THE BUILDER FEBRUARY 1926

The Symbolism of the Old Catechisms
By BRO. R.J. MEEKREN

THE light that may be shed on the subject of Masonic symbolism by
those curious documents which have been grouped under the term "Old
Catechisms" has now to be considered. There are not many of them,
and few but students know much about them or even of their
existence. This is not at all the place for anything like a full
account of them, yet a brief description may be of assistance in
estimating whatever value they may be supposed to have. Two of them
appeared in print in 1730 as exposures of the secrets of the Craft,
and have since then been reprinted a number of times; they were
both reproduced in full in the Appendix of Gould's History. The
catechism proper of one of them is also to be found in Mackey's
History. Other documents of similar character have turned up in
more recent times, some of which have been published in various
Masonic journals and Transactions; there are about a dozen of them
all told, including the MS. recently discovered by Bro. W. J.
Songhurst, Secretary of Quatuor Coronati Lodge.

The matter contained in these documents it must be confessed
appears as strange to the Mason today as it must to the profane,
though naturally, seeing that it professedly relates to the Craft,
certain things are referred to that form part of our own system. As
for example the lodge, the Temple of Solomon, the square and
compasses, and so on. But the natural judgment on first examining
any one of them would be that it was an invention by somebody who
really knew no more about Masonry than any outsider could pick up.

A closer acquaintance with the different documents might lead to a
modification of this view, however. It is possible that they
represent, fragmentarily, parts of the old Operative esoteric
system. Though it must be admitted that with no record of the
intervening stages of the evolution, it certainly leaves the matter
open to doubt how the Speculative system could have been erected on
such a meager foundation. The chief argument would be the
incomplete nature of the documents in question. Mackey assumes
quite decidedly that the Catechism he reproduces represents the
ritual "accepted by the Speculative Freemasons from their Operative
brethren, and used until the genius of such ritualists as
Desaguliers invented something more worthy." (1)

Whatever they may be they are not rituals. The most that could be
said is that they have some ritual references and give some
disjointed description of the ceremonies of admission. Their
contents vary a great deal, but the most natural conclusion is that
they are copies of, or based on, memoranda made by individuals for
their own use, for the purpose of retaining so much as would be
necessary to establish their claims to be received as members of
the Fraternity. This supposition fully accounts for their
incompleteness and unsystematic nature. One of them, the Mason's
Confession, published in the Scots Magazine in 1755, purports to
give what an anonymous individual, who had come to regard the
Institution as sinful and invented by the devil--"idle nonsense"
and "horrid wickedness" are the terms he uses--is able to remember
of his admission to the Fraternity some twenty-eight years before;
apparently, judging by internal evidence, in a lodge of strongly
Operative character. Another, the Sloane MS. No. 3329, appears to
be a compilation from more than one source, with some unsympathetic
comment by the compiler. All the others seem to have the character
suggested above, that of private memoranda.

For our present purpose no more need be said on this score.
Disregarding their origin, and making no judgment on their value or
authenticity, but merely taking them as they stand, let us see what
they offer in the way of symbolism. There is, however, one other
document, though it is of even more questionable character, to
which it may be useful to refer, one which has been reprinted many
times and is even yet to be obtained, and that is Prichard's
Freemasonry Dissected. The reason that it may be useful in this
connection is that though much longer and more diffuse, and much
more coherent in arrangement, yet there is nothing in its first
part that has not a parallel in one or other of the Old Catechisms,
though more frequently in a less developed form. One might suppose
the notorious Dissector compiled his account from different
sources; or on the other hand it may be taken as additional support
for the supposition that the other documents contain only fragments
of the actually existing catechisms. But that again is a question
apart from the inquiry on which we are engaged. The point is that
it does seem allowable to compare the often times cryptic phrases
of the more archaic documents by comparison with the expanded
account of the Dissection, when that may appear to shed some light
upon this very obscure subject.

