The Perfect Master is the fifth degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite and the second of the eleven degrees worked in a Lodge of Perfection. The 4th degree mourns the death of Hiram, the master builder of King Solomon’s Temple; the 5th honours his memory and turns that grief into a very personal question. If your own life ended tomorrow, would it have been well spent? The degree’s answer is practical rather than mystical: work diligently, deal honestly, and keep your affairs in order.
The degree at a glance
- Body: Lodge of Perfection (4°–14°), the first of the Scottish Rite bodies a new member enters.
- Degree: 5°, Perfect Master.
- Setting: the lodge, no longer in deep mourning but still in sorrow, gathers on the anniversary of Hiram’s death for the yearly tribute that, in the legend, King Solomon ordered in his honour.
- Principal figures: King Solomon, King Hiram of Tyre, Adoniram (appointed chief architect of the Temple after Hiram’s death) and Zabud, Solomon’s minister.
- Symbolic colour: green, standing for the renewal of virtue.
- In the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction: the degree keeps the name Perfect Master but tells a different story, in which two sons of Aaron, corrupted by greed and ambition, let the sacred flame go out. Its stated philosophy is that trustworthiness is worth more than life and is the foundation of Masonic honour.
The lesson
The Perfect Master is built around a funeral. The Southern Jurisdiction ritual, as summarised in Rex Hutchens’ A Bridge to Light, presents the burial of Hiram as a tribute paid by the living to a man who led a wise and useful life. The working tools that marked his skill and authority are laid with him, and sprigs of acacia, the old Masonic emblem of immortality, are shared among the brethren. The drama is quiet and dignified, and its point is not the dead man but the people watching.
Hutchens puts it plainly: the teaching of the degree “is based on the certainty of death”. Nobody knows how much time he has, so the sensible course is to live each day as if the account might be closed that evening. Hiram is held up as the example to copy, and the honours paid to him are a reminder that a reputation is earned slowly and lost quickly.
Albert Pike’s lecture on this degree in Morals and Dogma (1871) turns the theme into two everyday virtues. The first is industry. Pike has little patience with idleness, which he calls “the burial of a living man”, and he describes the shock of reaching old age and realising how many hours were wasted along the way. The second is honesty, which he defines with a lawyer’s precision as honesty in contracts, sincerity in what we affirm, simplicity in bargaining and faithfulness in carrying out what we promised. A Perfect Master, in Pike’s view, should avoid not only outright lies but anything that is technically true and still meant to mislead.
One custom makes the lesson unusually concrete. Hutchens records that from 1883 to 1935 the candidate was required to write his last will and testament before receiving this degree. The requirement has since been dropped, but the idea behind it remains: a Mason who takes the uncertainty of life seriously will make proper provision for his family and the people who depend on him.
Duties of the degree
A Bridge to Light sums up the degree in one duty and two lessons:
- Duty: be industrious and honest. Use your time well, earn what you receive and never profit at another person’s unfair expense.
- Lesson: life is uncertain, and death may call at any time. The right response is not fear but readiness, with work done and obligations met.
- Lesson: the noblest part of humanity is virtue for its own sake. Good conduct is not a bargain struck in hope of a reward; it is worth practising simply because it is right.
The duties build directly on the 4th degree, which taught silence, obedience and fidelity. Where the Secret Master learned to keep faith, the Perfect Master learns to make his working life an expression of that faith.
Symbols and regalia
The apron is white lambskin, with lining, border and flap in light green. At its centre two crossed columns carry three concentric circles, crimson on the outside, then blue, then orange, with a gold cube set over them. According to Hutchens the cube stands for the finite, created universe, while the three circles represent the wisdom, power and beneficence of God. Two Phoenician letters on the top face of the cube, yod and heh, are the first two letters of the ancient Hebrew name of God.
The jewel is a pair of compasses opened to sixty degrees, with the points resting on a graduated arc. Sixty degrees is the angle at each corner of an equilateral triangle, a figure that Masonry has long used as a symbol of the Deity. Notice what is missing: the square. Pike explains in his first lecture that the square concerns “the earth and the body” and the compasses “the heavens and the soul”, so a jewel made of compasses alone signals that the candidate is moving from earthly concerns towards spiritual ones.
The cordon is a broad, grass-green watered ribbon, worn from the right shoulder to the left hip, with the jewel hanging from it. Its colour carries the degree’s theme of virtue renewed. The gloves shown above complete the set of regalia pictured on this page.
Other important symbols are the branches of acacia, the coffin and the figure of Hiram himself. Hutchens explains that the apron, collar and jewel together stand for the Master himself, so that each time they are worn they recall a life worth imitating.
Reflections
A Bridge to Light closes its chapter with two questions for the reader:
- Can you measure your age not by years, but by good deeds?
- Does a life well lived prepare one for death?
Pike offers a useful starting point for both. “To learn and to do!” he writes; “this is the soul’s work here below” (Morals and Dogma, lecture V). On his reckoning a person’s true age is the sum of what he has learned and done with his time, not the number of birthdays he has had. That is the thought the Perfect Master asks every member to take home.
Please view the video on the left, for a more detailed explanation of the 5th° 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), chapter “The 5th Degree – Perfect 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 I “Apprentice” and lecture V “Perfect Master”. Purchase ‘Morals & Dogma‘ by Albert Pike.
– Scottish Rite, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, “Scottish Rite 5th Degree”: https://scottishritenmj.org/degrees/degrees-5