June 30 Meeting

In addition to our usual business at our June 30 meeting we reviewed and read through the Royal Ark Mariner degree.

Many Masons view the Royal Ark Mariner as just a quaint, short little degree about Noah’s Flood whose members wear rainbow colored aprons. It is often dismissed as being of very little ritual significance. This could not be more wrong. 

Those who are ‘elevated’ as Royal Ark Mariners, and who take the slightest interest in Ark Masonry, soon realize that it is simple and beautiful, rather than superficial or trivial.  The great point about the Royal Ark Mariner, as many have said, is that it further develops the idea that is the keynote of initiation: the making of a new beginning or the adoption of a new outlook on life.

The degree above all celebrates the providence and mercy of God in saving Noah and his family from the destruction metered out to all others. The Master, referred to as the Commander and representing Noah, speaks of his Wardens as his Sons, Japheth and Shem; this might seem a little contrived or absurdly quaint, but the exchanges between the three principal officers are appropriately familial and most instructive.

The ritual focuses on those attributes and virtues exemplified by Noah, and the symbolic uses of the working tools of the degree, are beautifully and informatively explained. The candidate is clearly instructed in his obligations to others and to his God. 

Like both Craft and Mark, the Ark Mariner has reference to that great Masonic allegory of Building. However, in this degree, the issue is not how to build something, but rather the ceremony celebrates a man who did so, in this case the Patriarch Noah in his construction of the Ark, which the ritual describes as an ‘Ark of Safety’. Furthermore, it teaches the futility of relying on any human endeavour or expedient to escape divine justice without the direct instructions of the Almighty. Obedience to the Deity is not to be avoided, but to be embraced.

Noah was also very important to the early Church, as well as to the founding fathers of Freemasonry.  Evidence of the Grade of Royal Ark Mariner appears in Masonic records at a very early date.  To even approximate the earliest working of the Grade is impossible and legend of such a working must suffice at this time.

In his Constitutions of 1733, Dr. James Anderson mentioned that we should all conduct ourselves as sons of Noah (or Noachidæ). In some quarters it is accepted theory that the Ark and Anchor with which we are so familiar in the Craft are but indications of an ancient Ark ceremony of yesteryear. 

The Degree is around two hundred years old and, as its name suggests, has a nautical flavour taking for its setting the circumstances leading up to the Great Flood and the steps taken by Noah to build the Ark by which mankind was preserved from perishing in the ‘Universal Deluge’.  Like the Mark Master Mason’s Degree, which is based on the fact of the construction of the Temple at Jerusalem, so the Degree of Royal Ark Mariner is also based on an actual happening, the Great Flood, as recorded in the Bible.

The legend of Noah, his sons, the Ark and the Deluge were enacted in the Mystery Plays of the Seventeenth Century and continued as catechisms in many of the early Masonic rituals. By the 1750s there was a Degree of Noachites. However, the first authentic record of the Degree appears in the minutes of a meeting held in Bath in 1790. Numerous records exist throughout the country of the Ceremony of Elevation being performed since that date.

The teaching of the Degree emphasises the importance of the family strengths and the need for each member of society to play his part for the benefit of all. We are taught that out of chaos and catastrophe mankind can survive and that we should face adversity together, helping to look after those less fortunate than ourselves. During the ceremony analogies are drawn between the dangers of the flood and the dangers of life. We are reminded of how we should strive to reach the Ark, the haven of rest, just as Noah’s family and the other occupants of the Ark did in the Biblical tales of the Deluge.

The Ritual of the Grade used by the Grand Council of the Allied Masonic Degrees of the United States of America, is the same as that worked today in Scotland. The legend is of the Deluge and it is both beautiful and instructive. 

The Jewel of the Grade is a silver Rainbow. Suspended from the inner upper edge of the rainbow is a silver Dove, bearing an olive-branch. The Jewel is suspended from a ribbon containing the colors of the Rainbow.

The Apron of the Grade is white, bordered with a rainbow colored edge, and having three rosettes of rainbow colored ribbon, two at the lower corners of the apron, and one centered on the flap.

The Sash of the Grade is approximately four inches in width, light green; or rainbow colored, and worn from the right shoulder and resting on the left hip.

The Seven Laws of Noah, also referred to as the Noahide Laws or the Noachide Laws (from the Hebrew pronunciation of "Noah"), are a set of imperatives which, according to the Talmud, were given by God for the "children of Noah" – that is, all of humanity.

According to Jewish tradition, non-Jews who adhere to these laws are said to be followers of Noahidism and regarded as righteous gentiles, who are assured of a place in the world to come, the final reward of the righteous.

The Seven Laws of Noah include prohibitions against worshipping idols, cursing God, murder, adultery and sexual immorality, theft, eating flesh torn from a living animal, as well as the obligation to establish courts of justice.

--Excerpted from several sources