Select Master

Select Master is the second principal degree of the Council of Cryptic Masons, and the degree that gives Cryptic Masonry its name. Its setting is the crypt, the secret vault constructed beneath the Temple, where certain treasures and records were deposited for safekeeping against a day of loss, so that they might one day be recovered, as they are in the Royal Arch degree.

History

The Select degree’s documented history runs parallel to the Royal Master’s. Traditions of “Select Masters” (small, carefully chosen groups concerned with the Temple’s secrets) were at work among American Masons in the closing decades of the eighteenth century, and the degree was being conferred in some chapters and other bodies before any Council existed to govern it.

The organized Council system took shape in the United States in the early nineteenth century. As Councils of Royal and Select Masters (or, in some jurisdictions, Councils of Cryptic Masons) were chartered, Royal Master and Select Master became the two principal degrees of the new body, and the state-by-state Grand Council system grew up alongside the Grand Chapters, part of the same general organization of the York Rite described on the Chapter page.

With the Royal Master degree, the Select Master degree completes the Cryptic narrative: what was hidden by the one body of workmen is preserved against loss, and recovered by another, binding the whole Temple story of the York Rite together.

In the York Rite

Select Master follows Royal Master as a principal degree of the Council. Many Councils additionally confer Super Excellent Master as an honorary degree. All degree histories are indexed on the degree histories page.