The Universal Language of Freemasonry - ArchiMeD - Johannes ...

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Chapter 4 - Signs & Symbols
As a symbol of death, the scythe of time in many Masonic illustrations 369 is
accompanied by a weeping virgin holding a sprig of acacia in one hand and an
urn in the other, standing at a broken column on which there lies an open book.
The hourglass and the scythe are explained to the candidate in the third part of
the lecture of the Third Degree of Masonry, in which the candidate is told about
the vanity of human life:
Thus wastes man! To-day, he puts forth the tender leaves of hope; tomorrow,
blossoms, and bears his blushing honors thick upon him; the
next day comes a frost which nips the shoot; and when he thinks his
greatness is still a-ripening, he falls, like autumn leaves, to enrich our
mother earth. 370
369
The hourglass was photographed at a Masonic exhibition in the Preußen-Museum in Wesel in
2000; the illustration of Father Time, the virgin, and the broken column is reproduced from
Sickels, p. 179.
370
Simons, p. 134 (1888); the same lecture appears in Sickels, p. 213 (1885), and in The Freemason's
Companion (1869), p. 82.