Enciclopédia Mackey – SPECULATIVE ~ SYNOD

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FREEMASONRY AND ITS KINDRED SCIENCES
by ALBERT C. MACKEY M. D. lodge

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SPECULATIVE MASONRY, EARLY lodge

The Masonic Fraternity writes its own history as it goes along in the form of Minutes and Proceedings. Unfortunately, it is not an easy history to read, nor convenient, nor is it furnished with an index, but it is a better and more reliable chronicle of the Craft than any work written by the historians. Below is a summary drawn from some 200 Minute Books and Lodge Histories of the oldest Lodges in Britain, Canada, and the United States; of these, about 60 are of the very earliest Speculative Lodges, of which one-half or so are long since defunct, or else have been merged with other Lodges.

The items are chosen to illustrate some point important to the history of the Fraternity; and to save space, names, numbers, and dates are omitted; also, the data are representative, not exhaustive; scarcely any two of the earliest Lodges were alike in the details of Lodge practice, and the same Lodge made changes in itself from time to time. The summary is not so much a portrait of early Speculative Freemasonry as a photo montage:

The majority of Lodges were very small; one of Sixty members was excessively large, almost too large to be managed; the majority had some fifteen or twenty members. Meetings with only six or seven members present were common.

During the Eighteenth Century and well into the Nineteenth they met in taverns inns hotels. Since the room was in use for other purposes, Lodge furniture was either the property of the landlord, or else had to be packed up and stored away between meetings. The arrangement was almost never satisfactory, and Lodges moved much about—one of them made twelve removals in ten years. It did the Fraternity no good to hold its meetings at the centers of hard drinking. Sometimes a ” wine drawer ” or waiter, or even the landlord, were ‘made” expressly to enable him to enter and leave the Lodge Room while the Lodge was in session.

Lodges went by the name of the tavern in which they met—thus ” the Lodge at the Goose and Gridiron, ” the Lodge at ” the Goat’s Head, ” etc. They were thus entered on the Grand Lodge’s engraved lists of Lodges. They were not numbered until Dr. Thomas Dunckerley made the suggestion (he ranked with Desaguliers, Preston and Dermott as an architect of the Fraternity).

In the center of the Lodge Room was placed a table, usually of the board and trestle type. The Lodge was opened with the members at table; Lodge business was conducted there; initiations were “made”; the Brethren ate and drank together for hours on end, the feasting being not an adjunct to Lodge business but as an integral part of it.

A Lodge “feast” was therefore a Lodge meeting, and when the old Lodges insisted that Grand Lodge “Quarterly Feasts ” be restored, it was in reality a demand that full Grand Lodge meetings be held, “as according to the old customs. ” The meals in the richer Lodges sometimes were elaborate and costly, with a dozen liquors, and a long list of ” healths. ” In one instance the Secretary of a rich Lodge set down one “feast,” for 51 members, at a sum now worth about 8500. Many Lodges owned their own punch bowls, plate, glasses, pitchers; a few of them had their own wine cellars.

Dues were caned “subscriptions”; most of the money went to pay for the dinners. The charity fund usually was voluntary, a Charity Box being kept at hand. Fines were imposed right and left, for non-attendance, for “being disguised in liquor, ” for quarreling, for “profane swearing, ” etc. Visitors were ” fined ” a dollar or two as their share of the costs of the food and drink. The title of the Master was ” Right Worshipful. ” He was elected for six months, and in some instances appointed his own Wardens.

Only a few Secretaries received stipends, and almost none of them had any regular system of books, so that there was frequent trouble over Lodge accounts (The Grand Lodge of Scotland expelled a Grand Secretary for that reason.) The Tiler wore a sword or a ” poignard, ” and received pay- he was a “servant” and seldom belonged to the same “class” as the members. He had many duties: to stand guard, to examine visitors, to deliver summons, to care for the furniture, etc.; the office was sometimes held in succession from father to son in the same family. (Montgomery, a famous Grand Tiler, became a personage almost as well known as the Grand Masters.) In at least one ease a Brother made a profession of being Lodge Secretary to a group of Lodges; Tilers often did.

Minutes were bare, brief, and never of large importance in the early years. For decades they were not countersigned by the Master. The Secretary kept his records ” in ye bag,” and either took the bag home with him, or stowed it in the bottom of a pedestal. Spelling went by ear, and a Secretary spelled words as they chanced to sound to him at the moment; in more than one Minutes the Master’s name was spelled three ways in one entry.

Thus, one encounters apprentice as prentice, interprentice, prentiss, prentayee, etc. (The language was not pronounced then as now; thus, tea was pronounced to rhyme with ” tay, ” as one recalls from a couplet by Bro. Alexander Pope.) Minutes were meager because Secretaries did as little work as possible; or were afraid of violating secrecy; or as a protection from prying eyes when they kept the bag at home.

Candidates, it appears, wore robes, for there is often mention of the purchase of them in Lodge inventories or minuses; sometimes “trousies,” or “drawers” are mentioned. (Present day British Masons have weird notions about American customs. Even a learned Lodge of research was recently told that ” in the States Candidates go naked!”)

The average early British Lodge was as local as it was small. and knew little about the Fraternity at large, still less about foreign countries To many of them “America” meant the West Indies. This lack of knowledge made them an easy prey to ” foreigner ” impostors. A number of Minute Books record relief being given to “Turks” who turned out to be frauds, to French counts, ditto, and to men coming over as ” rich Americans “—the “rich American” myth is even now still alive in some British centers; a “Turk” was almost any dark-skinned foreigner.

The great majority of members were Fellowcrafts only. In one ease a Worshipful Master was an Apprentice. The two grades often were conferred at one time, in “emergency meetings.” The Master Mason grade was at first given in Masters’ Lodges, and was confined, it appears, to Masters or Past Masters only (actual or virtual.)

The oldest Lodges, such as constituted the first Grand Lodge in 1717, were familiar with the rites and customs; but after Lodges of ‘new men” had multiplied by the hundreds, the Masons themselves had only a rudimentary understanding of Freemasonry, and made many experiments, changes, etc., trying out first one thing and then another. (One Lodge might use a Bible on the altar, another would use the Old Charges on a pedestal.)

The Lodges of Speculatives under the Grand Lodge with their two Degrees (and later, their Third) were only one of many developments which came out of the old Operative Masonry; there was a Right Worshipful Society of Operative Masons; Masons’ Companies in the cities; there were many self-constituted (St. Johns’) Lodges which were regular but did not belong to a Grand Lodge; in North Ireland there were many individual Masons who sometimes called themselves ” clandestines ” and who had no Lodges or only loose and temporary ones; there were many ” high grades, ” or ” side orders ” (sued as the “Seoteh Masons” who appear then disappear in English Lodge Minutes), etc.; that this was confusing to Chartered Lodges is exhibited by almost every Minute Book, and it took nearly a century to clear up and crystallize and unify a single system of Regular Masonry.

