In view of the fact, that there are two very different kinds of possessors of the same degree, the Grand Lodge of England has long since distinguished them as “virtual” and as “actual” Past Masters.  The terms are sufficiently explicit, and have the advantage of enabling us to avoid circumlocution, and I shall, therefore, adopt them.

An actual Past Master is one who has been regularly installed to preside over a symbolic lodge under the jurisdiction of a Grand Lodge.  A virtual Past Master is one who has received the degree in a chapter, for the purpose of qualifying him for exaltation to the Royal Arch.

Now the question to be considered is this.  Can a virtual Past Master be permitted to be present at the installation of an actual Past Master?

The Committee of Correspondence of New York, in 1851, announced the doctrine, that a Chapter, or virtual Past Master, cannot legally install the Master of a Symbolic Lodge; but that there is no rule forbidding his being present at the ceremony.  This doctrine has been accepted by several Grand Lodges, while others again refuse to admit the presence of a virtual Past Master at the installation-service.

In South Carolina, for instance, by uninterrupted usage, virtual Past Masters are excluded from the ceremony of installation.

In Louisiana, under the high authority of the late Brother Gedge, it is asserted, that “it is the bounden duty of all Grand Lodges to prevent the possessors of the (chapter) degree from the exercise of any function appertaining to the office and attributes of an installed Master of a lodge of Symbolic Masonry, and refuse to recognize them as belonging to the order of Past Masters."[88]

Brother Albert Pike, whose opinion on masonic jurisprudence is entitled to the most respectful consideration, has announced a similar doctrine in one of his elaborate reports to the Grand Chapter of Arkansas.  He does not consider “that the Past Master’s degree, conferred in a chapter, invests the recipient with any rank or authority, except within the chapter itself; that it no ways qualifies or authorizes him to preside in the chair of a lodge:  that a lodge has no legal means of knowing that he has received the degree in a chapter:  for it is not supposed to know anything that takes place there any more than it knows what takes place in a Lodge of Perfection, or a Chapter of Knights of the Rose Croix;” and, of course, if the Past Masters of a lodge have no such “legal means” of recognition of Chapter Masters, they cannot permit them to be present at an installation.

This is, in fact, no new doctrine.  Preston, in his description of the installation ceremony, says:  “The new Master is then conducted to an adjacent room, where he is regularly installed, and bound to his trust in ancient form, in the presence of at least three installed Masters"[89] And Dr. Oliver, in commenting on this passage, says, “this part of the ceremony can only be orally communicated, nor can any but installed Masters be present."[90]