The Lost Key: An Explanation of Masonic Symbols

Chapter II. 27four natures correspond to the square of the Apron and aresometimes called the “Lower Quartemary.” It is by the Personalitythat you know your friend. You recognize him by his physicalbody, perhaps, but it is through his various qualities and attributes,through what you know of his emotional nature and his habits andcharacteristics of thought that you know and like him as well asthrough your knowledge of his physical characteristics.73. So it is through the Personality that your friend or any humanbeing really touches or “contacts” the world. Most reasonably,then, we would expect to find the Personality symbolized by thatpart of the body which touches or “contacts” the symbolic representationof the environment, the floor of the Lodge. This part ofthe physical body, obviously, is the feet. Hence the feet symbolizethe Personality.74. But the actual, physical contact of the spirit with the world isthrough the physical body although the body is but the machine, soto speak. You know and like your friend by knowing his personalitybut you recognize that personality, when you meet it on thestreet, by recognizing the psyical body. So we may say that thephysical body comes between the personality and the environment.Now what comes between the feet and the floor? Is it not theshoes? Now let us see what we have:75. PHYSICAL BODY symbolizes the mind.FEET.symoblizes the personality.SHOESsymbolizes the physical body, also the power toadvance.FLOOR OF THE LODGE symbolizes the environment.SYMBOLISM OF THE BODY76. The body or, we might say, the trunk of the body, symbolizesthe mind. But the body has four limbs, two upper limbs which arethe arms and two lower limbs, the legs. The limbs, representing