The Intimate Secretary is the sixth degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite and the third in the Lodge of Perfection. It is a story about a quarrel between two kings and a loyal servant caught in the middle, and it asks how a good man should behave when tempers run high. Its answer is a cluster of practical virtues: zeal and fidelity in duty, generosity towards others, and the courage to be a peacemaker.
The degree at a glance
- Body: Lodge of Perfection (4°–14°).
- Degree: 6°, Intimate Secretary.
- Setting: the audience chamber of King Solomon, still hung in black with silver tears in memory of Hiram.
- Principal figures: King Solomon, King Hiram of Tyre and Zabud, a faithful servant of Solomon.
- Symbolic colour: crimson, the colour of zeal.
- In the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction: the 6th degree is a different drama altogether, the Master of the Brazen Serpent, in which the children of Israel rebel against Moses and God during a dangerous journey through the desert. Its stated philosophy is that the answer to humanity’s spiritual problems is faith in ourselves and in God.
The lesson
The degree starts from a short and rather awkward passage in the Bible. In return for cedar, fir and gold, King Solomon gave Hiram, King of Tyre, twenty cities in Galilee; Hiram went to see them, “and they pleased him not” (1 Kings 9:11–12). Scripture leaves the matter there. The Scottish Rite, as Rex Hutchens explains in A Bridge to Light, extends the story into an allegory about a dispute between two allies.
In outline, King Hiram arrives in anger, convinced that he has been cheated with a handful of ruined villages, and he accuses Solomon of breaking faith. Zabud, who does not recognise the visitor and fears for his own king, stays close to the door so that he can come to Solomon’s aid. He is taken for an eavesdropper and is in real danger, but Solomon insists that he be heard before he is judged. Once the facts come out, everyone’s conduct looks different. Solomon had always meant to rebuild the cities, and only Hiram’s death had delayed the work. Zabud’s “spying” turns out to be loyalty. King Hiram’s hasty words are forgiven, the two kings renew their friendship, and Zabud is rewarded by being made Intimate Secretary to them both, the position of trust once held by Hiram the builder.
Each character carries part of the lesson. Zabud stands for zeal and fidelity. Solomon shows patience and fairness, while King Hiram shows how quickly suspicion can lead a decent man to act unjustly. By the end, both kings are peacemakers. Hutchens notes that the happy ending is Pike’s reading of 2 Chronicles 8:2, which records that Solomon did rebuild the cities that Hiram had returned to him.
Pike’s lecture in Morals and Dogma does not retell the story. Instead it discusses duty in general, which he describes as “the moral magnetism which controls and guides the true Mason’s course over the tumultuous seas of life”, and it treats generosity, disinterestedness and peacemaking as the natural fruit of that sense of duty.
Duties of the degree
According to A Bridge to Light, the Intimate Secretary is taught to be zealous, faithful, disinterested and benevolent, and to act the peacemaker. In plain terms:
- Zealous and faithful: do your duty wholeheartedly, whether or not anyone is watching and whether or not it is rewarded.
- Disinterested: judge other people’s motives generously and without regard to your own advantage. Pike goes so far as to say that a man who is not disinterested and generous has no place among Masons.
- Benevolent: be glad of other people’s success, and never think that a brother’s advancement makes you any smaller.
- A peacemaker: calm quarrels rather than inflame them, and bring together people who have fallen out.
The lesson Hutchens draws from the drama is simple: zeal and fidelity to duty are always rewarded, even if the reward is sometimes only a clear conscience.
Symbols and regalia
The apron is white lambskin bordered in bright crimson, with an equilateral triangle embroidered on the flap. It carries Phoenician letters: in the centre are the same two letters, yod and heh, that appear on the apron of the 5th degree, with three further letters placed around them. Hutchens points out that the Phoenician script is a deliberate reminder that Hiram the builder, although his mother was Jewish, was regarded as a Phoenician who served a Phoenician king.
The jewel is a triple triangle (a “triple delta”) set on a golden equilateral triangle. Each small triangle carries one of the old astrological or alchemical signs for the Sun (gold), the Moon (silver) and Mercury (quicksilver), all of them sources or carriers of light and therefore emblems of truth. In Hutchens’ explanation the Sun is the active principle, the Moon the passive one that reflects its light, and Mercury, the messenger of the gods, the force that reconciles them: a picture of balance that suits the Master of a lodge. The form of the jewel comes from the Pythagorean tetractys, the triangle of ten dots that was one of Pike’s favourite sources of symbolism. The lodge’s three groups of nine lights repeat the same triple-triangle pattern.
The cordon is a broad crimson watered ribbon worn from right to left, or a collar of the same material, from which the jewel hangs. Crimson, the colour of the degree, stands for zeal. The gloves shown above complete the regalia pictured on this page.
Other important symbols listed by Hutchens are King Solomon and King Hiram themselves, as two halves of one lesson about trust and reconciliation.
Reflections
A Bridge to Light leaves the reader with one short question: why act the peacemaker?
Pike’s answer is worth reading in his own words. The Mason’s task, he writes, is “to keep friends from becoming foes, and to persuade foes to become friends”, and he adds that this is impossible for anyone who cannot first control his own temper (Morals and Dogma, lecture VI). The story of the two kings shows why. The quarrel was caused by a misunderstanding, nearly cost an innocent man dearly, and was settled only because one person was willing to stop, listen and judge fairly. Elsewhere in the same lecture Pike calls Masonry “the realm of peace”, a description that sets a high standard for every lodge.
Please view the video on the left, for a more detailed explanation of the 6th° 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 6th Degree – Intimate Secretary”. 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 VI “Intimate Secretary”. Purchase ‘Morals & Dogma‘ by Albert Pike.
– The Bible, 1 Kings 9:11–12 and 2 Chronicles 8:2.
– Scottish Rite, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, “Scottish Rite 6th Degree”: https://scottishritenmj.org/degrees/degrees-6