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

at
that chain of resemblances which unites Freemasonry with the ancient
systems of religion, and which has given rise, among masonic writers,
to
the names of Pure and Spurious Freemasonry--the pure Freemasonry being
that system of philosophical religion which, coming through the line of
the patriarchs, was eventually modified by influences exerted at the
building of King Solomon's temple, and the spurious being the same
system
as it was altered and corrupted by the polytheism of the nations of
heathendom.[64]
As this abstruser mode of symbolism, if less peculiar to the masonic
system, is, however, far more interesting than the one which was
treated
in the previous essay,--because it is more philosophical,--I propose to
give an extended investigation of its character. And, in the first
place,
there is what may be called an elementary view of this abstruser
symbolism, which seems almost to be a corollary from what has already
been
described in the preceding article.
As each individual mason has been supposed to be the symbol of a
spiritual
temple,--"a temple not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,"--the
lodge or collected assemblage of these masons, is adopted as a symbol
of
the world.[65]
It is in the first degree of Masonry, more particularly, that this
species of symbolism is developed. In its detail it derives the
characteristics of resemblance upon which it is founded, from the form,
the supports, the ornaments, and general construction and internal
organization of a lodge, in all of which the symbolic reference to the
world is beautifully and consistently sustained.
The form of a masonic lodge is said to be a parallelogram, or oblong
square; its greatest length being from east to west, its breadth from
north to south. A square, a circle, a triangle, or any other form but
that
of an _oblong square_, would be eminently incorrect and unmasonic,
because
such a figure would not be an expression of the symbolic idea which is
intended to be conveyed.
Now, as the world is a globe, or, to speak more accurately, an oblate
spheroid, the attempt to make an oblong square its symbol would seem,
at
first view, to present insuperable difficulties. But the system of
masonic
symbolism has stood the test of too long an experience to be easily
found
at fault; and therefore this very symbol furnishes a striking evidence
of
the antiquity of the order. At the Solomonic era--the era of the
building