘ by Albert Pike.
– Scottish Rite, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, “What is the Lodge of Perfection?”: https://scottishritenmj.org/blog/what-is-lodge-of-perfection, and “Scottish Rite 4th Degree”: https://scottishritenmj.org/degrees/degrees-4
– Wikipedia, “Scottish Rite” (sections on Henry Andrew Francken and the Albany Lodge of Perfection)