A Self-Created Body?

"A new Masonic power was combined and created under the title of "Supreme Council of the Grand Commanders Inspectors General of the thirty -third and last degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite."

This new creation naturally bore the same illegal character, and was accompanied by the same deplorable cir- cumstances which had already signalized the factious period from 1740 to 1770 a period of false titles, illegal constitutions, antedated regulations, etc.

The new authority lost no time in constituting itself. It elected its own members to the highest dignities of their new order of knighthood, and delivered to them patents with which they were empowered to institute this new T rite wherever their fortunes should carry them. The brother Colonel Mitchell was nominated the first Grand Commander. He died at Charleston, in 1841. But to facilitate the progress of the new rite, it was necessary to give it a respectable origin, and support it with some historic names as those of its originators and protectors.

This trust was committed to the brethren Paleho, Auld, and La Motte, and we have seen by the report from which we have quoted how they discharged it. Probably among the first deliverances of the new power was the warrant sent to De Grasse-Tilly who had some time previously been appointed as Inspector General of the Rite of Perfection for the French colonies in Amer- ica to enable him to establish, in the Island of St. Domingo, a Supreme Council of the new rite. This patent conferred upon him the title of Lieutenant Commander of the new rite, and is dated the 21st February, 1802. Having little hope of being recognized as a Masonic authority in America, this new power sought the recognition of the different Masonic powers established in Eu- rope; and, with this object, it sent to all the Grand Lodges of Europe a circular, dated the llth of December, 1802, by which it informed them of its installation, and gave them the names of the degrees which it conferred itself, and authorized its Grand Commander to confer in its name.

These pretended high degrees, into which have been in- troduced the reveries of the Templars, the speculations of the mystics, the deceptions of the alchemists, the magii, and many other idealists more or less dreamy, and the greater part of which repose upon legends absurd and contra- dictory with the truths of history, are, in fact, a mass of informal and undigested matters. Those of the Scottish Kite, in particular, are a monument of folly, and which would have been derided as nonsense long ago but for man's vanity, which is gratified by the titles and decora- tions of which this rite is the parent."

From: "A General History of Free-Masonry in Europe"

By: Rebold, Emmanuel 1868