V. Levert, that I take the following excerpt from it :

“Because this unity is good and pleasant, David compares it to the sacred oil, or precious ointment with which Aaron, the High Priest, was consecrated to office. This ointment was composed of olive oil, with several aromatic substances, which made it a most fragrant and delightful perfume. The Israelites were positively forbidden to make any like it, or to have, or use it for common purposes. This ointment of consecration was emblematical of the Holy Spirit’s influences, which alone can enlighten and purify the heart of man. And by this comparison we are taught that God alone can afford that grace by which the cor¬ rupt heart of man may be disposed to peace and unity with his brethren. He compares it to this ointment also, because of the pleasure which such a state of
70 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
unity amongst brethren affords to society. That as the fragrant smell of this ointment which was poured upon the head of Aaron extended to and delighted with its fragrance all around him, so unity of breth¬ ren is a source of pleasure as well as advantage to every member of the community. He compares it also to the dew which fell on Mount Hermon. Her- mon is a range of mountains on the north border of the land of Canaan, or of the Israelites, on the east side of Jordan, including within its range several emi¬ nences, one of which is called Zion. This is not the same as Zion the Holy City, but is one of the emi¬ nences of Hermon. It is said that the dew which forms upon this mountain is so abundant, that a per¬ son exposed to it in the night would be as thoroughly wet as though he had been drenched with water ; and yet it is so salubrious, that a man might sleep in the open air all night and be without feeling the least inconvenience, or suffering any injury from the dews of Hermon. To this abundant and healthful dew, David compares unity amongst brethren, to teach us that it is fruitful in its benefits and pleasures, shed¬ ding an abundance of good upon all who come within its influence, communicating the most solid pleasures and advantages, without injury to any one. Unity among brethren is wealth to the indigent, instruction to the ignorant, a friend to the friendless, and a father to the orphan. For there the Lord commanded the blessing. There, not on Hermon, but on a society of united brethren. For where such union exists it is the product of the Spirit of Holiness ; which causes the purified heart to send forth the tribute of praise, ardent and savoury, 'as the pot of burning incense.’ ”
RELIEF OF THE DISTRESSED
is but a manifestation, a putting into practice in one of
its most important aspects of the tenet of Brotherly Love.
THE ENTERED APPRENTICE DEGREE 71
One who loves his fellowman will hasten to his relief when in distress. The picture of the Good Samaritan, however, so often seen in our Monitors, can hardly be said to rise to the dignity of a true symbol. It is only an illustration.
TRUTH
is said to be the third tenet of Freemasonry. It is sym¬ bolised by the Bible. Freemasonry seeks not only to render us unafraid of Truth but to impress upon us the beauties and sublimities of Truth in all its manifold manifestations. There are millions of people (indeed the great bulk of mankind), who are afraid of the Truth; they fear their preconceived notions and beliefs cannot withstand the light of Truth. They forget that a knowl¬ edge of the Truth can not possibly injure any person or any just cause. In no fields are people more afraid of the Truth than in those of religion and politics, and, while Masonry dabbles with neither, it does urge the individual Mason to be at all times ready and willing to receive, accept and act upon the Truth in matters religious and political, as indeed in all other matters. One need not be afraid of serious religious or political error among a people where all are earnestly seeking the Truth and all are willing to be guided by it when found.
There is no lesson more important and none, we be¬ lieve, more commonly forgotten among men, than that an earnest, burning desire for Truth is the sine qua non, without which the highest development of the human race is impossible. Nothing has retarded human progress more than a cowardly or ignorant unwillingness to know the Truth and to have it known.
We can understand why the selfish man often does not want the Truth known, but the pathetic thing is that
72 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
most often it is his victim, who struggles most frantically to assist in staying the stream of Truth, which, if allowed to flow, would soon cover the quagmires of ignorance, superstition and error with shining seas of knowledge.
Masonry also admonishes us to consider the earth, the firmament, the universe, all Nature, as a vast scroll un¬ rolled before us whereon we may behold and in some measure at least read and understand God’s revelation of his Truth to man. It seeks to direct our attention to the miracles by which we are surrounded every moment of our lives, such as light, air, earth and water and to the various manifestations of force, such as adhesion, co¬ hesion, friction, heat, electricity, attraction, repulsion and gravitation, to enlist our interest in them, and to stimu¬ late in us an effort in a measure at least to understand them. It assures us that like love, it is better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all. From a baffled study of any one of the phenomena of Truth we return stronger and wiser and better men.
Moreover, Masonry suggests to us that the unsuccess¬ ful effort to learn the truths of nature are not only not lost in this life but will bear fruit in the life to come, just as the pupil who studies hard but fails is better prepared for the next lesson than if he had not studied at all.
In one of the Scottish Rite Degrees the candidate is told:
'^Nature is a revelation and the light of Truth shines everywhere in the world. The want of Faith and the refusal of men to reason make the shadows. Man is blindfolded by himself. All men might be free but ignorance and superstition forge the fetters and men enchain themselves and create their own bondage.
If you prefer anything in the world to Reason, Truth and Justice; if logic alarms you and the naked
THE ENTERED APPRENTICE DEGREE 73
Truth makes you blush; if to assail received errors is to wound you, seek not to become an Adept. You will not comprehend the secrets. To show the light to nocturnal birds is to conceal it from them, since it blinds them and is darker to them than the darkness.”
Truth is one of the most comprehensive words in any language. If we be true, we can not be false to any duty; hence, the entire moral and religious codes are embraced in this tenet of our order. Are we not told in the Sacred Writings that God himself is Truth?
LIGHT
is a familiar and most appropriate symbol of knowledge, both mental and spiritual, as Darkness is of ignorance. These are among our commonest figures of speech and we employ them almost unconsciously, so much so that our appreciation of their beauty is greatly dulled.
In our own peculiar way, this transition from dark¬ ness to light is symbolically represented in our ceremo¬ nies.
The “Shock of Enlightenment” or “Battery of Accla¬ mation,” says Brother W. Wynn Wescott, “when the candidate is restored to light is a direct imitation of the sudden crash of feigned thunder and lightning by which the neophyte of the Elusinian Mysteries was greeted.”
Light being perhaps the greatest natural phenomenon in the universe, it is appropriate that it should be made to symbolise the most important thing in the development of human character, namely, knowledge, education, culti¬ vation, enlightenment.
There are said to be three lights in the lodge, one in the South, one in the West, and one in the East. There is said to be none in the North and that hence it is called
74 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
a place of darkness. Applied to our ordinary lodge rooms this is meaningless, but applied to the world, as the ancients knew it, and of which, as we have seen, the lodge is emblematic, it has a charming symbolism. It alludes to the fact that to persons living in the northern hemi¬ sphere (where all the civilised people of antiquity dwelt), the sun each day appears in the East, ascends to the zenith in the South where he seems to become stationary for a short space, and thence descends and disappears in the West. The East, South and West seem, therefore, to be his stations; in the northern hemisphere he never attains the North. The ancients supposed the South to be a region of intense heat and blinding light and the extreme North to be a region of perpetual darkness. We have in this symbol, therefore, a reflection of these primeval con¬ ceptions of mankind concerning the world.
THE JEWELS OF THE LODGE,
six in number, are said to be the Square, the Level, the Plumb, the Rough Ashlar, the Perfect Ashlar, and the Trestleboard. In America, the first three are called the ‘'immovable jewels” and the latter three the “movable jewels.” In England, this is precisely reversed, the first three being the movable and the latter the immovable. No one has yet been able to give any satisfying reason for calling either the one set or the other movable or immovable. So we shall not attempt an explanation here of what has never been explained.
The real jewels of the lodge, however, are what the Square, the Level, the Plumb, the Rough Ashlar, the Per¬ fect Ashlar and the Trestleboard typify, that is to say (i) morality symbolised by the Square; (2) equality sym¬ bolised by the Level; (3) uprightness symbolised by the Plumb; (4) a man of untrained, uneducated mind but of
THE ENTERED APPRENTICE DEGREE 75
sterling character as typified by the stone rough and un¬ even in outline but of fine and approved texture, a stone capable of being fitted for the finest building; (5) the trained and educated man, who by cultivation and develop¬ ment of his natural qualities has become both an orna¬ ment and a blessing to society, as typified by the stone of perfect shape and design chiselled out of the rough stone as taken from the quarry; (6) every source from which the truth may be learned which Deity has laid down in the “great books of nature and revelation” for the guid¬ ance of the workman engaged in the erection of that Temple not made with hands, all of which is typified by the trestleboard on which the operative master lays down the designs for the erection of the material building.
Bearing in mind that the lodge typifies human society organised into government, it follows that the jewels of any state or nation are, (i) a sturdy, honest, sterling people, which, though uneducated to begin with, is capable by education and training and by a due use of and atten¬ tion to the great truths to be learned from (2) nature and revelation, of being developed into (3) a cultivated and refined citizenship characterised by (4) morality of conduct, (5) equality before the law, and (6) uprightness of character.
PERFECT YOUTH
In our symbolism, the human body is a prototype of the temple of the Deity. This speaking of the body as an abiding place of Deity is a very ancient metaphor. There¬ fore, we require as fitting that the body of a man about to be admitted to the craft shall be whole and without de¬ formity. Undoubtedly this requirement began as a very practical and serviceable rule when our craft was operative and the apprentice was at once put to heavy physical la-
76 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
hour. A man of maimed or defective body could not en¬ dure the arduous labours involved in building with stone.
The antiquity of this requirement is undenied and un¬ deniable. Our oldest Code of Masonic Law (the Regius MS., cir. A.D. 1390), in its quaint language declares.:
The mayster shal not, for no vantage,
Make no prentes that ys outrage ;
Hyt ys to mene, as ye mowe here,
That he have hys lymes hole alle y-f ere ;
To the craft hyt were gret schame.
To make an halt mon and a lame.
For an unperfyct mon of such blod Schulde do the craft but lytul good.
Thus ye mowe knowe everychen.
The craft wolde have a myghty mon ;
A maymed mon he hath no myght,
Ye mowe hyt knowe long yer nyght.
— 11. 149-160.
Anderson’s Book of Constitutions (1723), the first book of the kind ever published and still regarded the world over as a standard authority, thus states the law:
No Master should take an Apprentice, unless he has sufficient Imployment for him, and unless he be a perfect Youth, having no Maim or Defect in his Body that may render him uncapable of learning the Art, of serving his Master's Lord, and of being made a Brother, and then a Fellow-Craft in due time.
But, as the society became gradually speculative, this very practical requirement was brought over along with much other similar impedimenta and as the “perfect youth” rule gradually lost its practical value, it took on a symbolic meaning.
The task of the Fraternity was no longer that of erect¬ ing temples of stone but that of erecting temples to Deity
THE ENTERED APPRENTICE DEGREE 77
by developing the individual man into a more or less per¬ fect character. By an easy step the human body thus became the symbol of a temple of Deity. Indeed, we know that even in the days of Jesus of Nazareth the human body was symbolically spoken of as such. Speak¬ ing of His own body, He said, ^‘Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.’’ When the human body became symbolical of the temple, it was felt that only a body without blemish, a body whole of its limbs as a man ought to be, a perfect youth was a fit symbol of the temple of God, just as a lamb with spot or blemish was regarded as an unworthy sacrificial offering.
It is argued now in this utilitarian age that this re¬ quirement arose out of the necessities of a society of operative workmen, and is unsuited to our present Specu¬ lative Masonry. The contention is that the utilitarian purpose of the regulation having ceased, the regulation it¬ self is no longer binding. They forget that many things, once serving purely practical purposes in our Fraternity, but now entirely useless from that viewpoint, were for symbolic reasons brought over from operative into Specu¬ lative Masonry. Of what utility in the lodge, we may ask, are now the Square, the Level, the Plumb, the Com¬ passes, the Twenty-four-inch Gauge, the Chisel, the Trowel, the Spade? None whatever. This line of reason¬ ing would, therefore, dispense with them also. They are retained and cherished solely because they symbolise cer¬ tain virtues or truths. So it is with man. The most fundamental symbolism in Masonry is as we have just seen that man is a piece of flawless material to be chiselled and polished into a perfect stone to be used in the erection of a moral and spiritual temple. It is an ancient meta¬ phor, older than the Christian era that man symbolises the temple or abiding place of Deity himself. A perfect specimen of physical manhood is an admirable and a
78 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
marvellous piece of work regardless of the mind or the character housed in it. According to our conceit, it is made in the very image of God. — (Genesis i, 26.) In other words, the human body typifies Deity. Carlyle in Sartor Resartus exclaims, ‘‘What is man himself but a symbol of God!” An imperfect, a crippled, a maimed body is an unworthy type in such a sublime symbolism. Surely nothing less than a “perfect youth having no maim or defect in his body that may render him incapable of learning the art, of serving his Master’s Lord, and of being made a Brother, and then a Fellow-Craft in due time” is a fit symbol of Deity, or of his perfect abiding place, or of a perfect stone in a perfect temple. How¬ ever pure the material, who would think of putting a broken stone in a fine edifice? And what would one think of a temple splendidly furnished inside, built of the finest marble, but with a broken column, a cracked frieze or a shattered dome?
The argument, sometimes made, that Freemasonry should not be so exacting as to physical perfection while we admit those possessed of less than moral perfection proceeds on a false assurnption. Freemasonry has never declared any lower standard of moral qualification for its initiates than that they shall be “good men and true, or men of honour and honesty.” If less than these find their way into our lodges, the fault is not with Freemasonry or its laws, but with us whose duty it is to guard our portals against the unworthy. Because we are careless or sometimes deceived at one point is no reason why we should obliterate a “landmark” elsewhere.
This utilitarian spirit which would knock off a mark of antiquity here and another yonder, because they are no longer serviceable, would soon strip our Fraternity com¬ pletely of that delightful flavour of age which is one of its chief charms.
THE ENTERED APPRENTICE DEGREE 79
Our operative brethren required of their initiates just such degree of “physical perfection’' as enabled them to perform the work of the operative lodge. We should like¬ wise require just such degree of “physical perfection” as will enable our initiates to perform the “work” of the Speculative lodge.
At the same time we do not think it necessary to the preservation of this symbolism that an Entered Appren¬ tice should be denied advancement because of a maim suffered after initiation. The idea of man as a symbol of a perfect stone in a temple is taught chiefly in the First Degree, “living stones for that spiritual building, that house not made with hands, eternal in the heaven's.” So it is of the symbolism of the Rough Ashlar and the Perfect Ashlar. Many considerations operate in favour of the advancement of the Entered Apprentice or Fellow Craft, notwithstanding a maim after initiation which do not apply to the profane.
We have gotten along very well with this restriction of “physical perfection.” Many think the increase in mem¬ bership has been too rapid. There is at least no necessity to open the door any wider to the profane. When we open it to the worthy maimed, we also open it to the unworthy maimed.
THE SQUARE
The Entered Apprentice is taught that the Square sym¬ bolises morality. Acting “upon the square” is a familiar metaphor for fair and honest dealings. A like symbolic meaning attaching to this tool has been traced in China back five hundred years before Christ. In the Great Learning it is stated that abstaining from doing unto others what one would not they should do unto him “is called the principle of acting on the square.”
22^. Q. C., II, p. 120 ; Ibid., Ill, p. 14.
80 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
In 1830, workmen engaged in rebuilding Baal bridge near Limerick, Ireland, found beneath the foundation stone a metallic square bearing the date 1517 and also the following inscription :
‘T will strive to live with love & care,
Upon the level, by the square/’
This indicates strongly that mediaeval operative Masons attached to the Square the same symbolic meaning we do to-day.
THE LEVEL
The Level is said to teach equality among us ; not equal¬ ity in mind or character or wealth or learning; not the equality of the communist or the anarchist; not even that all men and women are socially equal, for none of these things are true. Masonry does not profess the impossible of making the weakest the equal in strength of the strong¬ est, or the simpleton the intellectual equal of the genius, or the pervert the moral equal of upright man, or the outcast the social equal of respectable people. It does not attempt to equalise wealth by taking from him who hath and giving to him who hath not. This word ‘‘equality” has been greatly misunderstood, if not deliberately abused, in the fields of politics, business, industry, eco¬ nomics and society. False and dangerous doctrines, poli¬ cies and systems have been founded upon it. The world is now witnessing the disastrous consequences of one of these false systems applied to Russia.
To understand the meaning of this term “equality,” as used by us, we must go back to the days when society was divided into castes or classes, for example, the no-
23Kennmg’s Cyclopedia of Freemasonry (1878), p. 603.
THE ENTERED APPRENTICE DEGREE 81
bility, the clergy, the yeomen, the serfs, the slaves, in which each class enjoyed legal rights not given to a lower class; in which certain higher classes had the power of life or death over those of lower classes; in which social intercourse by an individual, however honourable, of a lower class with those of a higher class was forbidden. It is artificial distinctions like these which we repudiate. But differences, created by God or resulting from the conduct or efforts of the individuals themselves. Masonry does not profess to abrogate or obliterate. It could not if it would; it would not if it could. Masonry believes in every man having the just reward of his industry or his genius. It does not believe in arbitrarily raising the slug¬ gard to the level of prosperity and material comfort en¬ joyed by the industrious. It does not thus set a premium on indolence. It does not believe in arbitrarily placing the man of no intellect or one who has neglected or refused to use his intellect on the same level with the man who by cultivation of his talents has greatly multiplied his powers of production. Masonry would not thus dis¬ courage the development of natural ability.
On the contrary, Masonry by its systems of degrees, from one of which the candidate can not, at least theoreti¬ cally, be advanced to a higher degree until by his own efforts he has mentally and morally fitted himself for the next degree, teaches a lesson that only by proficiency and efficiency does any man become entitled to advancement among his fellowmen. How much of baseless and bitter discontent would disappear from among men and what an impetus to labour and effort would be given if we could all be made thoroughly to understand this lesson !
We are entitled to nothing that we do not earn. There is no excellence without great labour. God wisely made it so and it is useless for us to kick against the pricks.
