Royal Arch Mason

Royal Arch Mason is the fourth and crowning degree of the Chapter. Its story returns, generations after the destruction of the first Temple, to the captives released from Babylon who set about laying the foundation of a second, and in clearing the ground, discover what the ancient builders had entrusted to it. In the Craft degrees a great word was lost; in the Royal Arch it is found again.

History

The Royal Arch has a longer documented pedigree than any of its companion Capitular degrees. Its earliest known appearances are in Ireland in the 1740s, and the degree is recorded in York, England, in the same decade, which is one reason the whole system of allied degrees came to be called “York Rite.” From Britain and Ireland it crossed the Atlantic, and by the last quarter of the eighteenth century Royal Arch masons in the American states were organizing to govern the degree, leading in time to the state-by-state Grand Chapter system and the General Grand Chapter, a history told on the Chapter page.

In England the Royal Arch came to be regarded not as an addendum but as the completion of the Craft itself. On 10 November 2004 the Grand Chapter of the Holy Royal Arch in England declared it to be a degree in its own right and the completion of “pure, antient Masonry,” which consists of the three Craft degrees and the Royal Arch, a statement quoted at length on the Chapter page. The American York Rite, while working its Capitular degrees in its own manner, preserves the same understanding of the degree’s standing.

In the York Rite

Royal Arch Mason completes the four degrees of the Chapter, following Mark Master Mason, Past Master, and Most Excellent Master. The story it restores is carried onward by the Council of Cryptic Masons.