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Who wrote the first three rituals.

Center

Registered User
The first three rituals are for me, as student the most amazing ones.
I read and meditate them since years and they always surprise me for their deep meaning.
Who was the original author of them? Anderson with some other fellows?

And how is experimentally true that the Royal Arch ( that has in my opinion the same insightful meaning of the first three degrees) was inclusive of the Master Degree.
 

Elexir

Registered User
The rituals have slowly been worked on over time with things added and things removed.
In the beginig it was only two.
 

Center

Registered User
Thank you very much all of you for your precious contributions. The rituals of the Craft are almost not human for their beauty, wisdom and force.
I will definitely buy the book of Robert Davis, it looks really clear-sighted from what I can see. Great reading for the Christmas period vacation Also I was thinking about reading again the famous Duncan as starting point, but William Preston and T.S.Webb look fantastic, I read them only in small portions so far.

Your interventions were really pertinent to me, furthermore just to quote one, @JamestheJust brought forward indirectly an essential question in my opinion regarding the rituals:Is more important the cultural reference that presented for the first time a symbol, or is a successive "modification" even more meritorious as insight? This is a question not easy to reply and make central the continuity and the importance of an association as the Freemasonry in the world.

Dear Friends, almost certain that the light will keep always shining in the darkness, my best wish is that the winter solstice may bless you your temple three times
 

Warrior1256

Site Benefactor
Three working tools per degree can be seen in the Mithraic lodge - along with a 7 rung ladder with a star at the top.

Raising with the lion's grip comes from Egypt - as does the Widow's Son.

>...Royal Arch ... was inclusive of the Master Degree.

The triple grip seems to come via Sumer - along with the relevant word - but the vault is recent Scottish - hence the Latin text.
Good info!
 

coachn

Coach John S. Nagy
Premium Member
JustJames said:
It may be inaccurate to assume that the originals were symbolic. My limited observation is that the ancient rituals were literal. In modern times we lack the spiritual technology and thus perform imitations.

religion_smart.jpg
 

BullDozer Harrell

Registered User
The first three rituals are for me, as student the most amazing ones.
I read and meditate them since years and they always surprise me for their deep meaning.
Who was the original author of them? Anderson with some other fellows?

And how is experimentally true that the Royal Arch ( that has in my opinion the same insightful meaning of the first three degrees) was inclusive of the Master Degree.
I haven`t heard much about Anderson and his involvement with assisting to frame early English masonic ritual. In fact this is the 1st time i`m hearing it.

I remember Anderson and the early English Constitutions.

Sent from my SM-T377P using My Freemasonry mobile app
 

Center

Registered User
@JamestheJust
Thank you very much for your link, the edge between symbolic and literal is one of the most complex to disentangle.
I went trough your interesting link with the Herodotus quotations.
The dispute about how sacred texts have to be read is still present today. For instance as I chosed to be part of a rosicrucian fringe order, I agree to partake to a current of thought that would like to see the bible with symbolic meanings that overweight the literal ones, but still today you are going to find a lot of students (more o less catholic) that will defend the literal aspect.

For instance I start to independently give credit that Isis could be more o less identified with the Holy Ghost in the Christian trinity. But would open another post for that.

Most of the ancient rites were literal and using drugs and sex. But still the archeoastronomy showed some wisdom that suggested a much more articulated symbolic system. The thoughtfulness of thinkers as Plato when mentions the pythagorean methaphors (for instance a perforated cup to contain the passions), put forward for consideration the ability from the ancients to use the symbols. Much-debated have been in the modernity the structuralist french studies of Vernant and Levi Strauss about the importance of the symbols for the ancient Greeks, how the polymorphic meanings of the deities, namely a no unilateral interpretation makes these symbols so important to us, because open to several interpretations, this is also a masonic principle as far as I spoke in some lodges, where there is not a dogmatic meaning for a particular symbol.
Said that, all the roots of the religions are in really literal rituals, where the female fecundity, as in Artemis, Potnia Theron, Diana, Cybele is all a recall with enrichments of the more simple Paleolithic and Mesolithic themes of big breasted females. So still you could see in some documentary, modern men from "civilizations without the writing techniques" that were inserting their erected penis into the ground as way to have prosperous harvests, as to sustain the fact that initially the literal part, the sun and the nature were playing a role much more practical than esoteric.
But the point that even some masonic authors miss at my advice is that outside the external manifestation of astronomic phenomena the role of corrispondence between micro and macro cosmos play an important role in the mystery, I read Know thyself on the entrance of some Lodges I visited after all.

@BullDozer Harrell
the famous 1717 Goose and Giridon story comes from Anderson second edition of the constitutions. The problem is that the sources he quotes are not always reliable, and also he was putting is point of view. With these premises I would not be surprised that Anderson wrote/elaborate them together with other enlightened minds. These are the years where the landmarks are taking a substantial form, far before the categorizations will see a century after from Albert Mackey. But mines are only speculations, as I would like to shed light on who wrote the rituals as written in the title of this thread.
 
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acjohnson53

Registered User
It's funny how we discuss Rituals, I know each Jurisdiction has a revised version of their original Ritual, for instance when I retured back to the states in 1994 and started working out a Lodge in Victorville, I had to buy a new Ritual for California, because you couldn't use a Ritual from another Jurisdiction which was Oklahoma. But I have several Ritual that were used in the past like the Old Duncans which is used in the Southern States it is also encrypted..
 

CLewey44

Registered User
It's funny how we discuss Rituals, I know each Jurisdiction has a revised version of their original Ritual, for instance when I retured back to the states in 1994 and started working out a Lodge in Victorville, I had to buy a new Ritual for California, because you couldn't use a Ritual from another Jurisdiction which was Oklahoma. But I have several Ritual that were used in the past like the Old Duncans which is used in the Southern States it is also encrypted..
Btw, brother, welcome home.
 

hanzosbm

Premium Member
Read up on Preston and webb, besides being interesting guys of their own accord they both have a lot to do with ritual
Not to disagree with brother David612, but rather to offer some context that I think a lot of American Masons miss;

Preston wrote most of the lectures we are now familiar with (Webb basically edited Preston's work). You know the very long parts that you take a deep breath before reciting? Those were Preston/Webb. For one thing, Preston's Illustrations of Masonry was written about Freemasonry, not as the ritual itself. It's freely available online and I'd encourage you to look through it to see not only what is the same and different from what we know today, but also the context in which it was written. Personally, I think it's a long stretch to say they wrote the ritual, but rather, they commentated on the ritual and their writings were later incorporated into the ritual to better explain it. I don't believe that was ever Preston's intention, Webb is a different story.

Prior to this, Anderson's Constitutions outlined a lot of Old Charges which included a lot of the rules and obligations we see in our current degrees, but in different verbiage. This was also the time that the Grand Lodge was trying to at least somewhat standardize the rituals. We don't really know what the degrees looked like around this time or before. We have catechisms from earlier and some of them, like the Edinburgh House Register, do mention the candidate going through a series of events similar to floorwork. Other than that, the early catechisms are about the symbols of the fraternity, so we don't know what, if any, degree work there was. It's possible that it consisted solely of swearing a short oath on the constitutions and then listening to the catechism spoken by others, or, it could've been as elaborate as what we have today, we simply don't know.
 
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