82 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
THE PLUMB
It is perfectly natural in a system where the tools of the operative builder are made to symbolise aspects of human conduct or character that the Plumb should sym¬ bolise uprightness of life. This symbolism is very old, going at least back to the days of Manasseh, king of Judah, that is to say more than seven hundred years be¬ fore Christ. Because of the sins of Manasseh, the Lord said “I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria and the plummet of the house of Ahab.” (2 Kings xxi, 13.) In the days of Isaiah, the Lord declared, ^^^o
will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet.” (Isaiah xxviii, 17.) And in Zechariah iv, 10, the word of the Lord is quoted as saying, “They shall rejoice and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel.” We introduce in our ceremonies a beautiful passage from Amos, with which we are all familiar, and which being interpreted means that the Lord had been lenient with his people in the past but without avail ; he now proposed to set up in their midst a test of uprightness — a plumb- line — and if his people failed to measure up to it he would no more ignore their shortcomings but would punish them rigorously. (Amos, vii, 7, 8.)
Jacob’s ladder
The Ladder is, of course, an implement familiar to the builder. It was in constant use by our ancient operative brethren. In a system where working tools are made to symbolise moral properties, it could scarcely happen other¬ wise than that the ladder would be made to typify the power or means by which man is lifted or attains to a higher state of existence. It was employed always with the same meaning in the Ancient Mysteries and was a
THE ENTERED APPRENTICE DEGREE 83
familiar symbol of salvation long before Jacob in his vision saw it extending from earth to heaven. We, as did the ancients, ascribe to it seven rungs, symbolical with us of the four cardinal and the three theological virtues by which it was supposed a man was prepared for and elevated to the higher state.
SITUATION OF THE LODGE
The situation of lodges due East and West is not at all peculiar to Freemasonry. In ancient times the custom was well-nigh universal to locate sacred edifices East and West. This is why the Tabernacle and Solomon's Temple were so situated. This old idea of orientation, as it is called, is practically lost except among Masons. We pre¬ serve it in theory even though necessity often compels us to depart from it in practice. The parallel between the lodge and the world holds good here as elsewhere. As the lodge is or should be situated East and West, so in ancient times was the world. The “oblong square” which made up the ancient world had its greatest length East and West.
THE POINT WITHIN THE CIRCLE
There is but scanty and unsatisfactory explanation of this symbol given in our Monitors, yet its deeper mean¬ ings are too vast and intricate to admit of discussion in a treatise like this. To it has been ascribed a phallic origin ; it has been said to symbolise the universe. Deity, fecundity and the sun, the lodge, the Master and the Wardens, not to mention other significances. We can only urge the Mason desiring knowledge on the subject to make research for himself.^^
2^ Mackey, Symbolism of Freemasonry, p. ill.
84 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
THE PARALLEL LINES
have been given several explanations not mentioned in our Monitors which the curious Mason will have to read for himself. They are said to have an astronomical or solar allusion.
There is, however, a very practical symbolism assigned to them in our Monitors. They are said to represent St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, and it is on this I desire to enlarge a little beyond what our Monitors say.
Saints John’s Days (June 24 and December 27), are among American Masons the only festivals in the Masonic calendar. It matters little whether it be true that these men were members of our Fraternity. They have been adopted by it as symbols. Although Masonry has existed from time immemorial and can boast of the great and good of every age and clime, although philosophers and poets, patriots and heroes, statesmen and philanthropists have crowded its ranks, the high honour of annual com¬ memoration has been conferred upon only two of its members. All the great kings and emperors, all the great soldiers and conquerors, all the great statesmen and pa¬ triots, who in ages past have belonged to our beloved Order, and of whom the order is justly proud have been assigned to a position subordinate to these two modest patrons of the Craft.
It is not material to our present purpose whether it be an historical fact that they were actually members of our Fraternity; its principles shone conspicuously in their lives and characters. It suffices here to say, in the lan¬ guage of a distinguished Irish Freemason, that ‘There seems to be no doubt that the mediaeval Fraternity ac¬ knowledged their patronage.”
2M. Q. C., Yol. VIII, p. 158.
THE ENTERED APPRENTICE DEGREE 85
Why is it that this man who wore a raiment of camel’s hair and whose food was locusts and wild honey, and this man who was noted for his excessive modesty and avoidance of all display, these men who never engaged in any of the pomp and glory of the world, have been hon¬ oured by Masons above all others?
It is because Masonry regards not the exterior of a man but only his internal qualifications. She bends not the suppliant knee at the shrine of wealth, its glittering splendours are no passport to her altars and temples, and never has it been said of her that she turns her face away from him who is clothed in poverty’s rags or veiled in poverty’s tears.
No worldly honours are there recognised. The king of England, the President of the United States, when he enters a lodge is simply “Brother.” He is there accorded no mark of distinction to which every other Master Mason is not entitled. Who enters a Masonic lodge leaves his titles, his wealth, his worldly honours, at the door.
“Yes, we meet upon the level Though from every station come.
The rich man from his mansion.
The poor man from his home ;
For the rich must leave his hoarded gold Outside our temple door.
And the servant feels himself a man Upon the Mason’s floor.”
He who wears the humble garb of domestic industry prepared by the hand of a devoted wife is as sure to gain admission and find as hearty welcome and rank as high as he whose raiment is purple and fine linen and who fares sumptuously every day.
The Saints John possessed few of the external qualifica¬ tions which attract the thoughtless crowd. They possessed
86 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
all those internal elements that make the true man. Be¬ yond all others the principles of our Fraternity shone forth in their characters and daily lives and for it Masonry has honoured them above all others.
We may and do have unworthy members, those who forget and violate their Masonic obligations. None of us indeed observe them as we should, but could stronger proof than the honour shown these two men be desired that Masonry as a whole regards excellence of character, the practice of virtue, the adoration of Deity, and the love of our fellow men, the doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, above any wealth or worldly honours ?
If any still doubt let them remember that the first three Grand Masters of Freemasonry were, according to tradi¬ tion, Solomon, King of Israel; Hiram, King of Tyre, and Hiram Abif; that the memory of the last Hiram Abif, a poor widow’s son of the tribe of Naphtali, and only a worker in brass and stone, is venerated among Masons far beyond his two royal associates. He lived a life of such purity and excellence that when the ap¬ pointed time arrived he welcomed the grim tyrant death. These are the lessons taught by this symbolism, these are the men whose example we should as Masons strive to emulate. These are the characters that we as Masons, imperfect as we are, love and venerate.
CARDINAL VIRTUES
The cardinal virtues mean simply the pre-eminent or principal virtues. They were declared by Socrates and Plato four hundred years before Christ, as they are by us to-day, to be Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence and Justice. This list has been criticised as being arbitrary,
THE ENTERED APPRENTICE DEGREE 87
as not covering the entire field, and as overlapping each other. In the light of the broadening influence of modern ethical and religious ideas the justice of these criticisms must be conceded. But reflection will disclose to us that these four virtues cover a surprisingly large part of the moral realm of human life.
Temperance means moderation not only in drink but in diet, not only in diet but in action, not only in action but in speech, not only in speech but in thought, not only in thought but in feeling. It condemns excess of every kind; of our affections as well as our passions; of our feelings as well as our appetites. The libertine, the glut¬ ton, the gambler, the miser and the profane swearer are all equal to the drunkard guilty of intemperance.
Fortitude implies, it is true, a physical bravery that leads one to resist insult or attack with force, but more especially that moral courage that enables one at the risk of incurring the sneers of others, to refrain from a resort to violence except where the necessity is imperative. When, however, this necessity arises it is not deterred by pain or circumstance, be it ever so appalling or threatening.
Prudence, as the critics have pointed out, enters to some extent into the last named virtue. It signifies also to meet every situation, however dangerous or difficult, with common sense and reason. It is a virtue which is lacking in a surprisingly large proportion of the human race.
Little need be added to what is said of the virtue of Justice in our Monitors. It is truly the ‘Very cement and support of civil society.’^ This conception of justice evi¬ dences a distinct advance by mankind. To be able and willing to mete out exact justice to every one, even oneV self, in every relation of life, in thought, word and action, very nearly sums up the total of all possible human virtue. In a system of moral philosophy, such as Plato's (as dis-
88 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
tinguished from a religious philosophy such as we now have), justice very nearly covers the whole field.^®
What a multitude of evils and mistakes the full pos¬ session and practice of these virtues would enable us to avoid !
But with the birth and development of theology the Platonic scheme seemed, and doubtless was, incomplete. It took little or no account of those higher speculative vir¬ tues which we class as religious. There was absent from it the conception of that charity or love which has entered so largely into modern sociological thoughts and move¬ ments. The later philosophical and religious teachers, therefore, added to the cardinal virtues what they termed the theological virtues, namely. Faith, Hope and Char¬ ity. These three were believed to include anything omitted from the other four, and together were supposed to cover the entire field of the moral thought and conduct of man.
Masonic Faith, it seems to me, is a very simple thing. We do not need to trouble with the refinements of the theologians, such as those of Avicenna, Maimonides, Ghazali, Jehuda Halevi, Averroes, Anselm, Abelard, Calvin, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, William of Occam, etc. We are not concerned with the Christian doc¬ trine of justification by faith. Whether reason and the theologian’s faith are in accord or at war with each other does not concern us. We attempt no decision between the Nominalists and the Thomists. We do not have to recon¬ cile or explain the rival theories of “Ontologism” and ‘‘Psychologism,” and many other mystifying “isms.” We are dealing with something so simple it can not be in con¬ flict with anything that is true. Masonic Faith means no more than confidence or trust in an all-wise, all-provi¬ dent and all-loving Creator. The Mason believes that 2® Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. V, p. 324 ; Ibid., Vol. IX, p. 813.
THE ENTERED APPRENTICE DEGREE 89
with such a Father no man who does his best has any¬ thing to fear either here or hereafter. It may be summed up in ten words, “If I but do my part, all will be well.^’
But a faith like this might alone lead to a dark and cheerless fatalism. Hence, Masonry summons Hope to lend her brightness and optimism to the prospect, while Charity mellows, and sweetens and softens all with love; love of Nature, love of the beautiful, love of the good, love of our fellowmen and love to God.
CHALK, CHARCOAL AND CLAY
We are told that Entered Apprentices should serve their Masters with Freedom, Fervency and Zeal; with free¬ dom, in that it should be done freely and without con¬ straint as becomes a free man, not grudgingly and hesi¬ tatingly as characterises the slave ; and with fervency and zeal. These terms are synonymous ; one is from the Latin ferveo, to boil, while the other is from the Greek :seo, having the same meaning. We have been unable to find that chalk, charcoal or clay anciently bore any symbolic significations. It must, however, be admitted that chalk is a fitting symbol of freedom, charcoal of fervency, and earth of zeal.
NORTHEAST CORNER
From the most ancient times it has been the custom of builders to lay with ceremonies the corner stone of im¬ portant edifices. As it was a custom of the ancients to orient their temples, that is, to make them face the East, so for some similar reason it was their custom to lay the corner stone in the northeast corner. Why this particu¬ lar part of the structure was chosen has been the subject of much speculation. Some have attributed it to the fact
90 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
that the rising sun sheds its beams more directly upon this corner of a building situated due east and west than upon either of the other corners. But many have sup¬ posed (and no doubt truly) that a symbolical reason existed for this custom. This also has given rise to further speculation and as a specimen we introduce this interesting conjecture by General Albert Pike:
“The apprentice represents the Aryan race in its original home on the highlands of Pamir, in the north of that Asia termed Orient, at the angle whence, upon two great lines of emigration South and West, they flowed forth in successive waves to conquer and colonise the world.'’
As Speculative l^asonry gradually developed from operative Masonry, it preserved this ceremony of laying the corner stone, because of the moral and religious sym¬ bolism which seems always to have pertained to it. With the operative it was a serious part of the actual process of building; with us its chief value lies in its symbolical significations.
As placing the newly made Entered Apprentice in the northeast corner of the lodge marks the completion of his initiation, so it symbolises the completion of the preparatory period of life and his readiness to enter upon its serious labours and business. The admonition there given him is, that having made proper moral preparation for life, his future activities should be kept in accord with the teaching and training he had received in his youth.
This, brethren, briefly reviews the symbolical teach¬ ings of the ceremonies of initiation. As said at the out¬ set we have barely touched upon them. Any one of them would be sufficient of itself to occupy a whole evening.
^'^Miscellanea Latomorum (N. S.), Vol. I, p. 122.
THE ENTERED APPRENTICE DEGREE 91
We could easily consume another hour talking to you about the symbolical teachings of the Entered Apprentice lesson without exhausting it. Let us illustrate with two questions and their answers.
“whence came you?’'
Daily this question is asked by Masons without the slightest thought as to its real meaning. The answer we make to it in the lodge is well-nigh unintelligible, yet about as reasonable as any ever given it or which ever will be given it. Who can answer the question, “Whence came you?” Who has ever answered it? Who will ever answer it? Equally baffling and profound is that com¬ panion question, familiar in some jurisdictions, “Whither are you bound?” Equally an enigma is the answer we give it. Simple as these questions appear, they search every nook and cranny and sound every depth of every philosophy, every mythology, every theology, and every religion that has ever been propounded anywhere by any¬ body at any time to explain human life. They allude to the problems of the origin and destiny of mankind ; they lie at the foundation of all the thinking and of all the activities of man except such as are concerned with the purely utilitarian question, “What shall we eat and where¬ withal shall we be clothed?” All our better impulses, all our loftier aspirations, all our faiths, all our longing for and striving after a nobler state of existence, either in this or a future life, are but attempts to answer these two questions. They are the supreme questions which men have been asking themselves and each other ever since men were able to think and to talk, and they are the questions which men will continue to ask oftenest and most anxiously until the time when we are promised that we shall know even as we are known.
92 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
‘'what came we here to do?'’
If we came we know not whence and are bound we know not whither, then naturally the next questions are, “Why came we here ? What came we here to do ? What is man’s mission in this life?” If we can not fathom the past nor descry the future, maybe we can solve the present. The second question however is no less baffling and pro¬ found than the other two. If they have reference to the origin and destiny of man, this one has to do with the riddle of his present existence. Again, we are met with the same inscrutable mystery; the three age-long ques¬ tions, whence ? why ? whither ? press again for answer.
And what a simple and significant answer do we give this question! Does the Mason proudly answer, like the Pharisee, “I am here to teach and instruct others/* “I am here to lead and reform others/* “I am here to re¬ lieve and assist others.” Not at all. With equal nobility and humility he answers, in substance, that, conscious of his own weakness, feeling the need of help from others rather than an ability to give help, his first duty is to im¬ prove himself and to subdue his own passions, to cast the beam out of his own eye before undertaking to remove the mote from his brother’s eye. To an intelligent crea¬ ture, ignorant of both his origin and his destiny, what more obvious duty could there be than the cultivation and development of his own mental, moral, and physical facul¬ ties? Self-subjugation and self-improvement: here alone lies before him a sure path. If he sets himself earnestly to the task of ridding himself of his own evil passions and of improving himself by adding the desirable virtues, error in the larger sense is impossible.
Nor is this a narrow or selfish task he sets himself, that of chastening and of improving himself. For lo I before he has proceeded far with this task of self-improvement.
THE ENTERED APPRENTICE DEGREE 93
the divesting himself of all that is low or evil or base and the setting of himself to the cultivation of those virtues that truly lend to his own improvement, he finds that they also involve the doing of good to others.
We commend this question and answer to those well- meaning brethren who are all the time bemoaning that Freemasonry does not become the champion of all the *‘up-lift” and ''reform” movements of the day. It will be noted that in this question and answer not a word is said about "uplifting” or reforming or improving others. It is always "myself.” This is an implied ad¬ mission that I need improvement quite as much as others, that it is presumptuous to pretend to lead and teach others until I myself am thoroughly prepared.
It should never be forgotten that Masonry is not a reform society, it is not a relief society. Its original and primary purpose was and still is to take men who are already "good and true” and, building on that foundation, to make of them men of such perfect minds and char¬ acters as will encourage others to follow in their foot¬ steps. The influences it has thus silently wielded upon the political, religious, mental and moral development of mankind can never be known. Such things do not find record upon the pages of history. We can only surmise by looking back and observing how many of those, who have shaped the religious, political, and social progress of the world in the last two hundred years, have been mem¬ bers of the craft.
Many centuries ago Omar Khayyam struggled with these three questions thus :
"With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow :
And this was all the Harvest that I reaped —
'I came like water and like wind I go.’
SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
“Into this Universe, and Why not knowing, Nor Whence, like water willy-nilly flowing:
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing/’
PART TWO: THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE
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Part Two
THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE
The ceremonies of initiation, passing, and raising, as well as the lectures explanatory of them, are necessarily brief ; want of time and the danger of over-burdening the candidate require that they should be so. The Mason, therefore, who relies solely upon what he sees and hears in the lodge will obtain a very inadequate conception of Freemasonry. He may and doubtless will be more or less affected by our ceremonies ; it could scarcely be other¬ wise, so solemn and impressive are they, but he will fail to discover and understand some of the greater truths which lie hidden beneath the surface, and can never be¬ come truly speaking a ‘^bright Mason.”
Nearly every Masonic symbol or ceremony (like all true allegories) has two (sometimes more) significations, one literal, the other symbolical. The literal meaning, usually the more apparent, is often of great interest, fre¬ quently affording striking evidences as to the origin and antiquity of Freemasonry. But it is the symbolical or allegorical meaning, usually the more recondite, which appeals most to the thoughtful mind.
Nor is it unfortunate that the more important lessons are somewhat veiled from observation. We do not prize what we obtain easily ; it is that for which we have striven or paid a big price which we value. If, therefore, from beneath the surface of these familiar ceremonies any of us by our own studies and reflections are enabled to dis¬ cover and bring to light truths which have lain somewhat hidden, the appreciation of them is keener and the im¬ pression produced deeper and more lasting than if they 97
98 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
had been open to superficial observation. For this reason many of the greatest lessons of Freemasonry are wisely hidden away as prizes for the studious and the diligent only. The ‘‘mysteries’' and the “secrets” of Freemasonry are not synonymous terms; the mysteries continue such forever even to the Mason who will not study and read. Do you feel that Masonry is an idle and frivolous thing, unworthy of the attention of serious men? If so, did you ever reflect whether the fault was yours or that of the institution? Unless you are sure that you know what Freemasonry is and what it teaches and what are its de¬ signs and that you thoroughly understand its methods of teaching, withhold your condemnation till you have made it the subject of a little serious study, because, as ob¬ served by an eminent authority, the character of the insti¬ tution is “elevated in every one’s opinion just in propor¬ tion to the amount of knowledge that he has acquired of its symbolism, philosophy and history.”
