Here Comes the Light! ebook

Contents

Preface

Are You Ready for Work?

Draw Me a Diagram18

Have We Got the Right Tools for the Job?

How to Climb

Freedom and its Limitations

Wise or Beautiful?

I Want to Be Free

To Be Your Own Person

Mystery? What Mystery?

To Stand in the Holy of Holies

Why Become a Freemason?

I Get It — the Centre Matters

Done With That — Let’s Move On

To Have and Have Not

How Much Do I Earn?

Loss and Gain

Get Ready for Something Special!

Laying Out the Implements

I Promise — No, I Really Do!

Where is God Then?

Here Comes the Light!

Am I Really Just a Little Crumbin the Cosmos?

More Light Coming My Way

Let’s Build!

Can I See the Way Ahead?

Let Me See the Light

Three Lights, No Less

Body, Soul, Spirit

Let’s Make It Beautiful!

Back to the Centre Again

Preface

Welcome to my collection of short talks. We talk a lot about light in Freemasonry. Many of my titles include the word. Light out of darkness. From the black squares to the white ones. From hardship and oppression to freedom. From sadness and suffering to fulfilment and joy. From unknowing to knowledge. These are all parts of the masonic journey and allegory.

These little talks are designed to be read individually as guidance in the Craft Degrees, or to be read out in lodge. Appended to each one is a short list of ideas to explore — ideas that may have been prompted by reading the talk.

Some of these talks are not suitable for Fellow Crafts or Entered Apprentices, so take care if reading them in open lodge.

We sometimes use the same subject matter in different essays. The Square, Level and Plumb Rule, for instance, have relevance on many different levels. Such repetition serves to reinforce the masonic message.

If you have any questions, do contact me at [email protected]

Let’s Go to Work

Are You Ready for Work?

The working tools of an Entered Apprentice Freemason are the twenty-four-inch gauge, the common gavel and chisel. The twenty-four-inch gauge is to measure our work, the common gavel to knock off all superfluous excrescences, and the chisel to further smooth and prepare the stone, to render it fit for the hands of the more expert workman.

Part of the presentation of the working tools in the First Degree

In the presentation of the working tools, the Master first describes their use as operative, concrete tools, physical attributes displayed, so that we might first impress on our minds how the world sees such tools. Once they have finished, they tell us:

But as we are not all operative masons, but rather free and accepted, or speculative, we apply these tools to our morals

and they then proceed to an exposition of them as speculative tools. The definition of the word ‘speculate’ appropriate to masonic symbolism is ‘to observe or view mentally; to contemplate’, and the word itself comes from the Latin speculari, meaning to spy out, or watch.

This is particularly appropriate to allegories, since an allegory is a description of some subject under the guise of another of suggestive similarity. A cupid shoots an arrow into a heart, and someone is said to be lovestruck! In Freemasonry, we can look at a Plumb Rule and seeing an emblem that tests whether an object is upright, can see in it a symbol that we can memorise and then use to remind ourselves when our actions are perhaps not as virtuous or as principled as they might be. And so, we have the three working tools in the First Degree but note that these are not tools of construction; they are tools of preparation, to prepare the Rough Ashlar, and ‘render it fit for the hands of the more expert workman’.

When we contemplate, these three tools form a remarkable triad. The gavel may be said to represent man’s driving, passionate nature. We often speak of a person as ‘a man of action’, meaning that he is not content to sit still and let things happen — a laudable characteristic in itself. He is constantly striving, striving either to further his own aims, or striving to combat negative forces or dangers. But such a person may not contemplate the consequences of all his activity. He may appear to us to be lacking in judgement or wisdom. He may also be the kind of person who gives full rein to impulses, passions and prejudices.

The chisel is a very interesting tool. It seems to be entirely inert, passively enduring the strokes of the gavel, bearing all the blows rained down on it. Yet this tool is capable of very fine work. It not only receives the blows, but transmits them to the stone, transforming them into detailed and beautiful workings of the design to be carved. It is able to determine the course of the line being carved, and therefore represents man’s creative, analytical nature, a tool which seeks to give expression to a person’s finer feelings. Although it is driven by the gavel, the chisel alone is responsible for the way the finer part of the work proceeds.

It is not at first apparent how the twenty-four-inch gauge relates to the gavel and the chisel, until we consider what happens when the gavel delivers too much force, and then the line cut will go too far, too deep, or too much stone will be removed. The twenty-four-inch gauge is there, in this instance, to tell the workman to curb the gavel, as it is also there to inform the workman if the chisel does not cut far enough or deep enough. The resulting work must fit into the measures required of it by the gauge.

So, the twenty-four-inch gauge is present to act to restrain the gavel, to prompt it to deliver measured blows, but also to encourage the chisel, to assist it to overcome some natural reticence and to assert its own creativity a little more. And so it is in our speculation, our contemplation — once our passionate, driving nature has been reminded to stop at the right place, to stop short of excess, and once our sensitive, analytical, creative impulses have been encouraged to greater assertiveness, then we shall lead a measured existence, measured in more than one sense.

To explore:

– speculation

– from speculative to operational

– what allegories are for

– tools to prepare, not to build

– impulses and passions

– action and contemplation

– the chisel in analysing and creating

– different aspects of measuring

Draw Me a Diagram

The Tracing Boards are the visual means by which our attention is drawn to masonic symbolism. The many symbols depicted on them are interlinked and provide a visual image that we can translate into a figurative insight for our lives.

From the earliest masonic systems, we see the practice of tracing on the floor of the lodge the symbols of each Degree, and the custom of Masters to illustrate the subject of their lecture by reference to drawings. The earliest practice was for the Master to demonstrate the symbolism and allegory by drawing designs on the floor of the lodge with chalk, which the Tyler would erase when the lodge was closed. Nowadays, the form of the Tracing Boards has become stylised as a rigid board, painted with the symbols and allegories of each Degree. To enable the board to be of use to all members of the lodge, it is laid flat on the floor in the middle of the Temple.

