Square and Compasses

"For in God we live and move and have our being..." - Acts 17:28

When I was 9 years old, I got in trouble at school for drawing a "rude" picture on a piece of paper and passing it around the classroom. This is the "rude" picture :)

For those who have problem figuring out what the picture means: it is a stylised depiction of a couple having a sexual intercourse in a "missionary" position (a man on top). 

This was a time when I was just finding out that there is such a thing called "sex" and was finding it all very funny.

Anyway, time passed, the sex became less funny and more fun and I completely forgot about this incident...

Then recently, while I was looking for something on the internet, I came across a picture of the Masonic Square and Compasses symbol:

The Square and Compasses is the single most identifiable symbol of Freemasonry. This symbol is a mystery. No one knows where it came from or what it means.

Most Freemasons, when asked the meaning of their Square & Compasses logo, state:

"Both…are architect’s tools…to teach symbolic lessons…"

I had of course seen this symbol before and I generally accepted that the symbol is probably in some way related to the idea of the God being the Great architect of the world.

If you look at this picture you will see why:

You can see that the ancient Hebrews saw the universe as a stone built structure with the stone flat Earth as the base and the stone Heavenly dome as the roof. Inside of this structure was all there was, the life itself. 

Now this was very interesting. The origin of the Masons is deeply rooted in the religion of the First Temple. So they probably shared the same world view described in the above drawing. And if we look at the above picture the idea of God being the Great Architect starts making a lot of sense. Only a great architect could have built the stone universe...

That architect would have used the Compasses to draw the top of the universe, the great stone semi circular dome of Heavens. He would also have used the Square to draw the bottom of the universe, the great stone flat earth. 

And this is exactly how the Compasses and Square are positioned in the Masonic symbol: the Compasses at the top, representing the Heavens, the Square at the bottom, representing the Earth. 

It seams that at least some Masons shared this view. 

Albert Pike, in his "Morals & Dogma" says: "The Compass, as the Symbol of the Heavens…and the Square, as the Symbol of the Earth...". 

Albert Pike actually goes further to say that the Compass (Heaven) represents the spiritual portion of the double nature of Humanity…and the Square (Earth) represents the material, sensual, and baser portion of the double nature of Humanity." 

J. S. Ward states in his "Interpretation of Our Masonic Symbols" that "…the compasses stand for…the spiritual side of man, while the square appertains to the material world…"

This is linked to the Euclid’s 47th problem of “Squaring The Circle,” said to be the primary goal of the Masonic craft. 

Squaring the circle, however, does not in this case refer to a mathematical problem. It is a description of the the fact that man has both physical and spiritual nature.

Now the reason why man has both physical and spiritual natures is because we are all children of the father sky and mother earth.

Sky, because we can't touch it, but because it has direct influence on life, is perceived as spiritual. The word spirit comes from breath, air...

Earth, because we can touch it, and because we and everything else that is alive, lives and grows out of earth, is seen as material. The word matter comes from mother...

In Genesis, God forms "Adam", out of "the dust of the ground" and "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life" (Genesis 2:7). This is basically a description of the creation of life by Father Sky and Mother Earth...

This reminded me of a Serbian riddle

Question: Tall (high) father, wide mother
Answer: sky and earth

This riddle contains the ancient belief in Father Sky and Mother Earth which was preserved in Serbian tradition.

Father Sky and Mother Earth are at the core of the old European belief system.

In Serbian tradition the Father Sky and Mother Earth are known as:

Father Sky:

Dajbog - giving god
Djed - grandfather, male ancestor

Mother Earth:

Dajbaba - giving goddess
Baba - grandmother, female ancestor

It is the dynamic interplay between the Sky and the Earth, the intercourse between the Father Sky and Mother Earth, which creates all life.

Which brings me back to my primary school doodle:

A father (on top) and mother (on the bottom) creating life...Compass and the Square. Heaven (Sky) father and Earth mother creating life.

In English speaking countries, the Compass and the Square symbol has a capital letter G in the space between the Compass and the Square.

Among the most widely accepted interpretations are that: [G] stands for God, and is to remind Masons that God is at the center of Freemasonry. In this context it can also stand for Great Architect of the Universe (a reference to God). 

So there is one GOD who creates all. The first thing he created was chaos. He had to. He created everything :) Then he "separated" the chaos into the sky and earth. Sky and earth then created living nature. Living nature then created all living things including man.

This is interesting. God Begets One. One begets Two. Two beget Three. Three beget all living things.

Now where did I see this before?

I know. In Taoism.

The Tao begot one (wuji, chaos).
One begot two (taiji, Heaven and Earth, Yang and Yin).
Two begot three (man heaven earth, life).
And three begot the ten thousand things (All things).

And in Fibonacci sequence. 1, 1, 2, 3... I wrote about the Fibonacci sequence and it being at the core of Taoism in the post entitled "Fibonacci".

Fibonacci sequence describes Genesis, the creation of life, the materialisation of the divine, the squaring of the circle...

