How does the Royal Arch relate symbolically to the Third Degree?

To the Master Mason, the Temple of Solomon represents this present life and the search for truth, whereas the Royal Arch uses the Temple of Zerubbabel to symbolize the future life and the discovery of truth, thereby completing the symbolic system 1. Dr. W. J. Chetwode Crawley characterizes the Royal Arch not as an isolated entity, but as the essential completing part of a Masonic legend—the cope-stone without which the entire building is left visibly unfinished 1.

Walter Leslie Wilmshurst explains that the Order forms the natural conclusion and fulfilment of the Third Degree, from which it was detached largely due to the inconvenience of an excessively long combined rite and the need for different officers and symbolic arrangements 2. Symbolically, where the Third Degree dramatizes mystical death and the candidate's raising into a renewed state, the Royal Arch carries this spiritual process to its ultimate climax in exaltation 2. Expressed in theological terms, Wilmshurst compares the Master Mason Degree to suffering, burial, and rising again, while the Royal Arch corresponds to ascension 2.

While the earlier degrees address the purification of man's physical nature and temporal mentality, the Royal Arch advances to the higher reaches of consciousness 2. It portrays the return of the soul from spiritual captivity and its entrance into a higher order of life, completing the journey from the natural state to divine consciousness 2.