"Craft-Light - the Second Degree"

Viewed by itself, the second, or what is more generally described as the Fellow- Craft Degree, is probably the least understood: and yet, when we remember that it is part of a human allegory, of which the Entered Apprentice’s Degree is only the beginning, and the Master Mason’s Degree the completion, it is not difficult to comprehend, especially when we keep in mind that the Fellow-Craft Degree is distinctly intellectual in its purpose and spirit as the Entered Apprentice Degree is moral, and that the first part of the Fellow-Craft Degree is chiefly a reiteration of the moral teaching of the Entered Apprentice’s Degree.    In the Entered Apprentice’s Degree we are symbolically born out of the darkness into the light of moral truth and duty, out of a merely physical into a spiritual world.   Symbolically, we enter a new environment, taking vows to live by the highest standard of values, whereas, in the Fellow-Craft Degree it is presumed that we are entering an advanced state of life, where we are face to face with serious labours and struggles, and the dominant note of the Degree is self-improvement.    In this Degree, we are taught that virtue is always to be our primary consideration.   And that neither knowledge nor success purchased at the sacrifice of morals, honour integrity, is of abiding value.   The pathway of strict rectitude and justice is emphasised as the only safe pathway.   The Fellow-Craft Degree also teaches that, as the Operative Mason, in building an upright structure, was compelled to adhere to the laws of Architecture and Building construction and to work rigidly by Square, Level and Plumb Rule, so, in the building of personal character, we must live and work in harmony with the moral principles which the working tools of the Second Degree symbolise.

W. Brother C.A.A. Wild.