THE ARCANE SCHOOLS - Fort Myers Beach Masonic Lodge No. 362

In the first place they have a right to install their successors, and
at
all times subsequent to their installation to be present at the
ceremony
of installing Masters of lodges. I should scarcely have deemed it
necessary to dwell upon so self-evident a proposition, were it not that
it
involves the discussion of a question which has of late years been
warmly
mooted in some jurisdictions, namely, whether this right of being
present
at an installation should, or should not, be extended to Past Masters,
made in Royal Arch Chapters.
In view of the fact, that there are two very different kinds of
possessors
of the same degree, the Grand Lodge of England has long since
distinguished them as "virtual" and as "actual" Past Masters. The terms
are sufficiently explicit, and have the advantage of enabling us to
avoid
circumlocution, and I shall, therefore, adopt them.
An _actual Past Master_ is one who has been regularly installed to
preside
over a symbolic lodge under the jurisdiction of a Grand Lodge. A
_virtual
Past Master_ is one who has received the degree in a chapter, for the
purpose of qualifying him for exaltation to the Royal Arch.
Now the question to be considered is this. Can a virtual Past Master be
permitted to be present at the installation of an actual Past Master?
The Committee of Correspondence of New York, in 1851, announced the
doctrine, that a Chapter, or virtual Past Master, cannot legally
install
the Master of a Symbolic Lodge; but that there is no rule forbidding
his
being present at the ceremony. This doctrine has been accepted by
several
Grand Lodges, while others again refuse to admit the presence of a
virtual
Past Master at the installation-service.
In South Carolina, for instance, by uninterrupted usage, virtual Past
Masters are excluded from the ceremony of installation.
In Louisiana, under the high authority of the late Brother Gedge, it is
asserted, that "it is the bounden duty of all Grand Lodges to prevent
the
possessors of the (chapter) degree from the exercise of any function
appertaining to the office and attributes of an installed Master of a
lodge of Symbolic Masonry, and refuse to recognize them as belonging to
the order of Past Masters."[88]
Brother Albert Pike, whose opinion on masonic jurisprudence is entitled
to