My dear brothers in the Scottish Rite,
I am so happy to again address you from the Santa Rosa Valley's newsletter. The venerable master in the Scottish Rite doesn't have much say in what happens in a valley very far beyond meals and event planning, and as we do not have our own building right now, we're not planning much in the way of events. However, the Valley's leadership seems to have listened to my suggestion to pay extra for good dinners rather than trying to find the cheapest options, and oh my, the dinners have been fantastic! I encourage all of you that have not attended a dinner in a while to do so, and maybe bring along some brothers from your Blue Lodge and show them how the elite of Freemasonry dines.
"Elite" of Masonry? Aren't we all on the level as Freemasons? Well, one thing I have observed at Blue Lodge is we might see a few sideliners at stated meetings, and year after year there's a lot of re-cycling of the chair positions. However, in the Santa Rosa Valley of the Scottish Rite (my only real exposure to what a Valley looks like), we have a lot of sideliners. So many sideliners that they fill chairs on both the South and the North side of the room! This translates to never needing to re-cycle chair positions. Of course it probably helps that we don't have to memorize in order to take a chair position. And we get fed good. This doesn't make us the "elite" of Freemasonry, but it sure makes us look like we are.
Another thing I notice is how many of our ladies attend our dinners. At blue lodge we don't tend to see that many of our ladies attend, but at Scottish Rite, there's quite a few! I like seeing our ladies at dinner. Please encourage your lady to attend with you. Our meetings are short and the dinners are wonderful.
At last month's meeting some of us got initiated into the Knights of St. Andrew. In early 1993 the late, Ill. Weldon Good, 33rd of the Tulsa Valley in Oklahoma saw a need for assistance during reunions. He also noticed that Masons were joining the Scottish Rite but not returning to help and participate in subsequent reunions. To rectify this he developed the organization now known as the Knights of St. Andrew as a service group for the valley. The by-laws stated that the Knights of St. Andrew are a “Black Cap” group. A member who receives the honor of KCCH – Knights Commander of the Court of Honor (red hat) can not hold an office or vote but they can continue to work and assist. The main duties of the Knights of St. Andrew are to assist during a reunion and to be available to the Valley’s General Secretary for any assigned duties. The Knights of St. Andrew work under the direction of the general secretary of the valley.
In several websites that I've just reviewed about the Knights of St. Andrew they are referred to as "elite". I'm not sure that was what I meant by using the term to describe the Scottish Rite. The Knights seem to be elite by nature of the costume, hat, and the fact they get to do the hard work no one else wants to stick around to do.
A mistake I noticed on one of the Knights of St. Andrew websites is it referred to the fact that one needs to be a "32 degree Mason" in order to be a Knight of St. Andrew. That is not quite correct. While it is true that to be a Knight one must be a black hat Scottish Rite Mason (32nd degree), but there is no such thing as a "32 degree Mason". Freemasonry has 3 degrees. The 3rd degree or Master Mason degree is as high as one can go in Freemasonry. The 32 degree is earned by a Scottish Rite Mason and is called Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret. Curiously I could not fact check the name of the degree at our own scottishrite.org; I couldn't find a list of the degrees there at all. Maybe they overlooked the obvious. I double checked the name in the book A Bridge To Light, which I know we all have easy at hand. Mine has been opened so many times I noticed today the binding is starting to give way. Soon it will look like my Blue Lodge cypher book.
In the process of learning about the Knights of St. Andrew, I also learned a bit more about the red hat some of our members wear. I was under the mistaken impression that it was participation in the Knights that earned the red hat, but such is not exactly the case. Curiously, if one is already a red hat, and not a Knight, they can not become a Knight. If they are a Knight and later earn the red hat, they are still a Knight, but can not vote or hold office as a Knight. How to earn the red hat is still a bit of a mystery to me, but perhaps being a Knight of St. Andrew is a step towards it. We all did get a Glengarry cap at our initiation, which is an interesting felt cap. I saw it spelled Glen Gharry on the Knights of St. Andrew website, but when I Googled about the hat, I think it is misspelled on the Knights website, as that is the only place on the web where it's spelled that way. I think it is Glengarry.
When I refer to the Scottish Rite as being the elite of Freemasonry, what I am referring to is the fact that the Scottish Rite is the university of Freemasonry. The York Rite completes the Hiramic legend of the three degrees of Masonry, and some secrets of our Gentle Craft are explained, while other secrets are introduced with only more veils of secrecy, making Freemasonry appear as a confusing morass of an amalgamation of ancient mystery school traditions and biblical era narratives. The York Rite is primarily exoteric. It completes the outer teaching of Freemasonry and displays the esoteric (inner, secret teaching) thickly veiled with symbols and allegory.
The Scottish Rite on the other hand explores the esoteric. The Scottish Rite attempts to communicate that which is "ineffable", in other words, a core secret of Freemasony that can not be spoken about. Not because it is so secret that we are mandated to keep it secret, but rather it is a kind of secret that words fail to explain, hence we call it ineffable. It can not be spoken about because the minute we open our mouths and say something about it we are wrong. There is no language that can be used to say what this secret is. Every man (and woman) must discover it for one's self. All that can be done is to point the way to a thing that is in your immediate awareness but you are ignoring. It is the root, the core, of who we, and the Supreme Intelligence, that Great Architect, really are.
I encourage all of you that read my message to come to the Scottish Rite and learn for yourself what this secret is. Encourage your Blue Lodge brethren to seek out membership in our truly Elite organization. Here they will find what it is they hoped to find at the Blue Lodge, but found only more secrets. This core secret is the promise of Freemasonry's goal of civility in the world. It is the solution to the salvation of our one single family: the human species. It is the promise of the Acacia and the Point Within a Circle and the Compass. It is the solution to our own individual eternal salvation. The grim tyrant of death is dying in ignorance. We seek the kind messenger of a death that is a birth into eternal light.
Here in the Scottish Rite we are indeed the elite of Freemasonry. Not in a braggart way; we are after all "on the level" in a way this core secret most definitely demonstrates. Here in the Scottish Rite we explain the mysteries of the York Rite, but it takes ears to hear before understanding can take hold. To the fresh initiate it will sound like so much balderdash. But give it time for the lessons of the degrees of the Scottish Rite to work upon your consciousness, and you will most assuredly find the Light which we all sought, knowingly or unknowingly, in the Blue Lodge.
Lux et Veritas.
I am your humble servant in our most Gentle Craft of Freemasonry,
Michael McKeown
