Origin The Grand Lodge of London, the first Grand Lodge, formed in 1717, drawing on operative stonemasons' lodge traditions documented from at least the late sixteenth century; the tripartite Craft degree system of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason took its familiar modern shape over the following decades.
Master Mason is the third and highest of the three Craft degrees of Freemasonry, conferred after Entered Apprentice and Fellow Craft. Holding it is the standard requirement for membership in the appendant bodies that confer further degrees, including the York Rite and the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Freemasonry's own literature describes everything beyond Master Mason as an addition to, rather than a rank above, the Craft degree itself.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodThe Grand Lodge of London, the first Grand Lodge, formed in 1717, drawing on operative stonemasons' lodge traditions documented from at least the late sixteenth century; the tripartite Craft degree system of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason took its familiar modern shape over the following decades. 2 Sources
Primary SourceCraft degree structure, Freemasonry. 1 Organisation
Governing BodyThe Blue Lodge, the foundational body of regular Freemasonry; the Master Mason degree that follows Entered Apprentice and Fellow Craft is the standard prerequisite for membership in the appendant bodies, including the York Rite and the Scottish Rite, that confer further degrees. 1 Status
Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 1 Identity
PositionThird and highest of the three Craft degrees of Freemasonry, conferred after Entered Apprentice and Fellow Craft. 1 Also Known As Meaning
Symbolic MeaningTraditionally associated with the perfect ashlar, a finished stone, and with the legend of Hiram Abiff, the allegory of the Temple's master builder through which the degree's central moral lesson is conveyed. 1 Learn More
Master Mason, The Craft's Highest Degree And Every Higher Body's Gateway
Master Mason is the third and highest of the three Craft degrees of Freemasonry, conferred after Entered Apprentice and Fellow Craft. Holding it is the standard entry requirement for the appendant bodies that confer further degrees, including the York Rite's Chapter, Council and Commandery, and the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite's Lodge of Perfection, Chapter of Rose Croix, Council of Kadosh and Consistory. In that sense Master Mason functions as a gateway degree for the whole further landscape of organized Freemasonry rather than only as the top of the basic Lodge sequence.
Freemasonry's own literature is emphatic that this structural role does not make anything beyond Master Mason a higher rank in Masonic standing. Everything conferred by the York Rite, the Scottish Rite or any other appendant body is described as an addition to Craft membership, not a promotion past it; a thirty third degree Scottish Rite Mason remains, in Craft terms, a Master Mason who has also received further degrees elsewhere.
The historical scholarship on early organized Freemasonry, tracing from the 1717 founding of the Grand Lodge of England, situates the settled three degree Craft system, with Master Mason as its capstone, as a development of the first half of the eighteenth century, arrived at gradually rather than fixed from the outset, alongside the broader eighteenth century politics that shaped how organized Freemasonry took its modern form.
Master Mason's Public Symbolism And The Hiram Abiff Legend
Master Mason is publicly associated, across virtually every general account of Freemasonry, with a legend concerning Hiram Abiff, the master builder of Solomon's Temple in the Craft's own symbolic history. This narrative, its broad outline and its central themes of fidelity and loss, is discussed openly in encyclopedic and scholarly treatments of Masonic symbolism, distinct from the specific words and staging a Lodge uses to confer the degree itself.
The trowel is the working tool most consistently associated with Master Mason in published Masonic reference literature, following the pattern of the twenty four inch gauge and common gavel for Entered Apprentice and the level, plumb and square for Fellow Craft: a real tool from the operative stonemason's trade, given a moral reading as part of the degree's publicly taught symbolism.
Because Master Mason is the degree every higher Masonic body requires as a prerequisite, its symbolism, the Hiram narrative above all, is the most widely reproduced in general literature about Freemasonry, appearing in popular histories and encyclopedias far more often than the comparatively narrower symbolism of any single appendant degree built on top of it.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Succeeded By
Inspector General Honorary is the thirty third degree. It is not worked in course but conferred by a Supreme Council on members it selects, and like the rest of the Rite it presupposes the three Craft degrees.
Knight Kadosh is the thirtieth Scottish Rite degree and is conferred on Master Masons. The atlas holds five of the Rite's thirty three degrees, so what is recorded is the Craft qualification rather than a step from the degree immediately before it.
The eighteenth degree, Knight of the Rose Croix, belongs to the Scottish Rite, an appendant body open only to Master Masons. Degrees the atlas does not hold stand between it and the fourth, so the link recorded is the Craft qualification the whole Rite rests on.
Knight Templar is an order of the York Rite Commandery, the last of the three York Rite bodies, and is conferred on Master Masons. In most jurisdictions it requires a profession of Christian faith, where the Craft degrees ask only for belief in a Supreme Being.
Mark Master is a Chapter degree of the York Rite, an appendant body that confers its degrees only on Master Masons, so it follows the three Craft degrees rather than sitting among them. The atlas holds a selection of the York Rite ladder, not all of it.
Master of the Royal Secret is the thirty second degree and the highest conferred in course in the Scottish Rite. Like every degree of the Rite it is open only to Master Masons, which is the qualification recorded here.
Royal Arch Mason is worked in the York Rite Chapter and is open only to Master Masons. Degrees the atlas does not yet hold stand between it and Mark Master, so no direct step from one to the other is claimed here.
Secret Master is the fourth degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, which begins where the Craft degrees end: the Rite confers its degrees only on Master Masons. Numbering this degree fourth places it directly after the Craft three.
Select Master is a Council degree, the second of the three York Rite bodies, and is conferred on Master Masons after the Chapter degrees. The link recorded is to the Craft qualification rather than to an adjacent degree.
Successor Of
Master Mason is the third and last Craft degree and is conferred after Fellow Craft. Completing it makes a member a Master Mason, which is the qualification every appendant rite requires before it will confer anything of its own.
Sources
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