THE COMPASSES
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
labour, 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 symbolismn 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 exhalt and enoble 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 neighbour, 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 labour 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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