The Scottish Rite Papers

A Study of the Troubled History of the Louisiana and US Scottish Rite in the Early to Mid 1800's

by Michael R. Poll

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Sometimes a published history provides a clear window into events of the past. Other times, it is written to create a confusing fog, to mislead the reader, and obscure a proper understanding of past events. This book is designed to dispel the fog and offer a clear look at the early development of the beautiful and highly valuable Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

Cornerstone Ebook edition is available by clicking HERE.

Also available at Amazon by clicking HERE.

REVIEWS

From Amazon.com
Ed K
5.0 out of 5 stars "I need a roadmap and a head-lantern"

How Mike Poll managed to sort all of this out totally amazes me. This is the most confusing bit of masonic history I have ever encountered. On my second reading, I’m going to have a Whiteboard ready to be able to trace out this whole story. If you want an outstanding background of Scottish Rite growth and development in the early to mid-1800s, this is the work you should buy immediately. I got it a year ago and left it on the shelf for a while. How foolish I was. Thanks again, Mike, for some exceptional historical detective work .

From Amazon.com
L. W. Chavis
5.0 out of 5 stars "Finding Order in the Chaos"

Writing history is rarely a straightforward reporting of facts. The would-be historian shoulders the burden of finding an order in scattered, hidden, confusing, often contradictory records, drawing such conclusions as can be drawn from the materials at hand, and organizing them in some presentable form. Historical research is a bit more than using Google.

The Scottish Rite Papers by Michael R. Poll is a well-done example of the art of the historian, taking on the tangled, confusing threads of the history of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in the first half of the nineteenth century. While many Scottish Rite Masons know the story of the creation of the thirty-three-degree A.&A.S.R., preceded by the twenty-five-degree Order of the Royal Secret promulgated by Etienne Morin in the eighteenth century, fewer are aware that Louisiana, largely due to its French and Spanish origins, had bodies of several rites working under its Grand Lodge. Louisiana has one of the most interesting, if confusing, stories of the foundation and growth of Freemasonry in all the United States, and to follow the various crossing, woven, and knotted threads of its lodges and higher degree bodies is a daunting task for most of us. Michael Poll, a Louisiana Scottish Rite Mason himself and a researcher and speaker about the history of Freemasonry who is well-known and well-respected, has undertaken in this volume to follow the intricate windings of the Scottish Rite in Louisiana, and he does so in a well-written and perspicacious series of papers that, to borrow from the thirty-third degree motto, brings order from chaos. There are many books and references about the Scottish Rite in Louisiana—Historical Inquiry into the Origins of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite by James Foulhouze, a Sovereign Grand Commander of the Louisiana Supreme Council, also published by Cornerstone Publishers is one such—but Poll's The Scottish Rite Papers is an excellent aid to clarity for those of us interested but less erudite. I highly recommend this book.