Rito de York

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.
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. [...]