Page 33 - MML - Journal - Centenary Edition - Vol. 01 / 2023

amongst the Fraternity. In the years prior to the formation of the First Grand Lodge, Lodges were answerable to no central point or control, and consequently they had no uniformity in ceremonial workings.
According to the Graham Manuscript, the Third Degree Legend was known in some form in the 17th Century. The phrase "Sublime Degree of a Master Mason" was used on a Grand Lodge Certificate of Ireland in 1754. There is also record that it was used in 1767 by the Lodge of Friendship No. 6. But it does not seem to have been in general use until the end of the seventeenth century. The earliest known reference to the Degree in Lodge Minutes in London occurred in 1727. So, taking a broad view of the confusing material available, and the reasonable assumptions made due to the lack of historical evidence, it would be, again, reasonable to assume that the Third-Degree System grew up by a gradual process between 1717 and 1730. That is about as precise as we can be.
As a matter of interest, the Third Degree System can be said to have been a "fact" in: France in 1731, in Scotland in 1735 and in Sweden in 1739. This can be taken to be the period of the establishment of the Third Degree in the History of Freemasonry. As one would expect some lodges were openly against the re-arrangement of the Degrees, particularly in Scotland. This of course made the fixing of a precise date of change even more hazardous. There is no certainty about the exact date when the Third Degree began to be worked but, as far back as 1711, the Trinity College (Dublin) manuscript mentions three separate classes of Masons: Entered Apprentices, Fellow Craftsmen and Masters, each with its own secrets.
By 1730, when Prichard's “Masonry Dissected” was published, the Three-Degree system had become firmly established. The introduction of the Hiramic legend in
Freemasonry dates from the same period, as proven by the advertisement for sale in 1726 of a publication entitled “The Whole History of the Widow's Son Killed by the Blow of a Beetle”. The name Hiram appeared in Masonic manuscripts much earlier, even centuries before, but we have no indication that the medieval Mason was familiar with any tragic legend associated with that name, which appears in different spellings and variations, such as Anyone, Aman, Amon, Aymon and Hyman. We note here a certain confusion between the name Hiram, belonging to the King of Tyre as well as the chief architect, and the Hebrew word Aman or Ooman, meaning Chief of the Works or Artificer. We are familiar with the Hiramic legend as exemplified in the Third-Degree ceremony. We should keep in mind, however, that like most myths, the legend is larger than any one specific recounting. This or that feature of Hiram Abif's story has been eliminated from some Masonic rituals but appear in others.
Albert Pike in his letter to Gould "Touching the Masonic Symbolism", had opined that a few men of intelligence , who belonged to the four old Lodges, which founded the First Grand Lodge, "is to be ascribed the authorship of the Third Degree and the introduction of Hermetic and the other symbols into Masonry; that they framed the three Degrees for the purpose of communicating the doctrines, veiled by their symbols, to those fitted to receive them and gave to others trite moral explanations, they could comprehend." J. F. Newton however rejects those postulates and holds that neither Desaguliers, nor Anderson and Payne could have been those intelligent men referred to by Pike. He has also pointed out that, Anderson had dilated in his Constitutions of 1723 about the construction of the Temple and has added a note on the meaning of the word Abif and then abruptly stops with the observation that "But leaving, what must not, indeed, cannot be
Madras Masonic Journal Vol. 01 / 2023 - Centenary Year Edition
A Publication of Madras Masters Lodge No. 103, GLI 32