The very first point that strikes the attention is the existence of
some kind of initiatory rite. That such existed was well known to
the profane even in the 17th century, as witness Plot's account,
and Aubrey's note in his Natural History of Wiltshire, both of
which have been often quoted. (2) But such a ceremony, or in fact
any ceremony at all, however simple, must be to some degree
symbolic. From the four documents that pretend to give some account
of this initiation (The Mason's Examination, The Mystery of
Freemasons, The Mason's Confession, and the unpublished Chetwode-
Crawley MS.) we learn the following. The first describes a form of
preparation of the entrant at the door; his knee is specifically
said to have been made bare, and everything made of metal is taken
from him. Later his elbow is spoken of as bare also. The Mystery
corroborates this by mentioning a demand by the doorkeeper for any
weapons he may have, and later describes him as being bare knee'd.
It might almost be supposed that the breast was bared, too, but
this is not explicitly stated.

PRIMITIVE MAGIC APPEARS

Now these requirements have a suspicious flavor of magic about
them. The deprivation of everything made of metal about the person
as a preparation for the performance of a ritual, magical or
religious, may even go back to a period of transition from the use
of stone implements to the higher culture in which bronze and iron
were used. The requirement would in any case carry the origin of
the ceremonies back to a time when its necessity was generally
presupposed. It is quite certain that this condition did not exist
two hundred years ago in England, nor the anthropological knowledge
for its comprehension. Indeed one may guess that there was even
then a tendency for it to break down into a purely formal
requirement, the giving up of some metal instead of all, as the
surrendering the sword, then very commonly worn by all men above
the lowest classes, and with this there would be the possibility of
an obvious interpretation--that of submission, good faith and
peaceful intention.

In the same way the baring of parts of the body would appear to
have in origin the purpose of making actual contact with sacred
objects. In the old form of judicial oaths, still in force in some
countries, the Bible is kissed, as earlier still were the holy
relics on which the oath was taken. The hands of kings were kissed,
as are those of priests in the Greek Church. The Holy Sacrament may
not be received with gloved hands, and Moses was told to remove his
shoes on holy ground. So according to the Confession the entrant
had his bare elbow on the Bible, and the Mystery says he knelt bare
knee'd within the square, while both say the compasses were held to
the breast. As the two latter instruments seem to have been sacred,
almost fetich objects, the sanctity of the oath was increased by
contact with them while taking it. The following quotations will
show the way in which they were regarded:

How was the Master clothed? 
In a yellow jacket and a blue pair of breeches.

and

Would you know your Master if you met him? 
Yes . . . by his habit.
What colour of his habit?
Yellow and blue, meaning the compass which is brass and iron.

Again from the Confession:

Where is your Master? 
He is not so far off but he may be found.

Then if the square be at hand it is offered on the stone which they
are working . . . and so the square is acknowledged to be their
Master.

And again:

How set you the square?
I ca' in two irons in the wall, if two will not serve three will
and that makes both square and level.


The author comments on this to the effect that two nails are driven
into the wall at the same height on which one limb of the square
can rest, and another perpendicularly underneath so that the other
limb can be pushed up against it, the three points naturally out
line a square, and give also a horizontal. He adds, however, that
"ordinarily they ca' in but one" and goes on to remark that "the
reason it is said to set the square and not hang it, is They're not
to hang their Master."

But the matter is even more explicitly stated later on where the
question is asked:

How many points in the Square?
Five.
What are those five?
The square our Master under God is one, the level's two, the
plumbrule's three, the handrule's four and the gage is five,

Other references to these implements will be quoted later in
another connection which will further illustrate the estimation in
which they were apparently held. We will now consider some other
accounts of the preparation. Prichard has the following description
of the entrant's condition:

"Neither naked nor clad, barefoot nor shod, deprived of all metal
and in a right moving posture."

The last phrase might be modernized "in a most pitiable state."
With this may be compared the Examination:

How was you made?
Neither naked nor clothed, standing or lying, but in due form.

