Select Master belongs to the Council body's Cryptic degrees, named for a shared narrative setting involving a hidden vault, a concealment and recovery theme that general Masonic reference literature describes as an extension of the Royal Arch's own preoccupation with something lost from an earlier era of the Craft's symbolic history. This thematic continuity across the Chapter and Council bodies is documented consistently in encyclopedic treatments of the York Rite.
Published accounts of the York Rite's structure note that Select Master, and the Cryptic degrees generally, occupy a less publicly discussed position than Royal Arch Mason or Knight Templar, appearing more often in specialist Masonic reference works than in general popular treatments of Freemasonry, a visibility difference that tracks the Council body's own smaller membership relative to the Chapter and Commandery.
As with the York Rite's other degrees, the publicly documented material covers the vault theme's general shape and its place in the Chapter to Council sequence, not the specific ceremonial content a Council transmits only to its own members.
General Masonic reference works note that the Cryptic degrees were, historically, a later addition to the York Rite's overall structure than the Chapter degrees beneath them, a documented sequencing fact that helps explain why Select Master and its companion degrees receive comparatively less general attention than the older, more established Royal Arch.