If Masons quarreled outside the Lodge, if one of them accused another of some dishonest practices they often brought the quarrel into the Lodge for adjudication. (This occurrence of private non-Lodge affairs is another reason for the brevity of the Minutes.)

Lodges (except in and about London) had little consciousness of Grand Lodge. or interest in it, and the Grand Lodge itself appears to have had even less interest in the Lodges because it was almost impossible oftentimes for a Lodge to secure a reply from the Grand Secretary. After a Provincial Grand Lodge was established, a Lodge was given to thinking of it, rather than “the London Grand Lodge,” as “Grand Lodge.”

Also, Lodges were not encouraged to submit their grievances to Grand Lodge; still less were they encouraged ever to question any act of Grand Lodge—one Lodge was rebuked for doing so by the Grand Secretary who told them they had ” insulted H. R. H. the Grand Master.” The Wigan secessionist Grand Lodge was formed partly in consequence of the almost complete inactivity of both Grand Lodge and a Provincial Grand Lodge for nearly four years.

An American Mason is always very conscious of “the Fraternity”; even when he has his own Lodge in mind he refers to it as “the Fraternity”; Masons 501) years ago had only a thin awareness of “the Fraternity” and their interest was almost solely concentrated in the local Lodge. But as against the present day Mason, with his dim consciousness of his own Lodge, a Mason 200 years ago loved his Lodge next only after his home. He filled it up with gifts—silverware, glassware, pictures, furniture, paraphernalia, books, etc., until many old Lodges had scarcely a square yard of bare wall, and a very rich atmosphere of family feeling, of an intimate friendliness, and of Brethren gone but who had left many mementos in the Lodge Room.

Piecing together scattered hints it appears that a “Degree” followed in the main the same pattern as now, but with less of it enacted (wherein American Masonry still differs most from British). The Candidate was prepared; he took an OB–; a Tracing Board (or floor Cloth, or the “Lodge”) contained the symbols of the Degree and these were explained.

It was only gradually that Degrees became in a strict sense “degrees,” or separate ceremonies, each one complete in itself, and with its own members and officers, with the Lodge not permitted to alter the ceremonies, and with Lodges everywhere using the same ceremonies.

The earliest Speculatives spoke not of the “Degree” of Apprentice (etc.) but of the Lodge of Apprentices. To become a full-fledged member of the circle, was the principal aim of initiation; the ceremonies were a means to that end. A new movement began, and was destined to become triumphant, especially in America, when Preston and Hutchinson and a few others began to study the Ritual for its own sake.

Any Mason could belong to more than one Lodge— in one Lodge record a member is listed as belonging to thirteen. The smallness of Lodges was partly responsible. As “class Lodges” became a rule, each with a specialized membership and interests, a new incentive to plural membership came into play. But the greatest incentive was the simple one, that many Masons enjoyed Lodge life for its own sake.

The Minute Books and Lodge Histories leave the history of the Master Mason Degree as unsettled as ever, not because these contradict each other but because for nearly a century there was no uniform rule. Some of the oldest (Time Immemorial) Lodges appear to have kept firm hold on the whole of ceremony. Some had the Master’s Degree separate from the other two (a Candidate was “made” a Fellowcraft) but kept it under Lodge control.

There were Masters’ Lodges, with their own rooms, officers, and meeting times; to them would go members from a number of surrounding Lodges. In some Lodges it looks as if any member could become a Master Mason; in others, only Masters or Past Masters; and in the latter, some had to be actual Past Masters, some could be “virtual” Past Masters by “passing the chair.” The general tendency seems to have been to look upon the Grand Master as sovereign over the Craft, with Grand Lodge in a secondary role; which was in contrast to the present American tendency (in reality the Grand Master and the Grand Lodge have equal sovereignty but in different fields).

Since a Grand Master was a Prince of the Blood, a Duke, an Earl, etc., the prerogatives which belonged to his person remained with him in the Grand East; in consequence a deal of snobbishness and exclusiveness developed among the Lodges, titles and ranks were over-valued, and this exclusiveness was (the writer so takes it) the principal reason for the division of England between two Grand Lodges; such a Mason as Peter Gilkes refused to accept Grand Honors or to attend Grand Lodge because the gentlemen there were “above his station.” This was not true of the Ancient Grand Lodge, or of Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and the American Colonies.

The oldest American Minute Books could almost be interchanged with the oldest British, so alike were the customs of the two until the end of the Revolution.

There were, however, two fundamental differences in the Craft in general; first, Lodges of English, Scottish, Irish, and French origin worked here side by side, and this made more puzzling the questions the earliest American Masons were called upon to decide; second, the American Provincial Grand Lodges were left hanging in the air, because they could not obtain continuous cooperation or supervision from Britain, and at the same time did not possess complete sovereignty; expediency became the general rule. Also, the American Lodges could not obtain light on Masonry itself, because it had no teaching from Grand Lodge and no literature of its own.

(Note. One instance is that of Thomas Smith Webb, who had to move in the dark, and who adopted Preston with no clear knowledge of Preston’s status in the Grand Lodge in England. Another is the odd fact that two of the first American Books of Constitutions begin with a paragraph explaining that the Book is designed for Operative ( ! !) Masons; further on in the Book it transpires that the authors had taken Operative” to mean the book-keeping of the Secretary, the care of Lodge rooms funds, etc.; by “Speculative” they meant the Ritual.)

The Eighteenth Century Lodges had no Order of the Eastern Star; yet the women had some connections with the Craft. In Ireland there were called “Masonic Dames.” In England one Lodge purchased “gloves for the ladies.” The history of Lodge symbolism is obscure; in old Tracing Boards are pictures of symbols no longer used, absence of symbols none in use, and symbols would be dropped and then resumed, etc.

The broached thurnel (a stone axe plus a certain type of stone); Common Gudge (or judge; a template); perpend ashlar; these are a few of the symbols or terms not familiar to us also on Tracing Boards were arches, the Star of David, a chisel, sometimes a pencil, etc.; the trowel v, as once widely used then widely discontinued. The Pps. of the OB. . was used at least as early as 1700, but not in its present elaborate form. The Ob.-. appears to have been shorter. The Box, for relief, was a fixture in a Lodge; but such monies were expended from it represent but a fraction of the relief given; for where Lodges were small, and relations were close, much help was given Masonically to widows and orphans which was not done by Lodge action.

