textfiles/magazines/STB/stb-1932-07.txt

SHORT TALK BULLETIN - Vol.X   July, 1932   No.7

TRESTLE-BOARD AND TRACING-BOARD

by: Unknown

Often confused, the trestle-board and the tracing-board are actually 
alike only in the similarity of their names.
In the Master Mason<6F>s Degree we hear, <20>The three steps usually 
delineated upon the Master<65>s Carpet, are, etc.<2E>  <20>What is this 
Master<EFBFBD>s Carpet?<3F>  is often asked by the newly-raised Mason.  He is 
in a good Lodge the Master of which can give him an intelligent 
answer!
Among our movable jewels the trestle-board is mentioned and described 
last, and with elaboration, but the Entered Apprentice looks long, 
and often in vain, for a piece of furniture which bears any 
resemblance to the trestle-board shown on the screen, or pointed out 
on the chart by the Deacon<6F>s rod.
We learn that Hiram Abif entered the Sanctum Sanctorum at high twelve 
to offer his devotions to Deity, and to draw his designs upon the 
<EFBFBD>trestle-board.<2E>  On that day when he was found missing there was a 
holiday in the half-finished Temple, because there were no designs on 
the trestle-board by which the workmen could proceed.  But except in 
the ritual of the Entered Apprentice Degree, no explanation is given 
in the Lodge as to what a trestle-board may be.
Therefore it is somewhat confusing to find that the Lodge notice of 
meetings is sometimes called a Trestle-board and still more so when 
some Masonic speaker refers to the Great Lights as <20>The Trestle-
board.<2E>
The tracing-board is a child on the Master<65>s carpet, which is a 
descendant of operative designs drawn upon the ground, or on the 
floors of the buildings used by operative builders for meeting 
purposes, and during construction hours as what we would term an 
architect<EFBFBD>s office.
Early operative builders plans, drawn upon floor or earth, were 
erased and destroyed as soon as used.  When Lodges changed from 
operative to Speculative, the custom of drawing designs upon the 
Lodge floor was continued; the <20>designs<6E> for the Speculative Lodge, 
of course, were the emblems and symbols for the construction of the 
Speculative Temple of Character.
From their position such plans became known as Carpets 
  the Master<65>s Carpet, of course was the design made upon the Lodge 
room floor during the Master<65>s Degree.

