HOW often we hear some 32d Mason spoken of as a "high" Mason. How frequently officers of Masonic bodies other than Symbolic Freemasonry are spoken of in terms exalting them above even Grand Masters of Grand Lodges. In laudatory introduction how constantly the Sovereign Grand Commander of a Supreme Council, or the Grand Master of the Grand Encampment, or the General Grand Council, or the General Grand High Priest is said to occupy the "highest office in the gift of Freemasonry. Not a bit of this is true. All such statements are due to ignorance, misconception or arrogance. All of them do grievous harm to the cause of Freemasonry both without and within the Craft. Let us consider the true facts. Prior to 1717, assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, there were no officers in Freemasonry of any rank or station whatsoever, outside of the particular lodges. In 1717, for the first time, there was organized a Grand Lodge and elected a Grand Master. Anthony Sayer was then, in London, chosen the first Grand Master of Masons the world has ever known. When the office was created, its occupant was given prerogatives. That is to say, he was regarded in Freemasonry as a king or emperor was regarded in civil political life. He was the seat of authority. In him resided all the powers which were not by the nature of the organization vested in the Grand Lodge or the particular lodges. The limitations upon his authority were those imposed by the Constitutions and the ancient usages and customs of the Craft. But the world was changing and with it changed the ideas of the Fraternity. More and more his prerogatives have been curtailed in many jurisdictions by peaceful yet revolutionary legislation. None of them has been wrested from the Grand Masters by duress, as the Barons curtailed the power of King John when they made him sign the Magna Charta. They have been absorbed from time to time by the Grand Lodges, just as by the development of civil government in England, Parliament and the people have sometimes by retail, sometimes by wholesale, limited the power of the King and taken over his authority. In most jurisdictions the Grand Master retains most of the pristine prerogatives of the office. In a few he has become a purely constitutional officer with no prerogatives whatever. This latter condition is the very infrequent exception and by no means the rule. No other grand officer in Freemasonry today has any prerogatives. Each one of them is strictly a constitutional officer deriving his sole power and authority, his rank and title, from the constitutional and statutory legislation of the body which has chosen him as its presiding officer. No other than a Grand Master has the attributes of kingship. None other is the successor of a king or a predecessor having kingly status save one, which by tradition, though probably not in fact, descends from civil or Masonic royalty. And in that one instance the Emperor, once the source and seat of authority, abrogated and divested himself and any single successor of all prerogatives by granting a constitution vesting all authority in a Council, the members of which thereafter have shared in common all the power which, tradition asserts, once resided in the Emperor. In all Freemasonry, nowadays, the only officer at the head of any grand body who can in fact or by tradition lay Claim to any authority, except that granted to him by the enacted laws of that grand body, is the Grand Master of Masons. There is no General Grand Lodge, no General Grand Master. Each Grand Master is the highest Masonic officer in his Jurisdiction. He has no superior. In the states and countries of the world where legitimate Grand Lodges exist, there is not a Freemason of any degree, rank or station who is not subject to some Grand Lodge and living under the reign of some Grand Master, save only the Grand Masters themselves. The Grand Lodges are in supreme, absolute, independent, unlimited and sovereign control of what is known as Symbolic Freemasonry, now divided into the degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason. One, the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania exercises a quasi-control over the ritualistic degree of Past Master. (All of course, control the qualification of an actual Master.) The only limit upon the utter supremacy of the Grand Lodges is that they shall not depart front the Landmarks. This limitation is due only to the fact that if they depart from the Landmarks they cease to be Masonic. To illustrate, if a railroad corporation should dispose of all its rails, its rights of way, and its rolling stock, and should manufacture shoes, it would cease to be a railroad, whatever it might call itself. There is a surprising amount of ignorance as to other degrees known as Masonic. Let us, therefore, review the other bodies generally admitted in the United States to be Masonic. One American Grand Lodge clearly defines this in its Constitution as follows: Whereas, this Grand Lodge recognizes no degrees of Masonry except those conferred under the regulations of the GRAND LODGES of the various States and Territories of the United States and the Governments throughout the world; and, whereas, it admits the following-named organizations to be regular and duly constituted Masonic Bodies, namely: The General Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the United States; The Grand Royal Arch Chapters of the several States and Territories of the United States, and the Royal Arch Chapters and other Bodies under their jurisdiction; The