Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite
The most widespread of the Masonic rites — and the one the Fênix has worked since its founding, in 1973.
This page tells where it came from. Nothing practiced inside the Temple is described here: it is public history, and it comes from the very Supreme Council that organized it.
The higher degrees are born almost alongside the Order itself.
When speculative Freemasonry becomes institutionalized, in 1717, only two degrees exist: Entered Apprentice and Fellowcraft. Everything that came after — including the degree of Master — is, technically, a higher degree.
- 1717
London, at the Goose and Gridiron
On June 24, four London Lodges meet at the Goose and Gridiron Ale House and found the Grand Lodge of England, electing Anthony Sayer as its first Grand Master. The original record was lost; the account that survives is that of the Reverend James Anderson, in his New Book of Constitutions, of 1738.
- 1725
The first higher degree
On May 12, Bro∴ Charles Cotton receives the degree of Master Mason — the first higher degree added to symbolic Freemasonry, eight years after the Grand Lodge's founding. It is not known who wrote the ritual, nor exactly how the change came about.
- 1733
The “Scots Masons' Lodges”
A handwritten list of Lodges mentions a Scotch Masons' Lodge. The words Scots, Scotch, and Scottish designated a type of Masonry practiced — not Scotsmen by birth. It is the second-oldest tradition of higher degrees known, older even than the Royal Arch.
- 1743
Bordeaux, and a name that reappears
The higher degrees were born in Great Britain, but they flourished in France. From the Loge L'Anglaise, founded in Bordeaux in 1732, comes the Loge la Française, which in 1743 founds the Loge Parfaite Harmonie. Among the founders of this last Lodge is Étienne Morin.
- 1744
Rebuilding, rather than mourning the ruin
The book Le Parfait Maçon includes a section on the “secret of the Scots Masons.” The theme found there still underlies degrees 15, Knight of the East, and 16, Prince of Jerusalem.
Instead of weeping over the ruin of Solomon's temple, as their brethren do, the Scots occupy themselves with rebuilding it.
The image is precise. After seventy years of captivity in Babylon, Cyrus allows the Israelites to rebuild the Temple and the city of Jerusalem; Zerubbabel leads them back; the first stone is laid under Cyrus, and the work is only completed in the sixth year of Darius. It is from this event that the Scots traced the origin of their institution.
From France to the New World.
- 1761
Morin's patent
On August 27, the French Grand Lodge of Paris, acting with the Council of Emperors of the East and West, issues Étienne Morin a patent as Grand Inspector, authorizing him to “establish the perfect and sublime Masonry in every part of the world.”
- 1763
The Order of the Royal Secret
Morin organizes a rite of twenty-five degrees, the Order of the Royal Secret — at times incorrectly called the Rite of Perfection. It gathered the most widely practiced degrees of the time. To reinforce his own authority, Morin also drafted and backdated the Constitutions and Regulations of 1762, which would only be discovered more than two hundred and twenty years later.
- 1764
Kingston, then New Orleans
Morin brings the Order to Kingston, Jamaica, and the following year the higher degrees reach the North American continent, established in New Orleans.
- 1767
The Francken Manuscripts
Morin authorizes the Dutch Mason Henry Andrew Francken to install Masonic bodies in the New World. Francken begins conferring the higher degrees in Albany and, fortunately for history, hand-copies several copies of the rituals — the Francken Manuscripts, some of which survive.
- 1795
Charleston, a colonel under Washington
After a chain of appointments running through the Antilles, Newport, and Philadelphia, Barend Moses Spitzer appoints, on April 2, John Mitchell — an Irishman settled in Charleston, who had served as Deputy Quartermaster General of the Continental Army and was known to George Washington.
Charleston, May 31.
A week after making the Reverend Frederick Dalcho a Grand Inspector, John Mitchell opens in Charleston, South Carolina, the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree for the United States of America — the world's first Supreme Council.
It was a system superior to Morin's: it administered thirty-three degrees, including the twenty-five of the Royal Secret. Its traditional authority rests on the Grand Constitutions of 1786, supposedly ratified by Frederick II of Prussia — a document modern historians consider traditional rather than historical.
That Supreme Council exists to this day as the Supreme Council, 33°, Southern Jurisdiction. Its seat remains in Charleston, though its residence moved to Washington around 1870.
When the Rite came to be called by this name.
Alexandre-Auguste de Grasse-Tilly, a member of the Supreme Council of Charleston, organizes a Supreme Council for France. In the agreement signed that year between this new Council and the Grand Orient of France, the title Rite Écossais Ancien et Accepté — Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite — appears for the first time.
The name would only come into common use from 1859 onward, under the administration of Grand Commander Albert Pike.
The Rite does not explain itself from the outside.
This is the chain the Fênix has worked in since July 30, 1973. It is the Lodge's declared vision to become a reference in Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite ritual practice across Rio de Janeiro Freemasonry.
What that demands is known to whoever practices it: rigor, study, and constancy. The rest belongs to those who were there.
This page is an abridged translation of A Brief History of Freemasonry and the Origins of the Scottish Rite, by Arturo de Hoyos, published in the Scottish Rite Ritual Monitor and Guide (2010, p. 77–111) and adapted by the Supreme Council, Southern Jurisdiction. Read the original in English →
Fênix Nº 1884
Three hundred years of a chain, and the next link.
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