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June 26, 2022

The York Rite of Freemasonry. A History and Handbook by Frederick G. Speidel. Part III – The Council of Royal and Select Masters, 40-51. Oxford, N.C. : Press of Oxford Orphanage, 1978.

The Council of Royal and Select Masters, known as the Cryptic Rite, fills, what would be, a huge void in the history of the York Rite. The degrees controlled by the Grand Councils in the United States are : the Royal Master degree, the Select Master degree, and the Super Excellent Master degree. The first two were called Preservation Degrees. [...]
July 2, 2019

The Crosses and the Sword

If we were to escape to the poor cubicle of rationalities, where nothing is produced or reproduced other than the fact that we think it is there that everything is produced and reproduced, we would live in a single world where cold stone walls would prevent us from seeing that it is beyond them that there is more sun and more moon.
December 18, 2016

Symbolism of cryptic degrees : the Royal Master’s degree

In the symbolic degrees, the Companions are confronted with the story of the loss of the Word, they search for it but do not find it. In the Chapter, they search, they find, but they do not understand the meaning of what they have found. The explanation of how, effectively, the Word was preserved, and what it means, is the theme of the cryptic degrees.
November 17, 2016

Cryptic Masonry

The degrees of the Council are commonly referred to as Cryptic degrees. The Cryptic degrees in Freemasonry are the degree of Royal Master and Select Master. The degree of Super Excellent Master is part of the Council degrees, but has nothing to do with the crypt or the vault.