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Liber XXV · Secret Societies

Liber XXV · Secret Societies · Chapter II: Freemasonry

The Scottish Rite: Origins, 33 Degrees and the 1801 Council

The Scottish Rite of Freemasonry explained: French origins, the 1801 Supreme Council at Charleston, the 33 degrees, Albert Pike's rituals and the rite today.

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The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite is a system of thirty-three Masonic degrees, open to Master Masons, that continues the three Craft degrees of the lodge with a long series of allegorical dramas on chivalry, religion and philosophy. Despite its name it did not come from Scotland: it grew out of French "Scots" degrees of the eighteenth century and was organised in its present form by the first Supreme Council, founded at Charleston, South Carolina, on 31 May 1801.

French Origins: Scots Masters and the Rite of Perfection§

Freemasonry spread from Britain to France in the 1720s, and within two decades French Masons were inventing degrees beyond the three of the Craft lodge. Among the earliest were the "Scots Master" (Maître Écossais) degrees, documented from the 1740s, which claimed to preserve secrets older or higher than those of ordinary Masons. The adjective "Scottish" may reflect the prestige of Scottish masonry, Jacobite exiles in France, or simply a legendary claim; historians do not agree, but there is no evidence that these degrees originated in Scotland itself. Andrew Michael Ramsay's oration of 1737, which connected Masonry with crusading knights, encouraged a flood of chivalric degrees.

By the 1750s and 1760s Parisian bodies were conferring systems of many degrees, culminating in grades such as Knight of the East, Knight of the Sun and Prince of the Royal Secret. In 1761 the French merchant and Mason Étienne (Stephen) Morin received a patent authorising him to establish these degrees in the Americas. Morin worked in Saint-Domingue and Jamaica, and his deputy, the Dutch-born Henry Andrew Francken, carried the system to Albany and other American towns in the 1760s and copied its rituals into manuscripts that still survive. This system of twenty-five degrees is usually called the Rite of Perfection or the "Order of the Royal Secret".

The Supreme Council of 1801 at Charleston§

Charleston, with its active Masonic community and links to the Caribbean, became the centre of the higher degrees in the United States. On 31 May 1801 a group of Masons there, led by John Mitchell and the physician Frederick Dalcho, constituted themselves the "Supreme Council of the Thirty-Third Degree for the United States of America". Its founders included Protestants and Sephardic Jews, among them Emanuel de la Motta, a reminder of the religious variety of Charleston Masonry.

The new council added eight degrees to the twenty-five of the Rite of Perfection, making thirty-three, and adopted as its charter the "Grand Constitutions of 1786", said to have been approved by Frederick the Great of Prussia. Historians regard that attribution as legendary: no evidence connects Frederick with the document, which appears first in the Charleston milieu. In December 1802 the council issued a circular to Masonic bodies worldwide announcing its existence and listing its degrees.

The Charleston council became the model for others. Alexandre de Grasse-Tilly, who had been made a member in America, established a Supreme Council for France in 1804. A Northern Masonic Jurisdiction was organised in New York in the 1810s and now has its headquarters at Lexington, Massachusetts, while the original council became the Southern Jurisdiction, governing the rite in most other states. The Supreme Council for England and Wales, founded in 1845, calls the system simply the Ancient and Accepted Rite.

The Thirty-Three Degrees§

The degrees are conferred in groups by bodies with traditional names. In the Southern Jurisdiction they are:

  • Lodge of Perfection (4°–14°): from Secret Master to Grand Elect Perfect and Sublime Mason, continuing the story of Solomon's Temple after the death of Hiram Abiff and centring on the recovery of the lost divine Name.
  • Chapter of Rose Croix (15°–18°): including the Knight of the East and the Knight Rose Croix, which treats the passage from the old law to a universal religion of love, with imagery of the rose and cross (see Rosicrucianism).
  • Council of Kadosh (19°–30°): philosophical and chivalric degrees, ending with the Knight Kadosh, which draws on Templar legends.
  • Consistory (31°–32°): culminating in the Master of the Royal Secret, which presents the reconciliation of opposites, faith and reason, authority and liberty.

