The Staircase is Upside Down

At the onset, I want to acknowledge that the idea for this entry came from a conversation with Br. Jeff Peace in a phone conversation that was also fleshed out in an article written by Worshipful Jarrod Morales about four years ago. There is truly nothing new under the sun, but the words here are mine.

Warning: The following discusses non-ritual symbolic aspects of the second and third degree.

So, what is wrong with the staircase? Let me start by laying a foundation, as all good masons should do when starting. The staircase is divided into 3, 5, and 7 steps; the first flight, we are taught represent childhood; The next, we are taught, represent youth, and the last, maturity. This staircase is ascended on the way to the middle chamber of King Solomon’s Temple, where the Fellowcraft, who has acquired knowledge and some experience, is worthy to receive pay.

This is the overarching theme of the Second Degree of Masonry as presented in lodge. Later, we are taught that a lodge of Entered Apprentices consists of no less than seven, one master, the others Entered Apprentices; that a lodge of Fellowcrafts consists of no less than five, two masters, the others Fellowcrafts; and that a lodge of Master Masons consists of not less then three Master Masons.

Notice, One Master is required in a lodge of Entered Apprentices, Two in a lodge of Fellowcrafts, and Three to make a lodge of Master Masons.

If the above is true, why is the staircase in the Fellowcraft trestleboard lecture always displayed as 3, then 5, then 7 steps? Shouldn't the staircase more accurately be 7, then 5, then 3? It seems the staircase has been reversed somewhere along the line, and we must ask, is it reversed to hide the true meaning that it teaches and more importantly, why have we forgotten that it is reversed?

With that in mind, lets take another look at the Staircase and see if the true meaning doesn’t leap out at us. The first level is the Entered Apprentice, Seven Steps. Coincidentally, this is the lodge that requires but ONE Master Mason to form. One is a clue to the first level.

As Entered Apprentices, we are to learn, that is our task, to labor in the mind. As speculative, not operative Masons, our task is to improve the mind, to begin our journey away from the material world of the profane outside the temple.

The seven steps are, we are told, represent the seven liberal arts and sciences: Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Music, Geometry and Astronomy. These can be broken down into two groups, the quadrivium and the trivium.

In medieval educational theory, the quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These followed the preparatory work of the trivium, made up of grammar, logic (or dialectic, as it was called at the times), and rhetoric. In turn, the quadrivium was considered preparatory work for the serious study of philosophy and theology.

Let me repeat that last again: The Liberal Arts and Sciences are preparatory work for the serious study of philosophy and theology. They are the foundation and the preparation necessary to advance into the philosophy of speculative masonry.

The subject of music within the quadrivium was originally the classical subject of harmonics, in particular the study of the proportions between the musical intervals created by the division of a monochord. A relationship to music as actually practiced was not part of this study, but the framework of classical harmonics would substantially influence the content and structure of music theory as practiced both in European and Islamic cultures.

In modern applications of the liberal arts as curriculum in colleges or universities, the quadrivium may be considered as the study of number and its relationship to physical space or time: arithmetic was pure number, geometry was number in space, music number in time, and astronomy number in space and time. Morris Kline classifies the four elements of the quadrivium as pure (arithmetic), stationary (geometry), moving (astronomy) and applied (music) number.(1)

Let us make an advance. The second flight of steps would remain the same: the Five orders of Architecture. Strangely, only three of these orders are important to Masons, and then there are the five senses of human nature, of which only three are important to Masons. This is the intermediary flight or stage of growth. It is symbolically the “operative” step, where we begin to apply what we have learned on the first flight of stairs.

Let us make another advance, my brothers, which would bring us to the flight of three steps. This flight represents the three degrees of Masonry, the great lights of Masonry, the three principles officers of the lodge, and the three supports of Masonry. These are the highest level of speculative Masonry in the second degree. They are symbolic of the speculative nature of Freemasonry, the spiritual side of the craft, and the first step above the mental plane toward the spiritual. It is the last advance a man makes before entering the middle chamber, that area between the material, mortal and the ethereal, spiritual world.

Edgar Allan Poe, who, strangely, was one of the antimasonic pinhead brigade, though a brilliant writer, taught us that sometimes the best place to hide something is in plain view. I wish to submit to you all that the staircase, presented to us and explained at length in the second degree, is a symbol and lesson hidden in plain sight.

The lesson however, is not the one we are taught and lectured on… oh, to be sure, the lesson taught is true, on a superficial level, and at that time and in that place, it is a valuable lesson. However, like calculus, the seeds of which are contained when we teach a child addition and subtraction, the true lesson of the staircase may only become visible on further contemplation.

We learn in Freemasonry that it is a peculiar moral science, taught by allegory and illustrated by symbols. It appears that perhaps some symbols are well and truly hidden. What else, my brothers, may be hidden in the recesses of the craft whose depths we are told to plumb in the lecture of the Fellowcraft degree?

With that, I leave you with a quote from Br. Giovanni Giacomo Cassanova:

Those who become Freemasons only for the sake of finding out the secret of the order, run a very great risk of growing old under the trowel without ever realizing their purpose. Yet there is a secret, but it is so inviolable that it has never been confided or whispered to anyone. Those who stop at the outward crust of things imagine that the secret consists in words, in signs, or that the main point of it is to be found only in reaching the highest degree. This is a mistaken view: the man who guesses the secret of Freemasonry, and to know it you must guess it, reaches that point only through long attendance in the lodges, through deep thinking, comparison, and deduction.

He would not trust that secret to his best friend in Freemasonry, because he is aware that if his friend has not found it out, he could not make any use of it after it had been whispered in his ear. No, he keeps his peace, and the secret remains a secret.(2)

May the blessings of heaven rest upon us and all regular masons. May brotherly love prevail, and every moral and social virtue, cement us!

References:

(1) Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrivium
(2) Memoirs, Volume 2a, Giovanni Giacomo Casanova, Paris, p. 33