Ancient Arabic Nobles of the Mystic Shrine
The Imperial Council of the Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the
Mystic Shrine, better known as the Shriners, was founded in 1871
in New York City as a “fun” side degree of the Freemasons. It is
open to Master Masons of the 32nd degree, or Knights Templar.
There were 720,000 members in 1995.
The “Shriners” are the archetypal “fun” auxiliary to a well-established secret society. They are also archetypically American; the Grand Lodge of England has in the past threatened English Masons with expulsion if they join the organization, believing that the Shrine brings Freemasonry into disrepute with childish antics, funny clothes, and ritual some find offensive. On the positive side, however, the Shriners raises a tremendous amount of money for a wide range of worthy causes, especially where children are concerned. The hospitals it funds for crippled and for badly burned children are state-of-the-art facilities and free to those in need. This order has a number of similarities to the much smaller Grottoes.
Like a number of other secret societies, the Shrine was
originally little more than a drinking club. In the United States,
where teetotalism has always been popular, Masonic lodges are
“dry.” The Shrine was set up by a group of 13 Master Masons who
had already been meeting for some time at a weekly luncheon club;
the leading lights were a medical man, Dr. Walter M. Fleming, and
a stage comedian named Billy Florence. The fact that there were 13
founding members commemorates the short-lived “13 craze” of 1870.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, the craze was a (mostly
Northern) attempt to deny superstition and bad luck. For example,
13 people for lunch or dinner was considered witty, invitations
were issued for 13 minutes past the hour, and a number of
short-lived games were invented wherein the winner acquired 13
points.
Florence and Fleming restricted membership to those who had
attained the 32nd Degree or were (Masonic) Knights Templar. The
lodge is known as a Temple, and the officers have such names as
Most Illustrious Grand Potentate, Illustrious Grand Chief Rabban,
and Illustrious Grand High Priest and Prophet. Ornaments in-dude
both a Christian Bible and al-Quran; a foot-square Black Stone or
Holy Stone (after the Qaaba in Mecca); a gavel and scimitar;
crossed swords; an Altar of Incense; and a bier and coffin. The
gaudy clothes and ornaments affected by Shriners are familiar to
many, and as early as 1887 some Shriners were wearing fezzes
decorated with gold and tiger claws — and valued at $1,000.
The rituals are a loose parody of
Islam and are offensive to followers of the religion. Like other
Middle Eastern parody rituals, this ritual claims remote
antiquity, supposedly dating back to the foundation of the
Shriners by the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammad, the Caliph
Ali, in A.D. 644. In the 1890s, controversy raged within the
organization as to its historical foundation, and many people
argued that it was indeed the legitimate descendant of an Arabic
vigilante organization.
Although the Shriners have only one degree, there are some
apendant bodies open to only Shriners, like the Royal Order of Jesters and the Order of Quetzalcoatl.
In 2016 some Shriners wrote a ritual for the Loyal Order
of Water Buffaloes, a fraternal organization that originated
in the cartoon series The Flinstones, in the 1960s.
The Shriners traditionally reveled in various pranks and
ritualistic shenanigans, together with a great deal of drinking.
This cast the Shrine into such disrepute by the 1910s, that some
American Masonic Grand Lodges seriously considered following the
course of the Grand Lodge of England and suspending any Mason who
became a Shriner. Accordingly, at the 1920 convention, it was
proposed that the Shrine organization divert some of its energies
into good works — specifically, to financing a children’s hospital
that would be open to crippled children tinder 14, of any race or
creed, whose parents could not afford to pay for medical care.
(Somewhat improbably, die first chairman of the hospital committee
was a christian Scientist, who, however, proved to be an excellent
choice.)
The emphasis was still on fun rather than charity, and die
exploits of Shriners at conventions became legendary. Traffic was
stopped, citizens were annoyed, and the peace was disturbed. Yet,
because the hooligans were well-to-do citizens, the police
routinely turned a blind eye to what was deemed harmless fun. The
Shriners’ tenuous image of respectability was reinforced in the
1950s, when the order enthusiastically joined in the
near-hysterical denunciations of communism that swept the United
States. On October 17, 1958, J. Edgar Hoover wrote an official
laudatory letter headed “Shrine Versus Communism”.
The wilder excesses both of anticommunism and Bibulous
conventioneering have declined, and the Shrine is now recognized
at least as much for its network of children’s hospitals as for
its riotous merrymaking. Shrine drill motorcycle units are also a
regular feature of many civic parades. And it is undeniable that
the organization has had many prominent members, including several
U.S. presidents (among them Harding, Roosevelt, and Truman); J.
Edgar Hoover; Thomas E. Dewey; Barry Goldwater; Chief Justice Earl
Warren; and such noted comedians as Harold Lloyd (a sometime
Imperial Potentate) and Red Skelton.
We have published more rituals and other texts on our download Freemasonry and Fraternal Organizations.