Corinthian Lodge No. 466 Protocol & Etiquette Seminar

Masonic Tracing Board Decoded & Explained: youtu.be/9exPJ6LAjA8

 

Elmvale Masonic Temple 77 Queen Street West Elmvale Ontario.

 

www.niagaramasons.com/Info%20Stuff/The%20Winding%20Stairc...

 

Museum of Freemasonry - Masonic Library

 

Lecture: The Legend Of The Winding Stairs

 

In an investigation of the symbolism of the winding stairs, we shall be directed to the true explanation by a reference to there origin, there number, the objects which they recall, and there termination, but above all by a consideration of the great design which an assent upon them was intended to accomplish.

 

The steps of this winding staircase commenced we are informed, at the porch of the Temple; that is to say, at its very entrance. But nothing is more undoubted in the science of Masonic symbolism than that the Temple was the representative of the world purified by the Divine Presence. The world of the profane is without the Temple; the world of the initiated is within its sacred walls. Hence to enter the Temple, to pass within the porch, to be made a mason, and to be born into the world of Masonic light, are all synonymous terms. Here, then, the symbolism of the winding stairs begins.

 

The Apprentice having entered within the porch of the temple, has begun his Masonic life. But the first degree in masonry, is only a preparation and purification for something higher. The Entered Apprentice is the child in Masonry. the lessons which he receives are simply intended to cleanse the heart and prepare the recipient for that mental illumination which is to be given in the succeeding degrees.

 

As a Fellow Craft, he has advanced another step, and as the degree is emblematic of youth, so it is here that the intellectual education of the candidate begins. And therefore, here, at the very spot which separates the porch from the sanctuary, where childhood ends and manhood begins, he finds stretching out before him a winding stair which invites him, as it were, to ascend, and which, as the symbol of discipline and instruction, teaches him that here must commence his Masonic labour here he must enter upon those glorious though difficult researches the end of which is to be in the possession of divine truth. The winding stairs begin after the candidate has passed within the porch and between the pillars of strength and establishment, as a significant symbol to teach him that as soon as he has passed beyond the years of irrational childhood, and commenced his entrance upon manly life, the laborious task of self-improvement is the first duty placed before him. He cannot stand still; his destiny requires him to ascend, step by step, until he has reached the summit, where the treasures of knowledge await him

 

The numbers of these steps in all the systems is odd. The coincidence is at least curious that the ancient temples were always ascended by an odd number of steps; so that commencing with the right foot at the bottom, the worshipper would find the same foot foremost when he entered the temple, which was considered as a fortunate omen. But the fact is, that the symbolism of numbers was borrowed by the masons from Pythagoras, in whose system of philosophy it plays an important part, and in which odd numbers were considered as more perfect than even ones. Hence, throughout the Masonic system we find a predominance of odd numbers, and while three, five, seven, and nine, are all-important symbols, we seldom find a reference to two, four, six, or eight. The odd number of stairs was therefore intended to symbolise the idea of perfection, to which it was the object of the aspirant to attain.

 

As to the particular number of the stairs, this has varied at different periods. The Tracing-boards of the nineteenth century have been found, in which only five steps are delineated, and others in which they amount to seven. The prestonian lectures, used at the beginning of the century gave the whole number of thirty-eight. the error of making an even number, which was a violation of the Pythagorean principle of odd numbers as the symbol of perfection, was later corrected. At the union of the two Grand Lodges of England the number was reduced to fifteen, divided into three series of three, five, and seven.

 

At the first pause which he makes he is instructed in the peculiar organisation of the order of which he has become a member. But the information here given, is barren, and unworthy of his labour. The rank of the officers, and the required number can give no knowledge which he has not before possessed. We must look therefore to the symbolic meaning of these allusions for any value which may be attached to this part of the ceremony.

