The Degree Rituals The Supreme Council, 33 ... - Scottish Rite, NMJ

80 The Degree Rituals
The attempted synthesis of the Van Rensselaer and Pike rituals was not
easily accomplished and would contribute to future difficulties in acceptance
of the ritual. The fact that the 1904 ritual continued substantially intact for a
century, that no revisions at all were made in the ritual from the 1930’s until
the 21st century, and its absence from the agenda of the Committee on Rituals
during all that period did not signify a vote of confidence. Quite the contrary,
it was evidence of disuse and disinterest as was amply demonstrated by the
infrequency of its presentation across the Jurisdiction.
All of this came as no surprise to McIlyar Lichliter, who spared few words
in his 1946 criticism of the 30° ritual. He found its evolution haphazard, without
a logical or orderly pattern. As a result, its staging was awkward its action
tiresome, its message confused. Aside from obvious shortcomings of inordinate
length and archaic, obscure language, it was anticlimactic, both internally
and in comparison with the highly dramatic allegories of the Consistorial degrees
that preceded it. In essence, it was a ritualistic dinosaur, a survivor of
the didactic style that had been characteristic of Masonic ritual in an earlier
age. His solution was that the ritual would have to be entirely reconstructed
and rewritten.
In 2004, the Committee on Ritualistic Matters finally took the long overdue
step of confronting the ritual of the 30°. The committee quickly arrived
at the same conclusion Lichliter had reached nearly 60 years earlier. Attempts
to salvage the ritual by rewrite ended in frustration. The ritual simply did not
express a meaningful lesson for Scottish Rite Masons of the 21st century.
Hence, the decision was made to recommend withdrawal of the ritual and its
replacement by a highly modified version of what then was the ritual of the
31°.
The replacement ritual, taken from the 31°, itself presented problems. Although
its current form was comparatively recent by ritualistic standards, dating
only from 1949, the script ran to some 45 pages. Use in the dialogue of
such archaic English words as “wot” (know) and “yclept” (named), and the
legal term “thwert-ut-nay” (general denial) required that a glossary be appended
to the ritual. That, of course, did nothing for the audience, for many
of whom the experience was almost like a journey to Tolkien’s Middle Earth.