Tag Archives: building

Temple of Wisdom

What a complex and weird drawing from Rite des Sophisiens. Below it says: “du Temple de la Sagesse”, ‘Temple of Wisdom’. The “Ordre sacré des Sophisiens” (‘sacred order of Sophisiens’) was a proto (some say: pseudo) organisation of Egyptian Freemasonry in the first half of the 18th century in France.

Tunnel (vault)

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

Tower

This image comes from the French book Liber Mutus Latomorum which seems to contain historical degrees. This tower has no ladder and neither appears to be the tower of Babel.

Les Plus Secret Mysteres (1820) speaks of: “The Tower where the murderers of Hiram are locked up”. Judging the three guys above, this might well be the explanation of the image above as well.

More about the book here.

Destroyed Temple

Probably the oldest ‘high degree’ was that of “Scottish Master” (or “Scots Master”) which might have been worked in England as early as the 1730’ies. There is a text from Berlin, dated 1747, in the Kloss collection with the content of the degree. The story is that of master builders from Scotland who were not content with the replacement of the master’s word in the third degree. They went to the Holy Land to find clues to what the original master’s word might have been. They search the rubble of King Solomon’s Temple (hence the destroyed temple) and find “4 column-pieces lying on the ground in the shape of a saltire” (an X, see crossed pillars), which is convenient, because Scottish Master lodges are dedicated to Saint Andrew.

The image shows a “Scots Master” tracing board. It appears to be one of three drawings of the Swede Carl Friedrich Eckleff (1723-1786) Eckleff: “allegedly […] received [St Andrew’s or Ecossais degrees] from Strasbourg in 1756, and Chapter or Templar degrees […] from Geneva in 1759.” Out of which he created the nine-degree Swedish Rite. Similar images can be found in Germany in the same period.

Belton and Dachez make a point that in the very similar French “Maitre Parfait” degree, there are crossed pillars, but no clear references to a destroyed temple. This destroyed temple, therefor, appears to be a part of the London/Berlin (and later Scandinavian) “Scots Master” degree.

Broken columns still appear on some AASR tracing boards, such as on the 14th degree French boards.

Temple Built Foursquare

The journal Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society Vol. 5, No. 2 / Vol. 6, No. 1 • Fall 2017 / Spring 2018 (can be found online) has a text translated from the Kloss collection Scottish Master and Knight of St. Andrew of the Scottish Lodge l’Union in Berlin 7th of October 1747 (note the year). The original was written in France. This may well be the oldest ritual text of a ‘higher degree’ and the text seems to be similar to rituals that were worked in the London area in the 1730’s. Above you can see a tracing board from the text. It has several images that later appear in other ‘high degrees’. One that I had not seen before is the “la temple en square” with a very specific form (bottom right).

Feddersen reproduces the same tracing board, but then from Denmark. He calls it a tracing board of the first Danish Scottish lodge “Dahl” from 1747.

Also see sanctuary.

Sanctuary

The journal Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society Vol. 5, No. 2 / Vol. 6, No. 1 • Fall 2017 / Spring 2018 (can be found online) has a text translated from the Kloss collection Scottish Master and Knight of St. Andrew of the Scottish Lodge l’Union in Berlin 7th of October 1747 (note the year). The original was written in France. This may well be the oldest ritual text of a ‘higher degree’ and the text seems to be similar to rituals that were worked in the London area in the 1730’s. Above you can see a tracing board from the text. It has several images that later appear in other ‘high degrees’. One that I had not seen before is the “sanctuaire” with a very specific form.

Feddersen reproduces the same tracing board, but from Denmark. He calls it the tracing board of the first Scottish lodge in Denmark “Dahl”, from 1747.

Les Plus Secret Mysteres (1820) also speaks of a sanctuary:

The Sanctuary represents our hearts holding the mysteries of the Law.

Also see Temple built Foursquare.

Cathedral / dom

Even though it is a persistent myth that Freemasonry stems from the cathedral buildings, an actual cathedral is seldom part of Masonic symbolism. Here we have a tracing board that (according to Feddersen was used by the Grand Lodge of York in Germany between 1947 and 1973. (Feddersen D/62.)

Encampment

This fairly well known image is the tracing board of the 32nd degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. What is interesting, is that this image is already in the Francken manuscript from 1783. Henry Andrew Francken (aka Hendrick Andriese Francken (ca1720 – 1795) was a collector of rituals. His manuscript would become the basis for the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

Temple on Side

A French tracing board from the early 1700’s has a temple on its side and also the Master’s chair is flipped over. Feddersen (F/19a and F/24) describes it as a third degree tracing board. The pillars at the entrance are also broken, so this is not your typical third degree as these elements may refer to a destroyed temple.

It took some effort, but Feddersen is right. The image comes from the book Les Francs Maçons Écrasé (‘the crushed Freemasons’) of Abbé Larudan. It was first published in 1747, but there are also editions of 1774 and 1778. I found the text describing the third degree tracing board:

The Lodge of Masters represents the entire Temple of Solomon with its three walls, as in the image of the Apprentice Lodge but it is painted as falling into ruin, as demolished, as entirely turned upside down. Its doors have been forced open, the walls have been breached to its walls, its staircases ruptured its columns knocked down, its pavilions torn. Its Sun, Moon & Star, suffer an eclipse; its windows are cracked; the Tabernacle & Altar overturned, extreme confusion, and in a deplorable state. However, we must exclude Mount Sinai, on which a branch still preserves its greenery, which remains greenery, which remains firm despite the upheaval of the whole Temple.

So indeed, King Solomon’s Temple has been destroyed in the third degree. There is one more degree in this book: “Des Architectes ou Écossois”, ‘Architects or Scots’, see “Lion“.

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Town

Dąbrowski has an unidentified “American Masonic Symbols”, see below. The chart is titled: “Masonic Chart of the Scottish Rite”, so I suppose the symbols refer to degrees in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. There are quite a few symbols on it that are unfamiliar to me, such as this one. I don’t even know what it is supposed to be, some village, town or city?

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