Early American Lodges were those which worked between 1730 and 1780-5; and while, as stated above, they were in essential Lodges of the same sort as worked in Britain during the same period, there was as between the former and the latter one difference which though small at the time was to lead to an ever widening divergence: the British Lodge was small, its members were recruited (generally) from its immediate neighborhood, and their social evening around the table was their Lodge’s greatest appeal to them;

an American Lodge was larger, had fewer sister Lodges near it, drew its members from a larger radius, its membership represented every type, and the Lodge’s greatest appeal to them was as a meeting place, an opportunity to become acquainted, a social center, a place to see friends which a man could not see otherwise; there was far less emphasis on the “feast” (which usually was a lunch) and much more on the Work.

(At the present time, and not to make comparisons, the American Craft Ritual is larger, more complete, more interesting, and more artistically and self-consistently developed than its English counterpart in any one of the English Workings.) In their first impact on a Masonic student’s mind the 200 or so Minute Books and Lodge Histories of which the above random notes are only slight indicia, alive him a sense of confusion, as if Speculative Masonry began with no clear understanding of itself; in the end he learns that the opposite was true.

There never has been deviation or uncertainty in the things that count. Before even the Mother Grand Lodge waw dreamed of, Freemasonry was a fraternity of workmen, was a philosophy of work (the first ever given to the world). raised work to the level of an attribute of God whose name was appropriately Sovereign Grand Architect (or Workman), envisaged mankind as a Lodge, or body of workmen, taught that work was not a curse but belongs to what a man is and therefore it cannot be despised without abasing him.

It was these discoveries truths, and principles which brought Freemasonry into being; they drove it forward, they persisted unaltered among many changes, and in the long run, by the tests they imposed, determined what belonged to Freemasonry and what did not, what rites, ceremonies, symbols, lectures, rules. regulations, and customs; whatever has opposed them has died, or hangs withering on the branch; and it is they, working through the Lodges, which have made Masonry a power among men. Deviations, details, experiments, localisms, these have been unimportant in the long run. It is Freemasonry that has created the Lodges; not the Lodges that have created it. This stands clear and evident in the Histories and Minute Books themselves.

SPECULATIVE-2

The word Speculative is used by Freemasons in its primary sense as symbolic, or theoretical, when opposed to Operative. The Matthew Cooke Manuscript transcribed about 1400 A. D. from an earlier original, makes use of the word in this technical connection, and its adoption by Anderson in his version of the Old Charges, 1723 A.D., is one of the proofs that this Manuscript was under his hand when compiling the Book of Constitutions Otherwise he would have substituted for Speculative and Operative the Scottish terms Geomatic and Domatic, just as he used Fellow Craft and Cowan.

Dogmatic is derived from the Latin word Domus, which signifies a house. It therefore means of or belonging to a house. Its Masonic meaning is transparent from its usage in former times. When a body of Freemasons who were also Operative Masons, applied for a Charter to found a Lodge, as was the case with the petitioners for Ayr Kilwinning in 1765, they designated themselves Dogmatic Masons.

On the other hand, members of Lodges who were not Operative Masons—Nobles, Lairds, etc.—were styled Geomatic Masons, a term derived from the Greek word afa, the land or soil, and therefore intended to show that they were landed proprietors or men in some way or another connected with agriculture. This was evidently the idea the word was meant to express at first but it was by and by applied to all Freemasons who were not Operative Masons, and who were in those days styled “Gentlemen Masons.”

So says Brother D. Murray Lyon, of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, in his History of Mother Kilwinning. But this will hardly hold water; it may pass with the bastard Latin Domaticus, but no one sufficiently acquainted with Greek to know that meant the Earth, could tolerate the meaningless termination. Judging by linguistic analogues, Geomatic should be a corruption of Geometic, due to the sharp sound of the short e in Lowland Scottish aided by the jingling assonance of Domatic (see Domatic).

Similarly, the word Cowan is first met with amongst Scottish Operative Masons applied with contempt to a Dry-Diker, that is, a spurious Freemason who builds walls without cement. Its etymology is uncertain and the far-fetched derivations from a dog, or from listening, a listening person, that is, an eavesdropper, must be dismissed as inconsistent with philological principles. In the present writer’s opinion the most likely derivation is that which connects it with the French Cofon or Coyon, a man of no account, a wretch. If so, it adds another to the list of low French words embedded in Lowland Scottish, during the medieval intercourse of the two countries, for the curious derivation of the French word and its Romance cognates from Latin Coleus, Greek (see Cowan).

The above notes are by Brother W. J. Chetwode Craxvley (Caementaria Hibernica, Faseieulus 1, page 6).

SPECULATIVE FREEMASONRY

The lectures of the Symbolic Degrees instruct the neophyte in the difference between the Operative and the Speculative divisions of Freemasonry. They tell him that “we work in Speculative Masonry, but our ancient Brethren wrought in both Operative and Speculative.” The distinction between an Operative Art and a Speculative Science is, therefore, familiar to all Freemasons from their early instructions.

To the Freemason, this Operative Art has been symbolized in that intellectual deduction from it which has been correctly called Speculative Freemasonry. At one time each was an integral part of one undivided system. Not that the period ever existed when every Operative Mason was acquainted with, or initiated into, the Speculative Science. Even now, there are thousands of skillful artisans who know as little of that as they do of the Hebrew language which was spoken by its founder. But Operative Masonry was, in the inception of our history, and is, in some measure, even now, the skeleton upon which was strung the living muscles and tendons and nerves of the Speculative system. It was the block of marble, rude and unpolished it may have been, from which was sculptured the life-breathing statue.

Speculative Masonry, which is but another name for Freemasonry in its modern acceptation, may be briefly defined as the Scientific application and the religious consecration of the rules and principles, the language, the implements, and materials of Operative Masonry to the veneration of God, the purification of the heart, and the inculcation of the dogmas of a religious philosophy.

Speculative Masonry, or Freemasonry, is then a system of ethics, and must therefore, lice all other ethical systems, have its distractive doctrines. These may be divided into three classes, namely, the Moral, the Religious, and the Philosophical.

1. The Moral Doctrines.

These are dependent on, and spring out of, its character as a social institution. Hence among its numerous definitions is one that declares it to be “a science of morality,” and morality is said to be, symbolically, one of the precious jewels of a Master Mason.

Freemasonry is, in its most patent and prominent sense, that which most readily and forcibly attracts the attention of the uninitiated; a fraternity, an association of men bound together by a peculiar tie; and therefore it is essential, to its successful existence, that it should, as it does, inculcate, at the very threshold of its teachings, obligation of kindness, man’s duty to his neighbor.

