The Five Cartouches of the Fellowcraft Degree

The Five Cartouches that appear at the reception ceremony of the Fellowcraft degree will not necessarily appeal to Anglo-Saxon or Nordic Freemasons, but it is a commonplace for a large part of French-speaking Freemasonry. What are the five cartouches of the Fellowcraft degree ? How are they used in the ritual ? In which rites are they found ? Are they exactly the same in all these rites ? And above all, when and why were these Five Cartouches incorporated into the ceremony of receiving the degree of Fellowcraft ? This is what we will try to find out in this article.

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What are the Five Cartouches of the Fellowcraft degree?

The Five Cartouches of the Fellowcraft Degree are small plaques on which some words or names are written. A cartouche is a graphic ornament surrounding an inscription, as was the case in ancient Egypt.

There are currently at least three main versions of the Five Cartouches, with probably some local variations. In the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, the first cartouche bears the names of the five senses (sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell) ; the second lists the five orders of architecture (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan, Composite) ; the third lists the liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic, geometry, music, astronomy) ; the fourth lists the benefactors of humanity (Moses, Pythagoras, Socrates, Jesus, Confucius) ; the last bears the motto "Glory to work".



The Five Cartouches of the Fellowcraft Degree

In the "Groussier" French Rite currently used in the Grand Orient of France, we have the enumeration of five words, all beginning with the letter G (Gravitation, Generation, Genius, Geometry, Gnosis), which replaces an older version (The Five Senses, Arts, Science, Humanity, Work), still followed in the Modern Restored French Rite.

In the Rite of Memphis-Misraim, the cartouches are the same as in the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, except for the benefactors of humanity, who become Solon, Socrates, Lycurgus, Pythagoras and I.N.R.I..

In these rites, the ritual use of the five cartouches consists in having them discovered by the future Fellowcrafts during the five symbolic journeys he will have to undertake during his initiation ceremony.

Contrary to what one might think, the five cartouches appear quite late in French Masonic rituals and are completely absent from the rituals of the 18th century. They are part of a development of the ceremony for the passing of the second degree, which was gradually introduced during the 19th century.

The French Masonic rituals of the 18th century present us with a very simple Second Degree. The surviving manuscripts show that the ceremony for the reception of a Fellowcraft was very brief and seems to have had little symbolism. By way of example, here is a reproduction of the ceremony for the reception of a Fellowcraft according to the Ritual of Bern (circa 1740-1744), the oldest known manuscript Masonic ritual in the French language :

“The Lodge is laid out for the Reception of a Fellow, just as for that of an Apprentice. The table is the same with the addition of the letter G. In the middle of the Blazing Star, I. on the left column, B on the right column, there is little difference for the Ceremonies of Reception, the Recipient is not undressed. The Worshipful Master opens the Lodge in the same way as that of the Apprentice, after which he sends the Brother-Introducer, who prepares the Recipient with beautiful words, & who then knocks on the door of the Lodge with three blows, which are spotted inside by the Worshipful Master & the Wardens, the Younger Brother sees who knocks, & comes to say to the Worshipful Master ; R. It is an Apprentice Mason who wishes to be received Fellow. [Here comes a dialogue of four ritual questions] He enters, the 2d. Warden makes him make three laps of the Lodge as to the Fellows, and then hands him to the first ; Then the Worshipful Master makes him once again the Questions above : And orders that he be made to Advance to him. by three steps of Fellow; When he is at the foot of the Throne, He is made to put the right towel on the ground, to renew his Obligations. Then the Worshipful Master gives him the Signs, Word & Token, & the Password of the Fellows.”

The other French Masonic rituals prior to the 1780s all display the same brevity and sobriety, with the exception of the Luquet Manuscript (circa 1745), which is the first to make the candidate travel five times, associating each journey with the tasks the Fellowcraft must perform during his five years of training. It is from this ritual that the practice of equipping the future Fellowcraft with different tools for each journey originated.

Progressive extension of the Second Degree Ritual 

The Grand Orient of France, in unifying its rituals, adopted the more symbolic form presented by the Luquet Manuscript, resulting in the French Rite of 1785, published in 1801 under the name of “Régulateur du Maçon”. This beautiful ceremony, centred on the symbolism of tools, was to dominate French Freemasonry for decades. 

The Cubic Stone of the Fellowcraft

The same ceremony was adopted, with minor variations, by the first French craft lodges of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite in 1804, by the Rite of Misraïm in its rituals of 1815-1820 and by the Rite of Memphis in its version of 1838-1839.

But it didn't take long for the rituals of French Freemasonry to change in the 19th century. Positivism and rationalism took precedence over simple symbolism, and the rituals became increasingly verbose, moralising, didactic and explanatory. In this context, the very beautiful ceremony of receiving a Fellowcraft no longer seemed sufficient. In its 1829 version, the Supreme Council of France of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite added three cartouches (the Five Senses, the Liberal Arts, the Orders of Architecture), then a fourth (the Philosophers) in 1877. The fifth cartouche (the Glorification of Work) was added by the "Grande Loge Symbolique Écossaise" (a very progressive obedience, born in 1880 from a split of a dozen lodges from the Supreme Council of France which died out in 1911). And the Grand Orient of France borrowed the five cartouches for its 1887 version of the French Rite ("Amiable" version) from the ritual of this short-lived Grand Lodge.

The Five Cartouches of the Fellowcraft degree were therefore adopted in a long process between 1829 and 1880, and do not form part of the hard core of Masonic rituals. However, they have become widely used in French Masonic rituals, including the Rite of Memphis-Misraïm and the Modern Restored French Rite ; only the Rectified Scottish Rite, the Traditional French Rite, the Operative Rite of Solomon and the Strict Templar Observance remained faithful to the more restricted practices of the late 18th century regarding the reception of Fellowcrafts.