THE PELICAN

THE BUILDER FEBRUARY 1922

It seems a strange thing to me that the Pelican should be a Masonic symbol.  It is a bird strange to us and also strange I should suppose, to the English. In what Masonic degree is it
used, and what does it mean? 
A.P.H., Arkansas.

In the Middle Ages, when Europe was rife with occultism mysticism, esotericism, and kindred interests, "The Physiologus," by Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia, in the Island of Cyprus was so widely used and believed that it may be described as on of the bibles of the time.  On page 30 of the edition printed by Plantin in 1588 (you will find the book in any large library) you will find an account of the Pelican which, we may believe is the fountainhead of the popular beliefs concerning that bird Here is his account:

"Beyond all birds the Pelican is fond of her young. The female sits on the nest, guarding her offspring, and cherishes and caresses them and wounds them with loving; and pierces their sides and they die.  After three days the male pelican comes and finds them dead, and very much his heart is pained Driven by grief he smites his own side, and as he stands over the wounds of the dead young ones, the blood trickles down, and thus are they made alive again."

The bishop believed all this very literally and so did his readers.  One old writer proposes to account for this nature history myth by saying that the pelican's bill is tipped with red, and that this may have suggested the blood-letting to an imaginative peasantry.  There are many variations of the myth, into which there is not space to go.  Shakespeare uses the idea many times, as when he makes Lear say, "And like the kind life rendering pelican, Repast them with my blood." He uses it similarly in Richard II, in Henry Vl, and in "As You Like It." Paper-makers used the bird as a waterwark.  Printers worked it into their symbolical headpieces and tailpieces.  Architects were fond of using it in church ornamentation, most of which was emblematic, as in St. Savior's Church, Reading, England, where the lectern has the pelican shape.  Dante refers to Christ as "nostro Pelicano,"-"Our Pelican."

The meaning of the symbol is apparent.  It refers to self sacrifice, the giving of one's very blood, or life, to another.  The great example of that, in all the symbolical systems, is the selfgiving of Jesus.  Also, it carries with it the idea of a resurrection from the dead, for the young pelicans were resuscitated by the blood of the parent. It has both these meanings in the Rose Croix Degree of the A. & A. S. R. in which it appears.