 

The reference to the organisation of the Masonic institution is intended to remind us of the union of men in society, and the development of the social state out of the state of nature. He is thus reminded, in the very outset of his journey, of the blessings which arise from civilisation, and of the fruits of virtue and knowledge which are derived from that condition. Masonry itself is the result of civilisation; while, in grateful return, it has been one of the most important means of extending that condition to mankind.

 

All the monuments of antiquity prove that as man emerged from the savage to the social state then came the invention of architecture. As architecture developed as a means of providing convenient dwellings and necessary shelter from the harshness of the seasons, with the mechanical arts connected with it, for as we began to erect solid and more stately edifices of stone, they imitated the parts which necessity had introduced into the primitive huts. and adapted them to there temples, which, although at first simple and rude, were in the course of time, and by the ingenuity of succeeding architects, wrought and improved to such a degree of perfection on different models, that each was by way of eminence, denominated an order of architecture.

 

Advancing in his progress the candidate is invited to contemplate another series of instructions. The human senses, as the appropriate channels through which we receive al our ideas of perception, and which, therefore, constitute the most important sources of our knowledge, are here referred to as a symbol of intellectual cultivation. Architecture, as the most important of the arts which conduce to comfort of mankind, is also alluded to here, not simply because it is closely connected with operative instruction of Masonry, but also as the type of all the other useful arts. In his second pause, in the ascent of the winding stairs, the aspirant is therefore reminded of the necessity of cultivating practical knowledge

 

So far, then the instructions he has received relate to his own condition in society as a member of the great social compact, and to his means of becoming, by a knowledge of the arts of practical life, a necessarry and useful member of society. Still must he go onward and forward. the stair is still before him; its summit is not yet reached, and further wisdoms are to be sought for, or the reward will not be gained, nor the middle chamber the abiding-place of truth, be reached.

 

In his third pause, he therefore arrives at that point in which the whole circle of human science is to be explained. Symbols, we know, are in themselves arbitrary and of conventional signification, and the complete circle of human science might have been as well symbolesed by any other sign or series of doctrines as by the seven liberal arts and sciences. But Masony is an institution of olden time; and this selection of the liberal arts and sciences as a symbol of the completion of human learningis one of the most pregnant evidences that we have of its antiquity.

 

In the seventh century, and for a long time afterwards, the circle of instruction to which all the learning of the most eminent schools and most distinguished philosophers was confined, was limited to what were then called the liberal arts and sciences, and consisted of two branches, the trivium and the quadrivium. The trivium included grammar, rhetoric, and logic; the quadrivium comprehended arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These seven arts were supposed to include universal knowledge. He who was master of these was thought to have no need of a preceptor to explain any books or to solve any question which lay within the compass of human reason, the knowledge of the trivium having furnished him with the key to all language, and that of the quadrivium having opened to him the secret laws of nature.

 

But we are not yet done. It will be remembered that a reward was promised for all this toilsome ascent of the winding stairs. Now, what are the wages of a Speculative Mason? Not money, nor corn, nor wine, nor oil. All these are but symbols. His wages are truth, or the approximation to which it will be most appropriate to the degree into which he has been initiated. It is one of the most beautiful, but at the same time most abstruse, doctrines of the science of Masonic symbolism that the Mason is ever to be in search of truth, but is never to find it. This divine truth, the object of all his labours, is symbolised by the Word, for which we all know he can only obtain a substitute; and this is intended to teach the humiliating but necessary lesson that the knowledge of nature, of God, and of man's relation to them, which knowledge constitutes divine truth, can never be acquired in this life. Only at the end of this life shall he know the origin of life.

 

The middle chamber is therefore symbolic of this life, where the symbol only of the Word can be given, where the truth is to be reached by approximation only, and yet where we are to learn that truth will consist in a perfect knowledge of the G.G.O.T.U. This is the reward of the inquiring Mason; in this consist the wages of a Fellow Craft; he is directed to the truth, but he must travel farther and ascend still higher to attain it.

