Day 76 out of 100 to Learn Masonic Ritual and that means just 25 days until your Installation (I know 76+25=101, but this 100 day study plan is meant to finish the day before your Installation!)
Continuing with the Third Degree, yesterday we read through The Charge, though this likely to be done by a Past Master (especially if this is your first time in the Chair) so we didn’t spend too much time on it. Should you discover you are meant to perform these pieces yourself then make sure you allocation extra time once you’ve had your Installation to work on these bits. On to today…
Learning Masonic Ritual, Day 76 of 100: Master Mason’s Badge
We’ll start today with picking up from the end of the The Charge where the candidate leaves and returns to the Lodge, then Invested with the Badge (pages 192-195 in my book of Emulation Ritual).
Much of this is similar to the this point in the other Degree ceremonies where the Candidate is told they can retire from the Lodge, though what they’ll be seeing on their return is obviously different. The process for the Candidate leaving and returning is the same as the other Degrees from the Master’s point of view. Similarly, when delegating the investing to the Senior Warden it is the same as the other degrees, save the description of the badge.
Once the Senior Warden has done the actual investing it again follows that the Master explains the duties of the degree. It’s only a shortish paragraph (actually it’s really one long sentence), but I find that it requires repetition to learn it, as to me it doesn’t have much in common with the similar paragraphs in the other Degree ceremonies.
I would recommend breaking it up a little more to assist learning it in smaller chunks.