“There are three great duties,” says the Charge given to an Entered Apprentice, “which, as a Mason, you are charged to inculcate—to God, your neighbor, and yourself.” And the duty to our neighbor is said to be that we should act upon the square, and do unto him as we wish that he should do unto ourselves.

The object, then, of Freemasonry, in this moral point of view, is to carry out to their fullest practical extent those lessons of mutual love and mutual aid that are essential to the very idea of a brotherhood. There i8 a socialism in Freemasonry from which spring all Masonic virtues—not that modern project exhibited in a community of goods, which, although it may have been practiced by the primitive Christians, is found to be uncongenial with the independent spirit of the present age but a community of sentiment, of principle, of design, which gives to Freemasonry all its social, and hence its moral, character. As the old song tells us:

That virtue had not left mankind

lier social maxims prove

For stamp’d upon the Mason’s mind

Are unity and love.

Thus the moral design of Freemasonry, based upon its social character, is to make men better to each other; to cultivate brotherly love, and to inculcate the practice of all those virtues which are essential to the perpetuation of a brotherhood. A Freemason is bound, say the Old Charges, to obey the moral law, and of this law the very keystone is the divine precept—the Golden Rule of our Lord—to do unto others as we would that they should do unto us. ‘I`o relieve the distressed, to give good counsel to the erring, to speak well of the absent, to observe temperance in the indulgence of appetite, to bear evil with fortitude, to be prudent in life and conversation, and to dispense justice to all men, are duties that are inculcated on every Freemason by the moral doctrines of his Order.

These doctrines of morality are not of recent origin. They are taught in all the Ok. Constitutions of the Craft, as the parchment records of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries show, even when the Institution was Operative in its organization, and long before the speculative element was made its predominating characteristic. Thus these Old Charges tell us, almost all of them in the same words, that Freemasons “shall be true, each one to other, that is to say, to every Mason of the science of Masonry that are Masons allowed, ye shall doe to them as ye would that they should doe unto youth

2. The Religious Doctrines

of Freemasonry are very simple and self-evident. They are darkened by no perplexities of sectarian theology, but stand out in the broad light, intelligible and acceptable by all minds, for they ask only for a belief in God and in the immortality of the soul. He who denies these tenets can be no Freemason, for the religious doctrines of the Institution significantly impress them in every part of its instructions. The neophyte no sooner crosses the threshold of the Lodge, but he is called upon to recognize, as his first duty, an entire trust in the superintending care and love of the Supreme Being, and the series of initiations into Symbolic Freemasonry terminate by revealing the awful symbol of a life after death and an entrance upon immortality.

Now this and the former class of doctrines are intimately connected and mutually dependent. For we must first know and feel the universal fatherhood of God before we can rightly appreciate the universal brotherhood of man. Hence the Old Records already alluded to, which show us what was the condition of the Craft in the Middle Ages, exhibit an eminently religious spirit. These ancient Constitutions always begin with a pious invocation to the trinity, and sometimes to the saints, and they tell us that “the first Charge is that a Mason shall be true to God and holy Church, and use no error nor heresy.” And the Charges published in 1723, which professes to be a compilation made from those older records, prescribe that a Freemason, while left to his particular opinions, must be of that “religion in which all men agree,” that is to say, the religion which teaches the existence of God and an eternal life.

3. The Philosophical Doctrines of Freemasonry are scarcely less important, although they arc less generally understood than either of the preceding classes. The object of these philosophical doctrines is very different from that of either the moral or the religious. For the moral and religious doctrines of the Order are intended to make men virtuous, while its philosophical doctrines are designed to make them zealous Freemasons. He who knows nothing of the philosophy of Freemasonry will be apt to become in time lukewarm and indifferent but he who devotes himself to its contemplation will feel an ever-increasing ardor in the study.

Now these philosophical doctrines are developed in that symbolism which is the especial characteristic of Masonic teaching, and relate altogether to the lost and recovered word, the search after divine truth, the manner and time of its discovery, and the reward that awaits the faithful and successful searcher. Such a philosophy far surpasses the abstract quiddities of metaphysicians. It brings us into close relation to the profound thought of the ancient world, and makes us familiar with every subject of mental science that lies within the grasp of the human intellect. So that, in conclusion, we find that the moral, religious, and philosophical doctrines of Freemasonry respectively relate to the social, the eternal, and the intellectual progress of man.

Finally, it must be observed that while the old Operative Institution, which was the cradle and forerunner of the Speculative, as we now have it, taught abundantly in its Constitutions the moral and religious doctrines of which we have been treating, it makes no reference to the philosophical doctrines. That our Operative predecessors were well acquainted with the science of symbolism is evident from the architectural ornaments of the buildings which they erected; but they do not seem to have applied its principles to any great extent to the elucidation of their moral and religious teachings; at least, we final nothing said of this symbolic philosophy in the Old Records that are extant.

And whether the Operative Masons were reticent on this Subject from choice or from ignorance, we may lay it down as an axiom, not easily to be controverted, that the philosophic doctrines of the Order are altogether a development of the system for which we are indebted solely to Speculative Freemasonry.

SOVEREIGN MASTER

This title has two references. 1. The presiding officer in a Council of Companions of the Red Cross. He represents Darius, King of Persia. 2. The Sixtieth Degree of the Rite of Mizraim.

SOVEREIGN OF MASONRY

See Sovereign

SOVEREIGN OF SOVEREIGNS

See Sovereign

SOVEREIGN PRINCE MASON

A title first conferred on its members by the Council of Emperors of the East and West.

SOVEREIGN PRINCE OF ROSE CROIX

See Rose Croix

SPAIN

Anderson says (see Constitutions, second edition, page 194) that a Deputation was granted by Lord Coleraine, Grand Master, in 1728, for constituting a Lodge at Madrid; another in 1731, by Lord Lovell, to Capt. James Cummerford, to be Provincial Grand Master of Andalusia; and a third in 1732, by Lord Montagu, for establishing a Lodge at Valenciennes. George Smith, writing in 1783, says (Use and Abuse of Freemasonry, page 203): “The first, and, I believe, the only Lodge established in Spain was by a Deputation sent to Madrid to constitute a Lodge in that city, under the auspices of Lord Coleraine, 1727; which continued under English jurisdiction till the year 1776, when it refused that subordination, but still continues to meet under its own authority.” From these two differing authorities we derive only this fact, in which they concur: that Freemasonry was introduced into Spain in 1727, more probably 1728, by the Grand Lodge of England. Smith’s statement that there never was a second Lodge at Madrid is opposed by that of Gadieke, who says that in 1751 there were two Lodges in Madrid.

