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"A beautiful system of morality, veiled in allegory
and illustrated by symbols" has become so much a part
of imaginative and the so-called "inspirational
speaking" of Freemasonry that it is largely
unquestioned.
"A" system of morality, seems to connote that
there are many such systems; all admissible. Actually,
each of the world's great religions
has only one system of morality and
"illustrates" it by its own symbols. The most
familiar in our word is Christianity. Its decalog, its
cross, its ecclesiastical architecture, all express but
one system of morality.
But what does "illustrated by symbols" really
mean?
In daily life, symbols are so familiar to us all that we
seldom or never think of them as such. Still less do we
think of them as matters which can be classified.
Yet in Masonry, classification should be accepted by any
man who would find in his Ancient Craft anything beyond a
mere society
to which he can belong with pride because the other fellow
thinks well of it.
Symbols may mean one thing, and only one thing; they may
mean two things and only two things; or they mean many
things: thus a
symbol may stand for an idea, some particular thing or a
generality.
As you read this you sit in a chair. It is a particular
chair, your chair. Does the word "chair" mean to
you any chair at all (a generality) ; does it mean the one
chair in which you sit (the particular chair) or does it
mean just the idea of a chair-that is, something on which
to sit which may be stone, bench, the ground, curbstone,
fallen tree or
whatever?
The most familiar symbol of everyday life may be a dollar
bill. We think of it as something we can exchange for some
loaves of bread, a pound of butter, a pair of socks, four
packs of cigarettes, three or four gallons of gas.
Actually it is a symbol that in the Treasury of the United
States is deposited a silver dollar. The green engraved
piece of paper is of no value in itself, only for what it
represents-which is true of most symbols.
The uncancelled postage stamp is a symbol that three cents
have been paid to the government, the government agreeing,
for that
payment, to transmit one ounce of letter from hither to
yon. Except for collectors, the stamp has no other value
(omitted from consideration here that stamps are
occasionally used in place of pennies for small commercial
transactions.)
No one thinks of a dollar bill as a symbol of a religion,
a philosophy, a system of morality. Dollar bills and
postage stamps are symbols which mean only one thing each,
and they mean that one thing each no matter where they
are; in your pocket, in a bank, in an office stamp
box.
A few Masonic symbols are in that class; meaning only one
thing, no matter where they are. Most Masonic symbols
require a place, an
association, a particular application, to speak their
Masonic language.
The Bible on the Altar of a Masonic lodge is a symbol of
the Volume of the Sacred Law; to a well-informed Mason it
means any book of
any religion which is revealed in printed characters on a
page. In lodges in the Far East, the book on the Altar may
be a Koran,
the Vedas, the Talmud, the Analects of Confucius; perhaps
even Egypt's Book of the Dead, if that is desired by an
initiate. The
Bible on the Altar means the books or any of them only on
a Masonic Altar-never elsewhere.
The Square and Compasses, however, mean Freemasonry
wherever they may be found together; on the Altar, on a
ring on your finger, painted as a sign on the side of a
Temple in any town.
Letters are symbols of sounds. The letter X is a symbol of
the sound EKS. It is also the Roman numeral signifying
ten; in mathematics
it signifies any unknown quantity. Thus it means different
things in different places. The school boy struggling with
algebra does
not think of X as meaning ten or a part of the word extra,
or example; to him it means a number he must find. If on
the title page of a book you read "Published MCMX"
you understand the book was printed in 1910; the X here is
not EKS, nor is it a number to be found by algebraic
calculation. The meaning depends here on the location, and
the use.
The letter G in Masonry depends on its place and use in a
lodge for its Masonic meaning. It has two sounds; hard, as
in "great" soft, as in "gesture." The
pronunciation of the letter, as a letter is always soft -
we speak the letter "Jee." In a Masonic lodge
the "letter G" is not a letter, but a symbol for
two conceptions; one is geometry, the other God.
Geometry is man-made, can be understood by any intelligent
high school student, is concerned with measurement,
angles, lines and
problems. It has no mystery for the initiated. In Masonry
geometry is a symbol of all mathematical learning; G as a
symbol of that subject is of a comprehensible matter.
