Most Powerful Brethren who adorn the East, all Brethren who adorn the Valleys, each according to his own Dignity and Degree,

I speak to you today not only as your Sovereign Grand Commander, but as a Brother, as a fellow traveller after two years of trial for us all. I speak with the voice of one who has kept watch with you through the longest nights, of one who has seen what seemed unshakeable begin to tremble, and of one who — just like you who are here, now — has never ceased to believe.

*

This was not the first trial that our Rite has been called upon to face since its foundation, on 16 March 1805. We have weathered far greater storms. From the Congress of Vienna of 1814-1815 until 1848, Freemasonry was forbidden and persecuted under the Austrian yoke. In the dark years of the totalitarian regimes of early twentieth-century Europe, Freemasonry was again the object of persecution. SGC Alessandro Tedeschi, a Jew in exile in France, was found dead on 19 August 1940 at the hands of the Gestapo. In the 1970s the Rite experienced a dramatic conflict which led SGC Vittorio Colao, on 4 May 1977, to dissolve all the Ritual Bodies of the Rite, expelling the dissenting Brethren, and to establish a new Supreme Council. With everything that followed.

I say this not to underestimate the seriousness of the events we have experienced together, but to place them in perspective. The last two years have been, for the AASR, a true ordeal, in the oldest and most initiatic sense of the term: a trial through which impure metal is separated from gold. Yet it is only through trial that evolution comes; it is only through crisis that growth is truly experienced. It is not the first time, and it will not be the last.

The Nigredo represents the necessary condition for the Work of perfection to proceed. The Crow is followed by the Swan, and the Swan by the Phoenix.

*

We have experienced the danger of external pressure and the manoeuvres of those who sought to bend our sovereignty. Of those who defined participation in the AASR as a “Masonic fault” (GOI Decree No. 10/AS of 13 June 2024) and made participation in their own Order conditional upon breach of oath and dissociation from the Rite (GOI Communication of 30 April 2025). Of those who improperly claimed to exercise a control that does not belong to them and that the history of the Rite has never granted to any Obedience, and never will.

Never!

The Rite, our Rite, is an autonomous cathedral, with its own foundations, its own columns, its own sky. And no one may presume to dwell within it without first having crossed its threshold with due reverence.

There have been, in these years, some — many — who swore oaths upon this Rite, received its Degrees, nourished themselves from its Light, and then chose the convenient path of abandonment, compromise and connivance with those who sought to extinguish or yoke that Light. To them I leave the weight of their own conscience. Tradition teaches that karma, the law of cause and effect, knows neither amnesties nor limitation periods. Whoever has turned his back on the Light will live in the shadow he has built with his own hands. Whatever accidental, material or earthly results may have been achieved.

No one is immune from risk, my Brethren. Fidelity is the true measure of a man, the measure that remains when everything else has been taken away. That is why, from the Fourth Degree onwards, we teach fidelity unto death.

*

In the midst of the storm, what saved us was Tradition which, in the words of Gustav Mahler, is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.

A tradition that does not date back to the foundation of the first Supreme Council in Charleston, in the United States, on 31 May 1801. It does not date back to the Ordonnances générales of the Grand Lodge of France of 1743, nor to the Chapter of Clermont of 1754. Rather, it dates back to the very origins of humanity and to those teachings that stand outside time and outside space and which, as such, we ascribe to the Sacred.

This is why the AASR could not, cannot, and will never be reduced to an instrument of others: because its essence lies in an inner Truth that no decree, no judgment, no law, however unjust and corrupt, can confiscate.

And this is why one of the indispensable conditions for the initiatic value of the Rite is, and remains, its regularity, which consists in recognition by the Supreme Council of the Southern Jurisdiction, the “Mother Supreme Council of the World”. Recognition that the “Mother Supreme Council of the World” confirmed to our AASR by communication dated 16 April 2025.

*

And now allow me to embrace you, each one of you, each one of you who resisted. You who kept our Rite alive. You who wrote, who called, who chose to remain united when it would have been simpler to yield. Those who gave much, those who gave what they could, those who simply resisted, those who could not give any contribution but remained faithful to the oaths they had taken and are now here.

To all of you go my deepest respect and the gratitude of the whole Rite. Know that every gesture has been seen, remembered and kept.

*

In this hour of trial, the Universe led us towards the Regular Grand Lodge of Italy, with which the Rite resolved to establish relations of reciprocity on 12 April 2025. To the RGLI goes our most sincere and solemn gratitude for having opened its doors to us with the generosity of those who know the value of regularity and authentic brotherhood.

This too was a sign, reminding us of the Five Points of Fellowship, which are not dead words but the essence of initiatic life: it was not a calculation of convenience, but an act of recognition, a Masonic act in the fullest and noblest sense of the term.

Together with them we shall build something more solid than what we had before, because it will be built not upon the sand of compromise, but upon the rock of regularity, Tradition and rituality. Every authentic architrave must rest upon authentic columns. Every Temple worthy of the name must be built according to the rules of the Art.

*

But I am not here to speak only of what has been. I am here also to tell you where we are going.

We have undertaken, and by now substantially completed, the reordering of the Bodies of the Rite. We are again operational in all Degrees. We have celebrated the first advancements in Degree. We have had the first admissions into the Chambers of the Fourth Degree.

We are restoring the enclosing walls tried by the conflict. We are rebuilding the furnishings that were taken. We are once again adorning our Temples. But let us remember: the Rite is not measured in numbers; it is measured by the quality of the men who compose it and by fidelity to the Rituals entrusted to us by the generations that came before us for the benefit of those that will come after.

 

*

 

I conclude.

In hermetic iconography, the sun does not ask permission to shine. It does not justify itself before the clouds. It does not negotiate its light with the darkness. It simply rises. Every morning, it rises, indifferent to what the night has done. And when it rises, darkness retreats.

We are this. We are the certainty that trials have not bent us and never will bend us, because what we are in our depths cannot be bent by what comes from outside.

The pelican of esoteric tradition, symbol of the true Master, feeds its young with its own blood. This is the archetype of our service: not to receive, but to give. Not to rise, but to raise. Not to go before, but to lead. Not to shine alone, but to be the lamp that helps others also to see the road.

Tradition lives. The Rite resists. We are the Rite.

Huzzai! Huzzai! Huzzai!

Sovereign Grand Commander, Andrea Roselli