Companions and Guests of St Clair Chapter No 2902
A report on St Clair Chapter 2902 first meeting of the new masonic year by E. Comp Stan Marut PPrGReg SLGCR
What do you do when you have no work? Have a Lecture, of course. However, that only takes up so much time and there’s the whole afternoon to get through. Not only that, but you’re one of the first masonic units to meet in the new masonic season and the Centre priority is the large wedding group to cater for. Nil desperandum. The afternoon convocation of St Clair Chapter 2902 became an opportunity to sit back and gain some masonic knowledge. Several daily chunks in one whole it seemed.
When a unit only has three meetings a year there always seems to be a race to gain new Companions. An admirable motive but on this occasion E. Comp Stan Marut PPrGReg SLGCR provided the solution to what would have been a short meeting otherwise. He gave two talks the first which sought to explain the relationship between the Craft and Royal Arch and why the Royal Arch is vital to the whole masonic story.
IN THE BEGINNING
E. Comp Stan considered the relationship between the Royal Arch and the Third Degree and said it was important first to distinguish between the ideas that later became associated with Royal Arch Masonry and the Royal Arch as a formal degree or ceremony. Before the emergence of the Third Degree in its recognisably modern form, around the 1720s and 1730s, there was no Royal Arch degree in the form that developed later in the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, several themes that would eventually become central to Royal Arch Masonry were already present within the wider Masonic tradition. The later Royal Arch did not therefore emerge from nothing; rather, it appears to have gathered and ritualised older ideas concerning the Temple, hidden knowledge, the Divine Name, restoration, and the recovery of ancient truth.
The Royal Arch could therefore be understood not simply as a later degree added to the Craft, but as the ritual resolution of questions that had become increasingly prominent within eighteenth-century Masonry. The Third Degree presented the Mason with death, loss, and the absence of the Word. The Royal Arch presented restoration, discovery, and recovery. In that sense, the two ceremonies became complementary parts of a larger symbolic narrative.
At the Conclusion of the talk the IPZ, E. Comp Darryl Bubb presented the Symbolical Lecture.
AN EXPLANATION
Renditions of the Lectures in the Royal Arch are all very well, but E. Comp Stan thought it important to spend time analysing the meanings within the text and proceeded to the next part of his presentation by providing an explanation. The Symbolical Lecture is revealed as a treasury of moral and spiritual instruction. Its emblems are not isolated objects, but parts of a single narrative of loss, return, labour, revelation, restoration, and preservation. The Royal Arch Companion is reminded that the Temple is not merely something that once stood in Jerusalem, nor merely a structure rebuilt after captivity. It becomes the enduring symbol of the human character and the spiritual life.
The evening finished with members and guests partaking of a cold buffet provided by the Centre which was enjoyed by all. A good start to the masonic season for St Clair Chapter 2902.
