Find your Symbol of Freemasonry
Most of the times the square has legs of the same length (‘isosceles’), while the tool itself usually has one leg that is longer than the other. Every so often you see this more ‘common’ square on charts and here even in the emblem of the German provincial Grand Lodge Zur Sonne (‘to the sun’).
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Emblem of the Grand Lodge Zur Sonne (‘to the sun’) from Bayreuth from 1810.
jewel from the German Grand Lodge Zur Sonne. I have not been able to retrace my source.
Jewel of the Past Master in the “Cryptic” degree of the York Rite.
general officer jewel
“The Royal & Select Masters’ Emblem. (Found with or without the sword)” (Wikipedia)
Royal & Select Master is a degree in the “Cryptic” part of the York Rite.
Wikimedia Commons
Tracing board from Von Löwen in the Kloss collection (Collection de 84 tableaux, Kl.MS:XXV.1) for the degree of “Chevalier du Soleil” (‘knight of the sun’). Is this a man with a scythe?
Christina Voss in The ‘Universal Language’ of Freemasonry (2003) describes a man with a scythe as “time”, which is an interesting interpretation.
Also see Grim Reaper.
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The “Missouri Masonic Family” tree below shows the bewildering number of rites and degrees in America. As a branch to the York Rite there is an order simply called “Allied Masonic Degrees”.
The square is also sometimes replaced by a triangle in French and German Freemasonry. It also happens that there is both a square and compasses and a triangle.
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Royal Order of Scotland jewel. Also an element in the 11th and 12th degrees of the Rectified Scottish Rite.
It can also be found on this “Parfait Macon” tracing board in the Kloss collection.
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Royal Order of Scotland jewel.
general officer jewel
Emblem of the Sojourner in the Royal Arch.
general officer jewel
Royal and Select Masters (a.k.a. “cryptic” degrees) breast jewel.
(“Cryptic Masonry is the second part of the York Rite system of Masonic degrees”.)
general officer jewel
There is a great variety of hammers and mallets. Also within Masonic symbolism you see a variety, but -fortunately- not as big as above. Sometimes these different hammers and mallets have a symbolic significance, oftentimes not. In Mark symbology you often see a carver’s mallet with a chisel. A hammer on one tracing board can also be a pick hammer on another. Perhaps it could be fun to make a list is types of hammers and mallets and their specific symbolic meanings.
A flat hammer (in German “Setzhammer”) is sometimes called “Grandmaster Hammer” (“Großmeisterhammer”), while a pick hammer (“Spitzhammer”) is for entered apprentices. In this way there are more specific meanings for specific types of hammers.
Wikimedia Commons.
Emblem of the Junior Warden in Mark lodges.
general officer jewel
When you drill a hole in a stone, you can insert a lewis to lift it. The lewis expand somewhat and clamp itself on the inside.
What this has to do with sons is unclear, but a lewis is also the son of a Freemason. In some lodges the son can be ‘adopted’ by the lodge and join before the minimum age. In the latter case, the word “loufton” (‘wolf’ in French) is sometimes used.
Also see Y.
Duncan’s Masonic Ritual and Monitor (1866) by Malcolm C. Duncan
This German 1st/2nd degree tracing board has three tools at the bottom. The one on the right is perhaps a pickaxe (?). And what is that thing in the middle? (And plumb and a ‘horn‘?)
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Usually a second “craft” degree tool.
Taken from Feddersen (Die Arbeitstafel in der Freimaurerei Band I (1982) F/16, P. 284), “after: Les Franc Macons Ecrase’s, 1717”
A wheelbarrow as can be seen on a French tracing board from the early 1700’s. The text calls it: “un petit Chariot pour transporter des pierres”, a ‘little wagon to transport the rocks’. Unfortunately the book does not say for what degree this tracing board is.
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From a French tracing board from the early 1700’s. Les Franc Macons Ecrasé calls this a “joug” which indeed means “yoke”.
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This axe with an unidentified tool can be found twice on a French “Compagnonnage” “tableau” from 1848.
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Dąbrowski has an unidentified “American Masonic Symbols”, see below. There are quite a few symbols on it that are unfamiliar to me, such as this one. It is a similar set to the pick axe, crow and shovel, but then with a garden tool. I don’t know in what rite or degree this tool has a significance.
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Obviously a symbol of mortality. The symbol appears fairly frequently and appears in some American 3rd “craft” degree. Sometimes it is an element in the ‘preparation room’.
The Scythe
Is an emblem of Time, which cuts the brittle thread of life, and launches us into eternity. Behold ! what havoc the scythe of Time makes among the human race ! If by chance we should escape the numerous evils incident to childhood and youth, and with health and vigor arrive to the years of manhood ; yet, withal, we must soon be cut down by the all-devouring scythe
Ahiman Rezon. Rituals of Freemasonry by Daniel Sickels (1870)
cut-out from unknown Symbol Chart