And the Essex MS.:

What posture did you pass your oath in?
I was neither setting nor standing, lying, hanging nor properly
kneeling, clothed nor naked, shod nor barefoot, but as a Brother
knows how.

The Sloane MS. has:

What were you sworn by? 
By God and the Square. 
Whether above the clothes or under the clothes? 
Under the clothes. 
Under which arm ? 
The right arm.

Which presumably refers to the necessity of the square being in
contact with the body, and may be better understood by the
following from an additional question and answer in the Mystery,
apparently not quite consistent with the previous quotation:


What was you doing while your oath was tendering?
I was kneeling bareknee'd betwixt the Bible and the square.

to which the note is added,

N.B. There's a Bible put in the Right Hand and the Square under the
Right Elbow.

The Dumfries-Kilwinning MS. No. 4 gives the following account; the
spelling is modernized:

How were you brought in?
Shamefully with a rope about my neck.
What posture were you in when you [were] received?
Neither sitting nor standing nor running nor going but left knee.

Why a rope about your neck?
To hang me if I should betray my trust.
Why upon your left knee?
Because I would be in so humble a posture to the receiving Royal
Secret.

Why might perhaps be paraphrased, "Because it was fitting I should
be in such an humble posture when receiving the Royal Secret."

Now such primitive rites as seem to underlie these variant accounts
are hardly symbolical. The metal was taken from the person of the
neophyte for the same reason that a surgeon washes his hands in a
disinfectant, to remove a dangerous influence that would militate
against the success of what was to be done. Of course the primitive
science had no foundation in fact, but it was based on reasoning
and the action following from it was logical, and so to say, a
matter of commonsense. At a later stage, with increased knowledge
the original reason becomes obscure and finally forgotten.
Conservatism however maintains the action, and so new, and usually
mystical, reasons are invented. But at the period to which our
documents belong mystical reasons would not serve; it was on the
whole a shallow, materialistic, unbelieving age, and so the stress
is laid on the personal humiliation involved, and the ceremony does
in a sense become truly symbolic. Not of course that this aspect
was entirely new. All societies and communities tend to magnify
their own importance, it goes to make up the elusive thing called
esprit de corps. If these sources give us any real information it
would seem that the Operative organization insisted that it was
honored by no man, however great, who joined it, but that itself
honored all whomsoever it received whatever their rank and station.
In form at least it insisted that the entrant came of his own will,
and made him submit to forms certainly well designed to express
humility and submission.

The majority of these documents state explicitly that the proper
place for performing these ceremonies was out of doors. There is no
need to remark that this is also a mark of its primitive origin.
For example, the Essex MS. has this:

Where was you made a Mayson? 
In a just and perfect lodge.
How many make a lodge?
God and the Square with 7 Right and perfect Maysons in the highest
Mountains or in the lowest valleys in the world.

The Examination says:

Where was you entered?
In a just and perfect lodge.
What makes a just and perfect lodge?
Master, two wardens, four fellows with Square, Compass and common
gudge.

Note that this again makes the number seven. Gudge undoubtedly is
a dialect form or corruption of gauge. Then follows:

Where was you made?
In the Valley of Jehosaphat behind a rush bush where a dog never
heard to bark or a cock crow, or elsewhere.

The last clause, "or elsewhere," is apparently an emendation
following the disuse of the traditional outdoor meetings. And
because of this disuse the "lowest valley" receives a Biblical name
and is obviously on the way to a symbolic interpretation.

The Confession has this:
Where should the Mason word be given?
On the top of a mountain from crow of a cock, the bark of a dog, or
the turtle of a dove.

And in another place:
Where place ye your lodge?
On the sunny side of a hill that the sun may ascend on't when it
rises.

The proviso that the place be out of hearing of the sound of the
common domestic animals means that it should be far from human
habitation. This is brought out in the Chetwode-Crawley MS.:

What makes a true and perfect Lodge?
Seven Masters, five apprentices, a day's journey from a Borrowstown
without Bark of a Dog or Crow of a cock.

