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The Square and Compasses, these emblems, joined with
the V.S.L., are referred to as the Great Lights of our Craft. If the lodge is an
"oblong square" and built upon the Square (as the earth was thought to be in
olden time), Over it arches the Sky, which is part of a circle. Thus Earth and
Heaven are brought together in the lodge the earth where man goes forth to his
labor, and
the heaven to which he aspires. In other words, the light of Revelation and
the law of Nature are like to two points of the Compass within which our life is set under
a canopy of Sun and Stars.
No symbolism can be more simple, more
profound, more universal, and it becomes more wonderful the longer one ponders
it. Indeed, if Masonry is in any sense a religion. A
Universal Religion, in which all men can unite. Its principles are as
wide as the world, as high as the sky, nature and revelation blend in its teaching;
its morality is rooted in the order of the world, and it's roof is the blue vault
above. The Lodge, as we are apt to forget, is always open to the sky,
whence come those influences which exalt and ennoble the life of man.
Symbolically, at least, it has no rafters but the arching heavens. Of
the heavenly side of Masonry, the Compasses are the symbol, and they are
perhaps the most spiritual of our working tools.
The Square and Compasses are nearly always together, and
that is true as far back as we can go. In the sixth book of the philosophy of Mencius, in
China, we find these words: "A Master Mason, in teaching Apprentices, makes use of
the compasses and the square. Ye who are engaged in the pursuit of wisdom must also make
use of the compass and the square." Note the order of the words: the Compass has
first place, as it should have to a Master Mason.. In the oldest classic of China,
THE BOOK OF HISTORY, dating back two thousand years before our era, we find the
Compasses employed without the Square: "Ye officers of the Government, apply the
Compasses." Even in that far off time these symbols had the same meaning they have
for us today, and they seem to have been interpreted in the same way.
While in the order of the lodge the Square is first, in
point of truth it is not the first in order. The Square rests upon the Compasses before
the Compasses rest upon the Square. that is to say, just as a perfect square is a figure
that can be drawn only within a circle or about a circle, so the earthly life of man moves
and is built within the Circle of Divine life and law and love which surrounds, sustains,
and explains it. In the Ritual of the lodge we see man, hoodwinked by the senses, slowly
groping has way out of darkness, seeking the light of morality and reason. but he does so
by the aid of inspiration from above, else he would live untroubled by a spark. Some deep
need, some dim desire brought him to the door of the lodge, in quest of a better life and
a clearer vision. vague gleams, impulses intimations reached him in the night of Nature,
and he set forth and finding a friendly hand to help knocked at the door of the House of
Light.
As an Apprentice, a man is symbolically in a crude
natural state, his divine life covered and ruled by his earthly nature. If we
examine with care the relative positions of the Square and Compasses as one advances
through the Degrees, we learn a parable and a prophecy of what the Compasses mean in the
life of a Mason. Here, too, we learn what the old philosopher
of China meant when he urged Officers of the Government to "apply the
Compasses," since only men who have mastered themselves can really lead or rule
others. Let us now study the Compasses apart from the Square, and try to discover what
they have to teach us. there is no more practical lesson in Masonry and it behooves us to
learn it and lay it to heart. As the light of the V.S.L. reveals our relation and duty to
the Supreme Being, and the Square instructs us in our duties to our Brother and
neighbor,
so the compasses teach us the obligation which we owe to ourselves. What that obligation
is needs to be made plain: It is the primary, imperative, everyday duty of circumscribing
his passions, and keeping his desires within due bounds.
In short, it is the old triad, without which character loses
its symmetry, and life may easily end in chaos and confusion. It has been put in many
ways, but never better than in the three great words: self-knowledge, self-reverence,
self-control; and we cannot lose any one of the three and keep the other two. To know
ourselves, our strength, our weakness, our limitations, is the first principle of wisdom,
and a security against many a pitfall and blunder. Lacking such knowledge, or disregarding
it, a man goes too far, loses control of himself, and by that very fact loses, in some
measure, the self-respect which is the corner stone of a character. If he loses respect
for himself, he does not long keep his respect for others.
How to use the Compass is one of the finest of all arts,
asking for the highest skill of a Master Mason. If he is properly instructed, he will rest
one point on the innermost center of his being and with the other draw a circle beyond
which he will not go, until he is ready and able to go farther. against the smallness of
his knowledge he will set the depth of his desire to know, against the brevity of his
earthly life the reach of his spiritual hope. Within a wise limit he will live and
labor
and grow, and when he reaches the outer rim of the circle he will draw another, and attain
to a fuller life, balanced, beautiful, and finely poised. No wise man dare forget the
maxim, "In nothing too much," for there are situations where a word too much, a
step too far, means disaster. If he has a quick tongue, a hot temper, a dark mood, he will
apply the Compasses, shut his weakness within the circle of his strength, and control it.
The Greeks put the same truth into a Trinity of maxims:
"Know thyself; in nothing too much; think as a mortal"; and it made them masters
of the art of life and the life of art. Hence their wise Doctrine of the Limit, as a basic
idea both of life and of thought, and their worship of the God of Bounds, of which the
Compasses are a symbol. It is the wonder of our human life that we belong to the limited
and to the unlimited. Hemmed in, hedged about, restricted, we long for a liberty without
rule or limit. However, Liberty rests upon law. The wise man is he who
takes full account of both, who knows how, at all points to qualify the one by the other,
as the Compasses, if he uses them correctly, will teach him how.
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Carmel
Lodge No. 680 F.&A.M.