Part 2 of 13 in Masonic Symbols & Symbolic Thinking
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If Freemasonry wanted to deliver its moral instruction as quickly as possible, it could hand out a list.
Be honest. Keep your promises. Control your temper. Help other people. Examine your faults before preparing a report on everyone else’s.
A competent printer could finish the job in an afternoon.
Instead, Freemasonry uses tools, stones, pillars, measured spaces, and ceremonies. It gives people objects to consider and actions to perform. The arrangement can seem unnecessarily elaborate if all we want is a summary of the lessons.
But a summary is not quite what the method is trying to provide.
Most of us already know more good advice than we put into practice. The difficulty is not always a shortage of information. Sometimes it is remembering what we know at the moment we need it.
A symbol offers something to return to. Whether we make anything of the return is another matter.
Start With a Tool
Consider a builder checking work with a square.
The angle either meets the standard or it does not. The builder’s confidence is interesting, but it has no effect on the result. Neither does seniority.
That makes the square useful for thinking about conduct. We can be quite certain that we have behaved fairly and still benefit from checking.
The moral meaning begins with the practical action. We understand what it means to test an angle, then use that understanding to examine something less easy to measure.
This is not an exotic way of thinking. A wedding ring is an ordinary object given an extraordinary place in someone’s life. Its material does not contain fidelity, but it can remind its wearer of a promise.
The distinction is important. An object can carry a meaning without possessing the quality it represents. Wearing a ring does not keep a marriage faithful. Owning a square does not make a person honest.
Masonic teaching uses the space between the object and the obligation. It asks whether the visible reminder will prompt some less visible work.[1]
Why the Language of Builders?
Freemasonry’s building vocabulary has a historical basis, although the familiar account of working stonemasons simply becoming philosophical gentlemen is too neat.
The development involved craft traditions, lodge organization, changing membership, and circumstances that differed between places. Scottish records are particularly important to the history, but they do not supply a single explanation for everything that followed.[2]
For this article, the distinction between operative and speculative Masonry is enough to get us started.
Operative masonry concerns actual construction. Speculative Masonry uses the language of construction to examine human conduct.
A level tests a relation between surfaces. In Masonic teaching, it can prompt reflection on equality. A plumb establishes a vertical line and can become an image of upright conduct. Compasses draw a boundary and invite questions about restraint.
The interpretations and the selection of working tools differ between ritual traditions. We should not assume that every lodge teaches every object in precisely the same way.
Still, the general method is recognizable. Begin with something a tool does. Ask what that action might help us understand about a life.
Building offers unusually fertile ground for this exercise. It requires preparation, judgment, correction, and some understanding of how one part affects another. A mistake does not remain private simply because the builder would prefer it that way.
Other people have to live with the result.
What a Symbol Adds to a Sentence
Why not say the lesson plainly?
Often, Masonic instruction does. The symbols are accompanied by explanations. The choice is not between an honest sentence and a mysterious object.
The question is whether the object gives the sentence further work to do.
“I should govern my temper” is clear enough. But it leaves a good deal unexplored. When does firmness become aggression? When is silence self-command, and when is it avoidance? What happens when the pleasure of winning an argument becomes more important than the matter being argued?
An image of boundaries or proportion may give us another way into those questions.
It does not answer them. Nor is an image always better than a direct explanation. If a building is on fire, a clear instruction about the exit is preferable to an allegory.
Symbolic teaching is useful for a different task: keeping a question available after the initial explanation is over.
The same emblem may meet us under different circumstances. What once seemed a lesson about another person’s behavior can become uncomfortably relevant to our own.
A Symbol Is Not a Code With One Answer
A key opens a lock. That practical action makes it available for thinking about access, trust, responsibility, or exclusion.
But those meanings are not interchangeable. The key to a borrowed house raises different questions from the key to a prison cell.
Context does some of the interpreting.
The same caution applies to Masonic symbols. A square, pillar, or source of light does not arrive with an unlimited license for speculation. Its place in a ceremony, the accompanying explanation, and its history all matter.[3]
We need to distinguish at least three questions:
What does a particular ritual say about this object?
What meanings have identifiable writers or traditions given it?
What further interpretation am I proposing?
The third question is legitimate. Trouble begins when its answer is presented as though it settled the first two.
