Open Veils · Answer
What is the Select Master in Freemasonry?
The Select Master degree is far more than a ceremonial grade — it encodes the esoteric architecture of a hidden underground vault beneath Solomon's Temple, the deliberate concealment of the Sacred Word, and the initiatory consequences of stumbling upon forbidden knowledge. It is the degree that bridges the Master Mason's loss of the Word with the Royal Arch's recovery of it, filling a deliberately engineered gap in the Solomonic mythos. The ritual's inner chamber, the 'secret vault,' maps onto a consistent cross-tradition theme — from Kabbalistic Genizah lore to the Hermetic concept of buried primordial wisdom.
Evidence
- Within the York Rite's Council structure — the tier called Cryptic Masonry — the Select Master degree dramatizes the construction of a crypt beneath Solomon's Temple, where the three Grand Masters (Solomon, Hiram King of Tyre, and Hiram Abiff) deposit the ineffable secrets before the Temple's completion.
- The candidate, representing Zabud, inadvertently discovers the secret vault mid-construction and is seized — an echo of the Hiramic legend's violent consequence for approaching forbidden knowledge.
- Manly P. Hall, in his encyclopedic treatment of Freemasonry's inner symbolism, situated the vault motif as a preservation mechanism — a Hermetic time capsule encoding the pre-diluvian sciences.
- The degree is conferred in England and Wales under the Order of Royal and Select Masters as a standalone body requiring prior Craft, Mark, and Royal Arch membership — structurally ensuring candidates have already received partial versions of the mystery before the vault's construction narrative is disclosed.
- As the Traveling Templar research blog notes, the central figure confronted in the ritual is Zabud, an obscure character drawn from 1 Kings who appears nowhere in Blue Lodge symbolism, making his presence here a deliberate esoteric insertion.