The Masonic Book Club, Vol. 12: Three Distinct Knocks and Jachin and Boaz

There have been many books published over the years which claim to be exposures of the Masonic ritual. Some of our members look upon them as mere "curiosities," others get high blood pressure when they hear about them and urge the Craft to take steps to suppress them, and others consider them as useful tools to trace the development of our ritual on the assumption that they possibly contain some elements of similarity with the work being done in our lodges at the time. The official position about exposures has been for the Craft to ignore them, and this policy has proved successful. When exposures first appear there is a great deal of excitement which then ends quickly as the novelty wears off. The reason is that non-Masons seldom have an interest in the matter. On one occasion a publisher of Masonic exposures stated that most of his books were sold to Masons who bought them out of curiosity.

Some exposures have been valuable to Masonic students engaged in the history of the ritual. For example, Prichard's Masonry Dissected, the first tri-gradal printed exposure, published in 1730 (and reproduced by The Masonic Book Club in 1977 with a detailed commentary by Harry Carr), disclosed the existence of the third degree in the Craft. Before that time all indications were that the Craft had only two degrees.