FAQs - Continued

Q. What is the meaning of the word 'Passing' as we use it in the second degree? Has it something to do with the passing up the Winding Stair? A. The earliest minutes of, 1598-9, are from 'Operative' Lodges (Aitchison's Haven Lodge and the Lodge of Edinburgh, Mary's Chapel), and they show that Apprentices were always 'entered' and 'Fellows of Craft' were usually 'made'. There is a rare case in the Edinburgh minutes, 1609, where a Fellow-Craft was 'exceptit' = accepted but the usual formula was 'made', though we often get the phrase 'admitted and received'. In England, around 1700 to 1730, after the Lodges had lost their operative character, the two degrees were frequently conferred in a single session and that was called 'making'. No early record has yet been found (under the two-degree system) of the word 'passing' being used for the Fellow-Craft's degree. There is an interesting use of the word 'passing' in the minutes of the 'Philo Musicae', founded in 1725. They were a masonic society for lovers of music and architecture, not a regular lodge; but, in those early days under the first Grand Lodge, controls were rather lax and those music-lovers certainly conferred masonic degrees without any authority. Indeed, they are credited with having conferred the earliest recorded third degree in England, though it was hopelessly irregular, of course. Their minutes contain numerous instances of brethren who were 'regularly passed Fellow Craft'. Unfortunately, we cannot give too much attention to the word 'passed' in this case, because they used exactly the same word for the third degree, for example, on 12 May 1725, two gentlemen who had been passed Fellow Crafts, some three months before, were regularly passed Masters'. Perhaps the earliest record of all, which uses the words 'passing and raising' as we use them in Freemasonry today, as in an extraordinary passage in the Graham MS., of 1726, an extremely valuable ritual document. It speaks of a Mason ‘…being entered passed and raised and Conformed by 3 several [!] Lodges…’. This is a clear English hint of the existence of a three degree system, although at that time there is no definite proof yet of three degrees being worked in any regular English. lodge. (Three degrees were already known in Scotland from 1726 onwards.) There is a minute of the Old King's Arms Lodge (now No. 28), dated 17 November 1735, which refers to ‘…a Jewel for the use of the Master at the passing of Masters’ (= MMs), and the Lodge of Antiquity (now No. 2), in its earliest record of the third degree, 5 April 1737, shows that Bro Reddall paid five shillings ‘for passing Master’. Prichard, in his Masonry Dissected (1730), had mentioned the ‘middle Chamber’ and the ‘winding Pair of Stairs’ in his second degree, but his only reference to passing is in a question on his third degree, ‘Where was you pass’d Master?' After much searching through early lodge minutes, the first lodge record so far found which uses the words ‘passing’ and ‘raising’ in our modem sense, is in the minutes of the Lodge Greenock Kilwinning (now No. 12 [SC] ). It was founded in 1728, eight years before the Grand Lodge of Scotland. Immediately after the election of the Master and appointment of Officers at its first meeting, 27 December 1728, the Lodge made a rule as to the fees that would be payable for each degree: ‘That each who shall be received Members of this Lodge shall pay into the Box when entered as Apprentices One pound ten shillings Scotts, twelve shillings when passed FellowCraft, and twenty shillings Scotts when raised Master Mason, besides paying the expenses of the night’s entertainment…’ It is doubtful that the word ‘passing’ in its original masonic usage had anything to do with passing up a winding stair. At its first appearance in England it was certainly used more often in connection with the MM degree than with the FC and it does not seem to have come into general use for the second degree until after the third, the ‘raising’, had become general practice in all the English lodges, around the 1750s.