What's third degree

The Third Degree centers on an allegorical legend involving the architect Hiram Abiff, a dramatic account that lacks historical or scriptural foundation and was composed for symbolic instruction 12. George Oliver noted that this central legend was adapted from traditional Jewish tales and introduced into Craft practice in the early eighteenth century 2. Scottish lodge records first record a brother being "raised" to the degree at Lodge Kilwinning in 1736 2. Many lodges in the early to mid-eighteenth century originally recognized only two steps—Entered Apprentice and Fellow Craft—and the Third Degree was adopted gradually over subsequent decades 2.

In Masonic symbolism, the degree represents a transition described as a symbolic death and rebirth 1. Wilmshurst takes the drama of the raising to signify a spiritual regeneration, wherein the candidate symbolically undergoes the death of his lower temporal self to achieve self-mastery and moral transformation 1. Rather than referring to physical mortality, the degree uses the motif of bodily death to illustrate the voluntarily disciplined life, the conquest of personal imperfections, and the restoration of divine harmony within human nature 1.