Freemasonry is a many-sided subject. There is some¬ thing in it which arrests and appeals to the shallowest mind or the most frivolous moral character. At the same time, there is much in it which has chained the thought and attention of the world’s greatest intellects and wisest philosophers. It presents many aspects for study and investigation, either of which will amply repay the efforts of the intelligent mind and will lead to knowledge not merely curious, as some suppose, but of the utmost prac¬ tical value.
We are forced to refer again to one line of thought touched on in the preceding chapter because we regard it as fundamental to the study and understanding of any part of Freemasonry. This idea is that Freemasonry is an elaborate allegory of human life, both individually and collectively, in all its varied aspects, past, present, and future; that the lodge represents the world into which
THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE
99
mortal man is introduced, lives, moves, has his being and eventually dies; that it also represents the place or state of the redeemed in the life which we believe follows this; that the lodge-member typifies the individual man; that its organised membership represents mankind united into human society ; that the ideal lodge-member, ruled by love, wisdom, strength and beauty, typifies man raised from a state of imperfection to one of perfection.
Of all the ceremonies of the lodge, the Fellow Craft Degree, when viewed by itself is the most difficult and the least generally understood. Preston, who wrote the first Monitor, tells us that '‘such is the latitude of this degree that the most judicious may fail in an attempt to explain it.” In Akin’s Georgia Manual we read that the “splendid beauty of the Fellow Craft Degree can be seen only by the studious eye and that the Master who would impress it upon the candidate must store his mind with the history, traditions and ritualism of this Degree.”
A flood of light, however, is at once shed upon the subject when we consider it a part of a human allegory, of which the Entered Apprentice and Master’s Degrees are respectively the beginning and the completion.
Let us then briefly consider it in this manner and en¬ deavour to reach a clearer understanding of its meaning. That we may the better perceive just where it falls into the complete scheme, it will be necessary first to consider for a moment the Entered Apprentice and Master’s Degrees.
We are told in the Master’s lecture that the Entered Apprentice represents youth; the Fellow Craft, manhood; and the Master Mason, old age. A little study will serve to show us how completely this simile is justified.
The introduction of first admission of the Entered Ap¬ prentice candidate into the lodge, therefore, typifies the entrance of man upon the world’s stage of action or in
100 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
other words, the birth of the child into this life. The dis¬ tinguished Masonic scholar, Dr. Mackey, says that the Entered Apprentice is a ‘^child in Masonry” and we read in many Monitors that “the first or Entered Apprentice Degree is intended symbolically to represent the entrance of man into the world in which he is afterwards to be¬ come a living and thinking actor.” In English working the candidate is reminded that his admission into the Entered Apprentice lodge “in a state of helpless ignorance was an emblematical representation of the entrance of all men on this their mortal existence.” ^
The preparation of the candidate and the plight in which he is admitted an Entered Apprentice strikingly symbolises the helpless, destitute, blind and ignorant condition of the newly born babe. Yes, it is even certain that there are features preserved in Masonic symbolism which allude to that part of life preceding even birth and which hint at the phenomena of coition, generation, conception and gestation of the child in its mother’s womb. These things rightly considered are as much a part and as pure and holy a part of a human life as birth or death, and could no more be omitted from any complete representation of it. Let no one, therefore, imagine that he has found any¬ thing impure in Freemasonry because he has discovered in it symbols and ceremonies which once undoubtedly bore phallic significations.
We may, therefore, say that the Masonic system epito¬ mizes allegorically the life of man from the moment he is begotten through every stage of existence, conception, gestation, birth, infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old age, death, the resurrection and everlasting life. Did any greater theme ever engage the attention of any society? Anything that pertains to any of these great subjects and which tends to strengthen, to elevate or to ennoble the
^ Mackey, Symbolism of Freemasonry, p. 307.
THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE 101
human being and his character is properly a part of Free¬ masonry.
The first important lesson impressed upon the candi¬ date after his entrance into the lodge is intended to signify to us that the very first idea that ought to be instilled into the mind of the child is a reverence and adoration for the Deity, the great and incomprehensible author of its existence. From beginning to the end, the Entered Ap¬ prentice Degree is a series of moral lessons. This is a hint so broad that one need not be wise in order to under¬ stand that the moral training and education of the child should precede even the development and cultivation of its intellect. How many parents and teachers fail just at this point! They polish and adorn the minds of their children and pupils with great diligence, at the same time neglect their moral training, and when too late find that often they have made of them smart criminals.
The placing of the young Entered Apprentice in the northeast corner of the lodge in imitation of the ancient custom of laying the corner stone of a building in the northeast corner, signifies that as an Entered Apprentice he has but laid the foundation whereon to build his future moral edifice, that of life and character. It aptly and fully symbolises the end of the preparatory period and the beginning of the constructive period of human life.
The admonition there given him is to the effect that, having laid the foundation true, he should take care that the superstructure is reared in like manner; in other words, that his life, his moral temple, be kept in harmony with the moral precepts which have been given him in the Entered Apprentice Degree.
This likening of the human body to a temple of God is an ancient metaphor. Jesus’ employment of it in speak¬ ing of his own body was but in keeping with a common practice among Jewish writers and teachers of his time.
102 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
It immensely dignifies the physical body of man and teaches that, when kept clean both in the literal and the moral sense, it is a fit place for even Deity himself to dwell.
This body, so powerfully and yet so delicately con¬ trived that often apparently slight causes produce death, we have no right to defile or abuse with any kind of excess. No mechanism was ever so delicately adjusted and no careful engineer would ever think of putting even too much oil upon a fine piece of machinery. Yet exces¬ sive indulgence in food, drink, or other appetites works far greater injury to our bodies.
The lesson is that we have no more right to defile or abuse our bodies than had the Jew to defile the Temple of God upon Mount Moriah.
In the Third Degree the matters pressed upon our at¬ tention are the closing years of life, death and the vast hereafter. The twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes, the most beautiful and affecting description of old age in all litera¬ ture is introduced. We are also told that the events it celebrates occurred just before the completion of the Temple, which is but a figurative way of saying that the period of life symbolised by the Master’s Degree is that just preceding its close, just before the completion of the moral and spiritual temple.^ It is, therefore, with the greatest propriety that the Master’s Degree is said to represent old age.
If then the Entered Apprentice represents childhood and youth, and the Master Mason old age, the Fellow Craft Degree should, in order to complete the allegory, repre¬ sent middle life and its labours, and this is precisely what it does with the greatest beauty and consistency.
Although the candidate for the Fellow Craft Degree is to be regarded as a seeker after knowledge, yet the first
2 Mackey, Symbolism of Freemasonry, p. 307.
THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE
103
section of this degree consists chiefly of a reiteration of the moral teachings of the First Degree. This is to re¬ mind the young man as he is about to enter upon the serious labours and struggles of life that virtue is to be always the first consideration, that no knowledge, no success which is purchased at the sacrifice of morals, honour or integrity is to be prized. This lesson is re¬ peated more than once in the course of this degree, ad¬ monishing us that, no matter how engrossed in the affairs of life we may become, we should never suffer the allure¬ ments of coveted gains to seduce us from the pathway of strict rectitude and justice.
Although thus reiterating and emphasising the moral precepts of the First Degree, the Fellow Craft Degree is as distinctly intellectual in its purpose and spirit as the Entered Apprentice is moral. The great theme of the Second Degree is the attainment of knowledge, the cultiva¬ tion of the mind and the acquisition of habits of industry.® This feature becomes prominent in the second section of this degree. Preston, who, as already observed, wrote what might be termed the first Monitor, says that while the First Degree is intended “to enforce the duties of morality,” the Second “comprehends a more diffusive sys¬ tem of knowledge.” We read in Simon’s Monitor that “the Entered Apprentice is to emerge from the darkness to light; the Fellow Craft is to come out of ignorance into knowledge.” Dr. Mackey expresses it thus : “The lessons the Entered Apprentice receives are simply in¬ tended to cleanse the heart and prepare the recipient for that mental illumination which is to be given in the suc¬ ceeding degree” : and further he says, “The candidate in the Second Degree represents a man starting forth on the journey of life with the great task before him of self-improvement,” and that the result is to be the de- 3 Mackey, Symbolism of Freemasonry, p. 307.
104 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
velopment of all his intellectual faculties and the acquisi¬ tion of truth and knowledge. In England (Emulation Working) the candidate is informed that while in the Entered Apprentice Degree “he made himself acquainted with the principles of moral truth and virtue, he is in the Fellow Craft Degree permitted to extend his researches into the hidden mysteries of nature and science,’^ ^ and that he is “led in the Second Degree to contemplate the intellectual faculty and to trace it from its development, through the paths of heavenly science, even to the throne of God himself.’’ Brother J. W. Horsley, Rector of St. Peter’s Cathedral, London, thus expresses the idea : “Gen¬ erally, therefore, we may say that the Third Degree repre¬ sents and enforces the blessedness of spiritual life and the duty of progress therein, as the Second Degree per¬ forms the same ofhce for the intellectual life, and the first for the moral life.” ®
THE JEWELS OF A FELLOW CRAFT
The very means of gaining admission into a Fellow Craft lodge * * *, alluding to the three jewels of a Fellow Craft, are made to typify the processes of com¬ municating, acquiring and preserving knowledge. “The attentive ear receives the sound from the instructive tongue and the mysteries of Freemasonry (as indeed all other knowledge) are safely lodged in the repository of faithful breasts.”
THE WORKING TOOLS
The plumb, square, and level were the appropriate tools of the operative Fellow Craft Mason. To the Master or
^Perfect Ceremonies of Craft Masonry (Lewis, i8q6). o S'?
0. C, Vol. XII, p. 52. > ^
THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE 105
Overseer fell the duty of superintendence, to the Entered Apprentice that of gathering and rough hewing the ma¬ terials, but to the Fellow Craft fell the labour of actual construction. This involved the laying of level founda¬ tions and courses, the erection of perpendicular walls and the bringing of the stones to perfectly rectangular shape. These labours necessitated the constant use by the opera¬ tive Fellow Craft Mason of the plumb, square and level. Their operative uses very appropriately symbolise the analogous processes in the building of human character. This symbolical application of these implements of the builder is by no means recent ; it dates back even among the Chinese more than seven hundred years before Christ. Five hundred years before Christ what we call the Golden Rule was by the Chinese called ‘‘the principle of acting on the square.’' Mencius, the great Chinese philosopher, who lived in the third century before Christ, teaches that men should apply the square and level to their lives, and speaking figuratively says that he who would acquire wisdom must make use of the square and compasses.
BOAZ AND JACHIN
Solomon, in accordance with the common practice of his day, placed two immense and highly ornate pillars, or columns, at the entrance of his temple. It is well known that King Hiram did the like for the great temple to Melkarth erected by him at Tyre. Many other instances might be cited. Whence originated this custom has been a matter for much speculation. We have seen what was the ancient conception of the form of the earth. To their world the Strait of Gibraltar appeared to be a veritable door of entry. On either side of this entrance rose two enormous rock promontories, Abyla and Calpe,-{now called Gibraltar and Ceuta) which completely commanded
106 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
egress and ingress and are familiarly known as the Pillars of Hercules. They were believed by the ancients to mark the western boundary of the world. Many have seen in these two vast columns of stone, set by nature to the entrance of the then known world, the counterparts of the pillars so often set by the ancients at the entrance to their temples, which were to them, as the lodge is to us, symbols of the world.
The first objects that engage the attention of the Fel¬ low Craft on his way to the Middle Chamber are the rep¬ resentatives of those pillars at the entrance to Solomon’s Temple. In addition to the explanation given in the lodge, they undoubtedly have also an allusion to the two leg¬ endary pillars of Enoch upon which tradition tells us all the wisdom of the ancient world was inscribed in order to preserve it ‘‘against inundation and conflagrations.” Standing at the very threshold of Solomon’s Temple, as well as of the Fellow Craft lodge, they admonish us that after a proper moral training the acquisition of wisdom is the next necessary preparation for a useful and success¬ ful life.® Their names, Boaz and Jachin, possess also a moral signification, meaning together that “in strength God will establish His house.” Symbolically applied to the candidate, they mean that God will firmly establish the moral and spiritual edifice of the just and upright man.
THE GLOBES
The idea that the globes upon the two brazen pillars represent the globes celestial and terrestrial is certainly modern. The globular form of the earth was unknown to the ancients. Except to a few profound thinkers like Plato, the conception of the earth as a sphere was ut-
® Mackey, Symbolism of Freemasonry, p. 219.
THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE
107
terly foreign. Not until about the time of the discovery of America did this fact become generally understood.
Moreover, the Bible, at least in English translations, says nothing of any globes upon the pillars, but distinctly states that there were “made two chapiters of molten brass to set upon the tops of the pillars,” and that “upon the tops of the pillars was lily-work.” (i Kings vii, i6, 22.) The more recent revisions of the Bible call the “chapiters” by their rhore familiar name of “capitals.” The learned Jewish Rabbi, Solomon Jehudi, speaks of them as “pommels,” a word signifying a globular orna¬ ment. It is well known that many of the architectural features and ornamental designs of Solomon’s Temple were borrowed from the Egyptians. The so-called “lily- work” was unquestionably some form of water-lily or lotus pattern of ornamentation so common in ancient architecture and which even now is employed in conven¬ tionalised forms nearly everywhere. It sometimes as¬ sumes the form of the lotus leaf, at others of the full blown blossom, and at others still of the bud. Our com¬ mon “egg and dart” pattern is a development therefrom.
At the time of Solomon, one of the most frequent and at the same time one of the most beautiful of the lotus or water-lily designs was the lotus-bud capital, which often assumed an egglike or oval shape. It is accurately in¬ dicated by the word “pommel,” and indeed this term is employed in some of our Masonic Monitors in lieu of the term “globes.” There seems little reason to doubt that the two Brazen Pillars were columns of the Egyptian style with the lotus-bud capitals. Their great diameter as com¬ pared to their height (about six diameters) is another strong evidence of their Egyptian derivation. Further¬ more, we know that winged globular ornaments, some¬ times of immense size, were extensively employed by the
108 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
Egyptians in adorning the entrances to their temples.
The lotus or water-lily was the sacred plant of the Egyptians and among other things signified ‘‘Universal¬ ity.” The conclusion, therefore, seems reasonable that, if there was anything like globes on the two Brazen Pillars, they were not true globes of the earth and of the heavens, but representations of the lotus-bud. If so, though the symbol has not been accurately perpetuated, the symbolism has.
There is another ancient conception to which the idea of globes upon the pillars may be related. From remotest times men must have observed that numerous forms of life proceeded from an egg. This observation gave rise to the belief which we know to have been widely dissemi¬ nated in ancient times, and which modern science has almost completely confirmed, that life in every form pro¬ ceeds from an egg. This supposed universal source of life became to the ancients the symbol of the source of things universal. In other words, the egg was the symbol of the Universal Mother. It is easily perceivable that to a people entertaining these ideas, globes or eggs mounted upon columns would convey the idea of universality.
LILY-WORK
In addition to the lotus capitals, no doubt the two pillars were, in keeping with the universal custom of the time, further ornamented with various forms of the lotus or water-lily design. The familiar token of peace with us is the palm branch, but to the Egyptian and the Jew this office was fulfilled by the lotus or water-lily. It is, therefore, with precise accuracy that we say that the lotus, or Egyptian water-lily (an entirely different plant from our lily), denotes peace.
THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE
109
THE NETWORK
The network which adorned the capitals or chapiters of the pillars might be more familiarly described as “lat¬ tice-work/' Curious specimens of this ornamentation are found in ancient and mediaeval architecture, particularly in that of the Magistri Comacini, or Comacine Masters of Northern Italy. Many of these are of the most beau¬ tiful and intricate designs and without either beginning or end. A more appropriate emblem of unity than these could not be conceived.
It is interesting to note in this connection, that recently a very gifted woman, Mrs. Lucy Baxter, writing under the nom de plume of Leader Scott, has in her splendid book. The Cathedral Builders, adduced much evidence to prove that our modern Freemasonry is derived from these same Magistri Comacini, and through them from the Collegia Fabrorum, or Colleges of Builders, of the pre- Christian Roman era. To my mind, one of the strong¬ est of these evidences is the common possession and em¬ ployment of this network ornamentation. See The Coma- ernes, by W. Ravenscroft.
This tracing of our society back to the Roman Building Societies of the eighth century before Christ (if it can be sustained) carries us back to the time when we know that building societies were common not only in Rome, but in Greece, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Palestine. Indeed, it is impossible to explain the erection of such architectural wonders as the great pyramids and temples of Egypt, Asia, Greece and Rome, without supposing the existence at that time of building societies, or associations of archi¬ tects, embracing within themselves the most brilliant in¬ tellects and skilful workmen, not only then living, but whose superior the world has never since seen; in other words, precisely such a society as our traditions teach
110 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
built King Solomon’s Temple. Evidences of ancient his¬ tory point to the existence of such a brotherhood, known as the Dionysian Architects, at Tyre, the home of the two Hirams at the time of the building of the Temple and it was to this place, according to Scripture, that Solomon sent when he wanted artisans competent to carry out his great design.
THE POMEGRANATE
The pomegranate, which also adorned the capitals of the pillars, is a symbol of great antiquity, but its meaning seems to have been sacredly guarded. Pausanias, who wrote about 150 A.D., calls it aporreto teros logos, — i.e., a forbidden mystery. Ancient deities were often depicted holding this fruit in their hands and this, Achilles Statius, Bishop of Alexandria, says '‘had a mystical meaning.” The Syrians at Damascus anciently worshipped a god whom they called "Rimmon,” and this we know to be the Hebrew word for pomegranate.
Cumberland, Bishop of Peterborough, a most learned antiquarian, guessed that on account of the great number of its seeds a pomegranate in the hand of a god denoted fruitfulness or fecundity. This corresponds closely enough with the meaning that we, as Masons, attach to it — that of plenty.
OPERATIVE AND SPECULATIVE MASONRY
The candidate is informed that there are two kinds of Masonry, operative and speculative; the one, the erection of material edifices to shelter us from the inclemencies of the seasons ; the other, the building of that moral, re¬ ligious and spiritual edifice, human life and character, that house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. He
THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE
111
is reminded of the historical fact that our ancient brethren wrought in both kinds of Masonry, which we work in speculative only. With this distinction in mind, the candidate is expected to be able to grasp the allegorical meanings of the succeeding ceremonies.