The Northern Jurisdiction groups the degrees differently and has substantially revised many of its dramas over the twentieth century. In most jurisdictions members receive the degrees as staged dramas watched by a class of candidates at a "reunion", with one candidate acting as the exemplar, rather than through individual initiation in each degree.

The 33rd degree, Inspector General Honorary or Active, is conferred by the Supreme Council on members chosen for service to the fraternity or society. It is often imagined as the summit of a pyramid of secret power. In practice it is an honour and an administrative rank within the Scottish Rite only; Craft lodges and Grand Lodges, which govern the first three degrees, are independent of it.

Albert Pike and the Southern Jurisdiction§

The figure most associated with the rite is Albert Pike (1809–1891), a Boston-born lawyer, poet and journalist who settled in Arkansas and served as a Confederate brigadier general. Pike received the Scottish Rite degrees in 1853 and found the rituals he inherited thin and inconsistent. Over the following years he rewrote all of them, drawing on comparative religion, Kabbalah, Hermeticism and the French occultist Éliphas Lévi; a privately printed version of 1857 is known as the Magnum Opus.

Elected Sovereign Grand Commander of the Southern Jurisdiction in 1859, Pike held the office until his death. He moved its headquarters to Washington, D.C., in 1870 and published, in 1871, his lecture commentary on the degrees, Morals and Dogma. His rituals, with later revisions, still form the basis of the Southern Jurisdiction's work. Pike's Confederate career and racial views make him a contested figure today, and the Scottish Rite's own historians have increasingly addressed that record.

Esotericism, Suspicion and Philanthropy§

The Scottish Rite occupies a distinctive place in esoteric history. Its degrees are an encyclopaedic tour of the religions, mystery cults and philosophies that interested eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Masons: Zoroaster and the Egyptian mysteries, Pythagoras, the Kabbalah, alchemy, the Templars and the Rosicrucians. For students of esotericism, the rite shows how material from these traditions was absorbed into a respectable fraternal institution and presented as moral allegory rather than secret practice.

The same features made it a target. Anti-Masonic writers have long treated the higher degrees as a hidden hierarchy behind the lodge, and the Léo Taxil hoax of the 1890s falsely presented Pike as the head of a Luciferian inner order, as discussed in our guide to conspiracy myths. The rite's actual history is better documented and more ordinary, a story of competing councils, ritual revisions and fraternal life.

In the twentieth century the Scottish Rite became known in the United States for large ceremonial buildings, including the House of the Temple in Washington, D.C., completed in 1915 to designs by John Russell Pope, and for philanthropy, notably children's hospitals and clinics for childhood speech and language disorders. Membership, like that of Freemasonry generally, peaked in the mid-twentieth century and has declined since, while international Supreme Councils continue to work the rite across Europe, Latin America and elsewhere.

Frequently asked questions§

Why is it called the Scottish Rite?§

The name comes from the French Écossais or "Scots Master" degrees of the 1740s, which the rite grew out of. It has no proven connection with Scotland, and Scottish Freemasonry developed separately.

What is a 33rd degree Mason?§

A 33rd degree Mason has been given the highest honorary degree of the Scottish Rite by a Supreme Council, usually for service. It gives standing and sometimes administrative duties within the Scottish Rite, but no authority over ordinary Masonic lodges.

When and where was the Scottish Rite founded?§

The first Supreme Council of the Thirty-Third Degree was founded at Charleston, South Carolina, on 31 May 1801, building on a 25-degree system brought from France via the Caribbean in the 1760s. It is regarded as the mother council of the rite.

Do you have to be a Freemason to join the Scottish Rite?§

Yes. Candidates must already be Master Masons in a recognised lodge. The Scottish Rite is one of several appendant bodies that offer further degrees to Master Masons.

Sources and further reading§