The origins of the Rectified Scottish Rite

The Rectified Scottish Rite (more properly the Rectified Scottish Regime) is an essentially Christian and chivalric Masonic Rite, which often intrigues Freemasons of other Rites, especially in countries where Freemasonry has been understood as being naturally progressive and rationalist, or even anticlerical. However the Rectified Scottish Rite is indeed a Masonic Rite, whose form and content echo a whole part of 18th-century Freemasonry, the Illuminist (or Mystical) current, which has always coexisted with the Rationalist one. What is the path that led to the official creation of the Rectified Scottish Rite in 1782? What are the different sources of the Rectified Scottish Rite and who created it? Here, in brief, are the main elements of the history of the Rectified Scottish Rite.

The sources of the Rectified Scottish Rite

All Masonic Rites are the confluence of several influences, and this is particularly obvious in the case of the Rectified Scottish Rite. This Masonic Rite has its roots in several currents that have fed the genesis of Freemasonry on the European continent.

The first source is, of course, the Freemasonry of the Grand Lodge of London (the Grand Lodge of the Moderns), which spread across Europe from 1725 onwards in the form of Lodges of the three Craft Degrees (Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft and Master Mason). This is obviously the starting point for all the Masonic Rites. In this respect, the Blue Lodge Degrees of the Rectified Scottish Rite are an extremely valuable record of ancient French Masonic practice. Eighteenth-century French Freemasonry practiced a wide variety of rituals, all based on the same Modern tradition, but differing in many details. Only two of them have survived: the French Rite of 1785 (published in 1801 under the title "Régulateur du Maçon") and the Blue Lodge rituals of the Rectified Scottish Rite, which are sometimes more archaic in form than those of the French Rite.

The second source is what is known as "Ecossism", i.e. the development, for a long time anarchic and confused, of the Masonic Higher Degrees. These degrees, supposed to stand beyond the degree of Master Mason, developed mainly in France, but also in Germany and Sweden. Jacobite Freemasons (i.e. those who remained loyal to the Stuart dynasty after the Glorious Revolution of 1688), many of whom lived in exile in France, played an important role in the emergence of these Higher Degrees, which they often associated with allegories concerning the restoration of the Stuarts on the throne of England.

The third source, and by no means the least important, is the Templar legend, which appeared in Freemasonry as early as the 1750s. According to this legend, of which there are several variants, Freemasons linked up with the Knights Templar and offered them refuge during their persecution, thus enabling them to survive.

The fourth source is one of the manifestations of eighteenth-century Illuminist and Mystical Freemasonry, which was multifaceted, ranging from alchemy and Hermeticism to Rosicrucianism, magic and even necromancy. It is Martinezism, a theosophical and gnostic doctrine that aims to enable souls to reintegrate their divine origin through the practice of evoking angelic entities. It is attributed to Martinès de Pasqually (1727-1774), who was probably of Portuguese Jewish origin but converted to Christianity, and who founded a Masonic order, the Order of Knight-Masons Elect Coens of the Universe to which most of the leaders of what was to become the Rectified Scottish Rite belonged. It is to this current, which also gave rise to Martinism, that the Rectified Scottish Rite owes its Christian esotericism.

The beginnings of the Strict Templar Observance

It is impossible to talk about the origins of the Rectified Scottish Rite without first presenting the Strict Templar Observance, from which it originated. The Strict Templar Observance Order is probably the most spectacular form that the Templar legend has taken within Freemasonry. This Order, which claimed to restore the Order of the Temple (and even hoped for an official rehabilitation of the Templars, with restitution of their property), was founded in Germany in the 1750s by the Baron of Hund (1722-1776; his full name and title are Karl Gotthelf, Reichsfreiherr zu Hundt und Alten-Grotgau). 

This member of the German landed gentry (a "Junker", typical of north-east Germany until 1918) took an early interest in Freemasonry, being received at the age of 19 in Frankfurt am Oder. Between 1742 and 1743, he lived in Paris, where he attended a number of Lodges and converted to Catholicism. He then spent a fortnight in Strasbourg, where he visited no less than five Lodges.

But the most significant event was his pretended reception in a Templar Chapter in Paris. Hund always alleged that two important personalities attended the ceremony: Lord Kilmarnock (William Boyd, 4th Earl of Kilmarnock, peer of the Kingdom of Scotland and faithful to the Stuarts, sentenced to death and executed following the Jacobite defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1745) and a mysterious "Eques a Penna Rubra" (Knight of the Red Plume) that Hund always claimed to be Charles Edward Stuart himself, the Young Pretender, grandson of the deposed king James II.  These eminent Jacobites allegedly gave Hund the dual mission of restoring the Order of the Temple and serving the Stuart cause. We shall see later what we are to make of this alleged reception.

