Book

The Master Mason's Handbook

W. L. Wilmshurst called the third degree the sublime degree, and J. S. M. Ward's little handbook takes that claim seriously. Ward, whose earlier handbooks on the Entered Apprentice and Fellowcraft degrees made him the most read expositor of craft symbolism in his generation, closes the series here: his own preface presents the book as completing the study of the three degrees, turning from preparation to the Mystic Quest itself, the search for that which was lost. Chapter by chapter he reads the ritual as it is actually worked: the questions and passwords, the opening, the symbolic journeys, the exhortation, the secrets, the badge, the legend of the third degree, the tracing board and the closing. Sir John Cockburn's introduction frames the whole as a preparation for death and the taking away of its sting, the lesson Ward finds at the degree's center. Written plainly for the working mason who wants more than the surface of the ceremony, it remains one of the classic short studies of what the sublime degree was designed to teach.

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