Of Pirates and Corsairs

“This degree will make you a brother to Pirates and Corsairs”

This is familiar to almost everyone who has been through the Master Mason degree, yet no one really knows where it came from and why it is in our ritual. In this article, I do not hope to make any conclusions and grant me the use of speculation. After all, we are speculative Masons are we not? I will need to make a  condition first (dubious as it is): that freemasonry evolved from the Knights Templar and a number of other esoteric groups. This conclusion has been drawn by a number of other authors, but is not widely accepted in masonic circles. Some of the books with this thesis are: Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry
by John J. Robinson, The Secret History of Freemasonry: Its Origins and Connection to the Knights Templar
by Paul Naudon. Of course, there are many others. With an argument like this, needless to say, the whole crumbles when this tenuous link is removed.

What peaked my interest was when a brother asked me why freemasons use the skull and cross bones in our symbolism. I did not have an answer except maybe something to do with the Hiram legend. Yet this seems unlikely after reflection.

There have been many legends that the Templars used the skull and cross bones while burying their dead. For a Christian order it would seem unlikely for them to defile the bodies of their dead, yet there are many accounts of it. Could this be the inspiration for Jolly Roger, the flag of the pirates? This is the conclusion drawn in David Childress’ book Pirates and the Lost Templar Fleet: The Secret Naval War Between the Knights Templar and the Vatican
David claims “Jolly Roger” is named after Roger the second, King of Sicily a Templar known for his seafaring skills.

At the time of the Friday the 13th, 1307 mass arrest of the Templars, a case can be made that the Templar fleet escaped from its naval base at La Rochelle. Many of these ships were galleys, the ship of choice for many pirates.

Of course, most of this is old news. Yet I have found another link. In the Entered Apprentice degree there is a curious part of the obligation. It states the violators of this obligation would be “buried in the rough sands of the sea at low water mark.” Pirates were known to have been hanged at low water mark to stress the point that their crimes had been commited within the Lord High Admiral’s Jurisdiction. He was responsible for the punishment of crimes on the high seas and the waterways up to the low water mark. Above that mark the civil courts took over.

History is, unfortunately, a subject that is sometimes too alive: leading one into contradictory paths. Yet sometimes it is too dead to penetrate. These answers we may never know, but hopefully this has given someone a spark to research this more.

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