Back in Germany, Hund founded a Lodge on his land at Unwürde (in Lower Lusatia, in the current Land of Saxony) and joined forces with Wilhelm Marschal von Bieberstein, Provincial Grand Master of Upper Saxony and founder of the first draft of a Templar Masonic Rite. Being a Freemason since 1737, Marschal had frequented Jacobite exiles in France, including Lord Kilmarnock: it was probably on the basis of Marschal's memories that Hund forged the story of his alleged reception by mysterious Jacobites. Between 1753 and 1755, Marschal and Hund began to draw up a new Templar system and produced the famous Red Book, which contained the rule and distribution of the Order's provinces. Marschal died before the work was finished, and Hund changed his title from Provincial Grand Master of Upper Saxony (a title of English origin) to Grand Master of the Seventh Templar Province, at the same time claiming to be his successor, under the orders of so-called Unknown Superiors (meaning Charles Edward Stuart and the Jacobite clan), from whom he was said to have received a mysterious, encrypted and completely illegible Patent.

Thanks to the intelligent construction of its legend, the appeal of its pompous ceremonies and the hope of one day being able to recover the Templars' property, the Strict Templar Observance encountered great success in the German aristocracy, to the point where several reigning princes were admitted. The Order soon spread to Switzerland, Strasbourg, France, the Austrian Empire, Denmark and Italy... The Order was highly hierarchical and aristocratic, reserving its Higher Degrees for nobles or wealthy middle-class people or those who were noted for their profession. Commoners could hardly hope to rise above the degree of Master Mason, and were not supposed to know the true nature and objectives of the Order, secrets reserved for the holders of the chivalric degrees alone. For Freemasons of the lower grades, as well as for Freemasons of the other Masonic Rites, the provincial structures that governed the Blue Lodges and the Lodges of St-Andrew of the system were known as Scottish Directorates, when in reality they were the Prefectures of the Order.

Decline of the Strict Templar Observance

The Order had set up place an Economic Plan, which was supposed to guarantee its dignitaries a comfortable income, but it only served to increase the financial contributions of its members to a very high level. As the rehabilitation of the Templars and the recovery of their property seemed to be delayed, discontent grew, and some members even began to doubt Hund's legitimacy. 

While the Convent of Altenberg of 1764 had endorsed Hund's entire system and legend without batting an eyelid, the situation was different at the Convent of Kohlo in 1772. Hund was asked to name the famous Unknown Superiors and to produce his Patent, which nobody could read. For the rest, Hund hid behind the oath of secrecy he had sworn to his Superiors in order to evade questions. But nobody was fooled and, without openly disowning Hund, the Convent appointed Ferdinand of Braunschweig-Luneburg (1721-1782) Grand Superior General of the Order, implicitly meaning that there were no Unknown Superiors. Hund was relegated to the rank of Grand Master of the Seventh Province, Grand Visitor of the Order. The first cracks were appearing in the German neo-templar edifice and the Order took the name of United and Rectified Lodges, and began to be referred to as Dresden Rectified Masonry. Rectified meant restored to its true aims. But what were they, if people began to doubt the Templar origin? The Convent of Kohlo was thus both the apogee of the Order and the first signs of its decline.

At the Convent of Braunschweig in 1775, Hund was once again attacked, and summoned to name the Unknown Superiors he claimed to serve and eventually produce a legible version of his famous patent. The unfortunate Baron collapsed, implicitly acknowledging the hoax. He died the following year. Ferdinand of Braunschweig then held an enquiry, which confirmed that Hund had made the whole thing up and had never received any mandate from Charles Edward Stuart, who was not even in Paris at the time he claimed to have met him, and who, above all, had never been a Freemason!

The Convent of Wilhelmsbad (1782)

Attempting to save what could be saved, Ferdinand of Braunschweig called a Convent to be held in Wilhelmsbad in 1782, but not before sending the Chapters, as early as 1780, a circular letter asking them to answer a series of questions, which can be summarised as follows: Did the Order have Superiors? Who were they? Does the Order go back to the Templars? Can the Order of the Temple be restored? Are the rituals adequate? Should the Order's aims be secret or public knowledge? Does the Order have some knowledge that no-one else has? The Order founded by Hund was almost completely devoid of spiritual substance, and a number of adventurers and charlatans had tried to take advantage of this, such as Johnson, Rosa and Gugomos. It was time to finally give satisfactory content to Rectified Masonry, from which many Lodges were beginning to defect. This was the aim of the Convent of Wilhelmsbad.

The salvation of Rectified Masonry came from France, and more particularly from Lyon, as we shall see later. The French members of the Strict Observance came to the Convent of Wilhelmsbad with a reform they had adopted at the Convent of Gauls in 1778. And, with one notable exception, this reform was adopted at Wilhelmsbad in 1782, with the explicit abandonment of Templar descent. But it was already too late, and the structure of the Order collapsed after the death of Ferdinand of Braunschweig in 1792. The Rectified Scottish Regime survived only in France and Switzerland, in the reformed form adopted in 1782.

Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, creator of the Rectified Scottish Rite

The Rectified Scottish Regime or Rite corresponds to the Reform of Lyon, adopted by the Convent of Gauls in 1778 and largely ratified by the Convent of Wilhelmsbad in 1782. It is essentially the work of Jean-Baptiste Willermoz (1730-1824). But how did we get there?

Jean-Baptiste Willermoz (an educated bourgeois and silk fabric manufacturer in Lyon) was probably one of the most passionate and assiduous Freemasons of the 18th century. Eager to discover the true secret of Freemasonry, he amassed a prodigious collection of rituals of all origins and was actively involved in the Masonic organisations of his time. In 1760, he was one of the founders of the Grand Lodge of the Regular Master Masons of Lyon, a sort of Provincial Grand Lodge dependent on what was still the Grand Lodge of France (which became the Grand Orient of France in 1773). In 1767, he was received into Martinès de Pasqually’s Order of Knight-Masons Elect Coens of the Universe, and thought he had finally found the true Masonic secret. His attachment to the Martinezist doctrine never wavered.

Following the Convent of Kohlo in 1772, some Freemasons from Strasbourg gave Willermoz such high praise for the German Rectified Masonry to which they had just affiliated that he resolved to join. He then entered into correspondence with Hund, whom he did not know had already fallen into a kind of disgrace. The Baron Weiler, who had already been delegated in 1772 to set up the Directorate of the Fifth Province of the Order (Burgundy) in Strasbourg, was sent in 1773 to the Brothers in Lyon who had requested affiliation. He carried the rituals translated into French and the conditions of membership. Willermoz added to the conditions that his Blue Lodges would remain under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of France, and he obtained, like the Rectified Freemasons of Strasbourg, the right to continue to practice two typically French Masonic Higher Degrees, the Knight of the Orient and the Knight of the Rosycross. Twenty or so Brothers from Lyon, who were to make up the new Chapter, were received as Knights on 21 July 1773, and on 25 July the Second Province of the Order (Auvergne) was installed. On 11 and 13 August 1773, all the new Knights made their Solemn Profession, thus attaining the highest degree in the Order, that of Professed Knight. 

Having fulfilled his mission in Lyon, Weiler continued his work by travelling to Montpellier and Bordeaux, where he established the Order's Third Province (Occitania). France now had three Templar Provinces and was to play a decisive role in the destiny of Rectified Masonry.

The Reform of Lyon and the Convent of Gauls (1778)

Being a great connoisseur of Masonic rituals, convinced that they should necessarily contain some spiritual content, Willermoz was very disappointed by the rituals that his German Superiors had transmitted to them. The Blue Lodge Degrees rituals are quite banal and, apart from a few allegories leading to the Templar legend, offer no originality whatsoever. They resemble all the known Masonic rituals of the years 1740-1760, only poorer. The Degree of Green Scottish Master is of great inanity, and is limited to expecting the recipient to imitate the virtues of four animals (the valour and generosity of the lion, the skill of the monkey, the foresight of the hawk and the cunning of the fox), and to reveal to him that Hiram is already half out of the grave and will arise in the shape of NOTUMA (an anagram of AUMONT, the supposed successor to Jacques de Molay according to the legend of the Strict Templar Observance). Regarding the degrees of the Inner Order, which is openly chivalric and Templar, the reception ceremonies for Novices, Knights and Professed Knights are mere imitations of the rituals used in Roman Catholic religious Orders, with no real content or originality.

Willermoz then undertook to rewrite the rituals, but not without adding the Martinezist dimension that was so dear to him, which he slowly and subtly disseminated through the degrees. He considerably enriched the existing rituals, adding content they did not have and proposing a new scale of degrees: the Entered Apprentices, Fellowcrafts, Master Masons and Scottish Masters of Saint Andrew constituted a Craft Freemasonry in four degrees, which was unprecedented; the Novice Squires and the Benevolent Knights of the Holy City formed the Inner Order, chivalric and no longer Masonic; above the Inner Order were placed the secret classes of Professed and Grand Professed, the only ones to know the explicit Martinezist doctrine and the theurgic practices of the Order.

This reform, known as the "Reform of Lyon", also included a new Masonic Code and a Nine-Point Rule, also the work of Willermoz. It was submitted to a Convent gathering the three French Provinces of the Order, the Convent of Gauls in 1778, the aim of which was to assert greater independence from the German Order, define more satisfactory rituals and decide on the Templar descent. Although some were reluctant to abandon the Templar legend, the reform was nonetheless widely adopted by the Convent. The Order then became the Order of the Benevolent Knights of the Holy City, and took the name of the Rectified Scottish Regime.

As we saw above, the French delegates to the Convent of Wilhelmsbad in 1782 brought the Reform of Lyon with them, and the Convent adopted it, with the notable exception that it did not ratify the degrees of Professed and Grand Professed, whose Martinezian mysticism competed too much with its northern European counterpart, dominated by Swedenborg's Johannism. But the Order died out in Germany ten years later. The history of the Rectified Scottish Rite was now to be written in France and Switzerland. But, as Bro. Rudyard Kipling used to say, that's another story...