191 lines
11 KiB
Plaintext
191 lines
11 KiB
Plaintext
SHORT TALK BULLETIN - Vol.XII July, 1934 No.7
|
||
|
||
MASONIC BLUE
|
||
|
||
by: Unknown
|
||
|
||
The inquirer who asks why the Ancient Craft Masonry is “blue” - why
|
||
speak of Blue Lodge, Blue Degrees, wear aprons edged with blue,
|
||
suspend jewel about the necks of officers with blue ribbons - is
|
||
faced at once with two divergent schools of thought. One of these is
|
||
the practical, hard-headed, founded-on-fact school of the Masonic
|
||
historian and antiquary; the other is that which associates ideas
|
||
with objects, colors, numbers, beasts, birds, natural phenomena,
|
||
etc., as symbolism has been developed and followed throughout the
|
||
history of mankind.
|
||
Historians both Masonic and secular agree that the square has been a
|
||
symbol of rectitude, honesty, fair dealing, justice the world over
|
||
for unknown ages. But the symbolist who reads much into the familiar
|
||
square apron, with its triangular flap, is at once confronted with
|
||
the undoubted fact that this form of apron is modern, not ancient.
|
||
The invention of the square as a tool must have been coincident with
|
||
the first appreciation of the right angle, and the advantages, in
|
||
solidity and ease of construction, of the use of stones and timbers
|
||
which were squared. Its Symbolism, therefore goes back to “time
|
||
immemorial.” Masonic aprons used by operative masons were simple
|
||
skins of any shape or no particular shape. With the change from
|
||
operative to speculative, the apron became conventionaized, but only
|
||
in comparatively recent times did it assume its present rectangular
|
||
and triangular features. The symbolism read into its present shape
|
||
will not fit, for instance, the aprons worn by George Washington,
|
||
which had curved flaps and rounded corners.
|
||
Blue as the color for Ancient Craft Masonry is accounted for by two
|
||
schools of thought on its origin. Both can adduce considerable
|
||
evidence. One believes that the symbolism of the color, like that of
|
||
the square, comes to us from “time immemorial” and that the color
|
||
must have been adopted because of its meanings; the other
|
||
demonstrates that blue as a Masonic color is not as old as the Mother
|
||
Grand Lodge, and that it was adopted for other than symbolic reasons.
|
||
Blue was a sacred color to the priests of Israel. The color is
|
||
mentioned first in the Old Testament in Exodus XXV:3-4, in which the
|
||
Lord Commands Moses to speak to the children of Israel: “And this is
|
||
the offering which ye shall take of them; gold, and silver, and
|
||
brass, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goat’s
|
||
hair.”
|
||
Throughout Exodus and Numbers are many references to the color, and
|
||
several are to be found in Chronicles, Esther, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
|
||
We read of the “fine twined linens,” “Make the ephod of Gold and
|
||
Blue,” “bind the breastplates with a lace of blue,” “pomegranates of
|
||
blue,” “an hanging for the tabernacle of blue,” “needlework of blue,”
|
||
“a cloth wholly of blue, etc.
|
||
Perhaps the most interesting allusion is in Numbers XV:37-38-39-40:
|
||
|
||
“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of
|
||
Israel, and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of
|
||
their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon
|
||
the fringe of the borders a ribband of blue; And it shall be unto you
|
||
for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the
|
||
commandments of the Lord, and do them; and that ye seek not after
|
||
your own heart and your eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring;
|
||
That ye may remember, and do all my commandments, and be holy unto
|
||
your God.”
|
||
Mackey notes that the blue of the Old Testament is a translation of
|
||
the Hebrew “tekelet” which is derived from a root signifying
|
||
“perfection.” He develops the idea that the blue was anciently, and
|
||
universally sacred as follows:
|
||
“Among the Druids, “blue” was the symbol of “truth” and the
|
||
candidate, in the initiation into the sacred rights of Druidism, was
|
||
invested with a robe composed of the colors, white, “blue” and green.
|
||
“The Egyptians esteemed “blue” as a sacred color, and the body of
|
||
Amun, the principal God of their theogony, was painted light “blue,”
|
||
to imitate. as Wilkinson remarks, ‘His peculiarly exalted and
|
||
heavenly nature.’
|
||
The ancient Babylonians clothed their idols in “blue,” as we learn
|
||
from the prophet Jeremiah (x, 9). The Chinese, in their mystical
|
||
philosophy, represented “blue” as the symbol of the Deity, because,
|
||
being, as they say, composed of black and red, this color is a fit
|
||
representation of the obscure and brilliant, the male and the female,
|
||
or active and passive principles.
|
||
“The Hindus assert that their God, Vishnu, was represented by a
|
||
celestial or sky “blue,” thus indicating that wisdom eminating from
|
||
God was to be symbolized by this color.
|
||
“Among the medieval Christians, “blue” was sometimes considered as an
|
||
emblem of immortality, as red was of the Divine Love. Portal says
|
||
that “blue” was the symbol of perfection, hope and constancy. “The
|
||
color of the celebrated dome, ‘azure,’ was in Divine language the
|
||
symbol of eternal truth; in consecrated language, of immortality; and
|
||
in profane for which Masons strive.”
|
||
Our ancient brethren met on hills and in vales, over which the blue
|
||
vault of heaven is a ceiling; Jacob in his wisdom saw the ladder
|
||
ascending from earth to heaven; the covering of a Lodge is the
|
||
clouded canopy or starry decked heaven. These allusions seem to
|
||
connote that blue, the color of the sky, is that of all celestial
|
||
attributes for which Masons strive.