What was probably the first active Masonic Lodge in Spain was held at a French Hotel in Madrid on February 15, 1728, and was summoned by Philip, Duke of Wharton. This was also the first Lodge to be warranted abroad by the Grand Lodge of England. Saint John of Jerusalem Lodge, Number 51, was chartered at Gibraltar on March 9, 1729, and two years later Capt. James Cummerford was appointed Provincial Grand Master for Andalusia.

Llorente says ( History of the Inquisition, page 525) that in 1741 Philip V issued a Royal Ordinance against the Freemasons, and, in consequence, many were arrested and sent to the galleys. The members of the Lodge at Madrid were especially treated by the Inquisition with great severity. All the members were arrested, and eight of them sent to the galleys. In 1751, Ferdinand VI, instigated by the Inquisitor Joseph Torrubia, published a Decree forbidding the assemblies of Freemasons, and declaring that all violators of it should be treated as persons guilty of high treason. In that year, Pope Benedict XIV had renewed the Bull of Clement XII. In 1793, the Cardinal Vicar caused a Decree of death to be promulgated against all Freemasons. Notwithstanding these persecutions of the Church and the State, Freemasonry continued to be cultivated in Spain; but the meetings of the Lodges were held with great caution and secrecy.

From 1728 onwards although Freemasonry suffered much persecution it grew strong amid dangers and in 1809 a Grand Orient of Spain was actually founded at Madrid in the dungeons of the Inquisition. Not until the Revolution of 1868 could Freemasonry be practiced openly in the country.

But the York Rite, which had been formerly practiced, appears now to have been abandoned, and the National Grand Lodge just alluded to was constituted by three Lodges of the Scottish Rite which, during that year, had been established at Madrid. From that time the Freemasonry of Spain has been that of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Clavel says (Picturesque History, page 252) that

In 1810, the Marquis de Clermont-Tonnere, member of the Supreme Council of France, created” near the National Grand Lodge, of the Scottish Rite m Spain, a Grand Consistory of the Thirty-second Degree; and, in 181l, the Count de Grasse added to this a Supreme Council of the Thirty-third Degree, which immediately organized the National Grand Lodge under the title of Grand Orient of Spain and the Indies. The overthrow of French domination dispersed, in 1813, most of the Spanish Freemasons, and caused the suspension of Masonic work in that country

Ferdinand VII having succeeded to the throne, 1814, restored the Inquisition with all its oppressive prerogatives, proscribed Freemasonry, and forbade the meetings of the Lodges. It was not until 1820 that the Grand Orient of Spain recovered its activity, and in 1821 we find a Supreme Council in actual existence, the history of whose organization was thus given, in 1870, to Brother A. G. Goodall, the Representative of the Supreme Council of the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction of the United States:

The parties now claiming to be a Supreme Council assert that the Count de Tilly, by authority from his cousin, De Grasse Tilly, constituted a Supreme Council, Ancient Accepted Rite, at Seville, in 1807; but in consequence of a revolution, in which Tilly was a prominent actor, the Grand Body was removed to Aranjuez where on the 21st of September, 1808, the officers were duly installed; Saavedra as Sovereign Grand Commander, Ad Vitam, or for life; Count de Tilly, Lieutenant Grand Commander, Carlos de Rosas, Grand Treasurer, Jovellanos. Grand Chanchellor; Quintana, Grand Secretary Pelajos, Captain of Guard. On the death of civilly anti Saavedra, Badilla became Sovereign Grand Commander and under his administration the Supreme Council was united with the Grand Orient of Spain at Granada in 1817, under the title of Supreme Council, National Grand Orient of Spain.

On the death of Ferdinand VII in 1853, the persecutions against the Freemasons ceased, because, in the civil war that ensued, the priests lost much of their power. between 1845 and 1849, according to Findel ( History, page 584), several Lodges were founded and a Grand Orient established, which appears to have exercised powers up to at least 1848. But subsequently, during the reign of Queen Isabella Freemasonry again fell into decadence. It has however, revived, and many Lodges continued in existence who formerly were under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of Portugal.

Nowadays there are several independent Masonic Bodies in Spain and it is almost impossible to trace their history and their present status.

However, the Annuaire reports the Grand Lodge of Spain, formerly Catalonia-Baleares, to have been founded in 1885, and that the Grand Orient of Spain at Madrid had decided at an Assembly held on October 21-4, 1922, to dissolve and form the following Bodies: Grand Lodge of Northeastern Spain (comprising Catalonia, Navarre, Baleares, and Aragon), Grand Lodge of the Levant (Valenee, Mureia, Cuenea, and Ferrol), Grand Lodge of North western Spain (Galieia, Asturias, Leon), Grand Lodge of Middle Spain (Andalusia, Canaries, Northern Africa), Grand Lodge of Central Spain (Castille, Estremadure, Vaseongadas), Grand Lodge of Porto Rico, and the Grand Lodge of the Philippines.

The last two projects must not be confused with the properly authorized Bodies already at work in these islands. But the Grand Orient of Spain has not respected jurisdictional boundaries and even before the above ambitious undertaking, had attempted a Regional Grand Lodge of North America, which was promptly denounced and vigorously condemned by the regular Grand Lodges of the United States.

SPARTACUS

The characteristic name assumed by Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the Order of the Illuminati.

SPEAKERS BUREAU

The Educational Committees of American Grand Lodges which maintain Speakers Bureaus for convenience of their Lodges employ such methods as their needs require or their circumstances allow, methods thereby differing from one Grand Jurisdiction to another. The most comprehensive system, and the one in which almost every possible method has a place at one point or another, is the one employed by the Board of General Activities, an educational department of the Grand Lodge of New York, which occupies a floor of Masonic Hall in New York City, and is administered by a salaried staff. In 1920 the then Grand Lodge Committee on Educational Service, R.-. W.. Sidney Morse being Executive Secretary, established the first Speakers Bureau.

When this and four other Committees were consolidated in 1926 to become the Board of General Activities (not to be confused in its functions with the Board of General Purposes of the United Grand Lodge of England) the Speakers Bureau was enlarged and placed in care of a full-time, salaried member of the Department. Volunteer speakers were called for from each of the fifty-nine Districts. They furnished data about themselves.

