THE BUILDER JULY 1919
SIGNIFICANCE OF MASONIC COLORS

BY BRO. HAROLD A. KINGSBURY, MASSACHUSETTS

WHY is my Master Mason's Lodge said to have a particular color of
transcending importance?" "Why is that particular color said to
be blue?"

The Mason who pauses in his Masonic journey to ask himself these
questions, or equivalent ones, has thereby set himself in the may
of investigating yet another phase of Masonic symbolism. For, in
the attempt to answer his two queries, the selfquestioner's first
thought is that the lodge is not possessed, in a physical sense,
of a particular and transcendingly important color, blue or
otherwise; and, when he reminds himself that there are rational
explanations for practically everything in Masonry and that most
of those explanations are founded in symbolism, his second
thought is that a color, a particular color, is assigned to his
lodge for symbolistic reasons, and that that color has a symbolic
meaning. Thus he is brought to a consideration of the symbolism
of colors and, more particularly, to a consideration of the
symbolism of blue.

If, now, he investigates the matter very briefly, running over
almost superficially the general subject of the symbolism of
colors and considering somewhat more deeply the symbolism of
blue, the inquiring Mason will, it is probable, arrive at
substantially the following:

The assigning of symbolic meanings to colors is probably as old
as symbolism itself. To cite but one set of examples from the
practices of an ancient people: The Egyptians, those ancient
masters of symbolism to whom the investigator of the symbols used
in Masonry first looks for explanations of those symbols, made
use of colors in their hieroglyphics to convey certain definite
ideas, each color being expressive of certain conceptions.
Hieroglyphs of the spirits of the dead were characterized by
white. Men were marked out by having their flesh red, while the
flesh of the women was yellow. Sapphire was the color of the
Egyptian god Amon. Green was the color used for the flesh of the
god Ptah, founder of the world, the active creative spirit and
the divine intelligence, and was also the color used for the
flesh of Lunus, the moon. Russet- brown was the color given to
the flesh of Thoueri, the concubine of Typhon. And black was the
color of Anubis, the god of the dead and of embalming.

The colors symbolically significant in Masonry are purple, red,
white, black, green, yellow, violet and blue. Each color has for
its purpose the teaching to the Mason of a valuable moral lesson
or the calling of his attention to some historical fact of
interest Masonically, certain of the colors serving both purposes
at one and the same time. 

Purple, being a mixture of blue and red, is, to the Mason, the
symbol of fraternal union because it is composed of the color
adopted for the Master Mason's Lodge and that adopted for the
Chapter of Royal Arch Companions, these two Masonic bodies being
indissolubly connected since the Royal Arch is an essential and
component part of the present-day mutilated Master Mason's
degree. For this reason purple is adopted as the proper color for
the Mark, the Past, and the Most Excellent Master degrees, to
symbolize the fact that those degrees connect the Master Mason's
degree with the Royal Arch.

Red is the color of fire, and fire was to the Egyptians the
symbol of the regeneration and the purification of souls. Hence,
in the Masonic system, red is the symbol of regeneration. Thus
red is the color assigned to the Royal Arch Degree since that
degree teaches the regeneration of life.

White is the symbol of purity, the reasons for adopting this
conception being obvious. Therefore, in Masonry it is, properly,
the color adopted for certain of the garments of investiture of
the candidate.

Black from the remotest antiquity has been the symbol of grief
and such is its significance to the Mason.

Green, being the unchanging color of the various evergreen trees,
shrubs, and so forth, is, in the symbolistic system of Masonry,
the color symbolic of the unchanging immortality of all that is
divine and true. This conception Masonry has received from the
ancients, more particularly the Egyptians. For example, with the
Egyptians, as noted above, Ptah was pictured as having green
flesh. Also, the goddess Pascht, the divine preserver, and Thoth,
the instructor of men in the sacred doctrines of truth, were both
painted with green flesh. So the Mason, adhering once more, as he
so often does, to the conceptions of the Egyptians, chooses for
his symbol of the immortality of the soul which he knows to be
divine and true an object, the acacia, whose color is unchanging
green.

Yellow was to the ancients the symbol of light. Though
unemphasized and seemingly almost unrecognised in Masonry yellow
is, nevertheless, a true Masonic symbolic color since it
symbolizes to the Mason that Great Thing to the finding of which
his Masonic Search is devoted and to the source of which his
Masonic pathway leads the Light of Truth.

Violet is the symbol of mourning, the Mason here adopting yet
another of the conceptions of an ancient people, this time the
Chinese.

Blue is the supreme color of Masonry. First, because it is that
color which, among all those used in Masonry, is the unquestioned
Masonic possession of every Mason. The Royal Arch Mason may
attempt to appropriate to himself the red, the Perfect Master may
feel himself the exclusive proprietor of the green and the black,
and so on, but blue is acknowledged by every Mason to belong to
us all and no Mason, whatever his degree, questions the Master
Mason's ownership of blue. Second, blue is the supreme color
because it has, coupled with its universality, a place in
symbolism which, both as regards importance of lessons taught and
as regards legitimacy as a symbol, is second to that of no
Masonic color.

The use of blue in religious ceremonials, and as a symbol, comes
to Masonry from many of the different peoples of antiquity. Among
the Hebrews various articles of the high priest's clothing were
blue. one of the veils of the tabernacle was blue. In his
initiation into the Druidical Mysteries the candidate was
invested with a robe one of whose colors was blue. The
Babylonians clothed their idols in blue. The Hindoo god Vishnu
was represented as blue. And among the medieval Christians blue
was considered a peculiarly important color.

Blue was the symbol of perfection to the Hebrews, to the Druids
the symbol of Truth, to the Chinese the symbol of Deity, and to
the medieval Christians it was the symbol of immortality. So, for
the Mason, the color of his Master Mason's lodge is the symbol of
perfection, truth, immortality and Deity.

Finally and preeminently, and following the teachings and
conceptions of the Egyptians aald the Hindoos, blue is the symbol
of that which the Craftsman must, since he is a Mason, always
revere and of that which his Master Mason's lodge must, when its
work and its teachings are properly understood and accepted,
cause him to Progressively revere the more Divine Wisdom.

