Adeptus Major, Grade VI, In The SRIA's Second Order

Adeptus Major is the sixth grade of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia's Second Order, following Adeptus Minor and preceding Adeptus Exemptus. Advancement within the Second Order, Grades V through VII, is the responsibility of the society's Provinces rather than its local Colleges, which oversee only the First Order, Grades I through IV, a decentralization that gives the SRIA's regional bodies real authority over most of the society's working grade structure.

The society predates the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1866 and 1867, roughly two decades before the Golden Dawn's own 1888 founding, and it is this earlier Second Order, Adeptus Minor through Adeptus Exemptus, that supplied the grade names and Tree of Life numbering the Golden Dawn later adapted for its own Second Order, the Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis. The parallel extends to grade titles as well as structure: the SRIA's Adeptus Minor, Adeptus Major and Adeptus Exemptus share their names exactly with their Golden Dawn counterparts.

Adeptus Major's position at this level places it above the Colleges' authority and below the Third Order, Grades VIII and IX, which the society reserves to its Supreme Magus alone, a three tier administrative structure documented consistently in Masonic reference literature on the SRIA's organization.