Find your Symbol of Freemasonry
More frequent than just a down-pointing arrow is the downwards-pointing arrow in a triangle. I am not sure if the two symbols refer to the same. The arrow in a triangle is an ancient Masonic symbol. You can find a beautiful one in the Mutus Liber Latamorum (1765):
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Continue reading2. The Celestial City with the Tree of Life in the centre.
A Cosmic Cross enclosing the letters C, K, A, A, and S.
That is all the description you get for this element on the tracing board below.
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The Grave stone on which are carved the Hebrew letters (right to left): – Cheth, Vau, Resh, Mem; below these: – Alepth, Beth, Yod. Below this inscription is an equilateral Triangle enclosing the Hebrew letter Yod.
Often on third degree tracing boards, you see the letters H and A in Masonic cipher or M and A. The former refers to Hiram Abiff, the latter to the password of the third degree. Here we have Hebrew letters spelling: CVRM ABY, which -I suppose- stands for “Churam (Hiram) Aby (Abiff).
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Not unexpectedly, but I hadn’t ran into it yet, King Solomon also had a palace. Here you can see it on a sixth degree AASR tracing board.
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Detail of an interesting looking fifth degree Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite tracing board. The description says:
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Detail of an interesting looking fifth degree Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite tracing board. The description says:
Continue readingA Memorial Monument under a Cupola raised on four Pillars, and a sprig of Acacia below it. The Monument is constructed with cubes of black and white Marble.
Ravignat (see further reading) gives no source for his “88th Degree: Supreme Grand Council General of the 88th, Sovereign Grand Princes of the 88th”, but I think it (partly) comes from Fonds Gaborria Ms.-372: “Rite de Misraïm. Les 3 suprêmes conseils du système d’Arcano, Arcanorum des 88e, 89e et 90e degrés, 17e classe” which contains three “Arcana Arcanorum” degrees.
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Ravignat (see further reading) gives no source for his “90th Degree: Supreme Grand Council General of the 90th and Last Degree, Sovereign Grand Princes of the 90th”, but I think it (partly) comes from Fonds Gaborria Ms.-372: “Rite de Misraïm. Les 3 suprêmes conseils du système d’Arcano, Arcanorum des 88e, 89e et 90e degrés, 17e classe” which contains three “Arcana Arcanorum” degrees.
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The “wicket” or “wicket gate” is a distinctive element of the Mark Master degree, connected to the Senior Warden. This is through which the Mark Master receives his wages.
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Royal Arch jewel.
co-Masonic HRA ritual book since at least 1926, but can be found in other places as well.
For his “45th Degree: Chevalier du Soleil – Knight of the Sun”, Ravignat presents the same image as above. He says it is a “Jewel of the Knights of the Sun from the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite”. I found the same image on the website of Brick Masons and they say that it is a 28th degree Memphis-Misraim jewel. “Chevalier du Soleil” is indeed the 28th degree of Memphis-Misraim (Ravignat uses a different counting in his reconstructed Traditional Egyptian Freemasonry).
In Ravignat’s translation of the ritual we find the following passage:
Newly made Knight and Sage, it is my pleasure to invest you with the collar of this degree. It shows a Sun, the Glory of God, within a triangle and forming a double square.
Here is not not as much an officier jewel, but a badge of the degree.
Brick Masons
There is something odd here. In the Gaborria collection are two Misraim texts. One is said to be a 51th degree ritual, the other one has a bit of a vague description: “Le Chevalier du soleil. Prince Adepte. Grade philosophique composé par le bénédictin Don Pernetti. 28e de l’Ecossisme. 51e de Misraïm. 72e grade de la 8e série du Chap… Métr… de Fr…”. In short, a 28th Scottish degree, a 51th Misraim degree and also a 72nd degree in the Metropolitan Chapter. It is -indeed- the 72nd ‘degree’ in the collection of 81 that was compressed to the seven degrees of the French Rite.
When you look at both tracing boards, it seems that we are not looking at two serpents on a cross (or Caduceus), as the snakes appear to ‘stand up (somewhat) straight’.
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When we here have a ‘blazing Mercury‘, would above a be a blazing Jupiter? Tracing board for the “Grade du G.el Sublime Philosophe Cabalistique” (‘degree of sublime ? Cabalistic philosoph’).
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Instead of a blazing star, we here see a shining Mercury? The tracing board below for the “Grade du Dépositaire Cabalistique” (‘degree of Cabalistic custodian’).
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Tracing board for the degree of Knight of St. John of Palestine.
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Jewel of the Knight of the Triple Cross.
For a three-barred crossed, see here.
Bibliotheque Nationale de France – Fonds Maçonnique – FM4 (74)
Tracing board of the ‘Knight of the Triple Cross’.
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I’m not sure what the construction at the bottom of this tracing board is supposed to be. It looks like a tunnel. This is the tracing board of the “Vray Maitre et Ecossais” (‘true master and Scot’) degree which is supposedly from 1745.
The degree also appears to be called “Écossais de la Voûte Sacrée” or ‘Schot of the sacred vault’, so it just might be a somewhat uncommon version of the Royal Arch, or at least, the vault in which Royal Arch masons find the Word.
Also see: cold man
Bibliotheque Nationale de France – Fonds Maçonnique – FM4 (232)