The General Ahiman Rezon

The General Ahiman Rezon is a book by Daniel Edgar Sickles, first published in 1868. This practical manual serves as a 19th-century Freemason’s guide and monitor for Blue Lodge work, presenting monitorial instructions for the three craft degrees — Entered Apprentice, Fellow-craft and Master Mason — together with forms, ceremonies, songs and related formulary.

Written in the manner of lodge monitors of its era, the volume aims to standardise ritual practice and provide lodge officers and brethren with the texts and procedural guidance necessary to conduct meetings and degree work. For readers interested in historical ritual, fraternal practice, or the development of American Freemasonry, it is a compact, hands-on source that reflects the priorities and style of public Masonic manuals produced in the mid- to late-1800s.

Though the title borrows the venerable name Ahiman Rezon — long associated with Masonic constitutions — Sickles’s work is best read as a practical, legally minded monitor rather than a direct continuation of Laurence Dermott’s earlier constitutional treatise. The book is useful for researchers and hobbyists who want a clear example of how ritual and lodge documents were presented to American brethren during the post-Civil War decades.