General Grand Council of Royal and Select Masters of the United States; The Grand Councils of Royal and Select Masters of the several States and Territories of the United States, and the Councils under their jurisdiction; The Grand Encampment of the United States; The Grand Commanderies of the several States and Territories of the United States, and the Commanderies under their jurisdiction; The Supreme Councils of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite for the Northern and Southern jurisdiction of the United States, and the various Bodies under their Jurisdiction; Therefore, any Mason admitted into any other Orders, as Masonic, is acting un-masonically, and for such conduct shall be liable to be expelled from all the rights and privileges of Masonry, and shall be ineligible to membership or office in any Lodge or in this Grand Lodge. The Chapters, Councils and Commanderies confer the degrees commonly grouped under the name of "York Rite." This is a misnomer. The "York Rite" has no connection with York. It is sometimes, and more properly, called the "American Rite." No one may take any of these degrees unless he be first a regular Master Mason in good standing. A Master Mason may apply to a Royal Arch Chapter and, if elected, receive four degrees known as the capitulary degrees, the principal of which is Royal Arch Mason. The capitulary degrees in America grew from a first appearance shortly after 1750, when lodge charters were borrowed as authority. In a few decades these degrees came to be worked in Chapters and a grand body, now the General Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the United States, was organized in 1797. A Royal Arch Mason may apply to a Council for the cryptic degrees, Royal, Select and Super-Excellent Master. These made their appearance in America about 1783, but it was nearly a century before their crystalization as now known, under the jurisdiction of Grand Councils, seventeen of which organized a General Grand Council in 1880. One who has the cryptic degrees (and, indeed in many jurisdictions, one who has only the capitulary degrees) [ed note -- as here in Michigan, only the capitular degrees are needed for membership in a Commandery.] may apply for the three Commandery degrees, the principal of which is that of Knight Templar. Like the Royal Arch, this degree first appeared in America under the sanction of lodge charters, toward the end of the eighteenth century. The first Grand Commandery was organized probably in 1797, and the Grand Encampment of the United States in 1816. Turning to the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, we find another misnomer, for it did not come from Scotland. About 1762 Morin brought to America something which has since developed into what we now know as the Scottish Rite. This had years of catalepsy but came to life and strength and now consists of what are known as the 4th to 33rd degrees, inclusive. They are under the entire control of two hierarchies known as the Southern and Northern Supreme Councils, 33d, of the United States. A Master Mason may apply to the Scottish Rite for its degrees up to the 32nd, through successive stages. No applications are received for the 33rd degree. Thirty-second degree brethren who are chosen by the active members of the Supreme Council, the hierarchy, are granted the 33rd degree, as an honorarium. From those who are honorary members of the 33rd degree vacancies in the active membership are filled by the surviving actives. Such being the "set up" of the modern system of Masonic degrees, it will be seen that Symbolic (Blue Lodge) Masonry existed long before Chapters, Councils, Commanderies, Consistories or Supreme Councils were dreamed of. While the degrees conferred in these bodies are colloquially known as "higher" degrees, in reality they are nothing of the kind. They might more properly be called collateral or appendant. One of the greatest of Masonic jurists was R. W. Brother Albert G. Mackey, M. D., Grand Secretary and Grand Lecturer of the Grand Lodge of South Carolina; Secretary General of the Supreme Council, 33d, Southern jurisdiction; author of many Masonic works on history and jurisprudence. He called all other than Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason "subsidiary." He said: We repeat, that the Scotch Rite is not antagonistic to the York Rite, but is subsidiary to it. And we are not willing to rest the truth or value of this assertion in our own unsupported authority. Dr. Frederick Dalcho, one of the leading members of the Scotch Rite in this country, in an address delivered as far back as the year 1803, before the Sublime Grand Lodge of Perfection, at Charleston, thus defined the relations between the two Rites: "The Sublime Masons view the Symbolic system with reverence, as forming a test of the character and capacity of the initiated." "Other degrees, indeed, there are above and beyond these. They are, however, but illustrative and explanatory, and, by Masonic students, may be, and often are, very advantageously cultivated, for the purposes of laudable curiosity and intellectual improvement." There were Masters and Grand Masters years before any one had invented or fabricated the ornamental, instructive and honorary degrees conferred by bodies presided over in these later years by High Priests, Eminent and Puissant Commanders, etc. No one can take any other Masonic degrees unless he has first received those of the symbolic or so-called "Blue" Lodge. The Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason are fundamental. And