Such form of expression at the least verges on figurative or poetic
symbolism.

The number of those present seems to have been regarded as
important, and except in one case is always uneven. The Sloane
gives six, two masters, two fellowcrafts, and two "Interprintices,"
but says "five will serve." The quotation from the Essex MS. given
above stipulates "five or seven." The latter seems to have been
regarded as the proper number taking the evidence as a whole, but
in an additional fragment appended to the Essex we have this:

And how many Masons was so called?
Any odd number from three to thirteen.

The Confession mentions another number:

Who made you a Mason?
God Almighty's holy will made me a Mason, the square under God made
me a Mason; nineteen fellowcrafts and thirteen entered 'prentices
made me a Mason.

The Confessor remarks that there weren't really this number
present, but "so I was taught to answer."

The Essex MS. and two others have the following explanation, which
itself needs explaining:

Why do odds make a lodge?
Because all odds are men's advantage.

Which seems to mean that odd numbers are lucky-- which again is
magical.

HOW THE LODGE WAS SITUATED

We saw that the Confession placed the lodge on the sunny side of a
hill that the first rays of the rising sun might strike it, for
that seems to be the meaning. Every one of our authorities (except
an appended fragment to the Kilwinning MS.) has something to say
about the situation of the lodge.

The Essex and the two parallel versions have this:

How doth that Lodge stand?
Perfect East and West as all holy temples do.

The Examination and the Mystery:

How is it seated?
East and West as other temples are.

The Confession:

How stands your lodge?
East and West as kirks and chapels did of old.
Why so?
Because they were holy and so ought we to be.

Prichard gives as a reason: "Because all churches and chapels are
so or ought to be so," while Kilwinning and two others mention the
orientation of the Temple of Solomon to account for it:

Which way stands your lodge?
East and West because all holy churches and temples stand that way
and particularly the temple of Jerusalem.

But though the Essex does not refer to the Temple in this place it
has later the following question and answer:

In what part of the temple was the Lodge kept?
In Solomon's porch at the west end of the Temple where the two
pillars are set up.

Now this is probably an explanation on the same lines as the
identification of the deep valley in which a lodge might be held
with the Vale of Jehosaphat. The original setting or situation was
East and West, in reference to the rising sun. It was naturally
associated with the orientation of churches with which of course
the Operative Masons were familiar; and after the Reformation, as
the Bible became a popular book, the Temple analogy would almost
inevitably be adopted if it had not appeared before, which is quite
possible. There are other indications that the East and West
direction was regarded as important. The Chetwode-Crawley MS. has:

Which way blows the wind?
East and West, out of the South.

Prichard has only "Due East and West" for answer to the question.

The fact that in several forms the lodge is called after st. John
may be of importance in this connection. We begin to get a
composite picture of a lodge formed on a hilltop towards the east.
It would almost appear that the original time of assembly was
sunrise, or rather just before it. Now the assembling on hilltops
on midsummer day before dawn was a very widespread and persistent
folk custom of a primitive religio-magical type. But midsummer day
is also the day of St. John the Evangelist, a coincidence that
seems significant, for there are certain independent traditions
that may point to the lodges originally meeting only once a year.
But such a state of affairs, one would judge, had long passed at
the period to which the relics we are considering properly belong.
It is perhaps not surprising, in view of the zealous Protestantism
of North Britain, that in the two versions of definite Scottish
origin no reference to the Saint appears. The Sloane MS. (which
Gould however thought was drawn, at least in part from Scottish
sources) does mention him, thus:

Where was the word first given?
At the tower of Babylon.
Where did they first call their lodge?
At the holy chapel of St. John.

Perhaps it was from some such variant that Prichard got the word
"holy."

From whence came you?
From the Holy Lodge of St. John's.

Though as we have seen it appeared in the "holy temples" referred
to as a reason for placing the lodge East and West.