We do not regard Speculative Masonry and non-opera¬ tive Masonry as necessarily synonymous terms. It seems clear that from the remotest times the operative builders were organised into societies or guilds. Though exclu¬ sively composed of operative builders, it is quite likely that they possessed speculative doctrines. We know they adorned their edifices with symbols of many kinds and that this continued for ages. It is scarcely conceivable that the operative builders could have thus dealt with sym¬ bols for so long a time without eventually having come to regard them as their own, and without attaching to them moral and religious meanings.
If we suppose that in the beginning the workman was employed by the owner and that he built only as he was directed and added only such adornment and symbolism as he was specifically instructed and that this continued to be the case for a long time, it is inevitable that the workman would after a while commence to add symbols of his own accord and that in course of time this would become a common feature of all buildings, particularly those of a sacred character.
Undoubtedly one of the original objects of the secrecy observed by Freemasons was to promote knowledge and skill in architecture and to preserve the trade secrets of the Craft among its members. At that period it was com¬ posed almost exclusively of operative masons and so con¬ tinued for many centuries. But gradually the outside world became cognisant that within the tiled recesses of its lodges were taught, by means of most impressive ceremonies, many of the greatest truths of morals and.
112 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
religion. Non-masons, therefore, began to seek admis¬ sion to its mysteries, and the most distinguished for knowledge and virtue were received into its ranks. We may well believe that at this stage the test of worthiness applied to the non-operative seeking admission was rigor¬ ous in the extreme. Gradually the non-operatives or, as we would say, the speculative members, began to outweigh in numbers and influence the operative members and eventually the Society became purely speculative. It was, however, a long time before the transformation was com¬ plete, beginning probably about A.D. 1450 and extending down to 1717. Scarce two hundred years ago lodges existed whose membership was exclusively operative; others exclusively speculative ; and others whose member¬ ship was mixed.
As the membership of the Fraternity thus changed, its mission also became altered.
It, therefore, admits of little doubt that our Fraternity is derived from an ancient society of operative builders. Both the external and the internal evidences are so numerous that this fact may be regarded as unques¬ tioned. A question then arises and one which in a large measure affects the meanings of our symbols in every degree. How can it be explained that this Society came to be called the Royal Craft?
ROYAL TRADITION
The claim that our society has from the most ancient times enjoyed the favour, the patronage, the association and in some instances the membership of many of the greatest monarchs of the past has subjected us to much ridicule. It is declared that royalty would scorn to asso¬ ciate with a society of mere operative builders, and that such traditions among us must be set down to mere pride
THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE
113
and boasting. Another that has created quite as much laughter at our expense is the claim that our society dates back to the beginning of architecture. Understand that we do not insist that we have historical warrant for these claims. We merely insist that they have been neither dis¬ proved nor shown to be unreasonable or unlikely. We have scanty enough references to school, colleges, or so¬ cieties of builders existing in ancient times, but their existence is proved by the buildings themselves. It is un¬ believable that such structures as adorned Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and Palestine, to say nothing of Greece and Rome, could have resulted from the disorganised efforts of individual masons and architects, however skilful they may have been. Such knowledge is not and presumably never was inherited or intuitive. It can now and pre¬ sumably always could be acquired only by years of hard study from some source where the accumulated learning of all the past was preserved. There must have been some organised institution in which the necessary learning could not only be preserved from generation to generation but where it could be acquired. It was a time when, printing being unknown and writing slow and difficult, books were few and costly. Hence knowledge of the art of build¬ ing, like all other knowledge, was transmitted by oral communication from father to son, from teacher to pupil, from master to apprentice. It would naturally result that knowledge so rare and so difficult to obtain and of such personal advantage to the possessor should be guarded with great care. A society possessing it must inevitably have become a secret one to the extent at least of withholding its trade secrets from the public at large. It is a safe conclusion that wherever we find in ancient times great architectural works there existed alongside them a society of architects of a more or less secret nature, who designed and built them. Thus we rationally account
114 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
for the existence in most ancient times of buildings so¬ cieties making secrets of their trade knowledge. The little evidence of a direct character which we possess is, therefore, sufficient to prove their existence. Our tradi¬ tions along these lines are, therefore, in accord with what might be reasonably expected.
But how are we to account for or rather to prove the possession of these ancient operative societies of philo¬ sophical, moral, and religious tenets and secrets ? In other words, while an operative society of builders appears necessary to account for the buildings themselves, what causes could give rise, within it or alongside of it, to a Speculative Masonry? Our traditions claim for our Society cordial, if not intimate, relations in the early times not only with the heads of the church but with the heads of the State; not only with the priesthood but with the royalty. Are these claims likely or unlikely, reasonable or unreasonable, or are they mere presumptuous boasts that ever a society of builders enjoyed the patronage, not to say the association, of kings and priests? The build¬ ings themselves prove another thing, that the men who could design and construct the greatest of them were the equals intellectually of any king or priest who ever lived. There was nothing in association with such men deroga¬ tory to the dignity of monarch or high priest. The buildings themselves establish another fact, that in the earliest times the operative builders were employed in the service of (which is but another way of saying enjoyed the patronage of) kings and priests. They prove this because with few exceptions they are temples of religion erected under the immediate direction of the monarch. We credit these priests and monarchs with little intelli¬ gence to suppose that their curiosity and desire to learn would not be aroused by witnessing the rise of such stu¬ pendous and magnificent structures. On the other hand.
THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE 115
however willing the builders might be to impart knowledge of this art to them, they could not learn without coming into intimate association with the builders. We can not conceive how intelligent monarchs and priests could fail to enter into cordial relations of some sort with such master artists whose services they were constantly requir¬ ing. The more enlightened a monarch or priest the closer and warmer would be their relation. To this very natural result and not to mere vainglory may be attributed the fact that it is the greatest monarchs and priests of the past with whom our society claims association.
THE WINDING STAIRS
In the Winding Stairs an architectural feature of Solo¬ mon’s Temple is seized upon to symbolise the journey of life. It is not a placid stream down which one may lazily float, it is not even a straight or level pathway along which one may travel with a minimum of exertion ; it is a devious and tortuous way, requiring labour and effort for its accomplishment. This is appropriately symbolised by a winding stairway. It teaches us that our lives should be neither downward nor on a dead level, but, although difficult, progressive and upward.
SCIENCE OF NUMBERS
The Winding Stairs consist of 3, 5 and 7 steps, num¬ bers which among the ancients were deemed of a mys¬ terious nature. This introduces us to what is one of the most curious bodies of learning of the ancient world, what is known as their science of numbers, many frag¬ ments of which are scattered throughout Masonry. It is exceedingly difficult for the modern mind to get any grasp whatever upon what is meant by this so-called
116 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
science, so highly speculative was it. It does not allude as its name might seem to indicate to any of the mathe¬ matical sciences, or anything akin to them. It was a sys¬ tem or moral science or philosophy, wherein numbers were given symbolical meaning and the letters of the alphabet were given numerical values ; whence words were supposed to have certain occult significations according to the sums or multiples of the numerical equivalents of its letters. The elaboration of this idea was productive of what is known as the Hebrew Kahala. Pythagoras is reputed to have introduced this school among the Greeks and according to Aristotle he taught that “Number is the principle of all things and that the organisation of the Universe is an harmonic system of numerical ratios.^’ ’’ To illustrate : — ^the soul was made to cor¬ respond to the number 6, and 7 was the counterpart of reason and health.
The numbers 3, 5 and 7 had many meanings among the Jews which are not elucidated in the lodge. The preserva¬ tion in our ritual of hints of this learning of a past age is now chiefly valuable to us as a proof of the antiquity of Masonic symbolism.®
There is another interesting feature of the total number of steps of the Winding Stairs, fifteen in all. This was an important symbol among the Jews, because it was the sum of the numerical equivalents of the Hebrew letters composing the word J A H — one of the names of Deity.
It will also be noted that the number of each series of steps, three, five and seven, as well as the total number of steps, fifteen, is odd. As we have seen, odd numbers were by the ancients regarded with greater veneration than were even numbers, Vitruvius, the great Roman
Universal Cyclopedia, Vol. IX, p. 560.
® Mackey, Symbolism of Freemasonry, pp. 219, 225.
THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE
117
architect, who flourished just before Christ, states that the ancient temples were always approached by an odd number of steps. The reason, he says, was that com¬ mencing with the right foot.at the bottom, the worshipper would find the same foot in advance when he entered the temple, and that this was considered a favourable omen. The thoughtful Mason cannot fail to be struck with the coincidence here indicated.
THE THREE STEPS
Adopting the method of these ancient men but varying the meaning, we make the number 3 allude to the organisa¬ tion of our Society with its three degrees and its three principal officers. Among the earliest realisations of every man is that no man lives to himself alone; that he is dependent upon his fellow-creatures and they upon him; that he owes them and they owe him mutual aid, support and protection; that to secure these advantages some must rule and some must at least temporarily obey; that there must be classes and that progress from one class to another must depend upon proficiency in the former. This state of mutual obligation and mutual dependence of men upon one another we call Society. The Three Steps, alluding to the three degrees and the division of our society into those who govern and those who obey, leads to the ideas of organisation and subordination in the lodge. We have seen that the lodge symbolises the world; so its organisation symbolises that of the world into society and governments. Dr. Mackey says “that the reference to the organisation of the Masonic institu¬ tion is intended to remind the aspirant of the union of men into society and the development of the social state Out of the state of nature. He is thus reminded in the
118 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
very outset of his journey of the blessings which arise from civilisation and of the fruits of virtue and the knowledge which are derived from that condition/’ In the allusion to the affairs of the lodge and the degrees of Masonry as explanatory of the organisation of our own society, “we clothe in symbolic language,” says Dr. Mackey, “the history of the organisation of society” in general.® This feature is brought out prominently in many Monitors.
THE OFFICERS OF THE LODGE
It is said that the Master and Wardens bear a solar symbolism but this is too abstruse and too lengthy for us to enter upon here.^® We are more interested in a very practical symbolism borne by them. If we remember that the lodge typifies human society organised into gov¬ ernment, then it becomes at once apparent that the officers of the lodge chosen for fixed periods symbolise the officers chosen for the time being to administer the affairs of the state. The lessons and admonitions of obedience to the officers of the lodge given to its members and the injunc¬ tions of moderation, fairness, and justice towards the members of the lodge, laid upon the officers at their instal¬ lation, typify most strikingly the relative duties which the citizens and the officers of the state owe to each other. With this symbolism in mind make a new study of those portions of our ritual dealing with and defining the mutual attitudes of the officers and members of the lodge toward each other and these parts of our ritual will take o'n new meanings. This feature is brought out strongly in the Past Master’s Degree as given in the Chapter.
® Mackey, Symbolism of Freemasonry, p. 221.
Ibid., p. 106.
THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE
119
THE FIVE SENSES
No representation of the pathway to knowledge would of course be complete without some allusion to the means by which it is to be acquired. Thus are the allusions to the five senses to be understood. A moment’s reflection will prove to us that through them we gain all our knowledge and that without them we could learn nothing. What wonderful and noble faculties and yet how seldom even thought of by us and how little appreciated and understood! What a truly marvellous organ is the eye, which can without contact make us sensible of the pres¬ ence, the form and the colour, of objects at a distance and through which we obtain our knowledge and appreciation of all that is beautiful in nature. The senses of hearing and feeling are scarcely less wonderful and are equally important. A little reflection will also furnish us with additional reasons to those given in the lodge why hear¬ ing, seeing and feeling are most revered by Masons. These are in every way the most important. Consider for a moment the relatively small part of our knowledge that comes through tasting and smelling, and how utterly useless these two senses were to our ancient brethren in their operative labours. Then consider again how help¬ less a human creature would be who possessed neither hearing, seeing nor feeling. Helen Keller is rightly con¬ sidered a marvel, yet she is bereft of only two of these, hearing and seeing. Deprive her of her finely attenuated sense of feeling and it would have been impossible for her to have made any progress whatever in knowledge. Com¬ menting on this part of the ritual, Thomas Smith Webb says, ‘To sum up the whole of this transcendent measure of God’s bounty to man, we shall add that memory, imagination, taste, reasoning, moral perception and all
120 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
the active powers of the soul present a vast and boundless field for philosophical disquisition which far exceeds human inquiry.” We could have none of these without the five senses, and they are, therefore, introduced as sym¬ bols of intellectual cultivation.^^
But the five senses are only ministers or servants to still more important and more mysterious attributes or powers of the human mind, such as consciousness and subconsciousness, reason, memory, expectation, experi¬ ence, imagination, taste, psychic feelings, emotions, atten¬ tion, cognition, conation, desire, perception, judgment, ideation, understanding, belief, etc. To get any adequate conception of the vast field covered by the characteristics and attributes of the human mind turn to some standard treatise on psychology. Consider imagination: without it we could not have looked into the future and seen any¬ thing which we had not already experienced. Improve¬ ment along any line could have been nothing but fortunate blundering; we could not have consciously gone to work to test the truthfulness of reality of a hypothesis, some¬ thing we had only imagined or seen in our mind’s eye. A wild or uncontrolled imagination we call insanity, but a sane imagination has been the mother of all conscious human progress. Consider the power of reasoning: a disordered reason is insanity, but without reason we could from facts experienced draw no conclusion as to facts not already known. The man who allows his imagination and reasoning processes to run away with his judgment is no less an object of either condemnation or pity than is the man who allows his appetite and passions to over¬ come him.
Yet, who would, if he could, chain the human imagina¬ tion? Who would, if he could, strip us of our natural impulse to draw deductions and conclusions ? Misleading Mackey, Symbolism of Freemasonry, p. 222.
THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE
121
as these two attributes of the human mind are when not kept in restraint, they lie at the fountain head of nearly all our knowledge and of our achievements.
The disquisition upon the five senses of human nature which appears in our American Monitors may be found in the English Monitors also which preceded the revision of Dr. Hemming in 1813. He eliminated all reference to them and they are still missing from English ‘‘work.’’ We feel that in some way Dr. Hemming must surely have failed to catch the meaning of this part of our sym¬ bolism. Dr. George Oliver, an eminent and learned Eng¬ lish Mason, deplores the omission and says that it ought by all means to be restored.
Having thus indicated to the candidate something of the importance and the means of acquiring knowledge, the proper fields of study and investigation are next pointed out.
THE FIVE ORDERS IN ARCHITECTURE
The five steps are said to allude further to the five orders in architecture, the Tuscan, the Doric, the Ionic, the Corinthian and the Composite. Their origins and their relative merits are pointed out, and we are told some¬ thing of architecture in general. We would naturally expect something on this subject in a society derived from one of actual builders and architects, and here we have an internal evidence of the great age of Freemasonry. This is a flotsam which has been wafted to us down the stream of time from that remote period when Freema¬ sonry was an organisation of operative Masons. To our speculative society it typifies all the other useful arts and serves to convey to the intelligent mind the truth that architecture considered as one of the fine arts is a sub¬ ject well worthy of our study. It is through architecture
122 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
that every great people have left the enduring records of their fame. Books perish and decay, but from their build¬ ings, which still remain, we know for a certainty of the great nations of antiquity. George Moller, in his charm¬ ing essay on Gothic Architecture, speaks of these architec¬ tural remains as “documents of stone” and declares that they “afford to those who can read them the most lively picture of centuries that have lapsed.”
THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES
Other fields of study are said to consist of the seven liberal arts and sciences and are enumerated as grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music and astron¬ omy. In our Fellow Craft’s charge we are recommended to study “the liberal arts and sciences which tend so ef¬ fectually to polish and adorn the mind.” In England (Emulation Working) the candidate is informed that he “is expected to make the liberal arts and sciences his future study, that he may the better be enabled to dis¬ charge his duties as a Mason, and estimate the wonderful works of the Almighty.”
It is, of course, obvious at a glance that these seven subjects enumerated above by no means exhaust the fields of knowledge now open to man, but the time once was when they did. And herein is another incontestible evi¬ dence of the great age of Freemasonry and its ceremonies. We cannot do better than quote Enfield. He says that in the seventh century, that is to say 1300 years ago, “these seven heads were supposed to include universal knowledge. He who was master of these was thought to
12 Mackey, Symbolism of Freemasonry, pp. 222, 223; Masonic Maga¬ zine, Vol. VI, p. 427.
IS Yarker, Arcane Schools, p. 118.
THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE
123
have no need of a preceptor to explain any books or to solve any questions which lay within the compass of human reason; knowledge of the trivium (as grammar, rhetoric and logic were then denominated) having fur¬ nished him with the key to all language, and that of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy) having opened to him the secret laws of nature/’ At a period, says Dr. Mackey, “when few were instructed in the trivium and very few studied the quadrivium, to be master of both was sufficient to complete the character of a philosopher.”
The term trivium means the three ways, or paths, and quadrivium the four ways, or paths, of knowledge. Hence it is with the greatest propriety that it is said that we are taught in the Fellow Craft Degree to explore the paths of heavenly science/®
THE LETTER G
This is the initial of our name for Deity and is appro¬ priate enough in lodges employing the English language, but our greatest scholars maintain that the proper and original letter is the letter Yod, which is the initial of the name of Deity in the Hebrew language. A volume of abstruse symbolism revolves around this letter which it is impossible even to enter upon here.^® The serious Masonic student must read and study it for himself.
However, whatever other meanings it may bear, it serves again to remind us of the existence and beneficence of Deity and of His omniscience, omnipotence and omni¬ presence.
Enfield, History of Philosophy, Vol. II, p. 337; Mackey, Synt- holism of Freemasonry, p. 224.
Mackey, Symbolism of Freemasonry, pp. 223, 224.
Pike, Morals and Dogma, p. 15.
124 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
GEOMETRY
Another numerous class of Masonic symbols are geometrical figures, the square, the triangle, the pental- pha, the hexalpa, the circle, etc. We know that some of them have been employed for ages as symbols of moral qualities.
