First Scottish Rite Degree

Tonight I participated in my first Scottish Rite Degree as a ritualist rather than a witness. I was given the role of The Guide in the suspiciously named "Secret Master" degree. The degree is not particularly suspicious up close as it merely takes a brief look at several Scottish Rite degrees including the 8th, 12th, 14th, 16th, 23rd, and 31st. The best word to describe the degree is tantalizing. The brief scenes give you just enough of the various degrees to make you genuinely want to see the individual degrees in their full form. I hope the candidates came away with the same sense.

The role I was given is present in all five scenes and has quite a few engaging lines. It leads the other main character, named Hiram, through the scenes providing most of the exposition. The character of Hiram was played by Andy Haslam, a Past Master from Hiram Lodge in South Portland. Andy is a great guy and an excellent ritualist. I really enjoy working with him, so this made the degree twice as fun. We are slated to perform the degree again in May.

The next degree on my plate for Scottish Rite is Zerubabbel in the 16th degree, "Prince of Jerusalem." There are about fifteen paragraphs of text to memorize. Fortunately, the language has classic Masonic styling rather than the modern styling of the new 4th degree, which ought to make it a lot easier than the 4th degree. For some strange reason modern language is harder for me to memorize.