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What American Freemason has created the most Masonic Rites and Degrees?


(L. to r.) AMD, HRAKTP, Grand College of Rites, Society of Blue Friars, Knight Masons, KYCH

You might think this was Thomas Smith Webb, who organized and regularized the American York Rite, but he primarily “edited” what already existed. Most Masonic Rites and Degrees have appeared anonymously with vague “time immemorial” traditions. An example of this is the Master Mason Degree which did not exist in 1717 when the premier Grand Lodge was formed in London, but is briefly mentioned in a lodge minute in 1725, and appears fully-formed in 1730 in Samuel Prichard’s Masonry Dissected.

We know who the founders of the first Supreme Council were in 1801 in Charleston, South Carolina, and we know they built their degrees upon the twenty-five degrees of the Order of the Royal Secret (also known as the Rite of Perfection). However, we don’t know who created the Order of the Royal Secret or who wrote their degrees.