Geometry is defined as that ‘ 'branch of pure mathe¬ matics that treats of space and its relations; the science of the mutual relations of points, lines, angles, surfaces, and solids, considered as having no properties but those arising from extension and differences of situation.” (Standard Dictionary). Or, as defined in our Masonic Monitors, it is "that science which treats of the power and properties of magnitude in general, where length, breadth, and thickness are considered, from a point to a line, from a line to a superficies, and from a superficies to a solid.”
It is by this science that we lay off angles, triangles, circles, squares, etc., etc., and are enabled to calculate their dimensions and areas. By it the surveyor measures land, locates rivers and seas, delineates the boundaries of oceans, and fixes the limits of nations. By it all archi¬ tectural plans are devised and the movements of the heavenly bodies are calculated. It is highly probable that at an early period every Masonic lodge was a school of architecture and that the mastery of this subject led to the study of the other liberal arts and sciences, particularly Geometry. This accounts for many features of our ritual that are otherwise inexplicable.
Pre-eminence is given by our ritual to the science of Geometry. It and its allied branches (trigonometry, architecture and astronomy) were the only exact sciences known to the ancients, and the perfection to which they
THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE
125
had reduced them is even now constantly surprising us. By them all mathematical calculations were made. Arith¬ metic and algebra in the modern sense were then unknown. The astonishing results obtained by them from an applica¬ tion of geometrical processes were well calculated to im¬ press the mind. As the only exact science known to them, Geometry was the most appropriate emblem of moral per¬ fection, in an age when everything had its symbol. We accordingly read in our Masonic Monitors that of the seven liberal arts and sciences, “Geometry is the most revered by Masons^’; that “it is the foundation of archi¬ tecture and the root of mathematics^’ ; that it is “the first and noblest of sciences”; that it is “the basis on which the superstructure of Masonry is erected” ; that by it “we may curiously trace nature through her various windings to her most concealed recesses”; and “discover the power, the wisdom and the goodness of the Grand Artificer of the Universe”; that “Geometry, or Masonry, originally synonymous terms, being of a divine and moral nature, is enriched with the most useful knowledge” ; that “while it proves the wonderful properties of nature, it demon¬ strates the more important truths of morality.”
It cannot be denied that to the present generation and in our present state of learning. Geometry is nothing of the kind. To any one except a Freemason, and to the great majority of them, the idea that Geometry incal- culates nforal truth is utterly foreign and incompre¬ hensible. Those members of the Craft who have ever thought of the matter at all as a rule look upon these expressions as crude extravagances, as distorted attempts to attach a speculative meaning to a science or an art which had never properly borne any other than a prac¬ tical signification. We are not surprised, it is true, to find still incorporated in our system these inheritances
126 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
of a past age and simply tolerate them as such without any serious attempt to ascertain their meaning or to measure their significance.
While, as stated, Geometry does not at present enjoy any such an enviable distinction among the sciences as that claimed for it in our Masonic ritual, yet the time once was when it was precisely so regarded by the wisest of men on earth.
What then is the significance of these ideas of a past age in our Masonic system? It seems to me to afford the strongest internal evidence of the great age of our Masonic ritual and symbolism.
The seven liberal arts and sciences, as enumerated in the lodge, are not now to be understood literally, but rather as a symbol of what they once were in fact, namely, the entire domain of human knowledge and research. No one man is, of course, expected to cultivate the whole of this vast field, but this part of the ceremony of passing urges upon us the importance and the duty of constantly apply¬ ing our minds to the attainment of wisdom in some of its forms. We have no right to be idle. It is a sin against God, ourselves and society. Whatever others may be. Masons have no right to be idlers and loafers. It is our God-given privilege and our solemn duty to work, work, work, not because a night is coming when man^s work is done, but that we may be able to do better work and more work in that brighter day that all good Masons expect to see when this life has passed away.
THE WAGES OF A FELLOW CRAFT
In the Middle Chamber we are informed what the wages shall be to the faithful Craftsman who has ob-
17^. Q. C., Vol. X, p. 82; “Freemason” (London), Vol. XLVIII, p. 417.
THE FELLOW CRAFT DEGREE
127
served the moral and the divine law and wasted not his time in idleness or vice. We are told that they shall be corn, wine and oil. Such was literally true to our ancient operative brethren, as our old documents abundantly prove. With us, of course, they are not received in the realistic sense, but emblematically. From a remoteness of time when the memory of man runneth not to the con¬ trary, the spica, or ear of corn, has symbolised plenty; wine has symbolised health ; and oil has symbolised peace.
The faithful Fellow Craft is, therefore, assured that his wages, his reward, shall be plenty, not mere sufficiency but plenitude to supply all his physical, moral and spiritual wants; health of body, mind and soul; peace in this life, in the hour of death, and in the life to come.
While we have by no means exhausted the subject this, my brethren, is briefly the meaning and purpose of the Fellow Craft Degree, and, if you do not already, we are sure that a little study and reflection will lead you to agree that in beauty and purity and loftiness of concep¬ tion this Degree is worthy to keep company with those splendid degrees of Entered Apprentice and Master Mason.
PART THREE: THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
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Part Three
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
Many of the lessons of the Third Degree are obvious to the most superficial mind, but others (and these the most important) are grasped only after long and patient study. We shall not attempt anything original, but only lay before you in an imperfect way a few of the reflec¬ tions and conclusions of some of our most trustworthy Masonic scholars.
We believe, as we have several times observed, that it is susceptible of the clearest proof that Freemasonry, viewed in the aggregate, is an elaborate allegory of human life, that the Three Degrees considered collectively, sym¬ bolically epitomise man’s existence both here and in the hereafter. 'Our excuse for recurring to this idea is that Speculative Masonry can not otherwise adequately be ex¬ plained. The lodge is emblematical of the world; initia¬ tion, of birth ; the Entered Apprentice, of the preparatory stage of life, or youth; the Fellow Craft, of the con¬ structive stage, or manhood; the Master Mason, of the reflective stage, or old age, death, the resurrection, and the everlasting life. This explanation of the Three De¬ grees is briefly given in our lecture on the “Three Steps” delineated on the Master’s Carpet. Any symbol or any meaning attributed to a symbol which does not legitimately contribute to this allegory may be discarded as non- Masonic.
THE ANTIQUITY OF MASONIC SYMBOLISM
The age of our symbolism is an important question in this connection, because upon it to a great extent depend 131
132 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
the meanings that must be assigned to our symbols. While some of them may be of comparatively modern origin, many of them are older than the oldest written language.
Says Brother Robert Freke Gould, one of the most cautious of our historians :
'The symbolism of Masonry, or at all events a material part of it, is of very great antiquity, and in substance the system of Masonry we now possess, including the Three Degrees of the Craft, has come down to us in all its essentials from times remote to our own.’’ ^
Another of our historians of the most exacting school. Brother William James Hughan, declares that “symbol¬ ism in connection with Freemasonry antedates our oldest records.”
Even this cautious statement would date our symbolism back more than five hundred years, and Brother Gould is on record as declaring that, if it can be put back that far, there is practically no limit backward to which its beginning must be assigned.^
Another distinguished Masonic scholar. Brother George William Speth, records his belief that “the greater part of our symbolism (including all essentials) is un¬ doubtedly mediaeval at least, and probably centuries older than that.” ®
Still another. Brother William Simpson, distinguished as an orientalist, says :
“The more important Masonic symbols are ancient and their true meanings can only be found by tracing them back into the past. This will be found to be
^A. Q. C., Vol. Ill, p. 10. p. 24.
p. 27.
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
133
particularly the case with the Third Degree ; its true meaning can only be realised by the study of similar rites which appear to go far back into the history of our race.” ^
These are the opinions of men who, noted for their scholarship, have disregarded our Masonic traditions and studied the question from the purely historical viewpoint.
Following them (and if they cannot be followed there are none who can be), our symbolism has come down to us from ancient times.
Of some of these symbols we know a part at least of their meanings, but of some we know nothing at all. We get a hint from Brother Pike that much of our sym¬ bolism has been forgotten, and Brother Gould asserts the same and declares that “to a considerable portion of the symbolism of Freemasonry, even at this day, no meaning can be assigned which is entirely satisfactory to the intel¬ ligent mind.” ®
Heckethorn, a non-Mason, says that many of the mystical figures and schemes of very ancient times are preserved in Masonry though their meaning is no longer understood by the Fraternity.®
It should therefore be obvious that if we are ever to re-acquire this lost knowledge, we must have recourse to the records and institutions of ancient times.
THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES
Do we find any institutions in ancient times similar to our own and employing our symbols for like purposes ? We answer at once that we do.
In all periods from the dawn of history till about the fifth century, A.D., there is recorded the existence in
Q. C, Vol. Ill, p. 26. » Ibid., p. 23.
134. SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
nearly every known country of secret societies which, so far as our knowledge of them enables us to judge, were strikingly like Freemasonry in all except name. Our fore¬ most Masonic historian. Brother Gould, says that they taught precisely the same doctrines in precisely the same way. These ancient societies bearing different names in different countries, yet appearing everywhere to have been the same thing, are generically termed ‘‘The Ancient Mysteries.’'
In Egypt they were known as the Mysteries of Osiris and Isis, and these appear to have been the model for all others. They prevailed in Egypt, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, and many other countries. The most ancient of these were certainly in existence as early as 3000 B.C., and some of them were still flourish¬ ing in Western Europe, in a corrupted state, it is true, as late as the fourth century of the Christian era.
Notwithstanding their differences in name, it does not admit of a doubt that they were all substantially the same; “so much so,” it has been said by high Masonic authority, “that we may conclude either that they were all independent copies from a great original or that they were propagated one from another.” Brother Gould, than whom no more judicious historian has ever written on any subject, thinks they were only differentiated types of one original form of worship, the object of which was in every instance the God of Light and of Truth and of Beneficence. The Osiris of Egypt, the Brahma of India, the Mithras of Persia, the Bacchus (or Dionysius) of Greece, the Bel (or Baal) of the Chaldeans, the Belenus of Gaul, the Baldur of Scandinavia, the Adonis of Phoe¬ nicia, and the Adonai of the Jews were all the same god; each to his own people, was the Supreme One, the Creator, the Enlightener, Lord and Master. All the mysteries taught a more or less pure system of monotheism, though
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
135
coupled with the idea of a Trinity, or one God in three persons. Their Trinity differed from ours, however, in that they conceived it to be a male, female and offspring, or Father, Mother and Son. They taught also the doc¬ trine of the resurrection of the dead and the immortality of the soul.’’
Cicero tells us that in the Eleusinian Mysteries they were taught to live virtuously and happily and to die in the hope of a blessed futurity.®
“The great, doctrine of immortality of the soul,'’ says Brother Gould, “and the teachings of the two lives, the present and the future, are to be found in the Ancient Mysteries, where precisely the same doctrines were taught in precisely the same way" that they are now taught by the Freemasons.
It seems that among pagan people of ancient times a few superior minds and spirits were found who did not accept the idolatrous notions of the populace as an adequate conception of the Deity and who searched con¬ stantly in the great book of nature in the effort to find out and understand Him aright. To have openly pro¬ claimed their beliefs and their rejection of the popular gods and popular religion would have but called down upon themselves contempt and ridicule and doubtless per¬ secutions. They, therefore, chose to drift along with the common herd to all outward appearances, reserving the contemplation and discussion of their cherished beliefs for secret communication with those of kindred mind in societies where they were secure from observation and the interference of the outside world. Such seems to have been the occasion of the origin of these ancient fraternities.
^ Gould, Concise History of Freemasonry, pp. 24, 25.
® Mackey, Symbolism of Freemasonry, p. 36 ; Mackey, Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, p. 515.
136 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
These societies were characterised by fixed forms of initiation, successive steps, or degrees, oaths of secrecy, a symbolical system of teaching, and the possession of emblems and perhaps of grips, signs and words of recogni¬ tion.® Their rites were usually celebrated at night in chambers securely guarded against intrusion and arranged similarly to our lodges, often with the three chief officers seated in the South, West and East. With all of them the East was an object of peculiar veneration as the source of light and knowledge.
Initiation was an allegorical search for light and knowl¬ edge and consisted of prescribed physical and moral preparations of the candidate, lustrations, purifications and the administrations of oaths of secrecy; the ushering from darkness to light symbolising a transformation from ignorance to knowledge, from corruption to moral and spiritual purity; the investiture with an emblem of this purity consisting sometimes of a white apron, sometimes of a white sash or robe; the encountering of trials and dangers sometimes mock and sometimes real. In the Mithraic Mysteries the candidate was received into the place of initiation upon the point of a sword piercing his naked left breast. Many of their symbols were identical with those that can now be seen in any Masonic lodge.
To each of the Ancient Mysteries pertained a char¬ acteristic legend, which was made the instrumentality of teaching with great impressiveness the doctrines of the resurrection and immortality.
The legend of Osiris, probably the oldest and the model for all the others, was as follows:
Osiris, meaning the soul of the Universe, the Gov¬ ernor of nature, was at once king and god of the Egyptians. The name appears as far back as 3000
®Yarker, Arcane Schools, p. 113.
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
137
B.C. Having taught civilisation, the arts and agricul¬ ture to his own people, he magnanimously resolved to spread in person their benign influence throughout the world. Leaving his kingdom in charge of his wife, Isis, he departed upon his beneficent mission. After an absence of three years he returned, but meanwhile his brother Typhon had organised a con¬ spiracy to murder him and seize the throne. At a grand banquet given in honour of his return, Typhon provided a magnificent chest which exactly fitted the body of Osiris. All the other guests being in the con¬ spiracy, they feigned great admiration of the chest and finally Typhon announced that he would give it to the one whose body it would most neatly contain. Osiris, trying the box, was no sooner in it than the lid was clapped down and securely fastened and the whole thrown into the river Nile. It was borne out to sea by the current and in course of time was cast ashore at Byblos, in Phoenicia, at the foot of an acacia tree. The tree grew up rapidly and completely encased the chest containing the body of Osiris.
No sooner had Isis learned of the fate of her hus¬ band than, weeping, she set out in search of his body and on her way interrogated every one she met for information concerning its whereabouts. Virgins accompanied her who dressed and combed her hair.
She finally discovered the body in the acacia tree, but the king of that country, struck with the tree’s beauty caused it to be cut down and a column made of it for his palace. Isis thereupon engaged herself to the king as a nurse for his children and asked and received for her pay this column. The column was broken and the body released and at once borne back to Egypt, but before it could be properly interred it was again seized by Typhon and cut into four¬ teen pieces and these hidden in as many places. After long search Isis succeeded in finding and bringing together all the parts except the phallus, and the
138 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
body was embalmed and buried in due form. It will be borne in mind that according to ancient Egyptian ideas there could be no resurrection in the absence of the body; hence, the great care with which they embalmed their dead. As soon as the body of Osiris had been recovered and buried, it was announced that he had risen from the dead and had resumed his place among the gods.
The ceremonies of initiation into the Egyptian Mys¬ teries dramatically represented the death of Osiris, the search for his body, its discovery in the acacia tree, and its burial and resurrection, the murdered god being per¬ sonated by the candidate.
Pertaining to each of the mysteries was a counter¬ part of this legend. In Greece, Osiris became Bacchus (not the drunken Bacchus of later ages), who is slain by the Titans and his limbs torn asunder. Isis becomes Rhea, who after long and bitter search finds and inters his body, and in due course he takes his place among the gods. In the Dionysian Mysteries celebrated in his hon¬ our an effigy was stretched upon a couch, as if dead, while his votaries bitterly bewailed his decease. After a proper time the figure was quickly removed and the an¬ nouncement made that the god had risen from the dead. Likewise in some of the Mysteries of India the candidate underwent an allegorical death, burial and resurrection. Those celebrated in Phoenicia during the time of Solomon, King of Israel, Hiram, King of Tyre and Hiram Abif were obvious copies of those of Egypt. Adonis and Venus became substitutes in the legend for Osiris and Isis. During the course of these Mysteries, with which our three ancient Grand Masters must have been familiar, an image was laid upon a bier as if it were a dead body. During a momentary darkness the figure was invisibly removed, after which it was announced that the god had
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
1S9
risen from the dead. The substantial identity with each other of all these Mysteries and doctrines they were in¬ tended to inculcate is obvious.
It is claimed by students of ancient mythology, that this legend of the Mysteries and the ceremonies based on it were all prophetic of the coming of a Messiah, who should triumph over death and the grave, and thereby demonstrate to mankind for a certainty that there is a life after death. That this was common belief, not merely among the Jews, but the Egyptians, Phoenicians, As¬ syrians, Babylonians, Persians, Chaldeans, Hindus, Greeks and Romans is now generally conceded.
The teachings of the Mysteries have been thus summarised :
“They diifused a spirit of unity and humanity; purified the soul from ignorance and pollution; se¬ cured the peculiar aid of the gods; the means of arriving at the perfection of virtue ; the serene happi¬ ness of a holy life ; the hope of a peaceful death and endless felicity in the Elysian fields ; whilst those not initiated therein should dwell after death in places of darkness and horror.’’
Thus did these ancient societies seek by means of the dramatic presentation of a legend to teach the great Masonic doctrines of the resurrection and the life after death.
There were lectures explanatory of the Mysteries, but the crowning ceremony of initiation was the communica¬ tion to the candidate of an ineffable name which it was lawful to speak only on certain occasions and in a certain manner. Among the Egyptians, Persians and Hindus, notwithstanding their wide separation, this was the mys¬ terious AUM, pronounced OM. We have purposely mingled things dissimilar with things similar to Free-
140 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
masonry, but the intelligent Master Mason will be able to detect the points of resemblance.
Brother Robert Freke Gould, whom we have already several times quoted, without venturing to pronounce Freemasonry and the Ancient Mysteries identical, saysj
‘Tt is a well known fact that these Mysteries offer striking analogies with much that is found in Free¬ masonry; their celebration in grottoes or covered halls, which symbolised the Universe, and which in disposition and decoration presented a distinct coun¬ terpart to our lodge ; their division into degrees con¬ ferred by the initiatory rites wonderfully like our own; their method of teaching through the same astronomic symbolism the highest truths then known in Philosophy and Morals; their mystic bond of secrecy, toleration, equality and brotherly love.”
He intimates strongly his belief that Freemasonry is a development out of the Mysteries of Mithras, which, originating in Persia, spread to Greece, Rome and West¬ ern Europe and lingered there until the fourth or fifth century, A.D., and for a long time was a formidable rival of Christianity.