the organized governing body of the Blue Lodge can deal Masonically with all Masons within its territorial jurisdiction. While the Grand Lodge cannot govern the other bodies, it is nevertheless the supreme authority of each jurisdiction. It is the Grand Lodges who have determined that other bodies are or are not Masonic. Grand Lodge recognition has been in the past, as it must be in the future, the final test. No other Masonic body could live if there were not Third Degree Masons from whom to receive applications. On the other hand, the Grand Lodge alone may expel from Masonry. The phrase, "expelled from Masonry," means just what it says. It is not expulsion from the First or Second, Third or Thirty- third Degree. Expulsion from Masonry is Masonic death. M. W. Josiah H. Drummond (Grand Master of Maine, 1860-62) when he was M. P. Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council, 33d, Northern Masonic jurisdiction, reported in an annual address to that body a decision that: All expulsion or suspension from all Masonic rights, for any cause whatever, by the lodge, in accordance with the laws of the Grand Lodge of the jurisdiction, deprives the one expelled or suspended of all rights in all Bodies of the Ancient and Accepted Rite, until he shall be legally restored. He explained: Our degrees (those of the Scottish Rite) are founded on those of the Blue Lodge. We have no jurisdiction over those. * * * When the foundation is destroyed, the structure falls with it. That body in any jurisdiction which can give or take away Masonic life is the supreme body of that jurisdiction. Its Grand Master is the highest Masonic officer in that jurisdiction. M.W. Sereno D. Nickerson, a lifelong student and exponent of Masonry and holder of all its degrees, said in 1901, speaking in Grand Lodge: Until within the last one hundred years there was not anything but the Three Degrees. The lodges conferring those degrees form the great body of the Fraternity. They have a right to say what shall be put upon the top of that organization; they have a right, and they are the only authorities which have a right, to say what is Masonry and what is not, because they are the basis, the foundation, of the whole Fraternity. Because a few brethren in France one hundred years ago established other organizations, that is no reason why we should submit to be reckoned as an inferior organization - it is no reason why we should call those higher and better and nobler bodies. Ours is the organization, and the lodges of the state should adhere to their power and their control over all fundamental matters that concern the Fraternity. I recollect distinctly at one of our Feasts of St. John, only a few years ago, Brother Gardner, whom you will remember as one of our best Grand Masters, and after his Grand Mastership a judge of our Supreme Court - a brother who had received all the degrees and all the honors of Masonry - I heard him say, at the Feast of St. John, "All other organizations are but excrescences on the body of Masonry. The Grand Lodge, composed of the Masters and Wardens of the lodges, is the representative of the whole Fraternity, and those who are connected with that organization should maintain the strength and the power which fairly belong to them." The word "excrescences" was doubtless intended without sinister meaning. The San Francisco "Mercury" said in 1865: It is on the superstructure of the lower degrees that the whole fabric of Freemasonry rests. There is a right vested in the Entered Apprentice that no legislation can deprive him of. All Masonic authority is derived from Blue Masonry, as on this branch the higher grades must depend for the material of which their bodies are composed. It is a contradiction in terms to call the Chapter, etc., the highest branches of the Order. It is not the fact - these are merely appendant to the first, or central point, the Blue, and they must move in harmony with the central power, or their course will be arrested, and they must come to a sudden stop. The Chapters and other branches of the Institution are indebted to the Blue branch for life, for vitality, for food and nourishment, otherwise they could not exist. This position cannot be denied, but must be admitted by all. So true is this that the highest branches of Freemasonry, so called, have only an existence by permission of the Blue. If at any time it was deemed beneficial or necessary to the harmony or existence of Freemasonry, to abolish the Chapter and other degrees, the authority to do so certainly rests in the Grand Lodge, which represents Blue Masonry. The authority to confer the Arch and other degrees came first from the lodges, subsequently the authority was transferred to, or delegated to the Grand Lodge. The power which creates can destroy - this is a fixed axiom - and as the Chapters and other degrees were created by those who were in the possession of the Blue degrees, so they can either by legislation or non-affiliation, put a period in the existence of these appendant degrees. Each Grand Lodge, if the members wish it, can absolve the connection within its jurisdiction, or it may be done by the common consent of all the Grand Lodges, and thus at one and the same time abolish those degrees throughout the world. It is not, of course, desired that such should be the case. Nobody wants to see the destruction of so good a thing; but the above is only written to show that the governing power in Freemasonry is in the Grand Lodges or Blue Lodges, and not in Chapters or Encampments. (To Be Continued)