 

It is then, as a symbol, and as a symbol only, that we must study this beautiful legend of the winding stairs. if we attempt to adopt it as a historical fact, the absurdity of its details stares us in the face, and wise men will wonder at our credulity. Its inventors had no desire to thus impose upon our folly; but offering it to us as a great philosophical myth, they did not for a moment suppose that we would pass over its sublime moral teachings to accept the allegory as a historical narrative without meaning, and wholly irreconcilable with the records of Scripture, and opposed by all the principles of probability. To suppose that eighty thousand craftsman were weekly paid in the narrow precincts of the Temple chambers, is simply to suppose an absurdity. But to believe that all this pictorial representation of an ascent by a winding staircase to the place where the wages of labour were received, was an allegory to teach us the ascent of the mind from ignorance, through all the toils of study and the difficulties of obtaining knowledge, receiving here a little and there a little, adding something to the stock of our ideas at each step, until, in the middle chamber of life, in the full fruition of manhood, the reward is attained, and the purified and elevated intellect is invested with the reward in the direction how to seek truth and knowledge; to believe this, is to believe and to know the true design of Speculative Masonry, the only design which makes it worthy of a good and wise man's study.

 

2nd degree fellowcraft tracing board illustration.

 

On our way to the Sanctum Sanctorum, the newly made Mason undertakes a passage through what is commonly called the Middle Chamber. The reference into the middle way is through the temple of Solomon, and the pathway to the Holy of Holies, the adytum in which the Holy Ark of the covenant resides at the the Kodesh Hakodashim, or the place in which deity dwells. In that journey through the middle space, the Second degree brother is introduced to some of the more seemingly secular influenced aspects of the fraternity that begin to take on a double, or symbolic, meaning. On their surface, the basic notions of these things are obvious, but not until you start to look at them closely, at their deeper meanings, that we start to see their relationships to other more esoteric ideas. This is similar to religious traditions where withing one religious text there can be multiple layers of meaning, and multiple ways of interpretation which can lead to an allegorical, a moral, or a mystical meaning.

 

Indeed, as the degree is symbolically in King Solomon’s Temple, so to can it be seen as a symbolic metaphor to our own internal path, what Joseph Campbell calls the hero quest, and where you “leave the world that you you’re in and go into a depth or into a distance or up to a height.”[1]

 

This is not to assume that the Masonic degrees have a similar relevancy to sacred or Masonic symbols, tracing board, second degree, 2 degreespiritual texts, though some could argue that their significance is almost as powerful to some observants. It is a system of morality that strives to make good men better, which runs nearly in parallel with the many Volumes of the Sacred Law which seeks similar outcomes to achieve as it outlines and instructs its path to elevation. Whether its salvation or spiritual awakening the holy books seek to instruct its adherents to live better lives through their faith, the same that Freemasonry strives to through its practice – to make those good men better. In that process of making the good man a candidate for the degrees is made an entered apprentice, symbolically as he ascends Jacob’s ladder. Once at the top, he is presented a series of three groups of symbols which are set before him to become a Second Degree mason so as they may observe and contemplate them in their path of progression, their hero’s quest, to the third degree.

 

The story of the degree, from Duncan’s Masonic Ritual and Monitor*, picks up after the passage between the twin pillars of the degree with the conductor delivering this instruction:

 

Brother, we will pursue our journey. The next thing that attracts our attention is the winding stairs which lead to the Middle Chamber of King Solomon’s Temple, consisting of three, five, and seven steps.

 

The first three allude to the three principal stages of human life, namely, youth, manhood, and old age. In youth, as Entered Apprentices, we ought industriously to occupy our minds in the attainment of useful knowledge; in manhood, as Fellow Crafts, we should apply our knowledge to the discharge of our respective duties to God, our neighbors, and ourselves; so that in old age, as Master Masons, we may enjoy the happy reflections consequent on a well-spent life, and die in the hope of a glorious immortality.

 

They also allude to the three principal supports in Masonry, namely, Wisdom, Strength. and Beauty; for it is necessary that there should be wisdom to contrive, strength to support, and beauty to adorn all great and important undertakings.