These reports were in each District reviewed by the District Deputy Grand Master and the Masters. The Board made a final selection, averaging three per District. The name, address, occupation, Lodge, and favorite speech subjects., etc., were entered in a file. When a Lodge asked for a speaker the Board sent it data on three speakers at convenient distances from it. The Lodge made its choice, and itself made the arrangements with the chosen speaker in person. Afterwards the Lodge made a report to the Board of General Activities; and if from these reports it was learned that some given speaker was a failure, or personally unsuitable, etc., his name was removed from the list.

SPENCER MANUSCRIPT

A manuscript copy of the Old Charges of the date of 1726, which belonged to the late Brother Richard Spencer and was sold in 1875 to Enoch T. Carson, of Cincinnati, Ohio, and with his library, after Brother Carson’s death, became the property of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts through the generosity of General Lawrence. It was reproduced in Spencer’s Old Constitutions in 1871.

SPES MEA IN DEO EST

A Latin motto meaning: My hope is in God. The motto of the Thirty-second Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

SPETH, GEORGE WILLIAM

English Freemason, a founder of Quatuor Coronati Lodge and the first Secretary. He originated the Correspondence Circle of that Lodge. This eminent Brother was born in 1847, was initiated in the Lodge of Unity No. 183 of London in 1872, becoming Worshipful Master in 1876. He wrote several papers and works on the Fraternity, History of his Mother Lodge appearing in 1881 and a work on Royal Freemasons being published in 1885. He was also the author of many articles appearing in Masonic journals such as Ars Quatuor Coronatoram. For sixteen years he held the office of Secretary to the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, his service only terminating with his death on April 19, 1901.

SPIRE, CONGRESS OF

Spire is a city in Bavaria, on the banks of the Rhine, and the seat of a Cathedral which was erected in the eleventh century A Masonic Congress was convoked there in 1469 by the Grand Lodge of Strasburg, principally to take into consideration the condition of the Fraternity and of the edifices in the course of construction by them, as well as to discuss the rights of the Craft.

SPIRITUALIZING

In the early lectures of the eighteenth century, this word was used to express the method of Symbolic instruction applied to the impalements of Operative Masonry. In a ritual of 1725, it is said: “As we are not all working Masons, we apply he working-tools to our morals, which we call spiritualizing .” Thus, too, about the same time, Bunyan wrote his symbolic book which he called Solomon’s Temple Spiritualized. Phillips, in his New World of Words, 1706, thus defines to spiritualize: “to explain a passage of an author in a spiritual manner, to give it a godly or mystical sense.”

SPIRITUAL LODGE

Hutchinson (Spirit of Masonry page 94) says: “We place the spiritual Lodge ,in the vale of Jehosophat, implying thereby, that le principles of Masonry are derived from the knowledge of God, and are established in the Judgment of the Lord; the literal translation of the word Jehosophat, from the Hebrew tongue, being no other than those express words.” This refers to the Lodge, which is thus described in the old lectures at the beginning of the eighteenth century, which were in vogue at the time of Hutchinson.

Where does the Lodge stand?

Upon the Holy Ground, on the highest hill or lowest vale. or in the vale of Jehoshaphat, or any other sacred place.

The Spiritual Lodge is the imaginary or Symbolic Lodge, whose form, magnitude, covering, supports, and other attributes are described in the lectures.

SPIRITUAL TEMPLE

The French Freemasons say: “We erect temples for virtue and dungeons for vice”; thus referring to the great Masonic doctrine of a spiritual temple. There is no symbolism of the Order more sublime than that in which the Speculative Freemason is supposed to be engaged in the construction of a spiritual temple, in allusion to that material one which was erected by his operative predecessors at Jerusalem. Indeed, the difference, in this point of view, between Operative and Speculative Freemasonry is simply this: that while the former was engaged in the construction, on Mount Moriah, of a material temple of stones and cedar, and gold and precious stones, the latter is occupied, from his first to his last initiation, in the construction, the I adornment, and the completion of the spiritual temple of his body.

The idea of making the temple a symbol of the body is not, it is true, exclusively Masonic. It had occurred to the first teachers of Christianity. Christ himself alluded to it when he said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”; and Saint Paul extends the idea, in the first of his Epistles to the Corinthians (iii, 16), in the following language: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you?” And again, in a subsequent passage of the same Epistle (vi, 19) he reiterates the idea in a more positive form: “What, know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?”

But the mode of treating this symbolism by a reference to the particular Temple of Solomon, and to the operative art engaged in its construetion, is an application of the idea peculiar to Freemasonry. Hitchcock, in his Essay on Swedenborg, thinks that the same Idea was also shared by the Hermetic Philosophers He says: “With perhaps the majority of readers, the temple of Solomon, and also the tabernacle, were mere buildings—very magnificent, indeed, but still mere buildings—for the worship of God.

But some are struck with many portions of the account of their erection admitting a moral interpretation; and while the buildings are allowed to stand, or to have stood, once, visible objects, these interpreters are delighted to meet with indications that Moses and Solomon, in building the Temples, were wise in the knowledge of God and of man; from which point it is not difficult to pass on to the moral meaning altogether, and affirm that the building, which was erected without the noise of a ‘hammer, nor ax, nor any tool of iron’ (First Kings vi, 7), was altogether a moral building—a building of God, not made with hands. In short, many see in the story of Solomon’s Temple, a symbolical representation of Man as the temple of God, with its Holy of Holies deep seated in the center of the human heart.”

SPOULEE, JOHN DE

He is claimed to have presided over the Freemasons of England in 1350, in the reign of Edward III. Doctor Anderson says he was called Master of the Ghiblim (see Constitutions, 1738, page 70).

SPRATT, EDWARD

Editor of an Irish edition of Anderson’s Constitutions of 1738, published at Dublin, 1751. He was Grand Secretary to the Grand Lodge of Ireland.

SPREADING THE BALLOT

Taking the vote on the application of a candidate for initiation or admission. It is an Americanism, principally developed in the Western States. Thus: “The ballot may be spread a second time in almost any case if the harmony of the Lodge seems to require it.”—Grand Master Swigert of Kentucky. “It is legal to spread the ballot the third time, if for the correction of mistakes, not otherwise.” —Rob Morris. It is a technicality.

SPRENGSEISEN, CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH KESSLER VON

An ardent adherent of Von Hund and admirer of his Templar system, in defense of which, and against the Spiritual Templarism of Starck, he wrote, in 1786, the book, now very rare, entitled Anti Saint Nicaise, and other works. He was born at Saalsfield, in 1731, and died January 11, 1809 (see Saint Nicaise).

SPRIG OF ACACIA

See Acacia

SPURIOUS FREEMASONRY

For this term, and for the theory connected with it, we are indebted to Doctor Oliver, whose speculations led him to the conclusion that in the earliest ages of the world there were two systems of Freemasonry, the one of which, preserved by the patriarchs and their descendants, he called Primitive or Pure freemasonry (see Primitive Freemasonry).

The other, which was a schism from this system, he designated as the Spurious Freemasonry of Antiquity. To comprehend this system of Oliver, and to understand his doctrine of the declension of the Spurious from the Primitive Freemasonry, we must remember that there were two races of men descended from the loins of Adam, whose history is as different as their characters were dissimilar. There was the virtuous race of Seth and his descendants, and the wicked one of Cain. Seth and his children, down to Noah, preserved the dogmas and instructions, the legends and symbols, which had been received from their common progenitor, Adam; but Cain and his descendants whose vices at length brought on the destruction of the earth, either totally forgot or greatly corrupted them.

Their Freemasonry was not the same as that of the Sethites. They distorted the truth, and varied the landmarks to suit their own profane purposes. At length the two races became blended together. The descendants of Seth, becoming corrupted by their frequent communications with those of Cain, adopted their manners, and soon lost the principles of the Primitive Freemasonry, which at length were confined to Noah and his three sons, who alone, in the destruction of a wicked world, were thought worthy of receiving mercy.

Noah consequently preserved this system, and was the medium of communicating it to the post-diluvian world. Hence, immediately after the Deluge, Primitive Freemasonry was the only system extant. But this happy state of affairs was not to last. Ham, the son of Noah, who had been accursed by his father for his wickedness, had been long familiar with the corruptions of the system of Cain, and with the gradual deviations from truth which, through the influence or evil example, had crept into the system of Seth. After the Deluge, he propagated the worst features of both systems among his immediate descendants.

Two sets or parties, so to Speak, now arose in the world— one which preserved the great truths of religion, and consequently of Freemasonry, which had been handed down from Adam, Enoch, and Noah—and another which deviated more and more from this pure, original Source. On the dispersion at the Tower of Babel, the schism became still wider and more irreconcilable. The legends of Primitive Freemasonry were altered, and its symbols perverted to a false worship; the mysteries were dedicated to the worship of false gods arid the practice of idolatrous rites, and in the place of the Pure or Primitive Freemasonry which continued to be cultivated among the patriarchal descendants of Noah, was established those Mysteries of Paganism to which Doctor Oliver has given the name of the Spurious Freemasonry.

It is not to Doctor Oliver, nor to any very modern writer, that we are indebted for the idea of a Masonic schism in this early age of the world. The doctrine that Freemasonry was lost, that is to say, lost in its purity, to the larger portion of mankind, at the Tower of Babel, is still preserved in the ritual of Ancient Craft Masonry.

And in the Degree of Noachites, a Degree which is attached to the Scottish Rite, the fact is plainly adverted to as, indeed, the very foundation of the Degree. Two races of Freemasons are there distinctly named, the Noachites and the Hiramites; the former were the Conservators of the Primitive Freemasonry as the descendants of Noah; the latter were the descendants of Hiram, who was himself of the race which had fallen into Spurious Freemasonry, but had reunited himself to the true sect at t he building of King Solomon’s Temple, as we shall hereafter see. But the inventors of the Degree do not seem to have had any very precise notions in relation to this latter part of the history. The Mysteries, which constituted what has been thus called Spurious Freemasonry, were all more or less identical in character.

Varying in a few unimportant particulars, attributable to the influence of local causes, their great similarity in all important points showed their derivation from a common origin. In the first place, they were communicated through a system of initiation, by which the aspirant was gradually prepared for the reception of their final doctrines; the rites were performed at night, and in the most retired situations, in caverns or amid the deep recesses of groves and forests; and the secrets were only communicated to the initiated after the administration of an obligation.

Thus, Firmicus, a Latin author in the reign of Constantine who about the year 346 A.D. wrote of false objects of worship in De erroributs profanarum religionum (book vii), tells us that “when Orpheus explained the ceremonies of his mysteries to candidates, he demanded of them, at the very entrance, an oath, under the solemn sanction of religion, that they would not betray the rites to profane ears.” Hence, as Warburton says from Horus Apollo, the Egyptian hieroglyphic for the mysteries was a grasshopper, because that insect was supposed to have no mouth.

The ceremonies were all of a funereal characters Commencing in representations of a lugubrious description, they celebrated the legend of the death and burial of some mythical being who was the especial object of their love and adoration. But these rites thus beginning in lamentation, and typical of death, always ended in joy. The object of their sorrow was restored to life and immortality, and the latter part of the ceremonial was descriptive of his resurrection. Hence, the great doctrines of the mysteries were the immortality of the soul and the existence of a God.

Such, then, is the theory on the subject of what is called Spurious Freemasonry, as taught by Doctor Oliver and the disciples of his school. Primitive Freemasonry consisted of that traditional knowledge and symbolic instruction which had been handed down from Adam, through Enoch, Noah, and the rest of the patriarchs, to the time of Solomon. Spurious Freemasonry consisted of the doctrines and initiations practiced at first by the antediluvian descendants of Cain, and, after the dispersion at Babel, by the Pagan priests and philosophers in their Mysteries (see Clandestine) .

SPURS

In the Orders of Chivalry, the slurs had a Symbolic meaning as important as their practical use was necessary. “To win one’s spurs” was a phrase which meant “to win one’s right to the dignity of knighthood.” Hence, in the investiture of a knight, he was told that the spurs were a symbol of promptitucle in military Service; and in the degradation of an unfaithful knight, his spurs were hacked off by the book, to show his utter unworthiness to wear them. Stowe says (Annals, 902), in describing the ceremony of investing knights: “Evening prayer being ended, there stood at the chapel-door the king’s master-cook, with his white apron and sleeves, and chopping-knife in his hand, gilded about the edge, and challenged their spurs. which they redeemed with a noble a piece, and he said to every knight, as they pressed by him: fair Knight, look that you be true and loyal to the King, my master, or else I must hew these spurs from your heels.’ ” In the Masonic Orders of Chivalry, the symbolism of the spurs has unfortunately been omitted.

SQUARE

This is one of the most important and significant Symbols in Freemasonry. As such, it is proper that its true form should be preserved. French Freemasons have almost universally given it with one leg longer than the other, thus making it a carpenter’s square American Freemasons, following the incorrect delineations of Brother Jeremy L. Cross, have, while generally preserving the equality of length in the legs, unnecessarily marked its surface with inches; thus making it an instrument for measuring length and breadth which it is not. It is simply the trying square of a stone-mason, and has a plain surface; the sides or legs embracing an angle of ninety degrees, and is intended only to test the accuracy of the sides of a stone, and to see that its edges subtend the same angle.

