THE PILLARS

Two pillars stand in the West in the majority of our lodge rooms and are referred to in the Senior Warden's explanation of the Tracing Board in the Fellowcraft Degree. Names are given to the pillars, which are said to have been placed at the porchway or entrance to King Solomon's Temple. The candidates are told that they were made of bronze and cast on the plain of Zeradatha and that they were hollow. The pillars are usually surmounted with globes. A number of masons wonder how in the days when the earth was thought to be flat, King Solomon had the insight to place globes on the top of the two pillars. It is interesting to note that in the 1700's both wardens sat in the West facing the Worshipful Master and the two pillars were placed near them to form an entrance way. Candidates passed between the pillars on their admission to the craft. This practice can be traced back to a text that was written in 1696 and called the Edinburgh Register House Manuscript, which records the examination of the candiate –

 Question - Where was the first Lodge?

 Answer - In the porch of King Solomon's Temple.

 Thus when the candidate was led before the two wardens in the West and in order to approach them had to go between the two great pillars he was, symbolically, entering the porch of King Solomon's Temple, where the legend says the first lodge was held.

Why is it necessary to indicate that the pillars were formed hollow? As an actual matter of fact they were necessarily made hollow in order that they could be transported from the plain of Zeradatha where they were cast in the place of their erection in Jerusalem. Otherwise the engineering problems would have been immense. The biblical account of their casting makes no mention of them being hollow, but Jeremiah 52:21 states that they were formed hollow, the metal being cast to a thickness of "four fingers.” It is typical of Masonic Legendry that some significance, other that engineering, be placed on the fact that the pillars were hollow. So it is that the Dumphries No. 3 Manuscript, which was written about 1710, records in the Catechism of the Apprentice some questions concerning the Temple. This is one of the questions –

Question - Where was the noble art or science found when it was lost?

Answer - It was found in the two pillars of stone the one would not sink and the other would not burn.

The obvious conclusion is that the pillars were formed hollow so that the Masons might use them as a type of archives in order that the Masonic records might be preserved despite fire and water.

Peculiarly enough this conception of the hollow pillars being used for storage purposes drives us further back into antiquity. There is an old manuscript, which was written about 1410, called the Cooke Manuscript, which takes us back to the time of Noah and the Flood. Lamech had two sons by one wife and a son and a daughter by another. These children were the founders of all the Crafts in the world. Jabell established Geometry, Jubell originated Music, Tuballcain the crafts of the Smiths and the sister discovered waving. Very cleverly they knew that God was about to take vengeance upon the world for its sin and would destroy it either by fire or water, so they decided to erect two hollow pillars and place in them records of all the sciences they knew. One pillar was constructed of marble because it would not burn by fire and the other was made of a material called Lateras because it could not be destroyed by water. Thus early Masons preserved knowledge for posterity.

The decoration of the pillars has always presented problems. In 1 Kings 7:16 the record says "and he made two chapiters" which really means many crowns, but later on in verse 41 it speaks of "two pillars and two bowls of the chapiter.” This has resulted in a composite construction in which there are chapiters, that is the decorative crowns, which are surmounted with spheres. Actually the globes, which completed the pillars in our Lodge rooms did not come into uniform use until towards the close of the eighteenth century. Previous to that there were a variety of tops on the pillars.

Author unknown; Published in GRAND LODGE BULLETIN G.R.A.; October, 1969.