Societas Rosicruciana in Scotia
Eighth Degree - Magister


This ritual dates from the first half of the 20th century

 
Opening of a Council of Magistri
 
C.: Fratres! We are assembled in our sacred Temple to fulfil the duties of Magistri of the Society of the Rose and Cross, and I give you hearty greeting.
In accordance with the ancient custom I call upon the Fratres to rise and stand with reverence around our Temple Triangle all rise and let each one breathe in silence a prayer and a thanksgiving while I salute in solemn form the Sacred Emblems inscribed upon the Altar.
S.: Let each Frater bend the knee, bow the head, and place the right hand upon the heart in token of submission to the Most High, and of devotion to the aims and welfare of our ancient Society.
C.: Behold, my Fratres! I salute the Sacred Emblems. I trace the Circle of Infinity, touch the three points of the Sacred Delta and the four angles of the Square of the Elements, and with due reverence point to the Symbol of Divine Unity presiding at the Centre of Existence.
Say after me: O t… q… d… all repeat, and rise.
By the power and authority vested in me I declare this Council of Magistri to be duly opened.
Be seated, Fraters.
 

Ceremony of Admission
 
When the knocks of an Adeptus Exemptus are heard on the Portal, the C. calls for silence and attention.
C.: Right Worthy Secretary, you will enquire who disturbs this Council of Magistri.
S. goes to the Portal, receives the name and motto of the Candidate, and returns to his place and says: Most Worthy Supreme Magus (or Right Worthy Celebrant), our Very Worthy Frater …,  an Adeptus
Exemptus, who has been chosen for advancement, now seeks admission to the Eighth Grade in this Temple of Magistri of the Rose and Cross.
C.: You will admit the Very Worthy Frater, who has been chosen for the Mastery.
S. goes once more to the Portal, admits the Adept, and leads him to the West, facing the Altar. The Adept bows to the Altar.
C.: Very Worthy Frater Adept, the attention and study which you gave to the pursuits of the Society led to your admission to the Second Order. The prominence you have attained among your Fratres has led to your selection as a Member of the Third Order, and it has been decided to advance you to the Eighth Grade of the Society, and our Right Worthy Frater, the Secretary-General, is instructed to place your name on the Roll of those Fratres who are Magistri Societatis Rosicruciana in Scotia.
The knowledge and experience you have gained in your progress through the Seven Grades of the First and Second Orders which you have successively passed, have given you an insight into the Mysteries of Science and Religion. You have obtained a clearer understanding of the Symbols and outward forms, which have ever been employed to veil the greater truths from the multitude, who would have been unable to appreciate them.
The principles of Numbers were displayed to you in your Zelatorship; the Secrets of Colour were exhibited to you in the Grade of Theoricus; the processes of Alchemy in the Grade of Practicus; and the dogmas of Theosophy were taught in the Grade of Philosophus.
The three successive stages of your Adeptship have implanted in your mind, and impressed upon your heart, the solemn lessons of Death. You were assured that Death is but change and not destruction, and that the tendency of the life-wave is ever to progress upward and onward to the Divine Source or all Life and of all Good.
E.: As Fratres of the Third Order, we are empowered to rule the members of the lower grades, to supervise their studies, and to review the progress which has been made in science, art, and literature. As a Magister of the Society you must, however, learn to be a true Master, and especially over your own lower Nature, for so only will you be able to rule the Fratres, and attain to success in any sphere of usefulness to which you may be appointed by the Supreme Magus of the Society.
C. to Cand.: Approach the East and kneel. Place your hands on the Sacred Triangle upon the Altar before you, and repeat after me:
 

