Lodge Burroughs Strange No. 87
Vijayawada, India

To the question why a Craft mason should Join the Royal Arch, there have been different answers. One is that the Membership of a Royal Arch Chapter is the consummation of a Craft mason's Masonic career, while the other is that by so doing he is satisfied with his desire to jin a distinct Order. And there is no denying the fact that there is some connection between the Craft and the Royal Arch Degree.

To establish this connection, it is necessary to have a retrospect of the First Three Degrees. In the First Degree the Entered Apprentice begins with his Masonic career as an ordinary natural wordly man, i.e., the candidate is taught first to purify and subdue his sensual nature, to resist temptation, etc. and then to develop his mental and spiritual nature, i.e. to contemplate his intellectual faculties, so that the secrets of nature and the principles of intellectual truth are unveiled to his view. His mind thus purified by virtue and science, he is taught how to die and where he becomes a regenerated perfected man. He is regenerated, because by the utter surrendering of his old life and losing his Soul to save it, he rises from the dead, a Master, a just man, made perfect with larger consciousness and faculties - an efficient instrument for use by the Great Architect in his plan of rebuilding the Temple of fallen humanity.

The Royal Arch, however, carried the process stage further by showing its fulfillment in the Exaltation or Apotheosis of him who has undergone it, i.e., his deification or attribute of divine powers.

Thus in the Craft degree, the candidate after a rigorous discipline where he subdues his sensual nature, proceeds to study the laws of nature, aims to become a perfected man, and then finally dies. He is buried and rises again. Thus the Master Mason is raised from a figurative death to a reunion with the former companions of his tolls, implying the reintegration and resumption of all his old faculties and powers in a sublimated state.

The Royal Arch Degree exhibits and exalts the candidates to a still higher Order of Life. Thus the Royal Arch Degree is an extension and completion of the Third Degree of which at one time it formed a part. This separation was made more for convenience sake than for anything else, as the two parts in combination made an inconveniently long ritual. Moreover, It needed a change in the Craft paraphernalia as well of the Officers. Thus the degrees in Craft Masonry and the Royal Arch Degree form a progressive group, offering us a philosophy of the spiritual life of man and diagram of the process of regeneration. It proclaims the fact that there exists a higher and more sacred path of life than that which was normally treat.

In the Royal Arch Degree we are told that Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, who destroyed Jerusalem and set fire to the Temple, carried away most of the inhabitants to Babylon, 416 years after the Temple was dedicated to Jehovah by King Solomon. The tribes of Judah and Benjamin, however, remained in captivity. King Cyrus of Persia taking pity on the calamities of the Jews issued an edict permitting them to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple of the Lord, which they did. The Babyloplan bondage - allegorically speaking - is the bondage of the human soul. The edict of King Cyrus is the inward urge to build upon the ruins of man's natural self a nobler and worthier one.

In one of the books on Freemasonry, I recollect having read that if a Craft mason is not able to join the other degrees like the Mark or the Ark Mariner, etc., he should at least Join the Royal Arch. The underlying idea is that we should inculcate the moral principles embodied in the three Degrees, and attain perfection and divination aimed at in the Royal Arch Degree.

The Royal Arch is considered a Supreme Degree, because it moves on a supremely high level through a long strenuous period of purification and mental discipline, - the climax of which reaches in the final merging of the Being In the Deity itself.

Companions, we are all human beings and are well aware that to attain such a perfection is not an easy task. Hardly a few in the world have got the will and the strength to do so. This, however, does not mean that we should consider ourselves helpless and make no efforts towards goodness in however small and humble a way to the best of our capacity - as no goodness small will be without its reward.

If this desire towards goodness were to pervade through every soul in however small a degree, the misery, the strife, the hatred which we now see throughout the world would be mitigated at least to some extent. Let us pray to the True and Loving God Most High that he give us the will and the strength to attain this Aim.