Enough has been said on this point to make it plain that any one who would understand our Masonic sym¬ bolism must at least make a study of what these same symbols meant to these ancient societies.
THIRD DEGREE SYMBOLS
We shall not lengthen this chapter and tax your patience by repeating explanations laid down in our Monitors and lectures. We shall for the most part confine ourselves to things that are not explained at all, or that are explained inadequately.
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
141
Many of the symbols of the Master Mason Degree are common to the preceding degrees and these we shall touch upon very briefly. There is, however, discoverable in their use, as the degrees progress, an increasing serious¬ ness and depth of meaning.
For instance, in the first two degrees, the lodge sym¬ bolises the world, the place where all workmen labour at useful avocations and in the acquisition of human knowl¬ edge and virtue. But in the Master’s Degree it repre¬ sents the Sanctum Sanctorum, or Holy of Holies of King Solomon’s Temple, which was itself a symbol of Heaven, or the abode of Deity. It was there that nothing earthly or unclean was allowed to enter; it was there that the visible presence of the Deity was said to dwell between the Cherubim. In the Master’s lodge, therefore, we are sym¬ bolically brought into the awful presence of the Deity. The reference here to death and the future life is obvious and is a further evidence that this degree typifies old age and death.
But there is even a deeper symbolism in the Master’s lodge. The allusion is not only to the sacred chamber of Solomon’s physical temple, it alludes also to the sacred chamber of that spiritual temple we all are, or should be, namely, a pure heart, and admonishes us to make of it a place fit for Deity himself to dwell.
The likening of the human body to a temple of the Deity is an ancient metaphor. Jesus said, in speaking of the temple of his body, ‘‘Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” Again, Paul says, “Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, and such are ye.” We quote these passages not as a Christian doctrine, but as a beautiful expression of Jewish thought far older than Christianity. We can with difii-
142 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
culty conceive the extreme sacredness of the Temple in the eyes of the Jew. It far exceeded the veneration with which we now regard our churches and synagogues. This idea once comprehended shows how greatly this figure of speech ennobles the human body. It declares it a fit dwelling place for Deity himself.
In the Entered Apprentice and Fellow Craft Degrees, Light typifies the acquisition of human knowledge and virtue ; in the Master Mason Degree it typifies the revela¬ tion of divine truth in the life that is to come.
In the first two degrees the Square and Compasses denote the earth and inculcate and impress upon us the desirability of curbing our passion; in the Third Degree the Compasses symbolise what is heavenly, because to our ancient brethren the visible heavens bore the aspect of circles and arches, geometrical figures produced with the Compasses.
In some of the Monitors we are told that *‘the Com¬ passes are peculiarly consecrated to this degree,’’ but the reasons there given are not satisfying. In ancient sym¬ bolism the square signified the earth, while the circle, a figure produced with the Compasses, signified the sun or the heavens. The Square therefore symbolised what is earthly and material while the Compasses signified the heavenly and the spiritual. It is not without significance, therefore, that in the Entered Apprentice Degree, both points of the Compasses are beneath the Square, that in the Fellow Craft Degree one point is above the Square, while in the Master Mason Degree both points are above, signifying that in the true Master, the spiritual has obtained full mastery and control over the earthly and the material.^®
10 Pike, Morals and Dogma, pp. 850, 854.
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
US
DISCALCEATION
Discalceation, or the plucking off of one’s shoes, was in the Entered Apprentice Degree, as we there learned, a symbol of fidelity to our fellow man. In this degree, however, it alludes to an ancient act of homage paid by man to Deity, namely, the Eastern custom that prevailed among both Jews and Gentiles of entering only barefooted into any sacred place or upon any holy ground. In the one case, this practice was a testimony of man to man; in the other, it is a testimony of man to his Creator.
Pythagoras taught his disciples in these words, “Offer sacrifice and worship with thy shoes off.” Adam Clarke includes the universality of this custom among his thirteen proofs that all mankind has descended from common ancestors. A Master Mason’s lodge represents, as we have seen, the Holy of Holies of Solomon’s Temple into which the High Priest alone entered only once yearly, and then with bare feet. The lodge in some of the old rituals is said to stand on holy ground. God said to Moses at the burning bush : “Put off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.”
Note also the deeper significance of the shock of recep¬ tion as the degrees progress. In the first, the appeal is to the sense of fear, in other words, purely physical. In the second, appeal is made to the moral sense and inculcates fair dealing with men, but in the third it is not merely to our sense of justice towards our fellow man, but to our brotherly love for him and to those higher reflective elements of our nature whose proverbial seat is the breast.
It is a mistake to limit the “Brotherly Love” of this degree to members of the Masonic Fraternity. If the lodge symbolises the world, as it undoubtedly does, so should its members symbolise all the inhabitants thereof.
Mackey, Symbolism of Freemasonry, p. 125.
144 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
The love that should prevail among the members of the lodge, therefore typifies the love that should prevail among all mankind. In the highest sense all men are our brothers precisely as we are so strikingly taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan that all men are our neighbours.
CIRCUMAMBULATION
Circumambulation, from the Latin word circumamhu- lare, to walk around, is a very ancient rite, one common to all the Ancient Mysteries. The sun, the fructifier and giver of life, in his daily course across the heavens, ap¬ pears to those living in the Northern Hemisphere, where the ancient world dwelt, to proceed from the East by the way of the South to the West, and thence through the darkness of the night via the North back to the East again. Vegetation was seen to spring up, animal life to be aroused from slumber and take on increased energy, as the King of Day moved with dignity across the heavens. To the untutored mind of primeval man it is not strange that the sun should appear to be the giver of life, the very Creator himself. His apparent course, therefore, from East through the South to the West and back to the East by way of the North became the “course of life,’’ as the ancients expressed it.
The ancients in their ceremonies when representing life pursued this course, and we Masons follow their ex¬ ample. To proceed in the reverse direction typified death, and as every Master Mason knows at one important point in our ceremonies we take this reverse course. At the grave of a deceased brother, however, contrary to what might be expected, we still follow the course of life as a token of our belief in the life that follows death.^^
^2 Oliver, Signs and Symbols, p. lo; Transactions, Lodge of Re¬ search, Leicester, 1909-10, p. 42.
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
145
THE WORKING TOOLS
With US in America the especial working tool of a Master Mason is said to be the Trowel. In England, this symbol is almost obsolete, and there the Skirret, Pencil and Compasses are employed.
Of the Trowel, Dr. George Oliver, a noted but some¬ what discredited Masonic authority, says:
‘The triangle, now called the Trowel, was an em¬ blem of very extensive application and was much revered by ancient nations as containing the greatest and most abstruse mysteries ; that it signified equally Deity, Creation and Fire.’’
We will learn directly something more of the sym¬ bolical signification of the triangle.
The Skirret, the Pencil and the Compasses are not enumerated in America among the working tools of a Master Mason. The Skirret is an instrument working on a centre pin and used by the operative Mason to mark out on the ground the foundation of the intended struc¬ ture. The Pencil is employed in drafting the plans and the Compasses in determining the limit and proportions of its several parts. Symbolically they are explained in English (Emulation Working) in the following words:
“The Skirret points out to us that straight and undeviating line of conduct laid down for our guid¬ ance in the volume of the sacred law. The Pencil teaches us that all our words and actions are not only observed, but are recorded by the Most High, to whom we must render an account of our conduct through life. The Compasses remind us of his un¬ erring and impartial justice, which, having defined for our instruction the limits of good and evil, will
146 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
either reward or punish us, as we have obeyed or disregarded His divine commands/'
We must admit that the Trowel would seem properly to belong to the Fellow Craft, who in operative Masonry puts the stones in place, rather than to the designer and overseer who corresponds to our Master Mason.
Brother John Yarker in his Arcane Schools says that the Skirret as a hieroglyphic signifies the origin of things (Pp. 33, 220).
BROACHED THURNEL
In English working, we hear of another working-tool, but the strange part of it is that neither our English brethren nor we know what it is or rather was. We refer to the so-called “Broached Thurnel." Of it Brother George William Speth, a most learned Mason, says :
“It was never understood by Grand Lodge Masons ; the various and contradictory uses ascribed to it at one and the same time prove this. It was dropped in 1814 because probably utterly meaningless to the Masons of those days; they dared not even attempt to explain it, however lamely. Nay, more. There are architects here present. Can any one even de¬ scribe what it was ? It was an appliance evidently of use in a Mason's stone yard or lodge ; but what was it?"
When an authority like Speth can not even hazard a guess, it is useless for us to speculate. Maybe the secret will some day be rediscovered.
13 Akin’s Manual (1908), p. 80.
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
147
DEITY AND IMMORTALITY
There are a few who feign that they believe nothing that cannot be experienced through the five senses of the body. Wonderful as are these faculties, we are per¬ suaded that we are possessed of a sixth sense which is higher and finer even than those of the body. By this sense we perceive though we see not; we feel though we touch not; we understand though we hear not; we know though we neither taste nor smell. By it, also, we are aware of all the higher aspirations of the mind and soul; by it alone are we conscious of our own existence. See¬ ing is not thinking. Nor is hearing, or feeling, or tast¬ ing, or smelling. These five senses are but ministers to this sixth sense. The five senses of human nature we were concerned with in a former degree, but we are here concerned with something far superior to them, what¬ ever we call it, whether consciousness, faith, mind, soul or spirit. Are the testimonies of this sixth sense any less real or any less reliable than those of the five senses of the body? By it mankind has always, in every age and in every condition, felt intuitively that there was a God and that we shall live again. These beliefs are so strong and so ever present with us that we never doubt them until we begin to argue about them.
There is nothing in Masonry so constantly pressed upon our thoughts as these two great doctrines. Signs, sym¬ bols, and legends are all repeatedly employed to emphasise them.
In the Master Mason’s Degree, the Pot of Incense, the All-Seeing Eye, the Three Grand Masters, the Tri¬ angle, and the legends of the Temple and of Hiram Abif are all employed for this purpose, as we shall attempt to show.
A reading of history shows that men in different ages
148 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
and in different countries have conceived God in different likenesses and with differing attributes, ranging from the most repulsive brute forms and impulses to the highest conceptions of form and attributes of which the human mind has ever been capable. It is, of course, not sup- posable that they all knew God and that he has thus changed according to time and country. God is neces¬ sarily the same to-day that he was, always has been and always will be, eternal and unchanging. Otherwise God is a myth. If man’s conceptions of him change, it is because we for the time being know less or more of him.
We read with incredulity that men could ever bow down to and worship idols. Doubtless the thoughtful and intel¬ ligent ones have never done so even in pagan countries. They looked beyond and viewed the idol as merely a sym¬ bol.
This thought is thus finely expressed by Albert Pike in one of the Scottish Rite Degrees :
‘^The Divine light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world has not been altogether want¬ ing to the devout of any creed. The permanent reve¬ lation, one and universal, is written in visible nature, is explained by Reason, and completed by the wise analogies of Faith. And there is but one True Re¬ ligion, but one legitimate doctrine and creed, as there is but one God, one Reason, one Universe. That revelation is obscure for no one, since every person in the world more or less comprehends Truth and Justice. Especially recollect that the Myth of Genesis is an eternal truth ; and that God allows none to approach the Tree of Knowledge, except those who are abstinent enough and strong enough not to lust after its fruits. Faith has in all ages been the lever whereby to move the world. Yet faith is but superstition and folly if it has not Reason for its
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
149
basis ; and we can suppose that which we do not know only by analogy with the known. To define what we know not is presumptuous ignorance ; to affirm positively what we know not is to lie.’'
As the idol among pagan people usually assumed a human form, the Jews, as well as other believers in monotheism of ancient times, forbade the employment of the human effigy as a symbol of Deity. To supply the need so keenly felt by the ancients of a symbol to repre¬ sent every idea, conventional figures such as squares, circles, triangles, etc., were adopted by the ancient mono¬ theists to symbolise the Deity. Thus perhaps it is that the being which alone is said to have been made in the image of his Creator is nowhere employed in our symbolism to represent the G. A. O. T. U.
THE HIRAMIC LEGEND
The most important series of symbols in Freemasonry is the legend concerning Hiram Abif and the other symbolic allusions connected therewith. For obvious reasons, we do not attempt to narrate the story of this legend. Nor shall we undertake to make any systematic or exhaustive study of it, but only to discuss in a discon¬ nected way those symbols associated with it that are most important or whose meaning is least obvious.
As we have already seen, the Ancient Mysteries em¬ ployed a legend dramatically presented to teach the great doctrines of the existence of Deity, the resurrection of the body, and the immortality of the soul. Among Free¬ masons, the legend of Hiram, the builder, is employed in a strikingly similar way to teach the same truths. It is not permissible, even if it were necessary, to enter further into details in order to demonstrate this parallel, but the
150 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
points of resemblance will be sufficiently obvious to the intelligent Mason.
A few observations upon the name Hiram Abif will not be out of place. Abif is certainly not a surname as our use of it would seem to indicate. It is translated in the English Bibles '‘Hiram, my father’s” and "Hiram, his father.” This scarcely makes sense; and hence the gen¬ eral consensus of opinion among Masonic scholars is that "Abif” is a Hebrew idiom indicating superiority in his Craft and may therefore, in a general sense, be said to be synonymous with "Master.”
The name "Hiram” itself has been supposed by many to bear a symbolic meaning. In Kings it is written "Hiram” but in Chronicles it is written "Huram.” Brother Albert Pike contends that the proper form is "Khirum” or "Khurum.” The former Khirum is from the Hebrew word "Khi” meaning "living,” and "ram” meaning "was or shall be raised oi* lifted up.” Hence Khirum means "was raised or lifted up to life.” The other form, Khurum, means nearly the same, "raised up noble or free.” Brother Pike shows this name to be synonymous with the Egyptian Her-ra, and the Phoenician Heracles, the personification of Light and the sun, the Mediator, the Redeemer and the Saviour.^®
But do not be misled into supposing that the reference is here Christian. The idea of a Mediator, Redeemer or Saviour is far older than Christianity and by no means confined to the Jews. It is a concept that seems to have been almost universal in the ancient world.
Again, it is said that Hiram, in its pure and original form, literally meant light or the sun. His murder by the three ruffians is by many scholars believed to have
Mackey, Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, p. 3 ; Pike, Morals and Dogma, p. 81.
Pike, Morals and Dogma, p. 78.
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
151
symbolic reference to the declension of the sun towards the South during the three winter months with its accom¬ panying temporary death of many forms of vegetable and animal life; the discovery and raising of his body, to the return of spring with its manifestations of newness of life in its thousands of forms. There is no doubt that this astronomical phenomenon, so typical of both death and a new life, was extensively employed by the ancients to teach the doctrines of resurrection and immortality.
Those who attach an astronomical signification, to this legend of Hiram Abif believe the fifteen Fellow Craft to be a faulty symbol ; that the true number is twelve, cor¬ responding to the twelve signs of the Zodiac through which the sun apparently passes every year ; that the num¬ ber of those who conspired and the number who recanted have been confused; that nine, typifying those who re¬ canted, fill the spring, summer and autumn with their seasons of planting, growth and harvest, while the three who persisted typify winter, when all nature, if not dead, appears to be dormant. It has been pointed out as cor¬ roborating this interpretation of this legend that our two festival seasons, June 24th and December 27th, the birth¬ days respectively of John the Baptist and John the Evan¬ gelist, very nearly coincide respectively with the summer and winter solstices ; that is to say, when the sun is at its greatest intensity, and, when in the dead of winter, having reached his furthermost limit to the South, he begins his fructifying and vivifying journey towards the North again.
We can but touch upon this abstruse symbolism, and invite the serious student of Freemasonry to its study. It can not be covered in an evening; volumes have been and may still be written upon the subject without exhaust¬ ing it^®
Pike, Morals and Dogma, p. 78.
152 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
In nearly all the ancient systems of religion, Deity was regarded as a triad, or trinity, by whom, acting conjointly only, could anything be done that was done. Our own doctrine of the Trinity is but a mere spiritualised modifi¬ cation of this ancient trinitarian conception. The secrets known only to our Three Grand Masters typify divine truth known only to this trinitarian Deity, and which is not to be communicated and made known to man, the Fellow Craft, the workman, until he has completed his spiritual temple. Then, according to divine promise, if found worthy, if this temple be nobly and worthily built and made a fit dwelling place for divine truth, these secrets will be communicated to him. He can then travel into that foreign country whither we all are bound and there obtain the wages of the master, that is to say, the reward of a righteous and well spent life. But he who would force or steal this knowledge or obtain it other than by faithful labour and effort to prepare himself for its under¬ standing and enjoyment is no better than a murderer and robber. It is the same allegory as that of Adam eating of the tree of knowledge. For a like offence, stealing the sacred fire of the gods and bestowing it upon man, was Prometheus bound to the rock, his body torn open and his liver fed upon by the vultures of the air.
The age of the Hiramic legend in our symbolism is an interesting and important question, but we have not space to deal with it here. Brother Gould says “that we may safely conclude that the distinctive legend of the Cam- pagnonnage concerning Hiram the Builder is of prior date to the introduction of modern Freemasonry in France, that is prior to A.D. 1726 (Gould II, p. 243). If this be true then this legend did not originate in Eng¬ land as some have contended. And this historical question affects vitally its allegorical signification.
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
153
THE THREE RUFFIANS
One having the least familiarity with the religions of the East cannot fail to recognise in the names of the three ruffians the names of the gods of Palestine, Phoenicia and Egypt, Jah, Bel and Om, spelled AUM. This will be even more striking to the Royal Arch and the Scottish Rite Mason.^^
The symbolism of the ‘‘three ruffians’’ has been variously explained. They have been declared to repre¬ sent the three greatest enemies of individual and political liberty, viz., kingcraft, priestcraft and ignorance. The three conspired to destroy liberty; one attempted this by a blow at the throat, the seat of free speech; the second attempted it by a stab at the heart, the seat of freedom of conscience; the third accomplished the foul conspiracy by felling his victim dead with a blow upon the brain, the seat of freedom of thought. The lesson is, suffer free¬ dom of thought, freedom of conscience and freedom of speech to be destroyed by kingcraft, priestcraft or igno¬ rance, or by all combined (for they usually work hand in hand), and individual and political liberty is lost.
