The “Chevalier du Soleil” (‘Knight of the Sun’) tracing board fascinates me. It looks very Alchemical. I know several variations with a few common features, but also differences. So far, I have not found many texts finding texts explaining details of the image and I have several texts for a degree called “Chevalier du Soleil”. Then, finally, the Baylot collection of degrees, contains a degree called: “Knight of the Eagle and the Sun or the disentangled Chaos”. This very long degree appears to look back, summarize, (re)interpret symbols of earlier degrees and then in a catechism a few elements are described.
Q. What is the meaning of the knights whose names are written in the large circle which is called the first heaven?
A. They represent the bodily delights bestowed by God upon man at his creation: sight, hearing, smell, taste, sensation, tranquility, thinking capacity or health.
All “Chevalier du Soleil” tracing boards that I knew, don’t have knights’ names, but (Arch)angel names in that circle! Yet, the Dutch translators of the Baylot collection (Van Eijk, Van Seggelen, Sinnighe Damsté, 2019) found a tracing board that -indeed- does not appear to contain angel names. Since I have not yet found the source of their image and because the descriptions of the “bodily delights” might just as well be put on the angel names, I decided to only reproduce the tracing boards that I do currently know:
Top row: Collection complète des tous les grades connus dans l’Art Royal de la Francmaçonerie (1773) – Fonds Maçonnique FM4 (76) – Collection de 84 tableaux (1784) Kloss collection Kl.MS:XXV.1
Bottom row: Fonds Gaborria Ms.-401 – Musée de la Franc-maçonnerie, Num. Inv. D2. SN01 – Hessisches Staatsarchiv, HStAD, D 4, 585/7