A pointed ashlar (“pierre cubique à pointe”) can often be found in France or French-influenced Freemasonry, usually connected to the second “craft” degree. Sometimes on tracing boards, an axe sticks into it.
Feddersen (F/31) has an example of a six sided pointed stone with an axe in it.
There is also a wildly esoteric version of it.
The top right says that the image comes from the Scottish degree in the “regime” of the Grand Orient de France. I know that there are Memphis Misraim lodges (of the ‘Yarker type’) that use it in their second degree. Parts of it appear in some Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite degrees (the 14º).
I have an image coloured by Adam McLean of one side of the cubic. He calls the image: “Engraving of cubic stone from Maurisches Handbuch Leipzig, 1829″. This is actually Maurerisches Handbuch : Oder Angabe aller Gebräuche in der französischen Maurerei, nebst Anzeige und Erklärung aller geheimen Worte und Grade der verschiedenen Systeme which was first published in 1821 and is a translation of Manuel Maconnique Ou Tuileur De Tous Les Rites De Maconnerie Pratiques En France by C. Vuillaume, 1820.
Other sources claim that is comes from Dictionnaire encyclopedique de la Franc maconnerie Centro Loyola. Madrid. But again no luck in finding information on that book.
There is a little book in French from 1806 called Explication de la Pierre Cubique, which appears to be the source of the image above. The author, Antoine Chéraux, repeatedly writes that the images originates in the ‘high degrees’ of the Grand Orient de France. That booklet is available in an English translation of Adam McLean (2023).
The oldest version (so far) is the 1801 version of the Régulateur des Chevaliers maçons, that is, the ‘high degree’ “Régulateur”. It seems that in the first 1786 version, there is one face of the cube. (Note that the Régulateur du Maçon – grades symbolique is also from 1786/1801.)
In 1893 John Yarker wrote a little booklet explaining “the cubic stone of the Ancient and Primitive Rite” which is basically the text of Chéraux. His cube is not entirely the same though.
On the different faces, you can see Masonic cipher, encrypted passwords and geometrical figures.
Click on the image for a larger version. When you print that image on A3, you can fold your own “Cubischer Stein”.
Top: Wikimedia Commons.
Middle: detail from French 18th century tracing board.
Bottom: first published in the 1801 edition of La Régulateur des Maçons Chevalier. Design by Antoinne Chéreau.