In case of Taoism behind everything is unknowable Tao. It is unknowable because it is beyond material universe (chaos) which is all we can ever really know. 
In case of Judeo Christianity behind everything is unknowable GOD. It is unknowable because it is beyond material universe (chaos) which is all we can ever really know.
In case of Science, behind everything is unknowable "something" that kicked off the Big Bang. It is unknowable because it is beyond material universe (chaos) which is all we can ever really know.

There is basically no difference between these three definitions of the beginning of the creation of life. They are all beliefs based on logical deduction that there must have been something or someone that created our universe (chaos) from which (or in which) sky and earth were formed (created) and which in turn created life and us, humans. But we can never have a proof that this belief is true or any way to see this something or someone. 

So from our point of view the only thing that really matters are the two things that directly create, maintain and destroy life: sky and earth. It is because of this that sky and earth were recognised as Father Sky and Mother Earth and were as such deified and venerated as God Father and Mother Goddess.

Sky father was often identified with the Sun. This is why Sky gods are often interchangeable with Sun gods. For instance in Slavic religion Dabog, the Sun god is also the giver of rain hence he is actually the Sky god. Dabog is imagined as a radiant youth who rides across the sky every day from east to west in golden chariots pulled by four white horses. 

There are very strong indications, based on archaeological and historical data, that the First Temple, the Temple of Solomon, the Temple Masons are trying to rebuild, was a solar temple, built on top of an ancient solar observatory, and built by the followers of a solar cult. More precisely the cult of Helios (El). Helios who was the old sun god imagined as a radiant youth driving across the sky from east to west in golden chariot pulled by four white horses...I wrote about this in my posts "Boaz and Jachin" and "Sun god from the first temple". The solar cult of the First Temple was only replaced by the lunar cult of the Second Temple after the return from Babylon. Not all jews agreed with this religious change. Some, like the Essenes, regarded the cult of the Second Temple as a heresy and dedicated themselves to the "rebuilding of the First Temple solar cult"... Now the God of the Jews, El, Helios, Sky Father, was the God of the Early Christians...

There are also very strong indications, based on ethnographic and archaeological evidence, that Virgin Mary is the Christianised Mother Earth. The old holy places related to the Mother Earth worship were converted to holy places dedicated to Virgin Mary (or the main Female Saint of the area). The old rituals performed to appease Mother Earth were transferred to Virgin Mary (or the main Female Saint of the area). I wrote about this in many posts, such as "Shepherd's chapels from Velebit", "Babje leto - Grandmother's summer"...

What does the intercourse between the Father Sky and Mother Earth produce? Life. Living nature including us humans...
What did the intercourse between God and Mary produce? Christ who is God who became Man. God materialised. 

So based on the above analogy, Christ is just a symbol. Symbol of life itself, symbol of nature. Life is materialised divine, god who became matter.  

Squaring (materialising) the circle (Devine, sun, sky, God) = creating life...

If Christ is life, living nature and we are part of life, living nature, then we are Christ. We truly live and move and have our being in Christ...
If Christ is life, living nature, god who became matter, then we are all god materialised. Just like the mystics the world over have been teaching for millennia.

I wonder how many masons and non masons are aware of all this?

What do you think? Does this make sense?

PS:

Chinese creator god Fuxi 伏羲 and mother goddess Nüwa 女娲 in the process of creating life. They are holding square and compasses. Astana (Xinjiang), Tang époque (618-907). 

What an incredible coincidence... :) 

The city of cockerels

The history of chickens (Gallus domesticus) is still a bit of a puzzle. Scholars agree that they were first domesticated by mixing two wild bird species from southeast Asia: 

red junglefowl (Gallus gallus)

gray junglefowl (G. sonneratii)

However where that domestication exactly happened and when is still unanswered question. 

The earliest possible domestic chicken remains are from the Cishan site (5400 BC) in northern China, but whether they are domesticated is controversial. Firm evidence of domesticated chickens isn't found in China until 3600 BC. 

Recent research suggests that there may have been multiple domestication events in distinct areas of South and Southeast Asia: southern China, Thailand, Burma, and India.

In India we have evidence that wild chicken have been used by people in the Indus Valley region since 5000 BC. The first archaeological evidence (chicken bones) belonging to the domesticated chickens appear at Mohenjo Daro by about 2000 BC. It is believed that it is from there that the chicken spread into Europe and Africa.

Now I believe that chicken domestication probably occurred in Mohenjo Daro a bit earlier than 2000 BC. Here is why:

Built around 2500 BC, Mohenjo Daro was one of the largest settlements of the ancient Indus Valley civilization, and one of the world's earliest major cities, contemporaneous with the civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Minoan Crete. Mohenjo daro was abandoned in the 19th century BC as the Indus Valley Civilization declined.

Recently I came across a paper entitled "Akam and Puram: ‘Address’ Signs of the Indus Script". It was presented by Iravatham Mahadevan in 2010 at the International Tamil Conference. In his paper he announced the identification of a frequent "opening" sign in the Indus texts.

