symbols - what are they?
by
bro. H. L. Haywood
Published in the N.Y. MASONIC OUTLOOK, May 1933
If you will copy off on a large sheet of paper forty or fifty of the most widely
used definitions of Freemasonry of the past two centuries your eye will be
struck by one out standing fact, perhaps it is the outstanding fact: with few
exceptions all of them take it for granted that Freemasonry hides, conceals, or
disguises its teachings behind its symbols, or at best that they merely suggest
or illustrate its meanings.
Symbols are not, and cannot be, a species of camouflage, veils,
darkness—designed to obscure or mislead. They are, and they must be, the exact
opposite. Their nature and function is not to conceal, but to reveal; not to
observe, but to express. The notion that Freemasonry employs a whole system of
symbolism solely for the purpose of withholding its teachings from its own
members has been the most disastrous blunder in the whole history of the Craft;
in the last analysis it amounts to arguing that Masonry says one thing but means
another; this weakens the force of its authority, transforms the ritual into one
long puzzle, and bewilders all except the most learned with the unhappy feeling
that they have no way of discovering what it is that they have obligated
themselves to practice and to believe.
Scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and artists, none of whom are addicted
to occultism or sworn to secrecy, employ symbols as a matter of course. They
know the human mind to be so made that symbolism is a necessity to it; neither
thought nor the communication of thought can be carried on without it; lacking
it there could be no such thing as knowledge and therefore no such thing as
science. If one were to tell any scholar, scientist or artist that symbols are
to conceal ideas he would be laughed at for his pains; they know that symbols
are themselves ideas and that no idea can be expressed and concealed at one and
the same time.
A symbol is first of all an object in its own right with its own immediate uses
and meanings. An hour glass, for example, is, to begin with, simply an
hour-glass, a species of clock, by which time is measured. A twenty-four-inch
rule is a measuring rod that every carpenter, mason or machinist carries about
with him for daily, practicable purposes. A circle drawn by a geometrician on a
piece of paper is nothing but a circle; an architect may make use of it to
construct the arch over a window, an engineer may employ it for the purpose of
manufacturing a steel pulley. Each is what it appears to be; there is no more
mystery about it than there is about a lump of dirt or a glass of water.
At the same time each familiar object is an instance or specimen of some general
practice, or rule, or law, or idea, or principle, or truth. The hour-glass is
but one of the countless instances of the fact of time, which operates as one of
the primary and universal realities in human experience. The rule is but one
instance of the principle of measurement, and measurement is a cardinal
necessity everywhere which takes a thousand forms—a liquid may be measured in a
cup, distance is measured by the rule, weight is measured by a scale, ignorance
is measured according to an accepted standard of enlightenment, music is
measured according to a system of beats, thought is measured by the degree of
its approximation to the truth; without all such modes and methods of
measurement human life would be impossible.
Confronted by such countless instances, with all their wide variety of forms
which may be ever changing, the mind cannot handle them all together, but must
simplify its task. It seeks out a law, principle, or idea which rims through and
controls them all and makes use of that. To do this it seizes on some
significant and familiar instance and uses it to stand for all the other
instances or as a simple form or expression of the general truth. The moment it
makes use of some one thing for that purpose, and regardless of what that thing
may be, the thing becomes a symbol. A symbol thus stands for some general truth
but at the same time it is itself an instance, embodiment, or expression of that
truth. It doesn’t hide that truth; it expresses it, makes it plain and clear;
there is nothing artificial about its symbolical use because it is itself the
truth in actual operation.
Thus an hour-glass is at once a clock for measuring time and an instance of the
whole idea of time; it possesses, as symbol, a double purpose, for it is both a
clock and a representative of the general idea of all possible kinds of clocks.
A two-foot rule is in itself nothing but a measuring stick, but at the same time
it stands for the whole principle of measurement. A circle first of all is
literally nothing but a circle, but as a symbol it becomes an expression of one
of the most important of all types of relationship, whether in the natural world
or in the human world. In the very nature of the case there cannot be anything
queer, occult, hidden or secret about a symbol because its whole being and
purpose is to exhibit something, express it, make it dear.
Nobody in his right senses will ever argue that men have all conspired together
to conceal their facts and ideas behind a veil of allegory or to hide them in
the depths of symbolism! Their motive, of course, always is the exact opposite:
to reveal, to communicate, to express, to make clear, and if more and more they
are making use of symbolism to that end it is because symbols are so expressive,
tell so much in so little, so accurately, and with an intelligibility so
universal.
