A wedding ring: an object whose associations extend beyond its definition.
Part 11 of 13 in Masonic Symbols & Symbolic Thinking
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You can explain a wedding ring without replacing it.
Say that it represents a commitment. Describe the promises, identify the people, and give an account of the custom. The explanation may be accurate.
It is still not quite the same thing as the ring worn for thirty years, removed before an operation, or kept after the person who gave it has died.
Nothing supernatural has happened to the metal. Its place in a life has given it associations that a short definition does not reproduce.
This is a useful beginning for understanding symbols.
Plain language can explain what an object represents. The object can also gather memory, feeling, and questions around that explanation. We return to it under changed circumstances and notice something that was not present—or not apparent—before.
Freemasonry makes extensive use of this possibility.
Its tools, stones, lights, and arranged spaces give members more than a collection of illustrated definitions. They provide objects through which an idea can be reconsidered.
The title of this article needs that distinction. Symbols do not possess a monopoly on depth, and plain language is not confined to issuing instructions.
The question is what a particular form of expression makes available that a summary leaves out.
Plain Language Deserves a Proper Defense
If someone owes you money, you probably want the amount and the payment date stated clearly.
An emblem suggesting fidelity to obligation would be a disappointing substitute.
Direct explanation is indispensable when we need to identify a fact, establish a responsibility, correct an error, or make a decision. Symbolism should not be used to avoid these tasks.
It is also a mistake to describe words as though they carry information but no feeling.
A plain sentence can be devastating. “He did not come home” requires no elaborate vocabulary to exceed the emotional resources of a paragraph explaining absence.
Language can evoke as well as state. Symbols can be banal as well as rich.
So we should abandon the contest in which words are practical but shallow and images are obscure but profound.
The more useful question is why an explanation of a symbol may be accurate without being an adequate substitute for encountering it.
A Definition Is Not Everything We Know
Consider the instruction to keep a promise.
Its meaning is clear enough. Yet what it requires may become apparent only through particular circumstances.
Keeping a promise may cost time, money, comfort, or approval. Sometimes it requires admitting that we should not have made the promise in the first place.
A symbol associated with obligation can become a meeting place for these experiences.
The words supply an explanation. The object gives us something recognizable through which to return to it.
This is not a separate, superior kind of truth. It is another way of bringing a question into view.
We might know what fidelity means and still discover that we have been making exceptions for ourselves. An inherited emblem, encountered again, may call up a promise we have become skilled at overlooking.
The object has not discovered the inconsistency.
It has helped us notice it.
A Symbol Is More Than a Label
Suppose we say that the square represents honest conduct.
That identifies a familiar moral association. It does not finish the comparison.
A square is used to test an angle against a standard. The test is not improved by the worker’s confidence. A small error may affect what is fitted to the work later.
These practical relationships provide further questions.
What standard am I applying? Have I checked the result? Who will be affected if I decide that close enough is good enough?
Each question develops from something the tool does.
Now imagine replacing the tool with a card bearing the word “honesty.” The card states the subject. It does not present the same network of relationships.
That is one reason the object remains useful after its usual explanation is known.
The symbol is not a locked box containing a longer sentence. It is something we can think with.
Meaning Can Be Presented Through Relationships
The philosopher Susanne K. Langer distinguished between discursive and presentational forms of symbolism.
In broad terms, discursive forms develop through a sequence, while presentational forms offer an arrangement whose relationships must be considered together.[1]
The distinction is not simply words versus pictures. A visual chart can convey a precise sequence of information, while a poem made of words may depend on the effect of the whole.
For our purposes, the useful insight is that an arrangement can matter in ways a list of its components does not capture.
A lodge room contains objects and stations. Listing them tells us what is present. It does not yet explain their relation to one another or what happens as people move among them.
Likewise, two pillars are more than two separate inventories of bronze and decoration. Their pairing and placement become part of what we consider.
This does not prove a particular interpretation. It explains why relationships deserve attention.
Sometimes the unit of meaning is not the isolated object but the arrangement.
Why One Explanation May Not Exhaust a Symbol
A useful symbol permits us to ask connected questions without requiring us to ask them all at once.
Take the rough and worked stone.
One encounter may direct attention toward effort. Another may raise a question about the proposed standard. Later, the relationship between the stone and the building may become more interesting than the contrast between roughness and finish.
These are not necessarily competing definitions.
They arise from different aspects of the same comparison: material, work, measure, preparation, and contribution.
But “many possible meanings” is not enough. A symbol can be made to mean almost anything if we stop asking how an interpretation is connected to it.
Why this reading? What feature supports it? Is it part of an established explanation, a historical writer’s account, or an application we are proposing?
Those questions give symbolic thought some discipline.
Without them, we may merely have found an attractive surface on which to display our existing opinions.
Symbols Can Start Thought Rather Than Finish It
Paul Ricoeur summarized an important part of his approach with the phrase “the symbol gives rise to thought.”[2]
That is a useful alternative to treating a symbol as a puzzle with a concealed answer.
A puzzle is resolved when we find the answer. A symbol may become more interesting when its familiar explanation leads to another question.
If the ashlar concerns improvement, what are we trying to improve?
If the level concerns equality, how do we account for differences of responsibility?
If light concerns understanding, how do we distinguish clearer judgment from greater confidence?
None of these questions requires pretending that the object contains a complete philosophy.
The symbol begins the inquiry by making a relationship available. We then have to examine it in language.
