THE ARCANE SCHOOLS - Fort Myers Beach Masonic Lodge No. 362

always been called Builders, and it was no idle fancy when Plato and
Pythagoras used imagery drawn from the art of building to utter their
highest thought. Everywhere in literature, philosophy, and life it is
so, and naturally so. Shakespeare speaks of "square-men," and when
Spenser would build in stately lines the Castle of Temperance, he
makes use of the Square, Circle, and Triangle:[101]
/P
The frame thereof seem'd partly circulaire
And part triangular: O work divine!
Those two the first and last proportions are;
The one imperfect, mortal, feminine.
The other immortal, perfect, masculine,
And twixt them both a quadrate was the base,
Proportion'd equally by seven and nine;
Nine was the circle set in heaven's place
All which compacted made a goodly diapase.
P/
During the Middle Ages, as we know, men revelled in symbolism, often
of the most recondite kind, and the emblems of Masonry are to be found
all through the literature, art, and thought of that time. Not only on
cathedrals, tombs, and monuments, where we should expect to come upon
them, but in the designs and decorations of dwellings, on vases,
pottery, and trinkets, in the water-marks used by paper-makers and
printers, and even as initial letters in books--everywhere one finds
the old, familiar emblems.[102] Square, Rule, Plumb-line, the perfect
Ashlar, the two Pillars, the Circle within the parallel lines, the
Point within the Circle, the Compasses, the Winding Staircase, the
numbers Three, Five, Seven, Nine, the double Triangle--these and other
such symbols were used alike by Hebrew Kabbalists and Rosicrucian
Mystics. Indeed, so abundant is the evidence--if the matter were in
dispute and needed proof--especially after the revival of symbolism
under Albertus Magnus in 1249, that a whole book might be filled with
it. Typical are the lines left by a poet who, writing in 1623, sings
of God as the great Logician whom the conclusion never fails, and
whose counsel rules without command:[103]
/P
Therefore can none foresee his end
Unless on God is built his hope.
And if we here below would learn
By Compass, Needle, Square, and Plumb,
We never must o'erlook the mete
Wherewith our God hath measur'd us.
P/
For all that, there are those who never weary of trying to find where,
in the misty mid-region of conjecture, the Masons got their immemorial
emblems. One would think, after reading their endless essays, that the
symbols of Masonry were loved and preserved by all the world--_except
by the Masons themselves_. Often these writers imply, if they do not
actually assert, that our order begged, borrowed, or cribbed its
emblems from Kabbalists or Rosicrucians, whereas the truth is exactly
the other way round--those impalpable fraternities, whose vague,
fantastic thought was always seeking a local habitation and a body,