Certain further working tools, appropriate to the task of a Craftsman, are next presented. As before they are three in number and are originally associated with each other, like such other triadic combinations as the Master and two Wardens, and the Greater and Lesser Lights.
The duty of presenting and explaining them, or of seeing that they are presented and explained, is incumbent upon the W.M. Having risen to Mastership himself by their use, he guarantees their efficacy to the Candidate, who is thus assured that, by using them, he too will rise to a like exalted position. Thus the keys of progress are and always have been passed on from Master to novice through the ages.
In practice the W.M. usually delegates the presentation to the J.W. in the First Degree and to the S.W. in the Second. But as the W.M. and Wardens are an organic trinity, the presentation by a Warden is the act of the Master, whilst the delegation serves to indicate the Degree to which the tools apply. In the First Degree they applied to the discipline and education of the Candidate's outward person; in the Second they relate to the government of his mind.
The Ritual itself provides an exposition of the tools of this Degree so full that it appears adequate. So indeed it is, within the elementary limits, disclosed on the surface of the Ritual, and we shall do well to accept and act upon the simple explanation provided. But the explanation is not exhaustive and once again, we must look beneath the surface for the fuller significance of the tools.
Taking the tools separately they constitute an evolutional, geometrical progression:
(1) A single line; (the vertical Plumb-rule). ¦
(2) Two lines, vertical and horizontal, at a right angle; (the Square).+
(3) Three lines, forming two right angles ; (the Level). -
If these lines (or the tools) be arranged
in such a way that they form four right angles meeting at the
center, they yield the figure of the Cross +
If they be arranged so that the four right angles do not meet
at a center but away from it, they produce a superfice (or symbol
of the perfect ashlar)?
Into the mathematical and geometrical ideas behind this progression
of 1, 2, 3, 4, we cannot now go, but they form the basis of all
the religio-philosophical teaching of antiquity and of the Tetragrammaton
of four-lettered name of Deity. Summed up in modern and personal
terms they imply that, to attain the state of spiritual development
signified by the Perfect Ashlar (which is the work of our Second
Degree), the individual soul and body must first be brought into
right and balanced relationship, and then pass through the crucial
regenerative experience known as "the Cross"--or transition
from natural to supernatural life.
It is well recognized that the Cross as a philosophical symbol was in use ages before Christianity and is found in connection with all the great pre-Christian religions. Amongst many significances was that of the four primordial elements (fire, water, air, earth) in a state of balanced union, for of them everything in the Universe, including ourselves, is composed, though in different proportions. Each of us has usually too much or too little of one or other of them in our composition and to restore them into balance and harmony in ourselves is the life-problem of each of us.
Accordingly in the Ancient Mysteries the Cross was as central and conspicuous a symbol as it is today upon the altar of a Christian church and into its closely screened secrets and mysteries only duly qualified Candidates were initiated. Contemplating it the pre-Christian Candidate was taught to see in it an emblem of himself; to discern that the Cross is the basic structural principle of the Universe and of his own cruciform body, to recognize that the human soul or Ego stands as it were bound and crucified upon the Cross of the four material elements which it must subdue into balance and harmonious function; to learn (as our Ritual still teaches) "to make all his passions and prejudices coincide with the strict line of virtue and in every pursuit to have eternity in view". And by it he received the counsel to "take up his cross" and, as a later and Christian Initiatee came to put it, so to carry it that eventually it would carry him.
Eventually the time came when the teaching of the Mysteries and philosophy was suppressed by the Roman Empire and the use of their symbols forbidden. The Initiation Schools still persisted, however, in secret, Christianity itself being at first a closely tyled secret system and there survives the interesting tradition that when, from fear of being raided by the civil authorities, it was dangerous for a private assembly to be found using such a symbol as the Cross, recourse was had to camouflage, and a loosely made cross of builder's tools was used which, in emergency, could readily be knocked in pieces and reveal nothing more than the Square, Level and Plumb rule which we exhibit to Candidates to-day. Be this tradition true or fabulous the fact remains that our Second Degree tools do indeed form a Cross when combined and that their ancient philosophical significance is still implied and remains applicable to the Candidate of today.
And so with the presentation of the three Working-tools the Ceremony fittingly ends, leaving the Candidate to convert their moral implications into practical conduct in the career of a Fellow Craft now opening before him. Considered merely as simple separate builder's tools each of them can teach him much, and if his life becomes an expression of their moral meaning he will do well and travel far. But he will be well advised if he can see them also unitedly and in syntheseis, forming that ancient and once secret symbol, the Cross, and perceiving it, as the Mysteries of old always taught, as a geometrical and philosophical emblem of himself and of that conflict between the spirit and the flesh which will go on in him until these twain are brought into due balance.
After all, whether he take up his builder's
tools separately and lives out their respective meanings in the
sense taught by our Ritual, or whether he take up his Cross and
follow all that the Cross implies, matters little; the difference
is but one of expression. What is of moment is that he shall faithfully
do what he sees to be necessary for his spiritual perfecting.
In either case the task and the end will be the same; it will
involve the same labor, the same self-denial, and it will ensure
the same result the shaping of himself into a "perfect ashlar."
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