Obligation
 
C. and cand.: I swear by the Torrent of Fire, by the Whirlwind of Air, by the Floods of Water, and by the Earth whereon I kneel, that I will be, and for ever remain, true and faithful Magister of the Society of the Rose and Cross, and I do undertake faithfully to carry out the behests of the Supreme Magus of the Society in Scotia, whose earnest co-adjutor I now engage myself to become. So help me all the sacred and mysterious powers above, represented by the Sublime Emblem of the Triangle upon his holy Altar, here in the East of this House of the Holy Spirit.
You will salute with your lips the Sacred Triangle.
Be seated, Fratres!
Rise, newly pledged Magister, and may you become a worthy successor to our great Founder, Christian Rosenkreutz, who, having laid the foundation of this Society upon a holy basis, instructed its members in the mystical knowledge acquired by his great talents. After a life spent in acts of benevolence, he died in the love and esteem of all the Fratres, and being buried in the symbolic Vault, was yet again brought to be a witness to the mystical knowledge of the Fratres or the House of the Sanctus Spiritus; and so hallowed this Society of the Rose of Silence and Secrecy, and the Cross of Self-Sacrifice and High Endeavour.
The emblematic design upon the Altar is of a sacred nature, The Circle represents Infinity; the Triangle refers to the Holy Trinity the Square to the four Elements; and the central point is a symbol of the Divine Unity.
The words and signs of the Grade are then communicated.
C.: The Words are “O T… q… d…” signifying H… b… are t… T…, O L… at H… The Signs of the Grade of Magister are thus given: I place my right hand upon the C… of your Head, thus covering with my outstretched fingers your Brain, the seat of man’s intellect, a the temple was the dwelling of the Shekinah.
You—as the other Magister, will then give me the Answering Sign—by placing your right hand on my Heart, the emblematic seat of the affections and of love.
Thus these two Signs demonstrate, first a Salutation to the Temple of God, and secondly a Recognition that God is Love.
The Secretary-General leads the Candidate to the Exponent.
E.: A Magister must give eight knocks upon the Portal to gain admission — four and four, which refers to IHVH and INRI.
A Magus desiring admission to a Council gives four and five knocks, which typify IHVH, Jehovah, and IHSHVH Jehoshuah or Jesus.
As a Magister, you belong to the Eighth Grade, and have entered the Third Order of this Society of the Rose and Cross. You may be called upon by the Most Worthy Supreme Magus to act as a High Councillor, or as the Celebrant of a College, or may be empowered by Dispensation to confer the Grades of Adeptship, or to take part in the admission of Fratres to the Mastery, or even to confer the Grade of Magister.
The formula of Recognition is as follows when you meet another Magister Rosæ Crucis, say to him
1st Master: Ave Frater.
2nd Master: Rosæ (touch head).
1st Master: et Crucis (touch heart).
2nd Master. Benedictus Dominus Deus Noster.
1st Master: Qui nobis degit Signum.
C.: the Grade you have now received entitles you to be called “Right Worthy Frater,” and may you ever live so as to be deserving of so honourable a designation. Be moderate in all things, be ever desirous of further progress, be ready to teach, and as ready to learn, and so shall the Great INRI, the Christos, the “Lux Mundi,” lead you into all Peace in the time to come.
Fratres! I call on you to salute your new Frater with the Sign of the Grade of Magister.
Each Frater steps up in turn and places his right hand on the head of the new Magister, who places his right hand on the heart of the older Magister.
 