He based his identification on the fact that identical symbols are known from Ancient Egypt:

This does open the question about the cultural connection between these two ancient civilisations. But this is not why I am mentioning this article. 

Another thing that Iravatham Mahadevan discusses in his article is the original name of Mohenjo Daro.

Many seals with cock symbols were discovered in Mohenjo Daro. Here are just two of these seals:

Because of the repeated occurrence of cocks in the seals, it is fair to assume that cocks played an important role in the city and its culture.

Now in Sanskrit the word for "Cock, Cockerel" is कुक्कुट (kukkuTa)

Why is this important? Because of this:

Thomas Burrow, who was an Indologist at the University of Oxford, published various books and papers in the field of linguistics and Indology. In his paper "On the significance of the term arma-, armaka- in Early Sanskrit Literature", published in Journal of Indian History XLI, Pt. I (1963) : 159-166, he published the list of all the places found in Sanskrit literature which end with "arma", "armaka". As we can see in "A Sanskrit-English dictionary, etymologically and philologically arranged, with special reference to Greek, Latin, Gothic, German, Anglo-Saxon, and other cognate Indo-European languages" published by Monier-Williams, Monier, Sir, 1819-1899 we can see that the Sanskrit words "arma", "armaka" mean "ruins of a village, town":

Thomas Burrow postulated that the place names ending with "arma", "armaka" are the names of ancient cities which were destroyed either by advancing Arians or were already lying in ruins when the Arians arrived.

It is safe to assume that most of the ruined cities mention in ancient Sanskrit literature must have belonged to the Indus Valley Civilization – because at the time of writing these ancient texts, most of the Indus Valley Cities must have been in a ruined state – and also at the time of writing these texts there were no Vedic cities in such ruined state.

One of the cities mentioned in the list of ruined cities composed by Thomas Burrow is "Kukkutarmaka". And as we have seen "kukkuTa" in the Sanskrit means "Cock, Cockerel". This means that "Kukkutarmaka" mentioned in the list means "ruined city of cocks, cockerels".

Based on all this, Iravatham Mahadevan concluded that the name of Mohenjo Daro, during the Indus Valley Civilization times, was probably "Kukkut arma" i.e. "City of cocks, cockerels".

Now considering that Mohenjo Daro, Kukkut arma, was built around 2500 BC, it is most likely that the people who built The City of Cocks have by that time already domesticated chickens???

Anyway, Iravatham Mahadevan also concludes that the city name, Kukkut arma, proves that people who built Mohenjo Daro spoke Dravidian languages.  This he says is because in today Dravidian languages like Naiki (Chanda) and Gondi the word for cockerel is gogodi, phonemically *kokoṭi, *kōkōṭi, *kukōṭi, *kokVṭi and finally *kokoṭ. You can find these words in "Pleonastic Compounding: An Ancient Dravidian Word Structure" by Periannan Chandrasekharan. 

Iravatham Mahadevan then concludes that this word was then borrowed by the Arians who arrived to the Indus Valley after the cities were already abandoned and lying in ruins. They have learned the name of the city from the Dravidian speaking local population from whom they also borrowed the word for cockerel "kukkuTa" which we find in Sanskrit. 

The word traveled east with the chickens. In Slavic languages, one of the words for cockerel is "Kokot" which comes from Proto-Slavic "*kokotъ" and is identical to Dravidian and Sanskrit words for cockerel. This word comes from the languages of the R1a people who dominated the Eurasian steppe during the Bronze Age, when the chickens started spreading from India towards Europe. Considering that these people controlled the main land trade route through Eurasia, connecting China, India, Europe, they probably were the people who brought chickens into Europe from India. These R1a people are one of the direct ancestors of the Slavs, so no wonder that we find the same name for cockerel in Slavic, Sanskrit and Dravidian languages.

Chickens finally appear in Europe in the 9th century BC when the words for chicken start appearing in other European languages. 

Morning dew

Irish riddle

Q: I wash my face in water that has never rained nor run, and dry it in a towel that was never wove on spun

A: A face washed in May dew and dried in the open air. 

This ritual performed on the May Day (1st of May, Beltane) morning was believed to bring beauty and health.

In Serbia in the past the dew bathing was done on the so called "herb Friday", the last Friday before St George's day. Older women lead younger women and girls out of their villages and towns and into wild, uncultivated meadows and fields, their voices collectively ringing out in song. They went there to wash themselves in morning dew. This they did by literally rolling about in the morning dew, as well as dabbing some dew on their faces. This was considered to be an extremely important magical ritual, one that brought beaty and health. It also helped ensure that women of child-bearing age will conceive without difficulty and have safe, uncomplicated births. 

As I already wrote in my post "Beltany stone circle" there is an indication that originally Beltane was celebrated on the 6th of May, the mid point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, the true beginning of summer. This is the day when people in Serbia still celebrate St George's day. Many customs and rituals which are in Ireland associated with Beltane, like this one, are in Serbia associated with St George's day.