Such carpets were drawn with chalk or charcoal.  It was the duty of 
the youngest Entered Apprentice to erase this Carpet after the 
meeting, using a mop and pail for the purpose.  Doubtless this use of 
chalk and charcoal first suggested to our ritualistic fathers the 
availability of these materials as symbols.  Incidentally, how did it 
<EFBFBD>not<EFBFBD> occur to some good brother of the olden days to make a symbol 
of that mop and pail!
Later it became evident that as no real Masonic secrets were drawn on 
the Carpet, the essentials of the institution were not disclosed by 
leaving them where the profane might see them.  For convenience, the 
several symbols of the degrees were then painted on cloth and laid 
upon the floor; true Carpets now.  Still later these Carpets were 
held erect on easels; in America the chart - in England the Tracing-
board - is still a commonplace of Lodge furniture, although the more 
convenient and beautiful lantern slide is often used in this country 
where finances and electric light permit.
Old Tracing-boards (charts) are already objects of interest to 
Masonic antiquarians, and those early ones which follow almost 
exactly the illustrations in Jeremy Cross<73> <20>True Masonic Chart<72> 
(1820) are increasingly valuable as the years go by.  Charts or 
Tracing-boards have performed a most valuable service; together with 
the printed monitors or manuals, they have kept a reasonable 
uniformity in the exoteric part of American work, thus making for a 
unity which is sometimes difficult for the newly made Mason to 
discover when he compares the esoteric work of one Jurisdiction with 
that of another.
The trestle-board is so entirely different from the tracing-board 
that it is difficult to understand how so earnest a student as Oliver 
confounded them.  Such mistakes made the most prolific of Masonic 
writers somewhat doubted as an authority.
<EFBFBD>Trestle<EFBFBD> comes from an old Scotch word, <20>trest,<2C> meaning a 
supporting framework.  Carpenters use trestles, or <20>saw horses,<2C> to 
support boards to be sawed or planed.  A board across two trestles 
provided a natural and easy way to display plans.  Hence the name 
trestle-board; a board supported by trestles, on which plans were 
shown or made.
Mackey observes:  <20>The trestle-board is at least two hundred years 
old; it is found in Pritchard<72>s <20>Masonry Dissected,<2C>  earliest of the 
exposes of Masonic Ritual.  Here it is called <20>trestle-board,<2C> but 
the object is he same, although the spelling of its name is 
different.
Symbols differ in relative importance according to the truths they 
conceal.  Eagle and flag are both symbols of American ideals, but the 
flag is far the greater symbol of the two.  The eagle is the American 
symbol of liberty - the flag, not only of liberty, but also of 
government of, for and by the people; of equality of opportunity; of 
free thought; of the nation as a whole.  If one disagrees with Mackey 
and considers the tracing-board a symbol, it is, at most, one of 
teaching and learning; the trestle-board, on the contrary, has a 
symbolic content comparable in Freemasonry to that of the flag of the 
nation.
From the meanest hut to the mightiest Cathedral, never a building was 
not first an idea in some man<61>s mind.  Never a pile of masonry of any 
pretensions but first a series of drawings, designs, plans.  From Mt. 
St. Albans, newest of the glorious Cathedrals erected to the Most 
High, to Strassburg, Rheims, Canterbury, Cologne and Notre Dame, all 
were first drawn upon the trestle-board.  Every bridge, every 
battleship, every engineering work, every dam, tunnel, monument, 
canal, tower erected by man must first be drawn upon paper with 
pencil and rule; with square and compasses.
The ancient builders erected Cathedrals by following the designs upon 
the Master<65>s trestle-board.  Where he indicated stone, stone was 
laid.  Where he drew a flying buttress, stone took wings.  Where he 
showed a tower, a spire pointed to the vault.  Where he indicated 
carvings, stone lace appeared.
Speculative Freemasons build not of stone, but with character.  We 
erect not Cathedrals, but the <20>House Not Made With Hands.<2E>  Our 
trestle-board, <20>spiritual, Moral and Masonic<69> as the ritual has it, 
is as important in character building as the plans and designs laid 
down by the Master on the trestle-board by which the operative 
workman builds his temporal building. 
The trestle-board of the Speculative Mason, so we are told by the 
ritual, is to be found in <20>the great books of nature and revelation.<2E>
Mackey considers that the Volume of the Sacred Law as the real 
trestle-board of Speculative Freemasonry.  He Says:
<EFBFBD>The trestle-board is then the symbol of the natural and moral law.  
Like every other symbol of the Order, it is universal and tolerant in 
its application; and while, as Christian Masons, we cling with 
unfaltering integrity to the explanation which makes the scriptures 
of both dispensations our trestle-board, we permit Jewish and 
Mohammedan brethren to content themselves with the books of the Old 
Testament or Koran.  Masonry does not interfere with the peculiar 
form or development of any one<6E>s religious faith.  All that it asks 
is that the interpretation of the symbol shall be in accordance to 
what each one supposes to be the revealed will of the Creator.  But 
so rigidly is it that the symbol shall be preserved and, in some 
rational way, interpreted, that it peremptorily excludes the atheist 
from its communion, because, believing in no Supreme Being - no 
Divine Architect - he must necessarily be without a spiritual 
trestle-board on which the designs of that Being may be inscribed for 
his direction.<2E>
Modern scholars amplify Mackey<65>s dictum rather than quarrel with it.  
The ritual speaks of the great books of nature and revelation, and by 
<EFBFBD>revelation<EFBFBD> the Speculative Freemason understands the Volume of 
Sacred Law.  But the great book of nature must not be forgotten when 
considering just what is and what is not the trestle-board of 
Freemasonry.
For Nature is the source of all knowledge.  Without the <20>The great 
Book of Nature<72> to read, man could not learn, no matter what his 
power of reasoning and insight might be.  All science comes from 
observation of nature.  In the last analysis, all knowledge is 
science, therefore all knowledge comes from observation of nature.  
This is true of the abstract as of the concrete.  Philosophy, ethics, 
standards of conduct and the like, are not products of natural 
evolution, but created by men<65>s minds.  They are the flowers of 
natural philosophy.  Few blossoms spring directly from the earth; the 
flowers grow upon the stalk which come from the ground.  Indirectly, 
all that is beautiful in orchid, rose and violet came from the earth 
in which the roots of the plant find sustenance.  So flowers of the 
mind are traceable back to observations of nature; had there been no 
nature to contemplate, man could not have imagined a philosophy to 
account for it.
Therefore modern Masonic scholarship thinks of the Speculative 
trestle-board as <20>both<74> nature - and by inference, all knowledge. all 
philosophy, all wisdom and learning; wherever dispersed and however 
made available - and the Volume of Sacred Law, the <20>revelation<6F> of 
the ritual.
All great symbols have more than one meaning.  Consider again the 
Flag of our country, which means no one essential part- liberty or 
equality or freedom to worship as we wish - but all these and many 
more besides.  The trestle-board is a symbol with more than one 
meaning - aye, more meanings than <20>nature and revelation.<2E>
As each ancient builder had his own trestle-board, on which he drew 
the designs from which the workman produced in stone the dream in his 
mind, so each Mason has his own private trestle board, on which he 
draws the design by which he erects his House No Made With Hands.  He 
may draw it of any one of many designs - he may choose a spiritual 
Doric, Ionic or Corinthian.  He may make his edifice beautiful, 
useful or merely ornamental.  But draw <20>some<6D> design he must, else he 
cannot build.  And the Freemason who builds not, what kind of a 
Freemason is he? 
Within the Master<65>s reach in every Lodge is some table, stand, 
pedestal or other structure on which he may lay his papers.  Often 
this is considered the trestle-board because upon it the Master draws 
the design for the meeting.  Any brother has a right to read into any 
symbol his own interpretation; for those to whom this conception is 
sufficient, it is good enough.  But it seems rather a reduction of 
the great level of the little.  A light house is, indeed, a house 
with a light, but he who sees but the house and the light, but fails 
to visualize those lost ones who by it find their way; who cannot see 
the ships kept in safety by its ceaseless admonition that this way 
lies danger; who cannot behold it as a symbol as well as a structure, 
misses its beauty.  Those who see only the pedestal which supports 
the Master<65>s plans as a Speculative Trestle-board miss the higher 
meaning of the symbol.
Lodge notices are not infrequently called trestle-boards, since on 
them the Master draws the design for the coming work, and sends them 
out to the Craftsmen.  This too, seems belittling of the symbol, 
unless the brethren are led to see that so denominating the monthly 
notice is but a play on words, and not a teaching.
A Freemason<6F>s trestle-board, his own combination of what he may learn 
from man and nature, from the Book of Revelation on the Altar, and 
the designs in his own heart, is a great and pregnant symbol.  It is 
worthy of many hours of pondering; a Masonic teaching to be loved and 
lived.  Who makes of it less misses something that is beautiful in 
Freemasonry