NOV 30, 2020 Meeting

 IT’S MEETING TIME AGAIN!

Come on down to Chappell Hill Monday Nov. 30 for our AMD meeting.  Bring your books, regalia and come to fellowship, learn and to conduct business.

Order of the Secret Monitor

As early as 1778 there was a society in Holland known as the Order of Jonathan and David. This Dutch society became Masonic.  There is the following statement: "From the foregoing documents it is not possible to determine whence they issued or derived their authority. The names, however, of De La Garde, Bergh, Dalmencourt, De Consalvin, are to be found on old documents and certificates issued by a Chapter named ‘Jesus,’ and another called ‘Jonathan and David,’ of Avignon, France, in 1778.

"The Bro. Bolt who was thus authorized to erect Chapters of the Rosy Cross, was also empowered to constitute Chapters of the United Orders of Jonathan and David, and Jesus Christ.

The birth of the Masonic Grade of Secret Monitor appears to have occurred in the United States, where it was worked for many years under various titles – "Brotherly Love," "Jonathan and David," and finally "Secret Monitor." Its first appearance seems to have been in 1850, in which there is clear mention of the Grade.

The Grade was one of the many so-called "side degrees" which were worked throughout America during the last half of the nineteenth century. It was usually conferred – by communication – by one Mason upon another, without fee and no record being made of the event. 

Sometime near the close of the nineteenth century, Dr. Issachar Zacharie carried the Grade from America over to England. There, a Body was created to administer over the Grade, termed a Supreme Council. The Grade was rearranged into three ceremonies: (1) That of Induction, (2) The Assembly of Princes, and (3) The Installation of a Supreme Ruler.

Early records of the working of the Grade are scarce in this country, due to the fact that it was worked as a "side degree" and no Minutes were kept. However, in Scotland, the Early Grand Rite secured a version of this American Grade and incorporated it into their multifarious System. It there formed the Sixteenth Degree and was worked under the title "Order of Brotherly Love." A copy of the Ritual of that Rite (dated 1890), in the Archives of the Grand Council of the Allied Masonic Degrees of the United States of America, shows a very weak and insignificant Ritual-ceremony, hardly worthy of consideration.

The Ritual used by the Grand Council in this country was an original text, which was used here in 1896. It is a very instructive ceremony and based, for the most part, upon the love, which we are taught, existed between Jonathan and David. It teaches a beautiful lesson in friendship and fidelity. In 2000, the Grand Council approved the optional use of the English Ritual, which includes the ceremony of Installed Supreme Ruler. In England, the Secret Monitor is a separate body from the Allied Masonic Degrees.