Freemasonry

The Symbolism of Freemasonry: XVI. The Covering of the Lodge

Summary only - full text stays on its own separately-gated source. Read the full text at the source »

This is an excerpt from a 19th-century scholarly treatise on Freemasonry, working in the tradition of comparative religious symbolism. The author argues that the Masonic lodge and its symbolic elements — particularly the "theological ladder" connecting earth to heaven — are direct descendants of initiation rites found in ancient mystery religions, including the Mithraic, Brahminic, and Scandinavian traditions, all of which employed a seven-runged ladder representing the cosmos and the sun's celestial journey. A central claim is that the modern Masonic ladder's reduction to three rounds (Faith, Hope, Charity) is an error introduced by uninformed engravers, and that the original and correct form always had seven steps, culminating in Charity — which the author equates, through Paul's epistles and symbolic color theory, with Divine Love and ultimately with the solar orb itself. The author consistently drives toward a single thesis: that the solar symbol — whether the literal sun or "the Grand Architect of the Universe" — is the organizing principle behind all Masonic symbolism and links it to the universal religious symbolism of antiquity. The work closes with five formal propositions asserting that Freemasonry is fundamentally a science of symbolism whose identity with ancient mystery religions proves a shared origin, one the author claims is compatible with genuine religious sentiment.

The Symbolism of Freemasonry: XVI. The Covering of the Lodge

Related pages View as graph →