When G is used as a symbol of God, however, it becomes
fraught with a different meaning. The human mind can
neither conceive nor
understand infinity; that which is unlimited except as an
abstraction. The figures 1,000,000,000,000 and
10,000,000,000,000 mean nothing different to the mind,
except that one is larger than the other. Ten raised to
the tenth power (10 ^10) or the eleventh power (10^11),
looks the same, means the same, to any mind. We can look
at a square or a hexagon and see the difference, but not
the difference between a figure with one thousand, and one
of one thousand and one sides. X in algebra may stand for
any number of any size; G in Masonry, considered as
meaning God, stands for an idea of such size and extent as
to be inconceivable. Thus used, the letter G means an idea
too great for the human mind to comprehend.
An act may be a symbol; removing the hat on the street
when greeting a friend, for instance, is a symbol of
friendship. Knights
of old removed their helmets in the presence of friends to
show they feared no blow. The clasping of hands on meeting
or parting is a
symbol of friendship; bare hands were extended by ancient
warriors to show they held no daggers. In Masonry the
clasped hands
represent fidelity, but the hands clasped in the special
way known only to Masons signify mutual knowledge, mutual
obligation, mutual
brotherhood. Here, again, the place and the purpose of the
act determine the meaning of the symbol.
You drop your collar button, which rolls under your
dressing table. You get upon your knees to hunt for it.
There is nothing symbolic in the act. You may kneel to
weed your garden; it is not a symbolic act. When, however,
in the privacy of your bedroom you kneel to make petition
to Deity, the act is symbolic of reverence and belief. As
any one may kneel for prayer anywhere - bedside, living
room, church, lodge, the public street if he will - it is
the purpose, not the place, which makes the kneeling
posture a symbol.
A symbol is meaningful only to those to whom it carries a
message. Your child may find the Masonic apron you wore
home from lodge in
forgetfulness and tie it about his waist. It is not to him
a symbol. The carpenter who wears an apron does so, as did
the original stone Masons, to protect his clothing and his
body, to carry his tools. The carpenter of today wears an
apron as part of his job. The Mason puts on an apron
before entering lodge as a symbol of many conceptions; his
duties as a Mason, his membership in a fraternity,
his badge of acceptance as such by his fellows. The
janitor of a Masonic temple, not a Mason, might put on an
apron and sit in a
lodge room; the apron to him could only be a piece of
play-acting, not a symbol.
To every American citizen, the stars and stripes are a
symbol of home, liberty, government, freedom, opportunity,
"my land."
Anywhere, any time, in any place, the flag has the same
meanings for all citizens. A flag is made of blue bunting,
and white bunting, and red bunting. The red and the white
are in long strips, the blue is an oblong. The white is
also in forty-eight five pointed stars.
To the seamstress putting these parts together, cloth
becomes only a finished job, not a symbol, when the last
stitch is in. At what time does the cloth of a flag become
a symbol? Obviously, not until it is used. A store room
may hold a thousand flags, all wrapped in paper and ready
for removal to other places. No one entering a store room
with a thousand wrapped flags would think of standing at
the sign of fidelity, remove his hat, repeat the pledge of
allegiance, have a
cold chill of pride and joy and patriotism crawl up and
down his spine. In the warehouse, the flags are just sewed
up pieces of cloth in bundles. They become symbols when
used as symbols and not before; when on staffs, waved in
parades, flown from windows or flag staffs, carried in
battle, in the east of a Masonic hall or lodge.
Five men erected a flag staff and flag on Iwo Jima. A
photographer made a marvelous picture. Now a great and
beautiful statue has
been made and erected near Washington, showing the men,
the pose, the flag. Men stand before it and remove their
hats. Women
look at it and wipe tears from their eyes. It stands for
bravery, and right, and courage, and the beauty of
self-sacrifice. It is history in bronze which makes the
statue a symbol; it is ritual in metal, and the ritual is
the ritual of the flag; the ritual of belief in the
American ideal, the American way of life.
The first "flag" was probably a stick or pole
raised aloft that members of one tribe of warriors might
know where their fellows were. Sticks developed into flags
and flags into heraldry and designs upon shields but all
meant the same in intent - this is my tribe, my race, my
regiment, my country, my people." Here it is the
"my" which is important, the possession which
makes the symbol have meaning.
Symbols, Masonic or secular, are sometimes abused: by
misreading and by confusing the symbol with the thing
symbolized.