In the above quotation from the Sloane MS. there seems to be a
reference to the history of the Craft in the Old Constitutions,
which assigns the first definite organization to the occasion of
building the Tower of Babel. While the second answer seems to
indicate an attempt to explain or rationalize the ascription of the
lodge by assuming that it had first met in a sacred building
dedicated to St. John.

Before we leave the lodge there are some other references that
should be considered. Prichard has a set of questions as to the
positions of the Master, Wardens and a Senior and Junior Entered
Apprentice. The arrangement seems rather self-conscious and
artificial The Examination and Mystery both seem to be corrupt at
this place, but together they seem to indicate the following as
their original:

How do Masons take their place in work?
The Master's place southeast, the Warden's place northeast and the
fellows the eastern passage.

The Essex and its parallels seem to have had:

What is the Master's point?
At the east window waiting the rising of the sun to set his men at
work.
What is the Warden's point?
At the west window waiting the setting of the sun to dismiss the
enter'd apprentices.

This last is intermediate between Prichard and the former
quotation. It would be comparatively late as the presence of
windows supposes a building. The more primitive arrangement fits
into the old outdoor meeting very well. The lodge would be a level
area on the hilltop marked out or enclosed in some way, leaving an
opening to the east and presumably another to the west, for
designating the particular passage as "eastern" implies more than
one. The entrant conducted in at the latter would be approaching
the sunrise, and those forming the lodge would be all facing him.
There are several references to day and night, of which the version
in the Confession is representative:

The day's for seeing, the night for hearing.

Prichard and the Kilwinning MS. make two bites of it. The former
has:

What's the day for? To see in.
What's the night for? To hear.


LIGHT IS SYMBOLIZED

Now the Mystery describes the entrant being taken "by two Wardens"
through a "dark Entry" and "conducted from Darkness into Light."
But before we go further with this it may be as well to consider
another point which is stressed in all our documents except the
Trinity College MS. As the latter has only eleven questions and
answers in all it can hardly be supposed to be complete, so the
omission is not very significant. The question in the majority of
cases is

How many lights in your lodge?

to which, however, the answer varies considerably. The majority
agree that there are three, but the Kilwinning MS. and the second
catechism in the Sloane MS. have only two. They are said to be,
giving some typical answers:

Three, a right east, south and west.
The southeast, south, and southwest.
Three, the northeast, the southwest and the eastern passage

The Essex group explains them as representing the three persons of
the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, while the Examination
refers them to the Master, Warden and Fellows, and the Chetwode
Crawley MS. says "one denotes the Master, the other the word, and
the third the fellowcraft."

The explanations in the instances where two only are given are;
Kilwinning:

Ye sun riseth in the east and sets all men to work, and sets in the
west and so turns all men to bed.
While Sloane says "that there is one to see to go in and another to
see to work."

In all these varying forms a general underlying meaning seems
present. The lights originally had to do with celestial phenomena,
and not with such artificialities as windows and candles. On our
supposition of an outdoor assembly before dawn on St. John's Day
all these references seem to arrange themselves in something like
order. The neophyte, brought to the lodge while it is yet night, is
in darkness, represented at a much later period by a dark anteroom.
He can only hear directions given to him. At sunrise he receives
light, physically, as well as symbolically by being "entered" to
the Craft, and being entrusted with its secrets. That the lights
are sometimes explained as referring to the Holy Trinity, or to the
Master and celestial luminaries, are only inevitable symbolical
developments.

THE KEY OF THE LODGE

The subject has by no means been exhausted but we will consider
only one more point, the key. There is as much unanimity in
mentioning this as there was on the lights, but even more
importance seems to have been laid on it, though its possibilities
seem much narrower. We may take the Essex MS. as typical:

Have you a key to the lodge? 
Yes I have.
What is its virtue?
To open and shut, and shut and open. 
Where do you keep it?
In an ivory box, between my tongue and my teeth, or within my heart
where all my secrets are kept.