The Historical Lecture of the Eighth Grade
 
Right Worthy Fratres,
The history of the Rosicrucians goes hack into the Middle Ages, and in Germany was the origin of the Fraternity.
The earliest public notice of the Fratres of the Rose and Cross appeared in 1614 in a pamphlet printed at Cassel in Germany, and entitled “Fama Fraternitatis.” It was a narrative of the founding of the Society, and this was reprinted in 1615, together with a second pamphlet, entitled, “Confessio Fraternitatis, ” being a confession of the faith of the Rosicrucians, with their purpose and duties.
These tracts were made known in an English translation in this country in 1652, by Thomas Vaughan, a mystic philosopher who wrote under the pseudonym of Eugenius Philalethes.
The “Fama,” which is a history, narrates that the highly learned Frater Christian Rosenkreutz travelled with a Father P.A.L. to the East in search of knowledge, and reached Cyprus where his friend died in 1393.
Christian Rosenkreutz then went on to Damascus and studied there, subsequently going into Egypt, where he remained a long time.
He journeyed along the Mediterranean Sea and visited Fez, where he studied the learning and magic of the Arabs, finally crossing over into Spain and learning the Jewish Kabalah, also the philosophy of the Moors.
He returned at length to Germany in 1402, and settled down to codify the vast amount of knowledge he had collected.
There, in a place now unknown, he collected around him a group of earnest students and self-sacrificing brothers, to whom he taught the Oriental systems of Religion and Philosophy, Alchymic and Astrological ideas, the doctrines of the Hermetic students of Egypt, and the Kabalah of the jewish Rabbis.
Christian Rosenkreutz chose at fist three faithful Fratres, and later five others were selected by him, and these eight earliest Fratres constituted the “Domus Sancti Spiritus,” or “house of the Holy Spirit” —the first Rosicrucian Temple—and this was in Germany, but its place has never been revealed.
Six ordinances were laid down to govern the original members in the conduct of their lives,
FIRST—That none of them should profess any great powers, knowledge or authority to the outer world, but should do good, and heal the poor freely.
SECOND—That no peculiar habit should be worn when out in the world, to make them conspicuous or liable to persecution.
THIRD—That on one day at least in every year all should assemble to record their work, and communicate to each other their gains of knowledge.
FOURTH—Every Frater should seek one or more suitable persons to succeed him.
FIFTH —That “R.C.” or “C.R.” should be their seal, mark and character.
SIXTH—That the Society should remain a secret or private one, at least for a hundred years, if no longer.
In society, study and work they passed many years, and the eldest Fratres or Magistri designed and executed a funeral Chamber, about 1450, in which Christian Rosencreuz should lie embalmed when his end came.
Christians Rosenkreutz charged them to bury him there, and to close up the chamber, after arranging within it copies of the books, magical weapons, and other secret paraphernalia designed by him and used in magic art by members of the Society.
At length the Great Founder died, as we reckon, in 1484, and was entombed.
On the door of the vault an inscriptions—Post centum viginti annos patebo—was engraved on a brazen plate, meaning that the vault should be opened after 520 years.
This long period passed by, and Roman Catholicism had become in a great measure superseded by the Lutheran Reformed Religion, but the work of the Rosicrucians had continued in peace and secrecy.
At last in 1604 the Fratres then forming the central group of the Society disclosed the door of the secret chamber and entered the vault, and there lay the embalmed body of the Founder in perfect condition, clothed in the Symbolic Robes and the Insignia of his office of Magus or Head of the Society, and there were found stored the original books and properties of the earliest members.
The hundred years of absolute secrecy having expired, the living Fratres decided to make the Society more manifest, and to disclose its history and origin.
It has been alleged that a Theologian named Valentine Andrea was the anonymous author who published the History or “Fama,” which narrates the Foundation, and the “Confessio,” or declaration of the tenets, of the Fratres Rosæ et Crucis at the time of manifestation, and so the learned of Europe were first made acquainted, about 1614, with the purposes and doctrines of the Rosicrucians.
Intense excitement was caused by these two little books, and there are still extant in German and other libraries more than 300 pamphlets, written within a period of twenty years, upon the Rosicrucian controversy.
Frater F. Leigh Gardner has published a “Catalogue Raisonné” of Rosicrucian literature, which is deserving of the attention of all Magistri. It shows that a very voluminous literature concerned with the Rosicrucian Legend and the Mystical studies of the Rosicrucians still exists.
Among notable Magi and Magistri there have been several, well-known by name and reputation:—Michael Maier, who died in 1622; Robert Fludd, or “de Fluctibus,” 1637; Sir Kenelm Digby, 1665; Thomas Vaughan, 1680; John Heydon, 1685; Elias Ashmole, 1692; and Sigismund Richter, 1750.
In 1785 was published, at Altona, “Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer,” or “The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucias,” a learned work on Theosophy, with many symbolic plates.
A copy of “The Admission” of the famous chemist and alchemist, Sigismund Bacstrom, by the Count de Chazal in 1794, was in the possession of the late Frater Frederick Hockley: this is now in the library of the High Council in Anglia; it contains in full the pledges given by this Frater to the Society of the Rose and Cross.
From that time onwards there have always been groups of students and individual philosophers having relation by descent with the original Rosicrucians of mediæval Germany.
In 1830, Godfrey Higgins wrote in his “Anacalypsis,” that a College was at work in England.
Many men of learning and students of Masonic History, as Nicolai, Buhle, and De Quincey, have asserted that the symbolic and philosophic teachings found in the Rituals of Craft Masonry were derived from Rosicrucian doctrines and incorporated into the body of Masonry, when Speculative Freemasonry arose out of the Operative Masonry of the great Trade Guilds of Masons who were the Cathedral and Church builders of the Middle Ages of Europe.
“The History of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia,” printed and distributed in 1899, gives an account of the present system of the Rosicrucian Fraternity in that country, and their proceedings since the year 1866.
The History of the Society in Scotland was printed and published in Edinburgh in 1924 by authority of the Supreme Magus in Scotia.
 
 
Closing.
 
C.: Fratres! You will assist me to close this Council of Magistri in solemn form. All rise.
E.: Fratres! before we leave this sacred Temple let us pledge each other ever to be faithful to the vows we have taken, and let us continue to build a Spiritual Temple, not made with hands, but eternal in the Heavens.
Let each Frater say aloud: I will be ever faithful to my vows of duty and fidelity.
C. gives the Salute as in the opening.
E. steps up and repeats.
S. also repeats.
All the Fratres then give 3, 4 and 1 s…s on the right hand upon the 1… p… in unison.
C.: I now declare this Council of Magistri to be duly closed with these words of prayer—Pax Domini est semper vobiscum. Amen.

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