The first of the higher degrees added to Freemasonry in the eighteenth century, the Royal Arch was probably of French origin but first surfaced in England sometime before 1744, when the first references appear to it in English Masonic writings. By that year Royal Arch lodges (not yet called chapters, as Royal Arch bodies were later termed) already existed in York and London, and possibly also in Dublin. No one has yet been able to determine who invented it. Andrew Michael Ramsay, an influential Mason in Jacobite circles in France, has been proposed as a candidate but no evidence has been found to confirm this.
The Royal Arch in its early years was associated with the Antient side of the Antient–Modern schism that split British Masonry down the middle in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Records of the Antient Grand Lodge in London show that the Royal Arch degree was in use among the Antients when it was still unheard of among English Moderns. In America, where the differences between the two sides were smaller, Antient and Modern grand lodges adopted the Royal Arch with equal enthusiasm, and once the split was healed in 1813 the Royal Arch became a standard element of Masonry throughout the English-speaking world.
For nearly a century after the degree’s appearance, Masons debated where to fit it into the structure of the Craft, and different countries and Masonic rites put it in different places. In England, the Royal Arch is considered the completion of the Master Mason degree, and is under the authority of the United Grand Lodge of England. In Scotland and America, it has become the most important degree of a separate organization, the Royal Arch Chapter, which has its own national and (in North America) state and provincial grand bodies, and also confers several other degrees. In America, the Royal Arch Chapter is one of the four independent bodies that constitute the York Rite.
In France and other European countries, by contrast, it was incorporated into larger rites as one degree among many, and when these rites travelled they took their own forms of the Royal Arch with them. Thus, for example, the Royal Arch of Solomon, 13° of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, and the Grand Royal Arch, 31° of the Rite of Misraim, are essentially the same as the Holy Royal Arch worked in Chapters affiliated with the United Grand Lodge of England or the Grand Royal Arch Chapters of Scotland and the United States. Versions of the Royal Arch were also adopted into the Loyal Orange Order and several other secret societies.
Whereas the legend of the Master Mason degree deals with the loss of the Master’s Word, that of the Royal Arch deals with its recovery. Three workmen, according to the legend, found an underground chamber while clearing away ruins, descended into it, and found an object marked with the true Master’s Word. Curiously, different versions of the ritual put this event in different historical settings. The Scottish Rite version just mentioned, for example, places it in the time of King Solomon, not long after the death of Hiram Abiff, while the version worked in Royal Arch Chapters sets it during the rebuilding of the Temple after the Jews’ Babylonian captivity. In reality, of course, the legends of this and all other Masonic degrees are symbolism, not history.
The traditional colour of the Royal Arch is red, contrasting with the blue of Craft Masonry (the “blue lodge”). Its emblem is the Triple Tau, a symbol formed of three capital Ts joined at the base, within a triangle.
SEE ALSO:
- Freemasonry
- High Degrees
- Andrew Michael Ramsay
- Antient–Modern schism
- York Rite
- Loyal Orange Order
- Rite of Misraim
- Hiram Abiff
- Origin Stories
li>Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (AASR)
SOURCE:
The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies : the ultimate a-z of ancient mysteries, lost civilizations and forgotten wisdom written by John Michael Greer – © John Michael Greer 2006