THE ROYAL ARCH JOURNEY Neville Barker Cryer, Lewis Masonic, Hersham, 2009. Paperback, 96 pages, £9.99. ISBN 978-0-65318-331-0

Ever since the beginning of methodical research into masonic history there has been a mystery about the origins of what we now know as The Holy Royal Arch.
     While the Antients Grand Lodge of 1751 worked it they obviously did not invent it. Where did it come from? And why have we not found any earlier trace?
     Neville Cryer asks both these questions and explores the possible solutions: his conclusion, which seems self-evident given all the evidence he presents, is that we are looking for the wrong thing. We are looking for the Royal Arch when we should be looking for the practices now contained within the Royal Arch but which existed earlier than 1751 under another name.
     His book, slender though it is, is a true journey of discovery and insight, crammed with information and forensic in its approach; it is a detective story, a quest to find answers to a mystery which is quickly revealed as something which not only concerns the Royal Arch but Freemasonry itself. Cryer’s taut arguments do demand the close attention of the reader but that attention is well rewarded.
     Cryer believes that the answer lies in accepting that what we now work as the Royal Arch was around long before the present name was established. Using evidence from the Graham manuscript (seventeenth century but copied in 1726) and the ‘exposure’ by Samuel Prichard (1730) he concludes that ‘What was later to be called “the Royal Arch steps” was already in place as the ... culmination of Masonry.’ He argues that the original Master Mason grade in Freemasonry contained material no longer in the present Craft third degree and that this material is now found in the Royal Arch.
     In pre-1717 Freemasonry, Cryer explains, the narrative which led up to the disclosure of the secrets was continuous; today it is fragmented, parts have ended up in other degrees such as the Royal and Select Masters. For this reason the Royal Arch is truly the completion of the third degree because it “enables the third degree to become part of its original whole”.
     By 1726 the Moderns Grand Lodge had reordered the ritual into three degrees; this entailed leaving out some important elements. As a result, the Antients formed their own Grand Lodge in 1751 to restore the original concept so far as was possible within the three-degree structure.
     This is an important and perhaps controversial book which quite correctly challenges a number of assumptions still maintained by Freemasons. And it points out the route to a narrative unity which, even after years of meddling, is still elusive, but still important.

Michael Baigent