The 14th degree takes up only 18 pages in Morals and Dogma. A curiously Masonic number. As I've written before, I suspect there may yet be hidden encoded information to be found in Morals and Dogma. I'm sure Albert Pike must've been exposed to the complexity of encoded information in art and literature that had been published close to his time if not contemporary with it.

But that is not the subject of this article, rather I want to take a close look at the 14th degree as it is one of our most significant degrees. The 14th degree is the Degree of Perfection which allows us to wear the Yud Ring.

The 14th degree is called Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Mason. Today we primarily refer to it as the Degree of the Perfect Elu. Collectively the 4th through the 14th degrees are called the lodge of Perfection. The first paragraph of the chapter on this degree in Morals and Dogma famously says:

"It is for each individual Mason to discover the secret of Masonry, by reflection upon its symbols and a wise consideration and analysis of what is said and done in the work. Masonry does not inculcate her truths. she states them, once and briefly; or hints them, perhaps, darkly ; or interposes a cloud between them and eyes that would be dazzled by them.  "Seek, and ye shall find," knowledge and the truth."

He goes on two paragraphs later:

"Much of the Masonic secret manifests itself, without speech revealing it, to him who even partially comprehends all the Degrees in proportion as he receives them ; and particularly to those who advance to the highest Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. That Rite raises a corner of the veil, even in the Degree of Apprentice ; for it there declares that Masonry is a worship."

Pike continues on with his verbose flowery prose, from which I think we can tease out some truths about this degree, but to get a quick overview, let's see what Hutchens has to say in "A Bridge to LIght". Once again however he demonstrates lack of knowledge of the One Thing which the ineffable degrees are really all about, so we can think of Hutchens' interpretation as the outer teaching, and Pike's as the inner teaching.

Hutchens reminds us that the lesson of this degree is that Perfect Elus are both bound and free: bound by their obligation and free from prejudice, intolerance and envy. He says that this degree is styled the Degree of Perfection because it represents the perfection or completion of the degrees of the symbolic degree.

I don't think that's the whole story though. That description may be accepted as the outer meaning of the name Perfection, but the inner meaning, the True meaning as intended by the authors of most of the Scottish Rite degrees is most clearly and plainly referring to the state of perfection of the Self realized mind. The Self realized, the Perfect Elu, directly experiences the immediate and constant presence of the perfection of the Divine Creator.

To say it another way, where Truth is, nothing else is. Truth is perfect just as it is, right now, in this eternal, glorious, perpetual moment.

Truth is the Divine Awareness. It is Awareness that is at the root of your constant experience, without pausing, without cessation. Awareness always is. Awareness is never second in the experience of observation. Awareness is the root of thought, the root of seeing, the root of hearing. Awareness is the root of emotion, for no emotion can arise in our awareness unless we are aware of it.

The mistake most of us make is we identify with the changeable stuff. We say: "these thoughts, they are mine. They are me." We say, "these feelings I feel, they are mine, they are how "I" feel". But those feelings change when presented with a different context. Where you those first feelings, or the second? Neither. You are at your core the divine constant never changing never ceasing sense of Awareness.

But Hutchens goes on to discuss a very enigmatic aspect of the 13th and the 14th degrees, one that appears to allude to another core set of secrets at the root of Masonry that has to do with how the megalithic stone buildings located around the planet on a perfect geometric grid were built and to what purpose. In these two degrees we learn of a cubical stone with the ineffable (can't be spoken) name of Deity on it. Solomon decides to place the stone in a special underground vault used by himself, King Hiram of Tyre, and the Master HJiram for private conferences. Hutchens then goes on to espouse the idea that the meaning of these underground vaults references the inner quality of man, and then draws a comparison to the Christian Cross which I think is a fairly far stretch. Rather what I see here is a description of a technology that had to be buried underground in the same way that the nuclear powered Ark of the Covenant had to be housed in a building made from sold stone, covered on the inside in sheets of gold, with no iron used in it's construction.

There is so much more to be found in this degree. An important image in this degree is the seal of Solomon, formed by two interlaced triangles, one white and the other black. This six pointed star can be found hidden with the Pythagorean Tetractys. But that only considers this symbol in two dimensions, for it may be a 2d representation of the Merkaba, which is two interpenetrating tetrahedrons (pyramids) positioned such that their points all touch a sphere that encloses them. This shape is also called a star tetrahedron. The points touch the sphere at 19.5 degrees. It is said that when the star tetrahedron functions as a Merkaba, the two interpenetrating pyramids rotate in opposite direction to each other, and in this form certainly looks to me to be the complex spin geometry of magnetism, which is not a thing, but rather a posterior attribute, and is the root of all energy. The interpenetrating inverse of the torus Merkaba is the first expression of the One Thing into the material observable space. It is the loss of intertia. It is what field is.

I believe that our ancient brethren understood the science of energy in a way we do not today. I believe they understood how this elemental energy behaves because they existed in the Self realized state and where therefor not distracted by belief, but rather used retroductive reasoning (Plato, Plotinus, et. al.) from an enlightened perspective. All that exists springs from an initial movement; a separation. This separation is a division of the One Thing into the many appearing things. The One Thing is not actually divided, nor does it change into any other thing. It is always just as it is, but it demonstrates different aspects as posterior attributes of what it really is. For example, waves are not a thing, but what a thing does. The thing that waves are is water. Waves are a posterior attribute of water. But water can also express as steam or ice, but steam and ice are not different or separate from water, rather they are different expressions of one thing. Similarly all that we identify with, think, see, and experience is One Thing, expressing as separate things, but they are not really separate at all. The One thing is not divisible, nor is it changeable. It is not a multiple of things, rather it is that which expresses as multiple things.

This One Thing is, again, the eternal divine presence which animates as Awareness. Those who awaken to this are the Perfect Elu. They are bound, as there is no separation from our Divine Creator. They are free, as there is no one to be bound.

To become a Perfect Elu is extremely simplex. It is the most simplex thing on the planet. Yet it is also extremely difficult as our attachment to everything we think we are prevents the recognition of who we really are from occurring. The most direct path is not a path at all, but an action of thought. By a very detailed and exacting investigation into who you think you are you will find nothing that you are. You will discover that nowhere within or without can you identify any clear thing that you thought you were that pans out to actually be you. Then you will be thrust into immediate awareness of who you really are. It will be an inversion of how you used to consider yourself. You used to identify with all the changeable stuff and ignored the constant awareness of our Divine Creator, and now the changeable stuff is recognized as illusion, the Grand Fakeout, and you now identify with the pure singular awareness of the Supreme Architect's constant presence. It is the Cosmic Joke because it is giggle worthy funny when you realize that you had been believing a dream was reality, when Reality was right there in front of you the entire time.

Virtus Junxit Mors Non Separabit
omne quod est, est unum
Lux et Veritas

Michael McKeown