No tyrant or priest can reduce this nation of ours to subjection until our people have been drowned in igno¬ rance. That tyrants and priests have by this method sought to maintain themselves in all ages can not be denied. The few brilliant exceptions afforded by history do not disprove the rule. It is just as certain that this same effort is going on to-day as that it was ever made. Churches (and you will note we use the plural) and tyrannical kings and so-called emperors would to-day de¬ liberately put bonds of ignorance on their people in order that they might more easily control them.
When we speak of ignorance we do not mean mere Pike, Morals and Dogma, pp. 8o, 82, 448, 488.
154 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
want of knowledge; we refer also to that mental state in which men refuse to reason, in which they refuse to recognise their own power, in which from laziness or from fear they refuse to do what they know they can and should do. It is this enlightened knowledge and the God- given power which goes with it that will alone enable liberty-loving men successfully to combat tyrants whether they come in the guise of kings, priests or Bolshevists.
LOW TWELVE
In ancient symbolism, the number twelve denoted com¬ pletion. Whether this meaning arose from the fact that twelve months completed the year, or twelve signs the Zodiac, or whether from the fact that what was regarded as the most stable geometrical figure known, the cube, is marked by twelve edges, opinions differ. At any rate, it denoted a thing fulfilled. It was therefore an emblem of human life. Death followed immediately after life; the number thirteen immediately after twelve; it is for this reason that thirteen has long been regarded as an unlucky number. With us the solemn stroke of twelve marks the completion of human existence in this life.
THE LION OF THE TRIBE OF JUDAH
The lion from most ancient times has been a symbol of might or royalty. It was blazoned upon the standard of the tribe of Judah, because it was the royal tribe. The kings of Judah were, therefore, each called Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and such was one of the titles of Solo¬ mon. Remembrance of this fact gives appropriateness to an expression employed at one point in our ceremonies which is otherwise obscure, not to say absurd. Such is the literal meaning of this phrase, but it also has a sym¬ bolical one.
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
155
The Jewish idea of a Messiah was of a mighty tem¬ poral king. He was also designated as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah; in fact this title was regarded as peculiarly belonging to him. The expression does not, as many Masons suppose, necessarily have reference to Jesus of Nazareth. The Christian Mason is privileged so to in¬ terpret it, if he likes, but the Jew has equal right to under¬ stand it as meaning his Messiah. Indeed, every great religion of the world has contained the conception in some form of a Mediator between God and man, a Redeemer who would raise mankind from the death of this life and the grave to an everlasting existence with God hereafter. The Mason who is a devotee of one of these religions, say, Buddhism, Brahmanism or Mohammedanism, is likewise entitled to construe this expression as referring to his own Mediator.
In an ancient Egyptian picture is depicted a lion seiz¬ ing by the wrist a man lying in front of an altar, prostrate upon his back as if dead. The lion seems to be raising the man up and to symbolise that power by which the dead are brought to newness of life. Near the altar stands a man with his left arm elevated in the form of a square.^®
FIVE POINTS OF FELLOWSHIP
Ancient builders were accustomed to lay out their build¬ ings from the centre. That is to say, the first located the centre, then by use of the 3, 4, triangle, which was well understood, the four corners of the intended structure were located by measurements from the centre. This gave them five points upon which and with regard to which
Pike, Morals and Dogma, pp. 79, 254, 461 ; Portal, Comparison of Egyptian Symbols with Those of the Hebrews (Vol. XXX, “Uni¬ versal Masonic Library”), p. 40.
156 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
the building was raised. Symbolising this, as we have so many other of the customs and tools of operative Ma¬ sons, we speculative Masons say that a Mason is raised on the Five Points of Fellowship.
The Five Points of Fellowship are symbolised by the Pentalpha, or five-pointed star. The connection of this geometrical figure with the art of building is not at once apparent, but recent researches show that it entered exten¬ sively into determining the plans of many of the splendid castles and cathedrals of mediaeval times. To this fact is probably due its introduction or retention among the symbols of our Speculative Craft.^®
This figure has, however, from very ancient times borne a moral signification also. Says a recent writer :
‘Tn the more esoteric philosophy, the symbol is used to designate man, and an examination of the shape of the figure will show that by a stretch of imagination it may be construed into a crude repre¬ sentation of a human figure.”
In this connection it is interesting to note that there exists in England a secret gild of operative Masons who have a ceremony wherein is represented the mock-assas¬ sination of one of its three Grand Masters. His body is said to be raised and borne out of the hall on the five points of fellowship in this wise — each of four seizing an arm or foot and a fifth under the middle of the body.
The Pentalpha with one of its points elevated, was a symbol of the pure and the virtuous and a harbinger of good, but with two of its points elevated it became the accursed Goat of Mendes, which typified Satan and fore¬ boded evil and misfortune.®^
Yarker, Arcane Schools, pp. ii8, 119.
20 “Tyler Keystone,” Oct. 5, 1909, p. 151.
Q. C., Vol. I, pp. 31, 57; Ibid., Vol. VIII, pp. 90, 105; Ashe, Masonic Manual, Argument IX.
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
157
In England, the Five Points of Fellowship are h. to h., f. to f., k. to k., b. to b. and h. over b.^^ It is well known that in the United States we substituted m. to e. for h. to h. Mackey thinks this change was made at the Baltimore Conference of Grand Lecturers in 1843, and we are persuaded that the English working is the ancient and correct one.
The winged foot has for ages been the symbol of swift¬ ness, the arm of strength, and the hand of fidelity. In the centre of the Pentalpha as employed by us is usually seen two hands clasped. This as we learned in the Entered Apprentice Degree is the ancient symbol of the god Fides.^^ It is an appropriate emblem of the fidelity and readiness to aid each other, which should characterise members of the Masonic Fraternity. Let it not be sup¬ posed that by assigning symbolical meanings to the per¬ sons and incidents of the legend of Hiram Abif, we thereby mean to deny its reality. We see no reason (and such seems to be the opinion of most students of Free¬ masonry) why this legend may not be based upon a sub¬ stratum of fact, as probably were those similar legends which characterised the Ancient Mysteries and those which are associated with the erection of other famous buildings. That it has undergone many alterations and been greatly overlaid with fiction is certain, but that it is founded wholly upon fable is not at all probable.
THE LOST WORD
We next come to consider one of the most abstruse con¬ ceptions in Freemasonry. The allegory of a search for a Lost Word is not a search for any particular word; in
22 “Lectures of the Three Degrees,” etc. (Lewis, 1896), pp. iii, 1 12.
23 Mackey, Symbolism of Freemasonry, p. 190 ; Pike, Morals and Dogma, p. 88.
158 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
fact it is not even a search for a word at all. The ex¬ pression “The Word” had significance to the Jews and other ancient races which is hard for us to comprehend. While not strictly accurate we shall not be far wrong in saying that to the ancient mind “The Word” signified all truth, particularly divine truth. To us the most striking and familiar passage in literature containing this expres¬ sion is that in St. John, as follows :
“In the beginning was the Word,
And the Word was with God,
And the Word was God.”
John does not here announce any new doctrine, but one that was perfectly familiar to the Jewish thought of his day; only his identification of Jesus of Nazareth with the Word was new. Nor was this expression or this idea by any means confined to the Jews; it belonged to nearly all ancient philosophy. Among the Greeks it was the Logos, a term derived from the Greek verb lego, to speak; the same root from which comes our word logic, the name of that science by which we determine moral truth.
That noble attribute of man, the power of articulate speech, whereby his wisdom and his most abstract thoughts are made known to his fellows, a power so far as we can see possessed by no other animal, must have in all ages greatly impressed the thoughtful mind. The spoken word seemed an instrument worthy to be em¬ ployed by Deity himself, not only in promulgating divine truth but even in creating all things that were created. According to the ancient idea. Deity was so omnipotent that he had but to speak and the thing was done ; he said “Let there be light” and there was light; and that with¬ out “The Word” was not anything made that was made.
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
159
Hence “The Word’’ under the development of philoso¬ phy, particularly that of Philo Judaeus, a contemporary of Jesus, became synonymous with every manifestation of divine power and truth, so that finally it was regarded as not only co-existent with but metaphorically as identical with Deity himself. This is clearly the meaning of St. John.
The Masonic search for “The Word,” therefore, sym¬ bolises the search for truth, particularly divine truth. The lesson here to us is to search diligently for the truth, never to permit prejudice, passion or interest to blind us, but to keep our minds always open to the reception of truth from whatever source, or however opposed to our preconceived notions it may be; and having seen it and received it, always to act agreeably to its dictates. Hence Masons everywhere are devoted to the doctrines of free¬ dom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom of action.
But we are also cautioned not vaingloriously to imagine that we ever here achieve all truth. The Master Mason is invested not with the True Word, but with a Substitute Word, implying that in this life we may know only in part, that we may approach, we may approximate truth, but that we never attain it in its perfection. This search will continue as long as this life lasts, but not until we shall have passed on to a higher state of existence will divine truth be disclosed to us in all its fulness and beauty. We may say here that this final disclosure is symbolised in the Royal Arch Degree.
The preservation of this extremely ancient conception of “The Word” is not without historic value also as indi¬ cating the great antiquity of Masonic Symbolism.^^
24 Pike, Morals and Dogma, pp. 204, 251, 254, 256, 259, 268, 269, 270, 27g, 281 ; Edersheim, Life of Jesus, pp. 46, 56 ; Mackey, Sym^ holism of Freemasonry, pp. 176, 216, 224, 226, 232,280, 298, 300.
160 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
THE MARBLE MONUMENT
Incidental to this legend of Hiram Abif are introduced certain other symbols. For example, the virgin weep¬ ing over the broken column, an urn in her left hand and a sprig of evergreen in her right, and an old man be¬ hind her dressing her hair. Masons are familiar with the explanation of this group given in our ritual, but we are persuaded that it is very superficial to say the least.
In the Egyptian Mysteries, as we have seen, Isis finds her husband’s body encased in a tamarisk or acacia tree, which the King of Byblos converts into a column. This column, still containing the body, is finally carried away and broken by Isis and the body released. We can readily imagine her weeping over this broken column. Apuleius (second century, A.D.) describes her as a “beautiful female, over whose divine neck her long thick hair hung in graceful ringlets,” and in a procession depicting her are shown female attendants following who are combing and dressing her hair.
The urn is an ancient sign of mourning. A small urn in which figuratively to catch the tears was worn by the mourners, especially widows. This explanation of the presence of the urn in this emblem, as a symbol of grief, better accords with our tradition as to the disposal of our Grand Master, as well as with history, than does that given in our Master’s lecture. We know that it was a well-nigh universal custom of the Jews as well as the Egyptians to bury and not to cremate their dead. Like¬ wise from ancient times it was common for the mourner to bear in the hand to the place of interment an ever¬ green sprig and there to deposit it in the grave as an avowal of belief in a life to come. It seems to me that in these ancient traditions and customs is to be found the
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE 16X
true origin of our Marble Monument and that this emblem signifies that, while we mourn for and cherish the memory of our dead, yet we believe that they shall live and that we shall see them again.
THE SETTING MAUL
The Setting Maul is a wooden instrument used in set¬ ting firmly into the wall the polished stone, and is one of those traditionally said to have been used at the build¬ ing of Solomon’s Temple. It would very properly be in the hands of the three Fellow Crafts, who are in the Third Degree reputed to have made a notable use of it just before the completion of the Temple. From that inci¬ dent it is employed among us as an emblem the meaning of which is known to every Master Mason.
It has, however, in different forms been employed as a symbol of destruction from prehistoric times. In Norse mythology, Thor, the god of Thunder, was represented as a powerful man armed with a mighty hammer, Miolnir (the smasher). Counterparts of this god and his for¬ midable weapon are found in many of the ancient religions and mythologies.
In the Cabiric Mysteries the seven gods who slew the eight were called “Paticii,” or wielders of the hammer.
THE ACACIA
It was a custom of the Jews to plant at the head of the grave an acacia sprig for the double purpose of intimat¬ ing their belief in immortality and of marking its loca¬ tion, as to tread on a grave was by them regarded as extremely unlucky. To them, therefore, the acacia was, as it is to us, an emblem of immortality and of innocence.
25 Pike, Morals and Dogma, pp. 17, 80, 378, 387.
162 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
The true acacia is the thorny tamarisk which abounds in Palestine, and we have seen that strangely enough in the legend of Osiris his dead body was said to have been cast ashore at the foot of a tamarisk or acacia tree, and that this circumstance led to its discovery. This tree, owing to its hard-wood quality, its evergreen nature and its exceeding tenacity of life bore to the Egyptian and Jew the same symbolical significance it does to us. Of its wood was constructed the tabernacle, the table for the shew-bread, the ark of the covenant and the rest of the sacred furni¬ ture of the Temple, and of its boughs was woven the crown of thorns that was placed upon the head of Jesus of Nazareth.
Each of the Ancient Mysteries possessed a sacred plant which was employed in their initiations and ceremonies for the same purpose and with the same symbolical sig¬ nificance as the acacia is by us. Among the Egyptians it was the Lotus, and the Erica, among the Greeks the Myrtle, and among the Scandinavians the Mistletoe. That a tree or plant had life-giving properties was an idea familiar to the Jews in the earliest times, as witness the Tree of Life mentioned in Genesis, and by New Testa¬ ment writers the immortality of man is likened to the re¬ currence of plant life. (I Cor. 15; John 12, 24.)/®
DEATH
Masonry, especially in the Third Degree, teaches us not to fear Death ; in the fulness of time when his approach is due, to welcome the grim tyrant as a kind messenger, or, as that great philosopher and Mason, Albert Pike, ex¬ presses it :
26^. Q, C., Vol. I, p. 57; Ibid., Vol. VI, pp. 9, 14; Mackey, En¬ cyclopedia of Freemasonry, p. 7; Mackey, Lexicon of Freemasonry, p. i6; “Masonic Magazine,” Vol. I, p. 126; Pike, Morals and Dogma, p. 82; Kenning, Cyclopedia of Freemasonry, p. 4.
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
163
‘‘The body is the gross representation, and as it were the temporary envelope of the Soul. The Soul can perceive by itself, and without the intervention of the bodily organs by means of its sensibility and lucidity, the things whether spiritual or corporeal, that exist in the Universe. There is no void in Nature; all is peopled. There is no real death in nature; all is living.”
“What we call death is change. The Supreme Reason being unchangeable is therefore irnperishable. Thoughts once uttered are eternal. Is the source or spring from which they flow less immortal than they ? Could the Universe, the uttered thought of God, con¬ tinue still to exist if he no longer were?
“The last victory any man can gain over death is to overcome the love of life, not through despair but through a loftier hope contained in Faith. To learn to overcome one’s self is to learn to live, and the austerities of Stoicism were not a vain ostentation of liberty. Every man who is prepared to die rather than abjure Truth and Justice truly lives for he is immortal in his soul. The object of all the ancient initiations was to find or form such men; and such is the object of Freemasonry. If thou art or canst become such an one thou wilt be worthy to be called Adept, and Knight of the Sun.
“Death is not for the Sage. It is a phantom which ignorance and weakness of the multitude make hor¬ rible. The spirit is not disengaged that it may live no longer. Can thought and love die when the basest matter does not? If change should be called death, we die and are born again every day; for every day our forms change. Let us fear then to go out from and rend our garments but let us not dread to lay them aside when the hour for rest comes.”
Nearly a thousand years ago, Omar Khayyam sang :
164 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
''Death's terrors spring from baseless fantasy, Death yields the tree of immortality."
William Cullen Bryant voices the usual Masonic view of Death in Thanatopsis:
"So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan which moves To that mysterious realm where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not like the quarry>slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon ; but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."
THE RESURRECTION
This is a cherished belief among Masons at least in the great majority of countries. Men are still asking, as in the days of Paul, "How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?" And men have been attempting an answer ever since, yea, for centuries before the days of Paul. These attempted answers have resulted in the following theories :
1. That all the particles of matter that have ever been in the body are brought together again ;
2. Only the particles present at death constitute the resurrection body ;
3. That certain more enduring parts are preserved, as an indestructible corporeal germ from which is made by divine power an organ of the soul adapted to its higher condition ;
4. That some of the particles of matter once consti¬ tuting remain and persist in the resurrection body, how¬ ever few;
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE 165
5. That there is a “vital germ” which preserves in a way not explained the identity of the two bodies ;
6. That a spiritual, ethereal, luminous body is evolved at the moment of death;
7. That the plastic, formative principle of life {anima, psyche) is continually gathering and -casting off the matter it needs for a body wherever it may be; the continuance of the vital principle constitutes identity; however, the particles of matter may change, as in a flowing stream; that in the case of Christ and those living at his second coming, the body then present supplies the material ; that in the case of the dead, the anima or psyche gathers in matter as it needs and makes the psychical body; that the fundamental “form” or principle of bodily organism, which here appropriates earthly materials, shall in the resurrection appropriate higher materials ;
8. That identity is in the spirit {nous), the rational, immortal principle which shows itself in the body which it occupies and stamps with its own personality; that identity in an inorganic body, as for example a stone, is in its substance and form, while in a person it rests in the consciousness; that the resurrection body is spiritual {soma pneumatikon) as opposed to the natural {soma psychikon) and that it is glorious, powerful, incorruptible and immortal.
Long before Christ, the Sadducees and the Pharisees were warring over this question. The greatest theologians have differed upon it. Such fathers of Christianity as Origen and Augustine changed their views upon it. Western Christians have tended toward belief in a resur¬ rection of the fleshly body; Eastern Christians towards a spiritual resurrection.^^
Masonry requires each individual Mason to form his own opinion on these matters. We catalogue them here 27 Universal Encyclopedia, “Resurrection.”
166 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
merely as a caution against the treacherous ground we encroach upon when we try to define the views of Free¬ masonry on this subject.
IMMORTALITY
While Masonry does not exact a declaration of a belief in immortality as a prerequisite to admission into the Fraternity, yet undoubtedly it does teach this doctrine by most impressive means. We shall not attempt ourselves to state the bases for this belief but there has recently fallen into our hands such a beautiful and powerful state¬ ment of the argument we are constrained to quote the following passage. It is from the pen of Charles Allen Dinsmore, professor of Scriptural Interpretation of Lit¬ erature in the Yale Divinity School. He says :
‘^Science can neither affirm nor deny immortality, but she has opened great spaces for this faith to live in. A man trained to our modern world-vision, gazing back over the long, toilsome, costly process from the fire mist up to man, and from primitive man to our present highly organised society, can not read¬ ily believe that he is contemplating the haphazard whirl of unintelligent forces, a riot of chance! Rather he detects an increasing purpose running through the ages, working toward man and the de¬ velopment of the race. Surely the unfolding purpose is prophetic of an outcome worthy of the process.