There are in our ritual many elements other than symbolism—emblems, types,
dramas and allegories, but in so far as it is composed of symbols the same
things may be said of each and every one of them that has been said in the above
paragraphs about symbols in general. Their one and only purpose is to make dear
to every Mason what it is that Masonry teaches and what is expected of him.
Freemasonry is one of the great teaching institutions like the school, the
church, the press, and similar organizations; where it differs from them is not
in its use or under standing of symbols but in its exclusive use of a system of
symbols as its method of teaching. Where they use books, speeches, lectures,
writ ten statements, creeds, all expressed in a form of words, it uses symbols
and symbols only. There are words and lectures in our ritual but their place is
not primary; their only function is to present or to explain the symbol.
It is because this is true that symbolism is of such paramount importance to
every Mason. If he is indifferent to the symbols, does not know how to use them,
leaves them alone, makes no effort to understand them, he must necessarily miss
the whole meaning of Masonry and stand incapacitated to be a Mason or to live
its life. And a Lodge that leaves them out of its room, or slurs them over, or
treats them as quaint curiosities survived from the Middle Ages is in so far in
the real sense not a Masonic Lodge at all, but has missed its calling and is
defeating its own end. Without its symbols Freemasonry necessarily is dumb
because it has no other voice; if its own members pass them by its influence in
their lives is paralyzed because it is through its symbols that it must operate
on their minds, if at all.
Nothing is more urgently necessary in the Craft, tragically necessary, here or
elsewhere, than the recovery—perhaps it is better to say, the discovery of the
place symbols hold in our Craft and of their proper function in the experience
of Ma sons. To teach and expound them, to require of a candidate that he study
them, to help, aid and assist worthy Master Masons to know what they are all
about— is not a side issue not a pleasant diversion but a need so cardinal that
if it isn’t done more thoroughly than it is now there is no telling what will
happen to the Craft in the future.
Why doesn’t the Craft state its teachings in so many words and be done with it,
instead of this puzzling, roundabout use of symbols?” This is an old question,
but it is always the plain confession of a lack of understanding of the nature
of the Craft and of the method it must always employ to effect its purpose. The
answer to the question penetrates to one of the most deeply-rooted of all the
‘secrets” of our art. In the broadest sense of the words, and other things being
equal, a man is made a Ma son for the express purpose of causing him to study,
understand, accept and practice the symbols. They are not pointers toward
Masonry, pictures here of what Masonry is there, illustrations or commentaries
of it; they are themselves Masonry, they are what it is, they are at first-hand
and in their own right its teachings, principles, ideals.
And it is in the very process of understanding and assimilating them that a
member grows into Masonic manhood. In them he finds the life he is pledged and
called upon to live. His mind is developed by his work of studying them. His
intellect is sharpened and disciplined by the toil of overcoming their
difficulties. His imagination is enlarged and enriched by his insights into
their significance. His character is strengthened by his effort to translate
them into his own practice. His life takes shape and becomes harmoniously
ordered as he follows their lead.
Others may help him, books may instruct him, but it is for him chiefly to use
his own wits, employ his own faculties, make his own observations, do his own
reflecting, compare one symbol with another and discover how each is related to
the system as a whole; by these methods, so remote from the easy acceptance of
opinions and ideas at second-hand, which is the curse that always dogs the use
of the printed page, a man grows. He can’t help but grow, because he is using
his own faculties to some purpose.
It was for this that he was initiated in the first place; it was to engage in
this life-long labor that he was presented with Working Tools in each of the
Degrees; it was to this end that he was made a Mason. In the Craft’s great
system of symbols there stands revealed and expressed one of the truest and
mightiest philosophies of human life that our race knows anything about; he whom
Initiation has brought into its presence, and who has inherited it by virtue of
his membership, has received a possession beyond all possible computation in any
of the ten thousand terms of money or riches.
Masonic Bits and Bytes
Have any symbols been added or omitted in modem times? A few. In old engraved
certificates, most of which depict an assemblage of symbols and emblems, you
will encounter now and then one that is no longer in use, at least in America;
the chisel, for example, the skirret, etc. The symbol of the Virgin Weeping over
the Broken Column is about one hundred and seventy years old and was devised in
America. What we call the due-guard is by many scholars believed to be also an
“Americanism.” The flag is now an officially adopted Lodge emblem in some Grand
Jurisdictions. It needs to be remembered that until about seventy-five years ago
Jurisdictions had no official, uniform ritual; prior to that time a certain
number of changes, additions and omissions occurred here and there. But these
changes, like present variations from State to State, were in details only; in
all essentials and fundamentals the ritual has not changed for about two hundred
and seventy years
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