Volume Issue Fall, 2019 T H E C R Y P T I C F R E E M A S O N CRYPTIC MASONRY By Hugh McCurdy (MI) from the “Voice of Masonry - 1880” To Royal and Select Masters are given the keystone in No bickering's, no strife and no conflicts could ever exist Masonry, more precious than is known by the vast in the Masonic institution, but peace, concord and workers of the quarries; and it has been truthfully tranquility would prevail, and the only contention in the proclaimed that to preserve and transmit our principles to whole Masonic family of earth would be who can best those who succeed us, in the hour of low twelve, is a work and who can best agree. Brotherly love and charity sacred, bounded duty we owe to Cryptic Masonry. Thus would be happily blended together, and the life and believing, we should often revert to the origin of our character of a gentleman, of a faithful brother and institution, for as has been said, it is only by digging to the devoted companion, would be merged in the life and foundation and examining each stone minutely that we purity of a consistent Mason. With you and all illustrious can rightfully estimate what has been erected thereon. It companions who have entered the secret vault rests the is so with Freemasonry. responsibility of any confusion ever prevailing in the lodge, chapter or council. Hence you perceive that the charge of a Select Master is literally true when it says to The first Grand Council which assembled at Jerusalem was each of you “that your obligations are increased in composed of Solomon, King of Israel; Hiram, King of Tyre, proportion to your privileges; and also let it be your and Hiram Abif - the three Grand Masters, who, constant care to prove yourself worthy of the confidence unobserved by “prying eyes,” devised the entire plan by reposed in you and of the high honor conferred on you, in which the temple should be erected, how the workmen should be divided into various degrees, each class admitting you among Select Masters.” consisting of an independent body, whereby it might be recognized by the peculiar sign of that degree. Most The degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and happily, too, they combine within the power of the council Master Mason were originally Ancient Craft Masonry; the alpha and the omega of Freemasonry, thereby while the old constitutions gave the Master the right and denominating Cryptic Masonry, by way of pre-eminence, authority to congregate his members into a chapter for the summit and perfection of Ancient Craft Masonry. Thus, the purpose of conferring the Royal Arch, which originally in fact, the duties, the powers, the responsibilities of a constituted a part of the Third degree. In elucidating the council embrace the whole range of Ancient Craft Royal Arch, it becomes necessary that other degrees Masonry, from the conception of the idea in the heart until should be incorporated into the chapter for the purpose of the candidate is in full possession of our mysteries, or in explaining the various parts of the temple. Hence the our own peculiar language, until he has passed the circle Mark and Most Excellent Master’s degrees were added of perfection. It is in the secret vault, securely guarded, and conferred before the Royal Arch. that the illustrious companions are required not only to search out the truth but to determine plans and design In the process of time it became necessary to establish a objects for the private as well as the general good of the Council whose province it should be to “account for the craft. concealment and preservation of those essentials of the Craft which were brought to light at the erection of the If, therefore, companions who constitute this class and second temple, and which lay concealed from the mystic who have passed the circle of perfection - who have eye four hundred and seventy years.” Hence Cryptic witnessed the wisdom, strength and beauty of our Masonry was inaugurated. principles, would be but true to their obligations and faithful to their requirements, what immense good could In different countries different systems prevail to be accomplished. inculcate, enforce and teach Ancient Craft Masonry; but in Continued on page 2 Page 2 this country it in confined to the degrees of the lodge, Deeds of love, it may well be claimed, are the chief chapter and council. Cryptic Masonry, therefore, is employment of the angels of GOD, and into a soul that contained within the degrees of Royal and Select Masters, overflows with bounty the bright-robed messengers of and are numbered eight and nine in the York Rite, faith, hope and charity constantly descend. Our faith after although in a chronological point of view they are the first death shall be swallowed up in victory; our hope and last degrees, hence called the alpha and omega of consumed only by its enjoyment, and our charity ended Ancient Craft Masonry. They illustrate the mysteries of when we shake off mortality in the boundless atmosphere Masonry, and without a full, perfect and complete of eternal love. knowledge of these degrees our Masonic edifice is incomplete and unfinished; or, as has been aptly said, “the degrees of Royal and Select Masters are polished and perfectly ashlars, marked and numbered for the building.” AN EXCERPT FROM COIL’S MASONIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Delos, an island of the Cyclades, was famed in ancient By Henry Wilson Coil, times for the number and skill of its artists, and for splendid temple and oracle of Apollo, raised eventually as Revised Edition 1995 by Allen E. Roberts an asylum to his mother when she was pursued from place to place by the implacable Juno. From this famous Zerubbabel. Prince of Judea, son of Shealtiel, mentioned oracle came the fount of inspiration, said to be a chasm in Haggai 1:12, 14, also called Tarshatha or the satrap of from which issued the exhilarating vapor. Over this was Persia. The statement that he was the grandson of King built the tripod of the gods from which a populace could Jehoiachin or Jeconiah seems not to be generally breathe the ascending distillations. To the inbred Mason endorsed. He was the leader of the first band of exiles we need not enlarge this illustration. The soul grows as returning from Babylon, where he had been known as truly as the Mason grows - as the tree takes in the air of Sheshbazzar and favored by the King. On arriving at the universe, aided by dew and rain, and by its mysterious Jerusalem, he and Jeshua, the High Priest, directed the chemistry transmits sap and fiber into wood and leaf, and renewal of public daily worship and of festival days. He flower and fruit, and color and perfume, so does the soul began the construction of the Second Temple in the of the Mason drink in living knowledge and by a divine second year after the return. This work was interrupted by alchemy, as patent and with the same inherent force as some of the petty satraps around and the work ceased for that which lies hid in the germ of the acorn. The virtuous about 16 years but was finally completed by Zerubbabel Roman truly said, “Either let not that which seems and Jeshua. So much for the historical facts connected expedient be base, or if it be base, let it not be expedient. with Zerubbabel. If our Masonic Order were merely a thing of yesterday; if it The Masonic ritualistic legends are more elaborated and were local and confined to one country, or to men of one somewhat variant. Masonically, Zerubbabel has been one faith; or if the number of its initiates were limited to this or of the most patronized of all historic figures, scarcely that clime, or its capacity for good or evil devoted to secondary to King Solomon and Hiram Abif, for the legend selfish ends, the question of its morality and philosophy of the Second Temple has been one of the most widely might well be consigned to one grave. Not in vain are the used in Masonic degrees, forming part of the legend of winged seeds of truth ever sown. GOD sees that they take the Royal arch degrees in both the York and Scottish Rites root somewhere and grow. The truth of all this is and all of the legend of the Order of the Red Cross in the witnessed in the past history of nearly 6,000 years - their York Rite and the 15th and 16th degrees of the Scottish pungent facts have been figured on the breastplate of Rite known a Knight of the East and Prince of Jerusalem, time. When our ancient brethren dispensed their charities respectively, also appearing in some lessor rites. The under the frowns of barbarism - when they disregarded various parts of the legend, not always told completely or the anathemas of kings and rulers and gathered around in the same arrangement, the York Rite using one degree common altars in fraternal relations - they gave divine and the Scottish two, are principally as follows: The evidence that the Order would survive the mutations of removal of the rubbish and debris of Solomon’s Temple time; and if we, brothers, shall continue to emulate the and preparation for the building of the Second Temple by virtues of these good and faithful men, it will survive the the Jews who had been allowed to return from Babylon wreck of ages yet to come.