In Freemasonry, the square is a symbol of morality. This is its general signification, and is applied in various ways:

1. It presents itself to the neophyte as one of the Three Great Lights.

2. To the Fellow Craft as one of his Working-tools.

3. To the Master Mason as the official emblem of the Master of the Lodge.

Everywhere, however, it inculcates the same lesson of morality, of truthfulness, of honesty. So universally accepted is this symbolism, that it has gone outside of the Order, and has been found in colloquial language communicating the same idea. Square, says Halliwell, Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, means honest, equitable, as in “square dealing.” To play upon the square is proverbial for to play honestly. In this sense the word is found in the old writers.

As a Masonic symbol, it is of very ancient date, and was familiar to the Operative Masons. In the year 1830, the architect, in rebuilding a very ancient bridge called Baal Bridge, near Limerick, in Ireland, found under the foundation-stone an old brass square, much eaten away, containing on its two surfaces the following inscription, the U being read as V: I. WILL. STRIUE. TO. LIUE.—WITH. LOUE. & CARE.— UPON. THE. LEUL.—BY. THE. SQUARE., and the date 1517. The modern Speculative Freemason will recognize the idea of living on the level fled by the square This discovery proves, if proof were necessary, that the familiar idea was borrowed from our Operative Brethren of former days.

The square, as a symbol in Speculative Freemasonry, has therefore presented itself from the very beginning of the revival period. In the very earliest catechism of the eighteenth century, of the date of 1725, we find the answer to the question, “How many make a Lodge?” is “God and the Square, with five or seven right or perfect Masons.” God and the Square, religion and morality, must be present in every Lodge as governing principles.

Signs at that early period were to be made by squares and the Furniture of the Lodge was declared to be the Bible, Compasses, and Square.

In the public lecture of Brother Herbert A. Giles, Worshipful Master of Ionic Lodge, No. 1781 at Amoy, delivered in 1880 and entitled Freemasonry in China, says:

From time immemorial we find the Square and Compasses used by Chinese Writers to symbolize precisely the same phases of moral conduct as in our system of Freemasonry. The earliest passage known to one which bears upon the subject is to be found in the Book of history embracing the period reaching from the twenty-fourth to the seventh century before Christ. There in an account of a military expedition we read:

“Ye officers of government, apply the Colllpasses!”

In another part of the same venerable record a Magistrate is spoken of as:

” A man of the level, or the level man”

The public discourses of Confucius provide us with several Masonic allusions of a more or less definite character. For instance. when recounting his own degrees of moral progress in life, the Master tells us that only at seventy-five spears of age could he venture to follow the inclinations of his heart without fear of ” transgressing the limits of the Square.” this would be 481 B.C. belt it is in the works of his great follower, Mencius, who flourished nearly two hundred years later, that we meet with a fuller and more impressive Masonic phraseology. In one chapter we are taught that just as the most skilled artificers are unable, without the aid of the Square and Compasses to produce perfect rectangles or perfect circles, so must all men apply these tools figuratively to their lives, and the level and the marking-line besides, if they would walk in the straight and even paths of wisdom and keep themselves within the bonds of honor and virtue. In Book iv we read:

“The Compasses and Square are the embodiment of the rectangular and the round, just as the prophets of old were the embodiment of the due relationship between man and man” In Book vi we find these words:

The Master Mason, in teaching his apprentices makes use of the Compasses and the Square Ye who are engaged in the pursuit of wisdom must also make use of the Compasses and the Square. In the Great Learning, admitted on all sides to date from between 300 to 400 years before Christ, in Chapter 10, we read that a man should abstain from doing unto others what he would not they should do unto him, ‘ this,” adds the writer, is called the principle of acting on the Square. ” In all rites and in all languages where Freemasonry has penetrated, the square has preserved its primitive Signification as a symbol of morality.

SQUARE, THE

The article on page 963 shows that in Freemasonry (and Masons can have only a secondary interest in the symbol as used outside the Craft) the Square has more than one use or exposition: it can even be said that instead of taking it as one symbol with many meanings it is more correct to take it that m Ancient Craft Masonry there are a number of Squares, each (relatively) independent of the other. The following can be added to the article given on that page:

1. The Oblong Square. This is an old and not very fortunate name for a rectangle, one never properly belonging to the nomenclature of mathematics.

2. Circumambulation. In almost every known instance outside of Freemasonry the rite of circumambulation has meant a movement, or procession, or walking in a circle. or circuit; in Freemasonry it is movement along a line that is part circle and part square—a circuit around corners. The Lodge room itself is an Oblong Square in which the members comprise a Circle, Circumambulation is, among other things, a visible representation of that combination of square and circle.

3. ” Part upon the square. ” This is a verbal symbol but it is an independent one, and not merely a commentary on the Square in general. Masons meet upon the level, no member being excluded from other members by any taboo of rank, class, title, or caste and it is expected that they thou thus meet not in theory, nor in some remote and abstract sense, but actually and regularly; but while they are thus meeting they will do and say only what upright men do and say, so that when they part (leave the Lodge) they will not carry away any feeling of hypocrisy or resentment. In this instance the symbolic try-square does not lie in a horizontal plane but in a vertical plane, and one leg is on the level, the Lodge room floor; the other leg is upright.

4. The Forty seventh Proposition, or Pythagorean Theorem. This theorem concerns a right-angled triangle, but a good half of it is composed of the properties of the Square. The Square itself is probably the oldest, or at least one of the oldest, of any Masonic tool, instrument, or action used as a symbol, for in the ” Mason window ” of some of the oldest cathedrals it is used to symbolize the Mason Craft; but it is probable that the Pythagorean triangle is as old, or almost as old, because the data indicate that it was used as the method for teaching geometry, since so much of Euelid can be deduced from it. Euclid himself worked out a proof for this theorem, one of the very few known to have been his. though it has never been wholly satisfactory to geometricians- our Brother Mason James A. Garfield, discovered a new proof for it as late as the Nineteenth Century.

The Minute Books of the oldest Lodges prove that for a number of years after 1717 Speculative Masons were in confusion about Masonic symbols; differed among themselves as to what symbols to include, differed as to their correct form, and differed as to their symbolic meaning. It is to that period of confusion that we owe the phrase “Working Tool” as applied to the Square (also the Level, Plumb, and Gage); manifestly it is not a tool but an instrument, and it had far more use by the mind (consider today the carpenter’s square and the slide rule) than by the hand; in colas sense there was always much Speculative Masonry in the Fraternity even when the great majority of memb