June 26, 2022
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
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
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
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.
November 17, 2016
The York Rite, or more correctly, the American Rite, is based on Freemasonry as practiced in the early 18th century. The formation of the first Grand Lodge of England in 1717 specified that lodges only conferred the degrees of Apprentice, Companion and Master Mason, considering all other degrees as spurious.
November 16, 2016
The following ritual bodies are allied to the York Rite ritual bodies because of the requirement that their members are also members of the York Rite or at least one of its ritual bodies; and they are allied to the York Rite by the requirement that their members be Freemasons.
May 5, 2014
One of the problems we most often encounter in Freemasonry is the difficulty we are sometimes confronted with, in ritual practice.