For symbols to be most effective, let us start with the most important ones and trace the allegories through the Degree. The central symbols on the First Degree board are not the most prominent ones depicted: they are the three Great Lights in Freemasonry, the Volume of the Sacred Law, the Square and Compasses, which are found on the pedestal depicted near the bottom of the board.

The sacred writings are to govern our faith, the Square to regulate our actions, and the Compasses to keep us in due bounds with all mankind, particularly our Brethren in Freemasonry.

The first, then, is God’s dealings with humankind; the second, the Square, is an emblem of correct morality and the most central and most important symbol in Freemasonry.

Morality informs us as to the distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil, in relation to our actions, our intentions or our character. The Square is ‘to regulate our actions’, and this happens on many different levels. It teaches us to harmonise our conduct, a way of making the right music. The Right Angle is in one sense the truest angle — any other, less than or more than ninety degrees, is an angle that is indeterminate. A Right Angle is one we know by instinct to be right and true, and truth is at the heart of much insight in Freemasonry. Near the bottom right-hand corner of the Tracing Board lie the Square, Level and Plumb Rule. The Square is also that emblem formed by setting the Plumb Rule, the symbol of uprightness, next to the Level, the symbol of equality, the upright and the Level together forming an angle of ninety degrees. So, morality can now be seen as the product of level dealings allied to upright conduct. The Square is repeatedly brought to our attention as an emblem of morality. The Master tells us in the First Degree:

You are therefore expected to stand perfectly erect, your feet formed in a square, your body being thus considered an emblem of your mind and your feet of the rectitude of your conduct

and we then form two right angles — one with our feet, and the other being the angle formed between our upright frame and the level ground. When we speak of being ‘demoralised’, we may mean more than just ‘downhearted’. We may mean that we are having difficulty maintaining an upright position; that we can no longer maintain the angle of ninety degrees that our uprightness would call for, and that our morale, if not our morality, is not in a good position.

Of other images of uprightness on the Tracing Board, the three most prominent are the three great pillars supporting a Freemason’s lodge, those of Wisdom, Strength and Beauty. Note that these also form a right angle with the ground on which they stand, namely the chequered pavement. In terms of morality then, these three have three important lessons for us. The Ionic column, the furthest away on the Tracing Board, represents wisdom, and the figure surmounting it is that of King Solomon, who established Jerusalem as the city of justice and peace. He was said to have been given both wisdom and knowledge by God, and he embodies the ability to distinguish between good and evil. The pillar nearest to us on the Tracing Board is the Doric, representing strength, surmounted by the figure of Hiram, King of Tyre. The middle pillar is the Corinthian column, said to represent Hiram Abiff, the principal architect of King Solomon’s Temple, representing therefore beauty, ‘to adorn the inward man’. These pillars are said to support a Freemason’s lodge. In our building, we construct two edifices — one is the Temple to humanity, which we seek to construct in concert with our Brethren, the other is our own moral edifice, and in either sense, we should remember that wisdom, strength and beauty are our chief supports.

To explore:

– must all allegories be visual?

– relationship of the three Great Lights to each other

– further examples of the Square in the lodge

– the nature of morality

– harmony, regular conduct

– true angles; true morality; truth

– relation of the Square to the Level and the Plumb Rule

– wisdom, strength and beauty in life

Have We Got the Right Tools for the Job?

But as we are not all operative masons and rather are free and accepted or speculative, we apply these tools to our morals.

Part of the presentation of the working tools in all three Degrees



The tools that operative stonemasons use belong to different categories. Some are tools for preparing the work, such as gavels, chisels, gouges, saws and augers. Some are tools used in actual construction, such as trowels, hawks, cramps and setting mauls. Some are tools used to check the work, such as straight edges, squares, levels, bevels, plumb rules and compasses. And yet others are tools of creativity, such as pencils, compasses again, lettering chisels and others.

Within the three Degrees of Freemasonry, we have most of the tools mentioned. And we can see their relation to actual, operative stonemasonry. Where we may need some guidance is in identifying their moral tendency, in contemplating on their real import for us on our masonic journey.

The first thing to notice is that the tools we employ in the First Degree are tools of preparation. Remember the words of the Master in the Third Degree in their retrospective of the first:

It inculcated the useful lessons of natural equality and mutual dependence; it instructed you in the active principles of universal beneficence and charity . . . above all, it taught you to bend with humility and resignation to the will of the Great Architect of the Universe . . .

and that our hearts are thereby fitted, by the First Degree, for the reception of truth and wisdom. The First Degree, therefore, may be regarded as the stage before the building proper is embarked on. It may be regarded as the phase of preparation, and so are the tools of this Degree tools that will assist in that preparation.

The gavel, representing our impelling, motivating instincts, impacts on the chisel, representing our sensitive, creative instincts. The twenty-four-inch gauge represents the need to coordinate those two forces, to restrain, if need be, the driving, forceful side of our nature, and to stimulate, if need be, our passive, sensitive, creative nature.

Now let us consider the Second Degree, and once again listen to the words of the Master’s retrospective:

Proceeding onwards, still guiding your progress by the principles of moral truth, you were led, in the Second Degree, to contemplate the intellectual faculty, and to trace it, from its development, through the paths of heavenly science ...

These words need a little interpretation. Intellect refers not to academic excellence, but to intellect of the heart, the virtue of instinct, feeling and intuition. The secrets of nature are the secrets of our own nature, so that intellectual truth refers to the truth we come to acknowledge in our own hearts.