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Weird orders & rituals under Freemasonry?

Brother JC

Moderating Staff
Staff Member
There's a division there for non-Masonic orders as well...
Some of these are from other countries, some from clandestine grand lodges, some are from a century or more ago. Freemasonry is far broader than our little American lodges, and the collection of appendant and concordent bodies is huge.
 

dfreybur

Premium Member
Rich folks can afford to be eccentric. Poor folks are stuck with being crazy. Masonry has a rich tradition so we can afford to call our strangest side orders eccentric instead of crazy. The distinction is semantic only but it does sound a lot better.

To sit in the east for one year a brother needs to be enthusiastic. To sit in the east a second year a brother needs to be dedicated. To sit in the east a third year does a brother need to be crazy or eccentric? Chuckle.
 

Rick Carver

Premium Member
From some google search I got to this page. What on earth all all these other weird rituals and why would so many of them that one would probably never ever hear of be classified under Freemasonry? Rite of Memphis- Misraïm has 99 degrees and order of the Police... really?

Are these all really part of our order?


http://www.stichtingargus.nl/vrijmetselarij/ritualen_en.html
I always wondered if the Rite of Memphis was like Scottish Rite where they actually convey 4 or 5 Degrees and kinda tell you about the rest. Those missing AASR Degrees are really quite special when you actually get a chance to see them all. The Valley in Guthrie, OK does an excellent job of putting on the 4th through the 32nd Degrees.

Wasn't Rite of Memphis one of the organizations that had trouble getting started in the USA for some reason? I may be thinking of another.
 

Warrior1256

Site Benefactor
Rich folks can afford to be eccentric. Poor folks are stuck with being crazy. Masonry has a rich tradition so we can afford to call our strangest side orders eccentric instead of crazy. The distinction is semantic only but it does sound a lot better.

To sit in the east for one year a brother needs to be enthusiastic. To sit in the east a second year a brother needs to be dedicated. To sit in the east a third year does a brother need to be crazy or eccentric? Chuckle.
LOL, I like the way that you look at this!
 

Mike Martin

Eternal Apprentice
Premium Member
There is a reason that the very specific term "Appendant" (tr. hanging from) is used to describe these Orders, bodies etc and that is they have all taken something from Freemasonry and used it to become their own entity, sadly today many don't realise this. They are not a part of Freemasonry but they are related to it, some more so than others .

The truth that every person needs to bear in mind is that in 1717 when the first Grand Lodge in the world was formed there were only 2 degrees given to a Freemason: Apprentice and Fellow and the only "Master" was the Master of the Lodge.

Within 10 years a Master Mason degree was being tentatively worked in some Lodges across the British Isles and became common and accepted by Grand Lodge by 1730ish. 20 years later a Mark Man and Mark Master (coming from Scotland) and a Royal Arch Degree and Installed Master (coming from Ireland) were being worked. However, most Appendant bodies owe their genesis to the 1737 oration of Chevalier Andrew Ramsey in Paris following which there was an explosion of degrees, mainly due to the creativity of the french brethren, that linked Freemasonry to many different things.

Even America has had a hand in creating an Appendant Rite called the York Rite, which pulled together several Appendant Degrees and put them into an ascending Order. It is always greeted with incredulity when I state that here in England there is no York Rite practised and that it was only ever worked between for about 30 years in the latter half of the 18th century by the (tiny) Grand Lodge of All England (a long extinct rival to the Premier and Antient Grand Lodges of England) that surfaced twice during the 18th Century. Initially there was a Lodge in York but in 1725 it proclaimed itself a Grand Lodge probably because it didn't like the fact that London Masons came up with the idea first. In its first incarnation 1725 - 1735 it practised exactly the same degrees as the rest of the British Isles, only during its "revival" between 1761 - 1789 did it work the degrees that today make up the (American) York Rite.

The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite and the Ancient & Primitive Rite of Memphis & Misraim are actually closer relations to each other than they are to the Craft, both having been born in France in the latter half of the 18th Century. The Craft of course evolved from the Operative Craft in the British Isles at an undefinable point between the 16th and 17th Centuries. The earliest actual speculative Freemasons we know of at the present time were Inititiated in the 1640s.
 

Warrior1256

Site Benefactor
I'm a new MM and in the process of joining the York Rite and I did not know that the YR was created in the U.S. Thanks for the heads up.
 

crono782

Premium Member
The degrees weren't all originally created here, but the York Rite as *we* know it to be organized and governed was implemented here, hence why a lot of folks refer to it as the American Rite.
 
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