Freemason Information
Freemasonry is a post-collegiate mostly-all male fraternity dedicated to the social development of the member to form a broader sense of the self and their community.
We come next, in a due order of precedence, to the consideration of the symbolism connected with an important ceremony in the ritual of the first degree of Masonry, which refers to the north-east corner of the lodge. In this ceremony the candidate becomes the representative of a spiritual corner-stone. And hence, to thoroughly comprehend […]
The Rite of Intrusting, to which we are now to direct our attention, will supply us with many important and interesting symbols. There is an important period in the ceremony of masonic initiation, when the candidate is about to receive a full communication of the mysteries through which he has passed, and to which the […]
The investiture with the gloves is very closely connected with the investiture with the apron, and the consideration of the symbolism of the one naturally follows the consideration of the symbolism of the other. In the continental rites of Masonry, as practised in France, in Germany, and in other countries of Europe, it is an […]
Another ritualistic symbolism, of still more importance and interest, is the rite of investiture. The rite of investiture, called, in the colloquially technical language of the order, the “ceremony of clothing”, brings us at once to the consideration of that well-known symbol of Freemasonry, the lamb skin apron. This rite of investiture, or the placing […]
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 […]
In the last essay, I treated of that symbolism of the Masonic system which makes the temple of Jerusalem the archetype of a lodge, and in which, in consequence, all the symbols are referred to the connection of a speculative science with an operative art. I propose in the present to discourse of a higher […]
I have said that the operative art is symbolized–that is to say, used as a symbol–in the speculative science. Let us now inquire, as the subject of the present essay, how this is done in reference to a system of symbolism dependent for its construction on types and figures derived from the temple of Solomon, […]
The lectures of the English lodges, which are far more philosophical than our own,–although I do not believe that the system itself is in general as philosophically studied by our English brethren as by ourselves,–have beautifully defined Freemasonry to be “a science of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.” But allegory itself is […]
The next point to which our attention is to be directed is when, a few centuries later, the operative character of the institution began to be less prominent, and the speculative to assume a pre-eminence which eventually ended in the total separation of the two. At what precise period the speculative began to predominate over […]
After this general view of the religious Mysteries of the ancient world, let us now proceed to a closer examination of those which are more intimately connected with the history of Freemasonry, and whose influence is, to this day, most evidently felt in its organization. Of all the pagan Mysteries instituted by the ancients none […]