Tag Archives: weapon

Scales with Crossed Swords

Ravignat displays the image below in his translation of the “61th degree: Chevalier d’Orient – Knight of the East – Tschoudy and Bédarride”. Other images he uses, can also be found in the Fonds Gaborria, but there in the text of the 47th degree (also “Chevalier d’Orient”). The front with the lamb is in Gaborria, the backside is not. Ravignat appears to connect the scales with crossed swords with the 61th degree of Memphis Misraim.

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Man with Sword in Mouth

Ravignat has this image in the “61th Degree: Chevalier d’Orient – Knight of the East – Tschoudy and Bédarride”. I found the same image in the Fonds Gaborria, but there it is listed as the “47e degré”, but also called “Chevalier d’Orient”. In Ravignat’s translation, this is the tracing board of the degree: “in the middle a man holding in his right hand seven stars and in his mouth a two-edged sword.”

The letters refer to virtues such as Beauty, Divinity, etc.
The two-edged sword means that the degree of “Knights Prince Jerusalem” is above other degrees (Baylot collection).

In the 14th degree (Knight of the West) of the Mirecourt collection the letters are explained, they are separate words such as Beauty, Divinity, Wisdom, etc. of course dependent on the language the ritual was written in. In the same text, the sword is called double edged and it “expresses the superiority of the Knight of the West over all other Degrees.”

In the Kloss collection there is a document (“Chevalier d’Occident et d’Orient. Avec tableau” “17e gr. REAA. (Kl.MS:XXV.82)”, the document itself says 18º) with a very similar tableau, so the image also appears to (have) feature(d) in (proto) AASR degrees.

Bibliothèque Numérique Patrimoniale, Fonds Gaborria Ms.-351

Gun

The 1780’ies French collection of 81 degrees that were condensed to the French Rite, contains a short text (degree) called “Les Antipodiens”. An “Antipodian” is someone from New Zealand or Australia (walking upside down from the European point of view). The degree comes with an image that includes a bow and arrows and a gun.

An arrow, a bow, a gun, to defend them [the master and two surveyors] during their work.

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Hand with Sword, Hand with Trowel

When Sanabal Hierusalem distrest,
With sharp assaultes, in Nehemias tyme,
To warre, and worke, the Jews them selves addrest
And did repaire theire walls, with stone, and lime:
One hand the swode, against the foe did shake,
The other hand, the trowel, up did take.

The image and text are from Choices of Emblemes (1586) of Geffrey Whitney (1548?-1601?). Belton and Dachez make quite something of this “Sanabal theme”. In his famous oration, Chevalier Ramsay referred to knights who rebuilt King Solomon’s Temple with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other. That theme would later appear in early French ‘high degrees’, most notably the “Chevalier d’Orient”, or “Knight of the East” that is still part of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. The text also seems to be used in the Royal Arch.

Choices of Emblemes (1586) of Geffrey Whitney (1548?-1601?)

Royal Axe

Emblem of the 22nd degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in the 1893 Vermont publication.

The degree of “Knights of the Royal Axe of the Grand Patriarchs, Princes of Libanon” in the Baylot collection of degrees, state that the L on the sword (above, the Hebrew “lamed”) stands for “Libanon”. The S (top right, “Shin”) for “Sidonian” and the N (“noun”) for “Noah”.

Also (some versions of) Memphis Misraim has a 22nd “Knight of the Royal Axe” degree with a plainer axe as emblem as the one above.

Sword and Veil

A veiled sword is the emblem of Adah in the Order of the Eastern Star. More about OES here.

Voss, The Universal Language of Freemasonry (2004). The emblems of the Order of the Eastern Star were most likely designed around the inception of the order in the 1870’ies, maybe by the inceptor of the organisation Rob Morris (1818-1888)