|
||
Man’s earliest forms of worship were of the sun and fire. The sun
|
||
rose, traveled and set in a realm of blue; to associate the color
|
||
with Deity was inevitable. Blue also is the color of the ocean, of
|
||
mountain streams, of lakes, of good drinking water - that blue should
|
||
also become emblematical of purity is equally natural.
|
||
In heraldry, blue or azure signifies chasity, loyalty and fidelity.
|
||
In painting, the color is frequently used in an emblematical manner,
|
||
as in depicting an angel’s robe and the robe of the Virgin Mary, to
|
||
signify humility, fidelity and especially faith. It is the color of
|
||
hope. It has been held to signify eternity and immortality; pale
|
||
blue is especially associated with peace. Of forty-seven nations,
|
||
twenty-seven have blue in their flags; all, doubtless with the same
|
||
thought that Brother Wilbur D. Nesbit so beautifully expressed:
|
||
Your Flag and my Flag
|
||
And how it flies today
|
||
In your land and my land
|
||
And half a world away!
|
||
Rose-Red and Blood-Red
|
||
The stripes forever gleam;
|
||
Snow-white and Soul-white
|
||
The good forefathers’ dream;
|
||
“Sky-blue and true-blue
|
||
With stars to gleam aright -
|
||
The glorious guidon of the day
|
||
A shelter through the night.
|
||
There seem to be many grounds on which he can firmly stand who
|
||
believes that Freemasonry adopted blue as the color of the three
|
||
degrees with its ancient symbolism in mind. Yet it is to be
|
||
remembered that Freemasonry as we know it was not formed overnight,
|
||
by any one group of men, each of whom contributed some idea to its
|
||
ritual, ceremonies, ancient usages and customs. No committee sat
|
||
about a table to decide the question “what color shall we adopt by
|
||
which the Ancient Craft shall forever more be distinguished?”
|
||
It is possible, of course, that the ancient operative masons, from
|
||
whose guilds and organizations modern Freemasonry came as a result of
|
||
slow evolution, may have had an especial reverence for the color
|
||
blue. As has been noted, blue has been associated from early times
|
||
in ecclesiastical history with the Virgin Mary. The earliest
|
||
document of Freemasonry, the Regius Poem (1390) has two lines:
|
||
“Pray we now to God almyght And to hys moder, Mary brytht.”
|
||
Which certainly connotes a reverence of these ancient Freemasons for
|
||
Mary the Mother, and may easily be considered ground for thinking
|
||
that the early builders also revered her special color.
|
||
However that may be, it is obvious that the absence of any evidence
|
||
is not negative evidence; it is commonplace of human experience that
|
||
in the face of any positive evidence for an idea, in the absence of
|
||
any evidence against it, the fact should be admitted.
|
||
All of which brings us to what we know of the earliest use of blue as
|
||
a Masonic color, regardless of how much we may wish that our
|
||
forefathers had adopted blue for the symbolism we are now content to
|
||
read into the hue of heaven.
|
||
Two extracts from the minutes of the Grand Lodge of England (1717)
|
||
are explicit upon the matter of color:
|
||
“Resolved, nem. con, that in private Lodges and Quarterly
|
||
Communications and General Meetings, the Masters and Wardens do wear
|
||
Jewells of Masonry hanging to a White Ribbon (vizt.) That the Master
|
||
wear the square, the Senr. Warden the Levell, the Junr. Warden the
|
||
Plumb-Rule.”
|
||
G.L. MINUTES, 24th JUNE, 1727.
|
||
|
||
“Dr. Desagulier taking notice of some irregularities in wearing the
|
||
marks of Distinction which have been allowed by former Grand Lodges.
|
||
“Proposed, that none but the Grand Master, his Deputy and Wardens
|
||
shall wear their Jewels in Gold or Gilt pendant to blue ribbons about
|
||
their necks and white leather Aprons lined with blue silk.
|
||
“That all those who have served any of the three Grand Offices shall
|
||
wear the like Aprons lined with Blue Silk in all Lodges and
|
||
assemblies of Masons when they appear clothed.
|
||
“That all Masters and Wardens of Lodges may wear their Aproms lined
|
||
with White Silk and their respective Jewels with plain white Ribbons
|
||
but of no other color whatsoever.
|
||
“The Deputy Grand Master accordingly put the question whether the
|
||
above regulation should be agreed to.
|
||
“And it was carried in the affirmative. Nemine Con.”
|
||
G.L. Minutes, 17th March, 1731.
|
||
But why did the Grand Lodge adopt, or permit, “blue” in 1731, when
|
||
“white” was specified just four years previously?
|
||
Passing over the common but wholly coincidental “reason” - that many
|
||
taverns where Masons met were distinguished by blue signs, such as
|
||
the Blue Boar - the sanest theory seems to be that proposed by the
|
||
noted Masonic scholar Fred J.W. Crowe. He wrote (1909-10 “Lodge of
|
||
Research Transactions).
|
||
“The color of the Grand Lodge Officers clothing was adopted from the
|
||
ribbon of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. The Grand Stewards
|
||
from the second National Order - the Most Honourable Order of the
|
||
Bath. The Scottish Grand Lodge undoubtedly copied the ribbon of the
|
||
Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, and the Grand Lodge
|
||
of Ireland anticipated the formation of the Most Illustrious Order of
|
||
St. Patrick in 1788 by selecting light Blue - thus accidentally
|
||
completing the series, although I would suggest that light Blue may
|
||
in all probability have been chosen merely to mark a difference from
|
||
the English Grand Lodge. In like manner I believe the light blue of
|
||
our own private Lodge clothing was, by a natural sequence of ideas,
|
||
adopted to contrast with the deeper colour of Grand Lodge attire, and
|
||
not very long after the last-named became the rule.”
|
||
|
||
|