This is why explanation and symbolism need not compete. The image gives us something to discuss. Discussion helps us see whether we have made anything of it.
A Shared Object Does Not Require Identical Thoughts
Members can recognize the same emblem while approaching it through different experiences.
A newly accepted responsibility may make someone attentive to obligation. A failure may make the same subject uncomfortable. Another person may be chiefly interested in the emblem’s history.
The shared form allows a conversation to begin without assuming that everyone arrives with the same inner account.
This is one of the useful possibilities of Masonic symbolism.
A common vocabulary can support discussion among people whose education, religious commitments, and personal histories differ. Interpretive writers such as W. Kirk MacNulty have explored the relationships among Masonic images and ceremonial forms.[3]
But a shared symbol does not eliminate disagreement.
Members may differ about what a reading supports, where it originated, or whether it is helpful. That disagreement can sharpen understanding if nobody is required to mistake personal conviction for universal instruction.
We can share the object without claiming possession of everyone else’s interpretation.
Feeling Something Does Not Settle Its Meaning
Symbols can carry emotional weight.
A familiar object may recall a person, a ceremony, a loss, or a promise. These associations can make a question difficult to dismiss as merely theoretical.
They can also influence judgment in less helpful ways.
An impressive emblem may make a weak claim seem substantial. An image associated with belonging can discourage scrutiny of what is being done in its name.
The fact that an interpretation moves us does not establish its accuracy.
We should be able to explain enough of the connection to examine it. What experience does the symbol recall? What claim is now being made? Does the feeling support that claim, or have we moved from one to the other without noticing?
There is no need to distrust emotion simply because it is emotion.
There is reason to avoid making it perform the work of evidence.
When the Familiar Image Stops Speaking
A symbol can become as easy to overlook as a familiar phrase.
The square appears. We recall “morality.” The ashlar appears. We recall “self-improvement.” Recognition is complete, and the examination never begins.
The problem is not that the explanation is wrong. It has become a label that allows us to stop looking.
One response is to return to the practical object.
How is it used? What does the operation require? What would count as failure? Which parts of that comparison are relevant to conduct, and which are not?
Another response is to examine a particular occasion.
What did equality require in the meeting last week? Where did restraint become difficult? What would keeping the promise involve now?
The symbol may then become specific enough to trouble our preferred account of ourselves.
That is more useful than supplying it with another impressive association.
Explanation Can Rescue a Symbol
Sometimes the obstacle is not a shortage of contemplation. It is a missing explanation.
A newcomer may not know the object’s name. A traditional phrase may have become unfamiliar. A historical reference may need context.
There is no virtue in allowing avoidable confusion to continue.
A clear account can give the reader or participant a place to begin. It can also correct an interpretation that has drifted away from the evidence.
Masonic symbols should not be defended by declaring that anyone who asks for an explanation is incapable of appreciating them.
The inquiry should move both ways. We look at the object, consider the explanation, and return to the object with something more definite to examine.
Sometimes the result will be a rich comparison.
Sometimes we will discover that a cherished interpretation rests on a misunderstanding.
Both are forms of learning.
What the Paraphrase Leaves Out
We can now give the title a more precise answer.
A paraphrase may identify an idea without reproducing the form through which we encounter it.
“The ring represents commitment” is useful. It does not reproduce the ring’s place in a particular life.
“The square represents upright conduct” gives a familiar explanation. It leaves further work in the relationship between the tool, the standard, the test, and the person doing the testing.
The difference is not that symbols are beyond speech. We have been using speech to examine them throughout this article.
It is that an explanation does not necessarily replace the thing explained.
A score can be discussed accurately without a performance taking place. A photograph can be described without being shown. An emblem can be defined without all its associations being present.
The summary serves a purpose. It need not pretend to serve every purpose.
Keep the Words and the Object
Freemasonry’s symbolic method is most intelligible when explanation and encounter remain in conversation.
Name the tool. Explain its use. Establish the traditional association where it is known. Then examine what the comparison permits us to notice about conduct.
There is no need to make the language obscure or the image miraculous.
A symbol may hold our attention because its relationships remain available for another look. Clear language allows us to ask whether that look has disclosed anything worth keeping.
The result is not a choice between a lecture and a mystery.
We have an object, an explanation, and a question that has not yet been settled in practice.
The symbol gives us somewhere to return.
What we say—and do—when we return is still our responsibility.
Continue the Series
Next: Why Initiation Is About Transformation, Not Information →
Sources and Further Reading
The discussion of Masonic examples is the author’s interpretation. The philosophical works below offer approaches to symbolism; they do not establish that every symbol is inexhaustible, that images are superior to language, or that a particular interpretation is historically Masonic.
- Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite and Art (Harvard University Press, 1942). Her distinction between discursive and presentational symbolism is more complex than a division between words and images. For an introductory account, see [“Susanne K. Langer,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy](Susanne K. Langer | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Susanne K. Langer | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil (Beacon Press, 1967), especially the concluding discussion, “The Symbol Gives Rise to Thought.” For context, see “Paul Ricoeur,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
W. Kirk MacNulty, Freemasonry: A Journey Through Ritual and Symbol (Thames & Hudson, 1991), and Freemasonry: Symbols, Secrets, Significance (Thames & Hudson, 2006). These offer developed interpretations of Masonic symbolism, not a single account binding on every tradition.
For further study of symbolism and interpretation, see Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man (Yale University Press, 1944), and Umberto Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (Indiana University Press, 1984). Specific claims attributed to these works should be supported by the passages actually consulted.
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