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The Fellow Craft Degree

Text Box: The Mason who has just received his Fellow Craft Degree finds himself a bit puzzled at the emphasis on the globes, the five human senses, and the seven liberal arts and sciences. In our modern ritual they are symbols. Originally they served another purpose. We owe the form of the Fellow Craft Degree to a man named William Preston, who lived in England during the early days of speculative Masonry. Preston did not like the fact that lectures given in connection with the degrees of Masonry followed no ritualistic pattern, but could assume whatever for the Worshipful Master desired. He set about to write a formal lecture for each degree. After working on them for seven years he succeeded in having them adopted by The Grand Lodge of England. Preston believed that one of Masonry’s principal duties was to bring light to a candidate by actually educating him; he believed that knowledge was the universal solvent for the problems of the world. In his time, however, there were few opportunities for the average man to acquire formal learning. There were few schools and not many men could attend them. So, according to some Masonic authorities, Preston conceived the idea of condensing the Fellow Craft lecture as many of the elements of a formal education as possible. The original lecture, which was far longer than that which we now use in Ohio, too up in much detail the five human senses, the terrestrial and celestial globes, and the seven liberal arts and sciences. In doing so, the lecture did give the average Masonic candidate of Preston’s era an insight into certain knowledge which he might never have received otherwise. To the modern Mason, however, the formal teachings in the lecture are elementary—so much so, in fact, that when we first hear them we wonder why they were brought in at all. As mentioned earlier, they are symbols. You of course noted that the Entered Apprentice Degree is directed to the heart. The Fellow Craft Degree, on the other hand, continues your Masonic instruction by being directed to the intellect. The Entered Apprentice represents a youth standing on the threshold of life, full of all the eager impetuosity and confidence of his age—sure of himself and his abilities to cope with the problems as yet unknown to him. The Fellow Craft represents man in his adulthood, in his prime, strong, tried, and experienced by the hardships of life. He is the person on whom falls the responsibility of providing for his family, of carrying the burdens of business and government. Day by day he is confronted with demanding tasks which he must accomplish as a matter of course. He must be fitted properly for all that faces him, and the Fellow Craft Degree tells us that he can be so prepared in several ways: First: he must learn through actual experience with life; in other words, by what he hears, sees, feels, tastes, and smells—by direct contact with life through the five senses. To the knowledge so gained today he adds that of yesterday and the days which have gone before. None of us can have sufficient direct experience of this nature to acquire the well rounded knowledge we must possess as adults or Fellow Crafts. To the learning which we obtain through the five senses we must add that of formal education. Thus it is that the seven liberal arts and sciences are introduced into the lecture as symbols of the knowledge we gain through the teachings of others. That which is imparted to us through the five senses we call experience. That which we receive by formal training we call education. The sum of the two, and immeasurably greater than the either, is wisdom, which is symbolized in the Fellow Craft Degree by the Middle Chamber.