The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

CONSTITUTION OF THE ORDER “They must each live in solitude, without more than the necessary speech even to casual neighbours, serving themselves in all respects, for three months con- tinuously, once at least in every two years. The President will summon them at the four seasons of the year, and if necessary at other times, when they will deliberate upon the affairs placed in their charge. All applications to pass to the Fifth Degree must receive their sanction. Appeal from their decisions may however be made to the Supreme Council. “The Sixth Degree is an executive or military body, and represents the tem- poral power of the Supreme and Holy King. Each member is amenable to military discipline. Singly or in concert with his comrades, each Knight is vowed to enforce the decisions of authority. “The Grade of Grand Inquisitor Commander follows. Here every member has the right to a seat on the Grand Tribunal, which body decides all disputes and complaints which have not been composed by the Chapter of Rose Croix or the Lodge Masters. Its verdicts are without appeal, unless a member of the Electoral College give sanction to take the case to the Areopagus of the Eighth Degree. All members of the Order, even of higher grades, are subject to the Grand Tribunal. “The next grade is that of Prince of the Royal Secret. Every member of this degree is devoted to the Propagation of the Law in a very special manner; for this grade is the first in which the Beginning of the Inmost Secret is declared openly. He will therefore, by his personal exertions, induce one hun- dred and eleven persons to join the Order, before he may proceed to the Seventh Degree, except hy special order from the Supreme and Holy King. “The Seventh Degree is, in military language, the Great General Staff of the Army of the Sixth Degree. From its members the Supreme and Holy King appoints a Supreme Grand Council. “This Council is charged with the government of the whole of the Second Triad, or Lovers. All members of the Seventh Degree travel as Sovereign Grand Inspectors General of the Order, and report, on their own initiative, to the Supreme and Most Holy King, as to the condition of all Lodges, and Chap- ters; to the Supreme Council, on all affairs of the Second Triad; and to the Electoral College, on those of the Third. “The Eighth Degree is a Philosophical Body. Its members being fully in- structed in the Principles of the Order, save in one point only, devote themselves to the understanding of what they have learned in their initiation. They have power to reverse the decisions of the Grand Tribunal, and to compose all con- flicts between any of the governing bodies. And this they do upon the great principles of philosophy. For it will often occur that there is contention between two parties, both of whom are right from their own point of view. This is so important that an illustration is desirable. A man is smitten with leprosy: is it 243