To most people dollars are representatives of work done,
of power to purchase, of food, clothing, daily living,
savings, security. The miser likes dollars as dollars. His
hidden hoard, in teapot or trunk, to be taken out after
dark and behind locked doors and gloated over, confuses
the thing with the thing symbolized. Dollars not spent but
saved in a bank may spell security; invested, may bring in
income. Dollars hoarded as dollars are of no value except
to the hoarder and
only to him because they are misread.
In Freemasonry, the most commonly misread and therefore
most abused symbol is ritual. There are ritualists to whom
ritual is the be-all and end-all of Masonry. To these, to
know ritual is to know Masonry; to make a mistake in
ritual is to commit a Masonic offense. The same error is
made by those to whom the literal Bible is religion. To
think of the story of Jonah and the whale as anything but
literal fact is a sin. To consider the story of the flood
or the Garden of Eden as an allegory is wicked. Take it as
literal fact or your are blasphemous! Here these symbols
are misread.
Ritual is no more Freemasonry than the bones of the body
are a human being. Ritual is a skeleton on which the flesh
and spirit of
Freemasonry are imposed. The Bible is no more religion
than is a grove of trees a church. The grove of trees may
become a church, if in its shade devout men and women
kneel to pray; the Bible becomes a part of religion when
it is so read, but neither words nor trees make worship,
which is from the spirit. All the ritual in all Masonic
degrees will not make a man a Mason, and a man may be an
excellent Mason and know no word of ritual. Ritual becomes
Masonry, the Bible becomes religion, only when it is
clothed with the spirit.
A common abuse of symbolism is to a right meaning into the
wrong thing.
Masonry admits the "symbol of the symbol";
electric lights for candles, for instance, which do NOT
consume themselves as they give light; a handkerchief has
played the part of a Masonic apron more than once when
there were not enough aprons to go around. But the
intelligent Freemason does not admit a symbolic
interpretation of that which was intended otherwise; for
instance, those who try to read symbols of abstract
meaning into the squares and triangles of the familiar
cloth apron with triangular flap, are but
stretching their imaginations. Ancient aprons were skins,
shapeless. Then they became hand-worked; long, with
rounded edges. Finally,
convention provided the familiar apron of today, which is
a manufacturer's answer to the most apron for the least
cloth and the
least manufacturing expense. Its size, shape, angles, flap
are not symbols, merely facts.
The greatest possession any American has is completely
intangible: his citizenship. We who proudly say "I am
an American citizen"
have no papers to prove it; it is not a thing to be held
in the hand and seen by the eye. It has no weight, size or
shape; it cannot be
bought or sold or given away, although it can be
forfeited. American citizenship is an idea, an ideal as
ethereal as a sunbeam, yet so valuable it is invaluable
(like a Gutenberg Bible or the Crown jewels)!
Freemasonry's greatest symbol is in the same class;
completely intangible. It is the search for that which was
lost; the Lost Word; the Royal Secret of the Scottish
Rite; the true word; the ultimate truth of the unseen
reality of which the world we know is but the shadow.
Few who possess it think often of their citizenship; it is
so much a part of us all that we forget it, like the air
we breathe, the gravity which holds us to the earth, the
sunlight which gives us life. Only when we risk it, and
perhaps, forfeit it, do we think of it.
Doubtless a majority of Masons think of the search but
seldom, yet none may witness a Master Mason Degree and not
be conscious of
it. When all Masons value it and understand it, as all
citizens should value and understand their citizenship,
the millenium will have come to the Ancient Craft.
These few pages will have value only as those who read
them may apply the principles here outlined to such
reading of Masonic symbols as they may attempt. All
Freemasons, presumably, can read. Some men
"read" only comic strips and sporting news;
others read learned books.
All Freemasons have symbolism before them in any lodge.
Some see an Altar as a table on which is a book; others,
as a focus of
brotherly love and a sanctum sanctorum before which to
worship.
He who studies books, learns.
He who considers his symbolism intelligently, becomes the
happier Mason.
For centuries had Freemasonry existed ere modern political
controversies were ever heard of, and when the topics
which now agitate society were not known, but were all
united in brotherhood and affection. I know the
institution to be founded on the great principles of
charity, philanthropy and brotherly love. BULWER.
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