In recent years a stunning amount of ancient Masonic archives have been made available to the public. Projects such as Latomia and libraries such as the Bibliotheque Nationale de France have been digitising archives. These archives usually contain hand-written, 18th century documents that are wildly interesting but hard to read. Fortunately, people took it upon themselves to transcribe and publish and sometimes even translate such old rituals.
So we have the three volume Les 81 grades qui fondèrent au siècle des lumières le Rite Français (2021) of Colette Leger containing 81 degrees that were compressed to the French Rite of seven degrees. With Quest for a Lost Rite I thought to have found something similar, but then for Memphis-Misraim.
This turned out to be only half true. What Ravignat did in his Quest for a Lost Rite: The Origins, High Degrees and Spiritual Practices of Traditional Egyptian Freemasonry was recreate what he calls “Traditional Egyptian Freemasonry” (TER). The documents for this project, he found in the “Fonds Gaborria” of the Bibliothèque Numérique Patrimoniale, also a digital, public archive. Ravignat aimed his arrows at ‘original Egyptian Freemasonry’, documents older than the rites of Memphis, Misraim and their combination. These are texts of (of course) Cagliostro (1743-1795), but also of Jean-Baptiste-Louis-Théodore de Tschudi (1734-1784) (Tschoudy in the book), Marc Bédarride (1776-1846) and … Jean-Baptiste Willermoz (1730-1824) and his brother Pierre-Jacques Willermoz (1735-1799).
The book opens with a fascinating history of “Egyptian Freemasonry” and its development towards several contemporary currents of Memphis-Misraim. The introduction alone makes the book worth buying. What follows after are the texts of 18 degrees. They are translated from the Gaborria archive, but Ravignat frequently felt he had to fill gaps using other texts. In the appendices there are five more degrees.
“Egyptian Freemasonry” is obviously much more esoteric than ‘Freemasonry proper’. The first degrees are recognisable, yet more elaborate, but as you go on, lessons about Alchemy (both physical and spiritual) start to appear, Theurgy (invocations of angels and spirits), John Dee-type ceremonies, etc. Some degrees have similarities to other old or still in use (for example in the Scottish Rite), other are nothing like anything I ran into so far. Some of the degrees are lengthy and elaborate, others are not much more than: ‘candidate enters, takes an oath, gets a catechism’. These catechisms are Q&A’s which can be between a few pages to 20+ pages in Ravignat’s book. These Q&A’s sometimes explain elements of the degree, symbols on the tracing board, but also complete lessons in Alchemy or Theurgy.
Towards the end of the book, the author reconstructs the “Traditional Egyptian Rite’s Spiritual Methods” with detailed lessons in both kinds of Alchemy, invocations, prayers and what not. His aim with the book is to present a manual that can be actually used by lodges and their members, hence the reconstructions, explanations, details, cross-references and use of images.
What is a bit odd is that Ravignat numbers his degrees differently from the texts in the Gaborria archives. Also he does not present a 90 or 99 degree system (which are not all worked in MM Freemasonry anyway), but he does seem to have used that numbering. Perhaps he could have just created an 18 degree “TER” rite, but I am sure he had his reasons. These non-matching numberings sometimes makes it hard to find the correct file in the Gaborria archive.
All in all Ravignat’s book is fascinating. Finally a descent history of Egytian-style Freemasonry and translations of old ritual texts are always welcome. I am not familiar enough with nowadays Memphis-Misraim to know how much Ravignat’s system differs from the various MM rites, so that I have to leave for people more familiar with MM.
As with several similar publications nowadays, the book is an Amazon printing-on-demand, friendly priced, available to anyone interested and a 500+ pages on A4 in a paperback (a bit difficult to handle). Recommended if you are interested in a much more esoteric approach to Freemasonry and/or the history of Egyptian themed Freemasonry in general.
2021 independently published, isbn 979-8520131779