 

They further allude to the three principal officers of the Lodge, viz.: Master, and Senior and Junior Wardens.

 

Let’s pause here and consider what some of the deeper meanings of these first steps infer. The first segment is fairly straight forward; with narrative telling us that the three steps allude to the three stages of human life – Youth, Manhood, and Old Age.

 

Youth is defined as:

Young persons, collectively.

A young person; especially, a young man.

The quality or state of being young; youthfulness; juvenility.

The part of life that succeeds to childhood; the period of existence preceding maturity or age; the whole early part of life, from childhood, or, sometimes, from infancy, to manhood.

 

from ThinkExist.com

This is a pretty straight forward idea, especially as it says to us that “we ought industriously to occupy our minds in the attainment of useful knowledge”, but how does this apply to an older initiate, someone who is no longer in his youth. Is it a wistful thought to what was achieved when younger and in still in school? Taken on a deeper level, it could allude to the idea of the degree itself, the First degree being synonymous to mean that in the first, the candidate comes to the lodge as a youth (despite his chronological or physical age) with a clean slate of perception and a clean pallet of interpretation. In a sense, he comes as blank slate to its teachings or to the ideas before him. The degree being his introduction from exterior life to interior life which ushers him both into the fraternity and into the concept of the undertaking. Pike, in the first degree lecture in Morals and Dogma, calls this the focusing of the aspirants “unregulated force” – the channel by which they constrain their previously raw, infantile state, into that of a focused and youthful aspirant no matter their age.

 

Next, the candidate enters into his Manhood, more literally the 2nd degree, of which the ceremony says of it “we should apply our knowledge to the discharge of our respective duties to God, our neighbors, and ourselves” which is a really active process to live by. We, in essence, are to achieve much by way of our doing, essentially, the work of our daily life towards our deity in worship and practice, our community in which we live and reside, but more specifically as we apply it to ourselves in continuing to apply what we’ve learned in our youth to this state of existence.

 

The Free Dictionary defines Manhood as:

1. The state or time of being an adult male human.

2. The composite of qualities, such as courage, determination, and vigor, often thought to be appropriate to a man.

3. Adult males considered as a group; men.

4. The state of being human.

 

In the third entry, we can take much from it beyond it simply being our middle state of being. It is in fact our ability to BE in the first place, our SELF in daily practice. Interesting as this is, the second degree in which our further education takes place is not only about the practice of our youth but also our ability to learn and apply that education to our life.

 

Campbell says of the age progression that “As a child, you are brought up in a world of discipline, of obedience, and you are dependant on others. All this has to be transcended when you come to maturity, so that you can live not in dependency but with self-responsible authority.”[2] This is, in essence, the heart of the three degree progression and the fundamental of the three steps – he becoming a man (or woman, respecting your discipline)!

 

Old age is a bit more of a troubling and complex issue. So often in modern society we look at old age as a point of retirement where work and physical activity dramatically changes or diminishes. In this description, the idea of old age holds true in that the degree says of old age that in it “we may enjoy the happy reflections consequent on a well-spent life, and die in the hope of a glorious immortality”

 

There are several interesting meanings we can take from this especially that it is in the degrees that these physical changes are metaphorically said to take place which can become a literal interpretation, and that once attained the Master Mason can live through them – literally to reflect on the life well spent. What’s troubling here is that the major portion of the work of the lodge is spent in the third degree and a caution must be considered so as to not see the work of the Master Mason as just one of reflection and of casual rest lest no work, as described in Manhood, be completed.

 

Old Age is essentially defined as ones age nearing or passing the average life span of human beings, and thus at the end of the human life cycle. In the U.S. this is considered to be 78 years old giving a distinct impression as to when one should then become a True Master. It really is at a twilight of life period, one of great age and maturity where little change and much reflection takes place. This gives us an interesting perspective on the meaning as it implies a near end of physical life period of time which squares with the degrees lesson as the period of reflection of a life well spent. We become the Master of our all, ready to pass our knowledge on to the next generation.

