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Did the authors of Method Infinite really try to connect the Book of Abraham to the 31st Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry? As a member of the Church and a member of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, I find that rather embarrassing a claim to make, if so! Why?
Well, for one thing, the Egyptian elements of the said Degree are pertinent to the Southern Jurisdiction rather than to the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction. Illinois is part of the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction rather than the Southern Jurisdiction (Mother Council of the World).
For another, as pointed out in the article, there was no Scottish Rite in Illinois before 1846.
For yet another, Joseph Smith was not a Mason of the Scottish Rite. Any parallel made to or claims of derivation of ideas from elements of Rites to which Joseph Smith did not belong are contrived and problematic at best.
Even worse is that the Egyptian elements were not present in the 31st Degree until the late Sovereign Grand Commander, Albert Pike, added them to the 31st Degree years after the death of Joseph Smith!
But the worst part of all of this is that the latter part of what I here have stated is that this is something that would have been easily verifiable and verified by simply consultation of the older rituals of the Scottish Rite, which have been published in various forms, or any of the works of the said Rite that discuss the evolution of the Degrees of the Rite under the influence of Albert Pike and his revisions thereof!
Embarrassing indeed, if the authors of Method Infinite actually did try to make any such connections! Frankly, this is something that should have been caught before publication by at least one of the authors.