A private insight may be useful without being ancient. It does not become more useful by acquiring an invented pedigree.
This is why symbolic thinking needs both imagination and restraint. Without imagination, the emblem becomes a label. Without restraint, it can be made to confirm almost anything.
Why Tools Are Especially Useful
Tools connect an intention with an action.
A rule measures. A level tests. A chisel removes material. None accomplishes its task merely by being admired.
That is a useful inconvenience for moral reflection.
It is possible to speak warmly about self-improvement while arranging life so that nothing requires changing. A tool suggests a less comfortable question: what are you actually going to do?
The answer has to become specific.
A person who interrupts others might practice allowing them to finish. Someone careless with promises might make fewer and record them more carefully. Someone who confuses office with importance might examine how he behaves when nobody is obliged to listen.
These are not dramatic discoveries. They are adjustments that can be attempted, observed, and repeated.
The building language also draws attention to technique. More effort does not always mean better work. A badly directed blow can damage what the worker intended to improve.
The comparison has limits, of course. Human difficulties are not all defects to be cut away, and force is not a universal remedy. Sometimes improvement requires listening, rest, assistance, or a different understanding of the problem.
A useful metaphor helps us examine reality. It should not be allowed to bully reality into resembling the metaphor.
Stone, Resistance, and the Unfinished Self
Stone makes effort visible.
It has weight and resistance. It does not take the desired shape because the worker has developed sincere feelings about architecture.
The rough and perfect ashlars give Masonic teaching a recognizable image of preparation and improvement. The contrast is easily summarized: something unfinished is worked upon until it becomes suitable for its intended use.
But the interesting questions begin after the summary.
What counts as improvement? Are we correcting a fault or merely making ourselves more agreeable to whoever happens to be in charge? Does preparation for a shared undertaking require conformity in everything?
People have qualities that do not fit neatly into the comparison. Individuality is not waste material.
For me, the value of the stone lies less in the idea of producing a flawless person than in acknowledging that intention is not completion. Something remains to be done, and it may take longer than we would like.
The work is also relational. A prepared stone has a place among others. That shifts the question from “How impressive have I become?” to “What am I fit to contribute?”
We will return to those difficulties in the article on rough and perfect ashlar.
What Geometry Can—and Cannot—Tell Us
Geometry concerns properties and relationships that can be examined with precision. That makes it attractive as a language of measure, proportion, and order.
In Masonic interpretation, these become ways of considering conduct. How much attention does one obligation deserve in relation to another? Where should a boundary be drawn? What happens when one part of life grows at the expense of everything else?
These are questions about proportion, but they are not mathematical problems in disguise.
No instrument will calculate the exact amount of patience owed to an irritating acquaintance. There is no angle at which a doubtful action becomes honest.
Geometry supplies a comparison, not a machine for producing moral answers.
The distinction keeps the symbolism useful. We can borrow the discipline of checking relationships without pretending that human judgment has the certainty of a geometric proof.
A well-drawn diagram may demonstrate its conclusion. A well-delivered lecture on virtue leaves the lecturer’s conduct to be examined separately.
Why Ceremony Matters
A symbol encountered in a ceremony is not quite the same experience as the same symbol reproduced on a screen.
There are other people present. Words arrive in a sequence. Attention is directed. A participant may have to move, answer, wait, or undertake an obligation.
Historical studies of Freemasonry place these ceremonies within the wider life of the fraternity: its meetings, relationships, institutions, and social expectations.[4]
It would be a mistake, however, to turn that observation into a guarantee about ritual’s effects.
A ceremony can be memorable without being understood. It can be understood without changing behavior. Repetition may deepen attention, or it may become an efficient way of avoiding attention altogether.
Most of us have managed to perform a familiar action while thinking about something else.
The educational possibility lies in returning with a question. What did I overlook? What did I understand too quickly? Does the lesson describe my conduct, or only my preferred account of it?
Ceremony gives those questions a setting. Reflection and practice have to follow.
Shared Symbols, Different Minds
Members do not have to think identically to reflect together.
Two people may encounter the same emblem and notice different implications. One sees a question about restraint. Another sees a responsibility toward others. Their readings may overlap without becoming identical.
That can be productive, provided the shared framework is taken seriously.