 

With this vantage, we can take pause to deeply consider that our daily working of the degrees, intrinsically, could (or should) be conducted in the 2nd state, our manhood in which we conversely learn and grow.

 

Cirlot, in his Dictionary of Symbols, makes an interesting point in that the idea of progression in the stages of age is not unique to Masonry. Besides the stages themselves, the number three (3) is a representation of synthesis and unites the “solution of conflict posed by dualism.” In other words, the third object brings about balance for the first two opposing states. Think of the balance of three dots, one stacked above two.

 

From this point, the degree breaks off to correlate these first steps with the three principal pillars of the lodge as Wisdom, Strength and Beauty which also has an interesting Kabalistic point of reference in the three pillars that make up the structure of the tree of life. Keep in mind, the orientation assumes the viewer reverse the structure to mirror ones own standing rather than simply reflect the observer.

 

Wisdom, the left hand pillar of mercy, is an active pillar and representativeof alchemical fire, which is the principal of spirituality, often called the pillar of Jachin. It is a masculine pillar, and relates to our mental energy, our loving kindness, and our creative inspiration as we traverse it up the Kabbalaistic tree through the Sephirot.

 

Strength is the right hand pillar and takes the form of severity, shaped into the alchemical symbol of water. It can represent darkness, but it is a passive symbol that is feminine in nature and called the pillar of Boaz. Upon it we find the points of our thoughts and ideas, our feelings and emotions, and the physicality of our physical experience, our sensations, each an aspect of its Cabalistic progression.

 

Beauty, then, takes on the role of synthesis of the two, the pillar of mildness; it is upon this pillar that the novitiate is transformed through his progressive states as he progresses. The central pillar of Beauty is representative of Jehovah, the Tetragrammaton which represents deity itself"mercurial transformation" upon which our crown of being resides balanced through feeling and emotion from our foundation of justice and mercy, all of which springs from our link to the everyday world.

 

These aspects of the Kabbalah are not specific attributes of the study in the blue lodge, rather elements of deeper esoteric study, found more specifically in the degrees of the Scottish Rite. Because of the pillars, and their deeper symbolic meaning, it does, however, necessitate looking at them deeper to see the relationship between them as the blue lodge degrees seem to have parallels in the study of the Kabbalah – a happy accident at some time past or with purpose to link the ideas together. Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty are specific aspects of the lower three degrees and emphasized here in the first three steps into the middle chamber, necessitating their deeper esoteric study to fully grasp their broader importance.

 

As the degree instructs – Wisdom is to contrive, Strength is to support, and Beauty is to adorn all great and important undertakings – which are the fundamentals of the three pillars in the Kabbalaistic study.

 

Conversely, as the degree states, these three pillars “allude to the three principal officers of the Lodge, viz.: Master, and Senior and Junior Wardens.” and can be interpreted as such in both a micro (in lodge) fashion and in a broader macro tradition of Masonry itself – in this Kabbalaistic formulation. When the alchemical aspects of wisdom and strength are combined we can see the 6 pointed star appears, the symbol of transformation, often depicted in the conjoining of the square and compass in which Masons are instructed to square their actions and circumscribe their passions, which also corresponds to the link between the Saints Johns – the Baptist as the principal of alchemical water, and the Evangelist as the symbol of alchemical fire, both of whom have much deeper esoteric connections in Masonry. Also, the figures of the lodge leadership have a deeper connection as you begin to look at their alchemical connections too, when you look at their relationship to the Sun and moon, and the aspirant candidate as the solution of conflict, as Cirlot described, and as defined in the first degree – the three sphere aspect to balance the two of conflict.

 

From these short first few tentative steps, we can see that there is a wealth of Masonic symbols at hand, but we are only one third into our progression. Our next step takes us deeper into the middle chamber to its central position where we encounter an interesting juxtaposition of the physical world to our very human aspect of being through our senses.

 

For now, reflect a time on these first three steps and consider what comes next upon the path.

Done