If materialism is right, and humanity returns to the dust from whence it came, and the earth is at last only a burnt-out cinder; if the struggle of the ages, the prayers of the holy, the sacrifices of martyrs, the devotion of the brave, ultimate in dust and ashes, then we are put to ‘permanent intellectual confusion.' The ages have toiled and brought forth nothing. The Eternal has blown a soap-bubble, and painted it with
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
167
wondrous colours at awful cost of agony to the iridescent figures, and then allowed it to burst ! The wisdom, the power, the sacrificial love, revealed in the long and orderly upward movement create the expec¬ tation that the culmination will be worthy of the cost.
“The contrast between science and religion is not a contrast between knowledge and belief, but between two different kinds of knowledge. Religion can use the word ‘know’ as legitimately as science. When we become aware of ourselves we are aware of a Power not ourselves. By co-operating with this Power we can develop characters of moral strength and spiritual beauty. Virtue and its transforming energies we know as well as we know any scientific fact, even better, for we have the sure test of daily experience. Experience warrants us in affirming that God is the Power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness. We take a step further. Power is an anthropomor¬ phic term, and so is personal spirit, but the latter is more significant; it represents higher worth. God can not be inferior to the highest symbol we use in interpreting Him. God can not be less than per¬ sonal; He may be infinitely more. By faith, there¬ fore, we think of Him as a living Spirit operating through the electric framework of the world. When we seek Him as the Father of our spirit in whom dwells all that we desire, we put this belief to the searching test of life. Thus, trusting and obeying, we meet with those responses which change faith into an assurance which often finds even the word ‘know* too feeble to express the experience.**
THE POT OF BURNING INCENSE
The Pot of Burning Incense was employed in Solomon*s Temple to produce a sweet savour in the Holy of Holies,
28 Religious Certitude in an Age of Science,
168 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
that is to say, according to the Jewish conceptions, in the actual presence of JHVH. It is not supposable that the intelligent Jew regarded this as other than symbolical of the offer of a pure heart as a sacrifice to the Deity. The bloody sacrifices of bullocks, lambs and goats, as well as the peace and sin offerings, were offered in less sacred precincts of the Temple and probably meant no more than to impress the. people that they should be ever gen¬ erous in dedicating their earthly wealth to the service of God and the hastening of His Kingdom, but the pure, immaterial offering of a delightful incense was to remind them that after all the only sacrifice worthy of Deity him¬ self was the spiritual and immaterial offering of a pure heart.
THE BEEHIVE
To the operative Mason could anything be more im¬ portant than industry? By it he lives, and by it were reared those dreams of architectural beauty which excite our wonder and please our fancy.
Is it any less necessary to the Speculative Mason in his work of building human character? Is it not far more so? The temple of human life is incomplete unless every talent and every virtue is brought to the highest possible state. A few years at most suffice to complete and adorn our greatest structures. If the builder die before it is finished, others can carry it on to completion after him. But the time allotted to no man was ever sufficient for the complete development of all the possibilities of his mind and character. If he die before the work is fin¬ ished, none can take it up and finish it for him. How important, therefore, is it that not a moment of our time, that most precious gift, should be wasted!
In all nature nothing is more constantly busy than the
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE 169
bee, and from ancient times it has been an emblem of industry. ^‘Busy as a bee’' has become an aphorism. A place of great industry we call a hive, and while I do not find it to have been employed in ancient symbolism, no symbol of labour could be more appropriate than a bee¬ hive. Strange to say, this symbol is now obsolete in England.
Masonry in every degree, and in none more than the Master Mason Degree, signifies labour. Its very name is synonymous with labour and its every implement remi¬ niscent of labour. Toil is noble, idleness dishonour. Deity himself is recorded as having worked and we see on every hand the Titanic results of his labour. He reared the mountains, he laid down the plains, he made the rivers and the seas ; the very smallest of these beyond the capabilities of millions of men. He deposited the rich ore in the bosom of the earth. He stocked the waters with fish and the land with an infinite variety of vegeta¬ tion and living animals both great and small. Finally he made man.
It is by a steadfast adherence to the homely virtues, industry, economy, honesty, morality, religion, love of liberty, friends and country, those sheet-anchors of any true civilisation, and its refusal to take up with every wind of doctrine that blows, that has enabled Freemasonry to maintain itself so firmly in the estimation of mankind. Its membership is larger and its influence greater than ever before.
SILENCE
The Book of Constitutions guarded by the Tyler’s sword may be as is claimed, a new emblem among us, but the virtue it commemorates, silence, is an old and excel¬ lent one. The disciples of many of the ancient philoso-
170 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
phers were required to practise absolute silence for long periods of probation, and so important was it deemed in their religious and philosophical systems that to it was allotted a special deity, Harpocrates, who was represented as full of eyes and ears, signifying that many things are to be seen and heard but little to be spoken.^®
THE ALL-SEEING EYE
The All-Seeing Eye is a very old symbol of Deity. The Egyptians represented Osiris, their chief god, by an open eye, which they placed in all his temples. The idea was also familiar to the Jews, for we read in Psalms (xxxiv, 15) that 'The eyes of Jehovah are upon the righteous,’' and (cxxi, 4) that "he that keepeth Israel shall neither sleep nor slumber.” In Proverbs (xv, 3) Solomon says "the eyes of Jehovah are in every place watching the evil and the good.” This symbol was to the Egyptians and the Jews the same that it is to us, the symbol of Deity manifested in his omnipresence. To us it is a warning that things we would not do before the eyes of men, yet do in secret, are nevertheless beheld by an eye that can explore our innermost thoughts and will witness against us before a tribunal where there are no perjured witnesses nor miscarriages of justice.®®
THE ANCHOR AND THE ARK
The Ark as a symbol in the Third Degree has been sup¬ posed by some to refer to the Jewish Ark of the Covenant, but others with more reason think it refers to the Ark of Noah. All the Ancient Mysteries seem to have contained
2® Lodge of Research “Masonic Reprints,” No. i, p. 42; Pike, Morals and Dogma, p. 106; U. M. L., Vol. X, Part I, p. 54.
A. Q. C., Vol. IV, p. 43; Kenning, Cyclopedia of Freemasonry, p. 18; Mackey, Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, p. 57.
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
171
allusions more or less clear to the Deluge and Noah^s Ark. There being so many other symbols common to Masonry and the Mysteries, it is not surprising to find the Ark also employed as a Masonic symbol. To the pre- Christian ages, the idea of a regeneration, or a new birth, was as familiar as it is to us. In the Ancient Mysteries, as we are best able to judge, the tradition of the Deluge and the Ark, by which the human race was reputed to have been both purified and perpetuated, was in a variety of forms employed to teach this doctrine of regenera¬ tion.
In the Funeral Ritual of the Egyptians, it is by means of the Ark, or boat, that the deceased passed to Aahlu or the place of the blessed in Amend. We are all familiar with the Grecian myth which represents Charon as ferrying the shades of the departed over the river Styx. Thus it is seen that the Ark has for ages been the symbol of the passage from this world to the next. We attach to it a very similar meaning; it symbolises to us that power or influence by which we are fitted for and raised to a higher state of existence in the life that is to come.®^
The Anchor does not seem to have belonged to ancient symbolism. Paul appears first to have employed it as an emblem of hope of immortality and bliss after this life (Heb. I, 19). Kip, in his Catacombs of Rome, says that the primitive Christians looked upon life as a stormy voyage and that of their safe arrival in port the anchor was a symbol. Mrs. Jameson says that the anchor is the Christian symbol of immovable firmness, hope and patience. Though apparently of Christian origin as a symbol, there is nothing narrow or sectarian in its sig¬ nificance, and it may with equal propriety be employed
31 A. Q. C., Vol. II, p. 24.
32 A. Q, C., Vol. I, p. 31 ; Mackey, Encyclopedia of Freemasonry^
p. 64.
172 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
by Jew and Gentile, as well as by all others who share in the belief of a peaceful place of abode hereafter for those who have made a proper use of this life.®^
In the symbol of the Anchor and Ark we, therefore, see again pressed upon our attention the doctrines of Deity, the Mediator, regeneration, resurrection and im¬ mortality.
THE FORTY-SEVENTH PROBLEM OF EUCLID
The Forty-Seventh Problem of Euclid is the earliest Masonic symbol we have on record; it appears as the frontispiece to Anderson^s Book of Constitutions, pub¬ lished at London in 1723, accompanied by the word Eureka in Greek characters. It will be understood that prior to this date only one book on Freemasonry had been printed, and not till three-quarters of a century later did our Monitors contain illustrations of the emblems and symbols. So it happens that the Forty-Seventh Problem is absolutely, so far as is known, the earliest illustration of a Masonic symbol on record.
In the text of the same book it is declared to be ‘‘if duly observed, the foundation of all Masonry, sacred, civil and military,” (p. 23) and in the second edition of this work (1738), he speaks of it as that “amazing proposi¬ tion which is the foundation of all Masonry, of whatever materials or dimensions” (p. 26). This figure is known by a variety of names. The Theorem of Pythagoras, the Theorem of the Bride, and the Theorem of the Three Squares. It was also known as the Gnomon, the Greek word for knowledge, and Plato in his Commonwealth, denominates it the “Nuptial Figure.” To our fathers in their school days, it was an object of dread, as the “Pons Assinorum,” or the Bridge of Asses.
83 Mackey, Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, p. 64.
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
173
The remarkable properties of the right-angled triangle are well known to those who have studied geometry. Astronomers also are acquainted with its value; with it they measure the universe. Its usefulness is understood by architects and builders. Even those mechanics who are so ignorant that they do not know that a figure whose three sides are to each other as 3, 4 and 5 is a right-angled triangle, yet are aware of its convenience in making corners of a building perfectly square. When they meas¬ ure three feet along one wall and four feet along the other, if five feet will exactly reach across, they know that the corner is square. These things were well under¬ stood by ancient and mediaeval operative Masons, and they constituted a part of their trade secrets.
But it is equally certain that to this beautiful triangle they ascribed moral and philosophical (not to say re¬ ligious) meanings which are now little understood by us.
Of this figure Brother George William Speth says “it is certain that, while our mediaeval brethren may have been familiar with its symbolic meaning, we are not.” We are now merely told in our Monitors that “it teaches Masons to be general lovers of the arts and sciences.” Perhaps this is true, but we are given no hint as to why or how it does so. The deeper meanings of this symbol are wholly lost except to those who have made it a special study. Much of it we fear is lost beyond the hope of recovery.
GEOMETRICAL FIGURES
It is a curious fact, the psychological reason for which is not known, that dimensions increasing by half {e.g., a rectangle 20x30, a solid 20x30x45), and the ratios of the base, perpendicular and hypotenuse of a right- sM. g. C., Vol. Ill, p.27.
174 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
angled triangle whose sides are as 3, 4, 5, are very pleas¬ ing to the eye. The equilateral triangle in ways not now fully understood seems also to enter into the dement of proportion in successful architecture.
Odd as it may appear that geometrical figures such as points, lines, superficies and solids, angles, triangles, squares and circles should be invested with such mean¬ ing, yet the fact is undoubted. The ancient moral phi¬ losophers attached what appears to us an inordinate im¬ portance to geometry and geometrical figures.
Plato, the greatest of philosophers, wrote four hundred years before Christ on the porch of his academy, “Let no one who is ignorant of geometry enter my doors.’’ He taught that God was “always geometrising,” and that “geometry rightly treated is the knowledge of the Eter¬ nal.” At his time, geometry was the only exact science ; hence quite naturally a knowledge of it was deemed in¬ dispensable to one in search of philosophical truth. To Pythagoras, all the ancient writers give credit for first having raised geometry to the rank of a science, and Proclus tells us that he “regarded its principles in a purely abstract manner and investigated his theorems from the immaterial and intellectual point of view.”
In short, “from the earliest times, the knowledge of geometry was looked upon not only as the foundation of all knowledge but even by the Greek philosophers as the very essence of their religion, the knowledge of God.”
Numerous echoes of this ancient veneration for geometry are preserved in Freemasonry, thus affording further evidence of its great age. But of all geometrical figures the right-angled triangle, or set-square, was most revered by the ancients. It has from extremely remote
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE 175
ages and among extremely remote peoples borne profound moral significations.
Confucius, the great Chinese teacher, tells us (481 B.C.) that not till he was seventy -five years old ‘'could he venture to follow the inclination of his heart without fear of transgressing the limits of the square.’’
In a Chinese book written between 500 B.C. and 300 B.C., called The Great Learning we are told that a man should not do unto another what he would not should be done to himself; “and this,” it is there said, “is called the principle of acting upon the square.”
It is, to say the least, a strange coincidence that the Greek word for square, “gnomon,” also means knowledge and that the initial of this word, the Greek letter gamma is a perfect set-square. As said by Brother Sidney T. Klein, a distinguished Mason and architect of England, to the ancients “geometry was the foundation of knowl¬ edge and gnomon was the knowledge of the square.”
In the symbolical writings of the Egyptians thousands of years ago, the square or right-angled triangle was the standard and symbol of perfection ; it was also the symbol of life.^^
The ancients taught a very peculiar philosophy. Ac¬ cording to their ideas. Nature was tripartite, masculine, feminine, and offspring. This conception was applied in an endless variety of ways. The sun was regarded as masculine or active; the moon as feminine or passive; and Mercury as the offspring. So the ancient Egyptian Trinity consisted of Osiris the father, Isis the mother, and Her-ra, or Ilorus, the son. To represent this con¬ ception of Deity they employed a right-angled triangle whose sides were in the proportion of 3, 4 and 5, wherein the shortest side, 3, represented Osiris, 4 represented Isis,
38^. Q, C., Vol. XIV, p. 30. Q. C., Vol. X, pp. 84, 92.
39 Ibid., p. 31. Ihid., p. 93.
176 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
and 5, the resulting hypotenuse, represented Her-ra, the son, or the result of the union of the male and the female. This figure, therefore, became an emblem of life.
But as it also represented Nature, and as they were wise enough to see that Nature uninterfered with was perfect, this figure became the recognised symbol of per¬ fection.
This implement so useful among operative Masons in testing the perfection of the work was, therefore, appro¬ priately adopted by them as symbolical of that perfection which should mark the temple of human character. This symbolical square is the instrument by which all mental, moral and religious conduct is tested.
THE HOUR GLASS
Rev. A. F. A. Woodford, a distinguished Masonic scholar of England, expressed the opinion that the Hour Glass is not, strictly speaking, a Masonic symbol. This is probably based upon the fact that evidence is wanting of its ancient employment as a symbol. The antiquity of its use as a measure of time is, however, undoubted, and it is a most fit emblem of the flight of time and of wast¬ ing away of our lives. If it is a recent acquisition to our ritual, we shall not quarrel with the Monitor maker who introduced it.^^
THE SCYTHE
In ancient symbolism, the scythe was one of the attri¬ butes of Saturn because he was reputed to have taught men agriculture. But Saturn was also the god of Time, and, as by another ancient myth human life was said to be a brittle thread spun by the three Fates, it is natural that this peaceful implement of agriculture should be-
42 Kenning, Cyclopedia of Freemasonry, p. 318.
THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
177
come the symbol of the power that severs the slender thread and puts an end to our existence."*^
THE COFFIN
To US the coffin is an obvious emblem of death, but it has sometimes been claimed that it would not be so to the Jews, who anciently buried their dead in shrouds and winding sheets only. But in the Ancient Mysteries of those peoples surrounding the Jews the candidate was placed in a coffin or chest as a symbolical representation of death. This custom, as well as the use by Egyptians of the coffin for burial, was undoubtedly well known to the Jews whether they practised it or not.
The ancient symbolism of the coffin seems to have been intimately connected with that of the Ark. In fact in Hebrew the word aron denoted both. But the subject is too recondite to be entered upon further at this time.**
!
CONCLUSION
Some have questioned whether those engaged in the operative art of building could comprehend such abstruse symbolism as that we have herein attempted to outline. Whether they understood it or not, it is certain that they, at least those of them engaged in temple and church build¬ ing, employed it. The important structures devoted to purposes of worship, from the most ancient period through mediaeval to modern times, abound in symbolism. It is doubtless true that many of these operative work¬ men did not know the meaning of their own symbols, just as many Speculative Masons do not now know them. But we must bear in mind that operative Masonry in
Mackey, Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, p. 700.
Q. C., Vol. I, p. 31; Mackey, Encyclopedia of Freemasonry,
pp. 64, 171.
178 SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
ancient and mediaeval times did embrace classes that well may be supposed to have understood them. They were in the closest association with the priestly and monastic orders to whom we are indebted for most of the learning of the ancients which has come down to us. Architecture and its kindred sciences were until comparatively recent times the most honourable of all callings.
Brother Albert Pike claims that “during the splendour of mediaeval operative Masonry the art of building stood above all other arts, and made all others subservient to it ; that it commanded the services of the most brilliant in¬ tellects and of the greatest artists.”
It must be admitted that men like these were capable of appreciating and preserving the most refined symbol¬ ism. Brother Pike further declares that they “revelled in symbolism of the most recondite kind ; that geometry was the handmaid of symbolism; that it may be said that sym¬ bolism is speculative geometry.”
Brother Gould has admitted his belief that the Masons of the fourteenth century, or earlier, were capable of understanding and did understand to a greater extent than ourselves the meaning of a great part of the symbolism which has descended from ancient to Modern Masonry.
In conclusion, permit us to say, that for every state¬ ment herein contained there is respectable Masonic au¬ thority. It is not claimed, however, that on none of these questions is there difference of opinion. Where this is the case, we have been compelled simply to adopt that view which appeared most reasonable, and did not have time always to state the different views and the reasons for each. This each student must do for himself. Our expectation has not been to accomplish more than to arouse in some, if not all, of you, a curiosity to learn more of our beautiful and instructive symbolism.
A. Q. C.f Vol. Ill, p. 15. Ibid., p. 16.
APPENDIX
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Appendix
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION