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The Point Within A Circle
CHAPTER XV
the symbolism of freemasonry
albert gallatin mackey
The point within a Circle is another symbol of great importance in
Freemasonry, and commands peculiar attention in this connection with the
ancient symbolism of the universe and the solar orb. Everybody who has
read a masonic "Monitor" is well acquainted with the usual explanation of
this symbol. We are told that the point represents an individual brother,
the circle the boundary line of his duty to God and man, and the two
perpendicular parallel lines the patron saints of the order—St. John the
Baptist and St. John the Evangelist.
Now, this explanation, trite and meagre as it is, may do very well for
the exoteric teaching of the order; but the question at this time is, not
how it has been explained by modern lecturers and masonic system-makers,
but what was the ancient interpretation of the symbol, and how should it
be read as a sacred hieroglyphic in reference to the true philosophic
system which constitutes the real essence and character of Freemasonry?
Perfectly to understand this symbol, I must refer, as a preliminary
matter, to the worship of the Phallus, a peculiar modification of
sun-worship, which prevailed to a great extent among the nations of
antiquity.
The Phallus was a sculptured representation of the membrum virile,
or male organ of generation,76
and the worship of it is said to have originated in
Egypt, where, after the murder of Osiris by Typhon, which is symbolically
to be explained as the destruction or deprivation of the sun's light by
night, Isis, his wife, or the symbol of nature, in the search for his
mutilated body, is said to have found all the parts except the organs of
generation, which myth is simply symbolic of the fact, that the sun having
set, its fecundating and invigorating power had ceased. The Phallus,
therefore, as the symbol of the male generative principle, was very
universally venerated among the ancients,77
and that too as a religious rite, without the slightest
reference to any impure or lascivious application.78
He is supposed, by some commentators, to be the god
mentioned under the name of Baal-peor, in the Book of Numbers,79
as having been worshipped by the idolatrous Moabites.
Among the eastern nations of India the same symbol was prevalent, under
the name of "Lingam." But the Phallus or Lingam was a representation of
the male principle only. To perfect the circle of generation it is
necessary to advance one step farther. Accordingly we find in the Cteis
of the Greeks, and the Yoni of the Indians, a symbol of the female
generative principle, of co-extensive prevalence with the Phallus. The
Cteis was a circular and concave pedestal, or receptacle, on which
the Phallus or column rested, and from the centre of which it sprang.
The union of the Phallus and Cteis, or the Lingam and Yoni, in one
compound figure, as an object of adoration, was the most usual mode of
representation. This was in strict accordance with the whole system of
ancient mythology, which was founded upon a worship of the prolific powers
of nature. All the deities of pagan antiquity, however numerous they may
be, can always be reduced to the two different forms of the generative
principle—the active, or male, and the passive, or female. Hence the gods
were always arranged in pairs, as Jupiter and Juno, Bacchus and Venus,
Osiris and Isis. But the ancients went farther. Believing that the
procreative and productive powers of nature might be conceived to exist in
the same individual, they made the older of their deities hermaphrodite,
and used the term ἀῤῥενοθέλυς, or man-virgin, to denote the union
of the two sexes in the same divine person.80
Thus, in one of the Orphic Hymns, we find this line:—
"Ζεὺς ἄρσην γένετο, Ζεὺς ἄμβροτος ἔπλετο νύμφη."
Jove was created a male and an unspotted virgin.
And Plutarch, in his tract "On Isis and Osiris," says, "God, who is a
male and female intelligence, being both life and light, brought forth
another intelligence, the Creator of the World."
Now, this hermaphrodism of the Supreme Divinity was again supposed to
be represented by the sun, which was the male generative energy, and by
nature, or the universe, which was the female prolific principle.81
And this union was symbolized in different ways, but
principally by the point within the circle, the point indicating
the sun, and the circle the universe, invigorated and fertilized by his
generative rays. And in some of the Indian cave-temples, this allusion was
made more manifest by the inscription of the signs of the zodiac on the
circle.
So far, then, we arrive at the true interpretation of the masonic
symbolism of the point within the circle. It is the same thing, but under
a different form, as the Master and Wardens of a lodge. The Master and
Wardens are symbols of the sun, the lodge of the universe, or world, just
as the point is the symbol of the same sun, and the surrounding circle of
the universe.
But the two perpendicular parallel lines remain to be explained. Every
one is familiar with the very recent interpretation, that they represent
the two Saints John, the Baptist and the Evangelist. But this modern
exposition must be abandoned, if we desire to obtain the true ancient
signification.
In the first place, we must call to mind the fact that, at two
particular points of his course, the sun is found in the zodiacal signs of
Cancer and Capricorn. These points are astronomically distinguished as the
summer and winter solstice. When the sun is in these points, he has
reached his greatest northern and southern declination, and produces the
most evident effects on the temperature of the seasons, and on the length
of the days and nights. These points, if we suppose the circle to
represent the sun's apparent course, will be indicated by the points where
the parallel lines touch the circle, or, in other words, the parallels
will indicate the limits of the sun's extreme northern and southern
declination, when he arrives at the solstitial points of Cancer and
Capricorn.
But the days when the sun reaches these points are, respectively, the
21st of June and the 22d of December, and this will account for their
subsequent application to the two Saints John, whose anniversaries have
been placed by the church near those days. FOOTNOTES
76. Facciolatus thus
defines the Phallus: "penis ligneus, vel vitreus, vel coriaceus, quem in
Bacchi festis plaustro impositum per rura et urbes magno honore
circumferebant."—Lex. in voc.
77. The exhibition of
these images in a colossal form, before the gates of ancient temples, was
common. Lucian tells us of two colossal Phalli, each one hundred and
eighty feet high, which stood in the fore court of the temple at
Hierapolis. Mailer, in his "Ancient Art and its Remains," mentions, on the
authority of Leake, the fact that a colossal Phallus, which once stood on
the top of the tomb of the Lydian king Halyattes, is now lying near the
same spot; it is not an entire Phallus, but only the head of one; it is
twelve feet in diameter below and nine feet over the glands. The Phallus
has even been found, so universal was this worship, among the savages of
America. Dr. Arthaut discovered, in the year 1790, a marble Phallic image
in a cave of the island of St. Domingo.—CLAVEL,
Hist. Pittoresq. des Religions, p. 9.
78. Sonnerat (Voyage
aux Indes Orient, i. p. 118) observes, that the professors of this worship
were of the purest principles and most unblemished conduct, and it seems
never to have entered into the heads of the Indian legislator and people
that anything natural could be grossly obscene.—Sir William Jones remarks
(Asiatic Researches, i. 254), that from the earliest periods the women of
Asia, Greece, and Italy wore this symbol as a jewel, and Clavel tells us
that a similar usage prevails at this day among the women in some of the
villages of Brittany. Seely tells us that the Lingam, or Indian Phallus,
is an emblem as frequently met with in Hindostan as the cross is in
Catholic countries.—Wonders of Elora. p. 278.
79. Num. xxv. 1-3. See
also Psalm cvi. 28: "They joined themselves also unto Baal-peor, and ate
the sacrifices of the dead." This last expression, according to Russel,
has a distinct reference to the physical qualities of matter, and to the
time when death, by the winter absence of the solar heat, gets, as it
were, possession of the earth. Baal-peor was, he says, the sun exercising
his powers of fecundity.—Connection of Sacred and Profane History
80. Is there not a
seeming reference to this thought of divine hermaphrodism in the
well-known passage of Genesis? "So God created man in his own image, in
the image of God created he him: male and female created he them."
And so being created "male and female," they were "in the image of God."
81. The world being
animated by man, says Creuzer, in his learned work on Symbolism, received
from him the two sexes, represented by heaven and the earth. Heaven, as
the fecundating principle, was male, and the source of fire; the earth, as
the fecundated, was female, and the source of humidity. All things issued
from the alliance of these two principles. The vivifying powers of the
heavens are concentrated in the sun, and the earth, eternally fixed in the
place which it occupies, receives the emanations from the sun, through the
medium of the moon, which sheds upon the earth the germs which the sun had
deposited in its fertile bosom. The Lingam is at once the symbol and the
mystery of this religious idea.
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