brethren.—As to what knowledge a Major Illuminee may have acquired either relative to other secret societies, or to employments or dignities which might be obtained for adepts, he is bound to report it to his lodge, which will note it, and inform the assembly of the Directing Illuminees or Scotch Knights. 4
When treating of the intermediary degree of Scotch Knight, I gave an account of their particular functions, and especially their charge of superintending the Masonic Lodges. The part they act in the general government of the Order chiefly consists in hearing all the Quibus Licets of the preparatory classes read in their chapters, even those of the Novices which had already been opened by the officers of the Minerval school: the latter having only the power of deciding provisionally on these letters.
The authority which the Scotch Knights exercise over this correspondence seems to give still more propriety to their denomination of intermediary degree. Their Quibus Licets are directly sent to the Provincial Lodge, which is composed entirely of adepts initiated in the mysteries of the Order. But the Knights read all letters coining from the preparatory class which have not the distinction of Primo or Soli. They classify and make extracts from all the Quibus Licets of lesser importance coming from the inferior degrees, and send the general extract to the Provincial. To these extracts they subjoin a circumstantial account of every thing that is going forward in the lodges of the preparatory class, to which they transmit all the orders coming from the adepts initiated in the mysteries, even from those of the highest degrees with the very names of which they are unacquainted, and thus constitute a link between the two extremities. 5
Both the intermediary and preparatory classes, however, form but the lower part of the edifice. The Prefects of the Chapters of the Scotch Knights are rather tools than superiors; they receive their impulse from the higher mysteries. It is there that the grand polity of the Order is to be sought for in the instructions laid down for the Epopt and the Regent, and these are the instructions which, beginning with those of the Epopt, demand our utmost attention.
Footnotes
529:1 Letters to Cato, 15th March 1781, and 16th February 1782.
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
