The Universal Language of Freemasonry - ArchiMeD - Johannes ...

Chapter 7 - Rituals 619
gavel. The candidate is bound in chains. The Chief Patriarch demands to see the
candidate and the disturbers of peace, who form a circle in front of his chair. He
orders the chains and blindfold to be removed, and holds a beautiful speech on
tolerance, because now, the followers of the crescent are commingled with those
of the cross as one happy family.
An ode is sung that talks about peace, justice, and white-robed innocence,
during which a procession may be formed, so that the representatives of the
different races pass slowly around the Encampment room, the candidate in the
rear. This ends the ceremony of toleration, and the candidate receives the final
instruction, which is the secret work of the degree. He is admonished to always
act according to the "golden rule," and is invested with a black apron trimmed
with yellow, which is said to be emblematical of this degree. Thus, as in
Freemasonry, the candidate receives an apron, however, its meaning is not
explained to him, and it is not a "white badge of innocence" as the one he obtains
in the Initiatory Degree of Odd Fellowship (cf. p. 58).
The whole degree is very self-contradictory, which leads Blanchard, in his
critical analysis of the Golden Rule Degree, to call this proclamation of spiritual
oneness of all God's children a hypocrisy:
They meet as a sect or lodge which excludes more than nineteentwentieth
of mankind. They admit only "free white males" over twentyone
and under sixty; and those only when hale and able-bodied, and
with this badgered, blindfolded and bewildered handful of humanity
they set themselves to unify mankind. They cant and deplore over the
sects of Christianity, and teach their own little sect, divided from other
secret sects and the outside world by walls of secrecy, and excluding all
who inherit the least tinge of brown or yellow in their complexion, they
boast [...]: 'Here no artificial distinctions of nation, sect, or tribe are
known!' (p. 200)
Royal Purple, or Third Encampment Degree
In this degree, the emphasis is put on troublesome travels. Therefore, to the
furniture of the Encampment room are added a bridge which is level with the
floor, at least two feet wide, with rough poles as railing, and a rough road made
of stone, pieces of wood, stumps, limbs of trees or brushwood.
The Junior Warden announces the candidate, who is called "Pilgrim," at the
door as follows:
[...] a Patriarch who has served as a herdsman on the mountains of
Horeb and in the wilderness of Paran, has suffered persecution by the
prejudices of selfish and bigoted men, and now seeks further instruction,
teaching him the good and evil that beset the pathway of life. (p. 204)