Further questions refer to a chain to this key, "as long as from my
tongue to my heart." Other variants speak of the key lying under a
"green turf or a square ashlar," or in "a bound case under a
three-cornered pavement a foot and a half from the lodge door." The
chain also appears as a "cable." The Sloane MS. has:

What is the key of your lodge door made of?
It is not made of wood, stone, iron or steel, or any sort of metal,
but a tongue of good report behind a brother's back as well as
before his face. 

Which the Kilwinning MS. explains thus:

My head is the box, my teeth is the bones, my hair is the map and
my tongue the key.

"Map" is a dialect form of mop. Probably the turf or "divoy" has
the same meaning. Prichard combines most of this, and makes
something of a play on words - "Does it hang or lie?" by which
apparently we are to understand that being a tongue of good report
it will not lie about a brother, but that its owner would rather
hang first. Really it would seem that the earlier conception was
that the key was not the tongue, but the word. Though the tongue as
the organ of speech was probably always confused with it.

To sum up this rather tedious discussion, granting the supposition
that these catechisms do represent in part what might be called the
formal esoteric teaching of the Operative Craft, we see that the
symbolizing tendency was present. It might plausibly be supposed
that it was at an earlier period even more developed than we find
it, as there are many signs of these accounts being corrupt and
deficient; though it is really more probable that such questions
and answers formed the text on which the young Mason's instructors
or "intenders" expounded at length according to their knowledge and
ability rather than that they included a full exposition of the
mysteries of the Craft. Those who expect to find symbolism
shadowing forth the deepest mystical, philosophic and cosmic truths
will of course be disappointed, and perhaps contemptuous. Let them
remember Naaman the Syrian. The imagery of the Scriptures
themselves deal chiefly with the affairs of every-day life and the
thoughts, feelings and desires common to all men. Why should that
of our Operative predecessors be expected to have had something
different, something more occult? They were practical men, and
their codes and secrets related especially to their work and the
ordinary circumstances of their lives. It is after all not a little
thing to teach even common morality--it is really not very common--
and if a system of symbolism will help to enforce the lesson it is
justified. And so far as such a system is true it can be fitted in
or adapted to teaching greater and deeper truths still, as far as
the human mind can go--towards the East, the place of light.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) Mackey, Revised Edition, p. 980.
(2) Gould's Concise History, pp. 99, 119. Mackey 658. Gould's
Collected Essays should be referred to, especially the first "On
Some Catechisms, etc., in the Scottish Idiom and the sixth On the
Antiquity of Masonic Symbolism, though the author uses the word
symbolism in a way peculiar to himself. There are many valuable
papers in A.Q.C. that should be looked up by the student fortunate
enough to have access to them.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

In what way could ceremonies based on primitive magic have become
part of the Operative ritual?

What symbolism is implied in the adoption of an admission ceremony
into a society, and what forms might it take?

How could the simple symbolism of light and darkness be developed? 

What kind of symbolism would it be natural to suppose the Operative
Masons to have evolved?

"THE GOODNESS AND SEVERITY OF THE LAW" 
IT is in their certainty and severity that many laws are most
beneficent. Even of the laws against murder and other crimes as
horrible this is true: for if a man knows beyond doubt that the
gallows or the penitentiary will follow his deed, such a fear will
recall him to his senses when nothing else can, inside himself or
without. Most attempts to soften the severity or to make uncertain
the executions of these laws are inspired by a false sentimentality
which cannot bear to think of inflicting pain on any human being.
The sentimentalist should favor making fear of wrong doing
absolutely ubiquitous, for only thus can men be prevented from
crime. The justest mercy to those of murderous disposition is to
neutralize their criminal impulses by a fear that operates
automatically wherever they are. Such a fear does more to maintain
security for all citizens than any number of policemen or
penitentiaries, and in the long run keeps men out of prisons, which
is certainly more kind to them than any amount of coddling after
they are behind the bars.

