Among the high-degree systems born in the eighteenth century, the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite is today the most widespread in the world. Its structure of thirty-three degrees has become almost synonymous with Freemasonry in the popular imagination. Yet, despite its name, the Rite was not born in Scotland: its history runs through France, the Caribbean and the United States.
Why "Scottish"
In mid-eighteenth-century France, so-called "Scottish" degrees spread, presenting themselves as superior to the three symbolic degrees. The reference to Scotland probably carried prestige, linked to the presence in France of Scottish Jacobite exiles and to the idea that Scotland preserved an older Freemasonry. There is, however, no documented link between these degrees and the Scottish lodges.
The Rite of Perfection
In the 1750s and 1760s these degrees were gathered into a system of twenty-five degrees, known as the Rite of Perfection or Rite of Heredom. In 1761 Étienne Morin, a French merchant, received a patent authorising him to spread the high degrees in the Americas. Morin settled in the Caribbean, and through him and his successors the system reached the colonies of North America.
Charleston, 31 May 1801
The birth date of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite as an independent system is 31 May 1801, when a Supreme Council of the 33rd degree was constituted at Charleston, South Carolina. Its founders included John Mitchell and Frederick Dalcho. The new Council presented itself as the first Supreme Council in the world, and to this day the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States calls itself the Mother Council.
The system went from the twenty-five degrees of the Rite of Perfection to thirty-three, adding new degrees and reorganising the existing ones.
The Grand Constitutions of 1786
The legal foundation invoked by the Supreme Council was the so-called Grand Constitutions of 1786, attributed to King Frederick II of Prussia. Historians regard this attribution as apocryphal: there is no evidence that Frederick, although he had been initiated into Freemasonry in his youth, played any part in creating the Rite. The Constitutions nonetheless remain the reference text of many Supreme Councils.
Spread in Europe
From the United States the Rite returned to Europe. In 1804 Count Alexandre de Grasse-Tilly, who had received the degrees at Charleston, founded a Supreme Council in France. In 1805 a Supreme Council for Italy was established in Milan. Over the nineteenth century the Rite spread across much of the world, and in 1813 a second jurisdiction, known as the Northern Jurisdiction, was constituted in the United States.
The degree structure
The thirty-three degrees are organised into groups, whose names vary between jurisdictions. Some degrees are particularly well known:
| Degree | Name | Main theme |
|---|---|---|
| 1-3 | Apprentice, Fellow Craft, Master | The symbolic degrees, often administered by Grand Lodges |
| 4 | Secret Master | Mourning for Hiram and silence |
| 14 | Grand Elect, Perfect and Sublime Mason | Completion of the search for the word |
| 18 | Knight Rose Croix | The theological virtues and the word recovered |
| 30 | Knight Kadosh | The Templar theme of justice |
| 32 | Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret | Synthesis of the preceding degrees |
| 33 | Sovereign Grand Inspector General | The supreme administrative and honorary degree |
In many jurisdictions most of the intermediate degrees are conferred by communication, that is with an explanation, while only some are worked with a full ceremony.
The symbols of the Rite
The Rite's main symbol is the double-headed eagle, often crowned, holding a sword. The two heads look in opposite directions and are read as an image of balance between opposites: east and west, spirit and matter. Two Latin mottoes accompany the Rite: Deus meumque jus, "God and my right", and Ordo ab chao, "order out of chaos". The number 33 appears frequently in the symbols of the supreme degree.
Albert Pike
A decisive figure was Albert Pike, an American lawyer and journalist, Sovereign Grand Commander of the Southern Jurisdiction from 1859 until his death in 1891. Pike rewrote much of the ritual, enriching it with references to Kabbalah, Hermeticism, ancient religions and philosophy.
In 1871 he published Morals and Dogma, a vast commentary on the degrees of the Rite, in which he gathered texts from many sources, including the works of Éliphas Lévi. The book was given to members and became one of the most widely read Masonic texts, although the Jurisdiction specified that the opinions expressed were the author's own.
A rite of deepening
The Scottish Rite does not replace symbolic Freemasonry but builds on it. It is conceived as a path of deepening that takes up the legend of Hiram and develops it through biblical, chivalric and philosophical themes. In this sense it expresses a characteristic trait of Western initiatory societies: the idea that knowledge opens by degrees, each of which sheds new light on what was learned before.
In short
- The Rite grew out of the French "Scottish" degrees and the twenty-five-degree Rite of Perfection.
- In 1761 Étienne Morin received a patent to spread the high degrees in the Americas.
- The first Supreme Council of the 33rd degree was constituted at Charleston on 31 May 1801.
- The Grand Constitutions of 1786 attributed to Frederick II are considered apocryphal.
- Albert Pike reworked the rituals and published Morals and Dogma in 1871.
