THE NATURE OF SYMBOLS
"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.
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