Freemasonry has obligations, rules, membership requirements, and established explanations. It is not simply a room in which every opinion becomes equally authoritative. Anderson’s Constitutions, for example, supplied explicit expectations about religion and conduct; symbolic openness should not be mistaken for the absence of boundaries.[5]
Within a framework, however, discussion can reveal what solitary interpretation misses.
Someone may ask for the source of an assertion. Someone else may point out that a proposed meaning has little connection with what the tool actually does. A third person may notice an implication that everyone else overlooked.
This is less theatrical than announcing that the symbol contains all wisdom. It is also a better way to learn something.
From Recognition to Use
There is a point at which familiarity becomes a problem.
We recognize the square, level, stone, and pillars. We know the usual explanations. The object appears, the approved meaning follows, and the mind moves on.
Nothing is necessarily wrong with the explanation. It has simply become easy to recite without examination.
A useful response is to return to the object.
What does it do? Why would that action suggest this lesson? Where does the comparison fail? What would accepting the lesson require of me this week?
That last question prevents symbolic study from becoming an elaborate way to remain unchanged.
Suppose the level prompts an argument about equality. How does the person making the argument treat the least influential member of the lodge? Suppose the compasses prompt a fine explanation of restraint. What happens when that person is contradicted?
The symbol gives us a subject to discuss. Conduct gives us something to check.
Why Keep the Old Language?
Inherited forms deserve neither automatic obedience nor automatic disposal.
Some survive because people continue to find them useful. Others survive because nobody wants the meeting at which changing them will be discussed. Age alone does not tell us which is which.
The case for retaining Masonic tools and building imagery is that they still provide workable comparisons. They connect thought to action, individual effort to shared work, and aspiration to the need for correction.
They also give members a vocabulary they did not have to invent alone.
That inheritance is worth examining rather than merely possessing. We can ask where an interpretation came from, how it has changed, and whether it helps us meet an obligation more honestly.
Masons talk in stones and tools because building offers them a way to think about living. The language persists through use, not simply through age.
Knowing what a tool is called is a beginning. Knowing its customary explanation takes us a little further.
Then comes the awkward part: using the lesson when we would rather make an exception.
Continue the Series
Next: Some Men Want Light. Some Just Want a Title: Office, Ambition, and the Inward Life →
Sources and Further Reading
These works provide historical context and examples of Masonic interpretation. The practical comparisons and argument about symbolic thinking in this essay are the author’s. Historical descriptions of ritual do not, by themselves, establish that ritual produces particular psychological or moral results.
Albert G. Mackey, The Symbolism of Freemasonry. A historical example of interpretation from within the fraternity, to be read critically rather than treated as a final authority on Masonic origins.
David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland’s Century, 1590–1710 (Cambridge University Press, 1988); Douglas Knoop and G. P. Jones, The Genesis of Freemasonry (Manchester University Press, 1947).
W. Kirk MacNulty, Freemasonry: Symbols, Secrets, Significance (Thames & Hudson, 2006); John Hamill, The Craft: A History of English Freemasonry (Crucible, 1986).
Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730–1840 (University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Jessica L. Harland-Jacobs, Builders of Empire: Freemasons and British Imperialism, 1717–1927 (University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
James Anderson, The Constitutions of the Free-Masons (London, 1723), especially the Charges concerning religion and behavior.
Complete This Two-Part Introduction
This is Part 2 of “Why Masons Talk in Stones, Tools, and Symbols.” Read it alongside the personal introduction, then continue into the individual-symbol essays. The next step is not simply to collect meanings, but to consider what an image might ask us to notice, examine, or put into practice.
Previous: Part 1 — A Personal Introduction
Explore the Freemasonry Reader’s Guide
Explore Individual Masonic Symbols
Continue into Masonic Symbols: Stones, Tools, and the Work of Character, a guided collection on the ashlars, the two pillars, the twenty-four-inch gauge, and the lodge room.
Begin with Rough and Perfect Ashlar: The Masonic Work of Self-Improvement, or use the overview to choose the symbol that interests you most.
Related Articles
- The Twenty-Four-Inch Gauge, Benjamin Franklin, and the Problem of Time — Follow a working tool into the practical question of how a day is used.
- Why the Lodge Room Is Laid Out Like a Map of the Mind — Move from individual objects to the symbolic relationships within a room.
- Geometry, Architecture, and Moral Proportion — Explore a companion reading on measure, building, and moral reflection.
