Friday 11 January 2008

Chapter One - The Compass And The Square

Freemason symbolic drawing called Faith, Hope and Charity
The above drawing is called Faith, Hope and Charity. As in other Mason drawings Faith, Hope and Charity are represented by angels or Goddesses. In this drawing we only see two Goddesses or angels so where is the third? The secret meaning within this drawing is that the third Goddess is Compass and Square imagine in the middle of the drawing. So why is does this image represent a Goddess?

Different designs of the Compass and Square symbol
The Compass and Square image is probably the most popular symbol in Freemasonry. The fundamentalist Pastor Ron Carlson, who has spoken about Freemasonry in evangelical churches in many parts of America, claims that the square represents the earth, the compasses represent the sky, and the square and compasses when united, represent the sky impregnating the earth with its showers. He goes on to state that this is a symbol of sexual intercourse. The official Freemason line is they are just tools of the Masonry Trade.
Within the space made by the square and compass sometimes a letter is put there. Mostly it is a G though sometimes it is an M. So what do these letters mean? Masons claim that G is the secret name of God. Which is a mystery in itself because clearly G would stand for God, so it is not a mystery at all. To make it a mystery suggests it must be another name. Masons themselves claimed that G stands for geometry. This is because Freemasons refer to God as the Great Architect and you need geometry to create a complex building like a Church.
It has been claimed that the Presbyterian minister, James Anderson, introduced the word “Great Architect” into Freemasonry in 1723 and that he got it from the works of John Calvin, one of the founders of Presbyterianism. Also the idea of geometry comes from the physics of Isaac Newton who showed that the movement of planets was caused by scientific laws and not by the hand of God as previously thought. Newton used geometry to calculate the movement of planets so if we replace geometry with God we would then assume that Freemasonry is an atheistic organisation. As atheists claim that God didn’t exist, used the physics of Isaac Newton along with the later Darwin’s theory of evolution to prove that the world was created by blind chance. Though the irony of this is that Isaac Newton was a very religious man and would completely reject this claim.
Freemasonry is certainly not an atheist society and they even banned people from joining it who are atheists. In my opinion both the Great Architect and Geometry are really very poor names for the Creator. After all there is a vast difference in planning a building and creating life. They are names that wouldn’t satisfy a person who has the imagination to wonder at the diversity and complexity of life and the universe. A better explanation comes from Gerald Gardner who was not only a Freemason but also the originator of modern Witchcraft. At the end of a article about Witchcraft he was to write. -
The Myth of Witchcraft seems to be the story of the goddess here quoted. I am forbidden to give her name, so I will call her G.

Compass and square image using knifes and forks
If that is true, then it gives us a clue to the meaning of the Compass and Square image. A Diamond shape frames the letter G. This shape must be important because Masons use the same shape using other tools. As we can see above where knives and forks are used to make the same shape, which is strange because knives and forks and certainly not Mason tools. This then suggests that the shape that the objects makes, is more important the than objects that make the shape. So what is this shape trying to tell us? The V or triangle shape seems to be used a lot in Freemason symbolism.
An example of this is another important Mason symbol of the Trowel which off course is another triangle shape. In Stone-Age excavations archaeologists and palaeontologists have discovered many V and triangle shaped symbols and it seems they represent the triangle of a women’s pubic hairs. While the diamond shape is similar to an open woman’s vagina. We can find an example of this is the images of the Sheela-Na-Gig.

[Drawing of a Sheela-Na-Gig by Kathy Jones from her book The Ancient British Goddess.]

The image called Sheela-Na-Gig, and is found, believe it or not, on ancient Christian Churches in Britain and Ireland. It is claimed by Christian Priests that this image was used to frighten away demons. Which might make sense to a Christian minded person who believe sex and everything to do with it, is “dirty” and evil. Yet to the ancients this was once a holy and sacred image. Many of these images are found on Churches dedicated to St Bridget. Who was once the pagan Goddess Brigit.
It has also been claimed that when the Christian Church first built the first stone Churches the workforce still followed pagan beliefs. So the workers were able to incorporate many of the pagan gods and goddesses within the decoration of the churches. As well as coded messages of pre-Christian teachings, so it seem the Church at the time didn’t then have to power to prevent this. It has also been claimed that these pagan stonemasons were the first Freemasons.

Freemasons today don’t mind admitting that the Compass and Square symbol is also a disguise version of the Hexagram shape, if you put two horizontal lines across the points of the compass and square. So why did the Freemasons in the past, need to disguise its shape? Although in the last 200 years the Hexagram has gained reasonable respectability as the Star of David in Judaism, in pre-Christian times it was used by Pagan religions. So back in medieval times it would have been seen as a pagan symbol which would warranted a visit by the Inquisition, for anyone who dared to displayed it.
The Hexagram consists of 6 sides, 6 points and 6 smaller triangles, thus 666. Before Revelation in the Bible was written, 666 stood for the Triple Goddesses as 6 was a sacred number, and is still as holy number in Hinduism and Buddhism. So the story of the Beast 666 in Book of Revelations was an attack on Goddess worship as 666 was also used to represent the Triple Babylonian Goddess Ishtar whom Revelation called, “The Great Whore Of Babylon”. Hex is also associated with Witchcraft as it is another name for a Witch’s spell and in German a Hexen is a Witch.
The Hexagram is very ancient and was used to represent sexual love. As we can see one triangle of the female pubic hair and the other triangle of the penis and two testicles, they are then joined together in sexual union. If you take away the two horizontal bars you once again have the diamond shape similar to an open vagina. The Hexagram is still used today by the Hindu Tantra as a symbol of sexual intercourse. Judaism only adopted the Star of David as late as the 18th century, so they may not of known its original meaning.

Carving in a Hindu temple
In our Judeo-Christian world we assume that sex and religion don’t have anything to do with each other, because we have been taught, that sex is a sin. But in the ancient past sex was seen as a very sacred act, because it creates life. This is true even in Hinduism today as whole temples are devoted to the sacredness of sex.
As was also the vagina, because pre-historic people believed that the whole world was born from the womb of the Great Mother. For this reason they worshipped the vagina as the source of all life. The later patriarchal religions made sex a sin and claimed that the vagina was, “unclean” as an attack on the earlier Goddess religions.
To many Christian minded people these carvings from India would be seen as obscene. When ancient people believed that the Great Mother created the universe it was easy for them to imagine the Great Mother giving birth to the world. For this reason everything associated with giving birth became very sacred.
When humans first became self aware they began to ask themselves, “What created the world?” It then would be natural for them to assume that the intelligence that created our world would be feminine. This is because if we look at animal and human life we find that life is created within the bodies of females. In fact it must have seem to our ancestors that women had great magical powers to create life like this. So it would be logical for them to assume that the whole of creation was born from the body of what they called, “The Great Mother.
The carving below comes from India and represents the worship of the yoni. Even in modern times in Tantra, the yoni is seen as a sacred and revered object. This belief it seems gave women great power and status in human societies, because if the Creatrix was female then all women were created in the image of the Great Mother. The belief also made women very holy because it was only women who could create life in the same way the Great Mother had done.

This is seen clearly in the many images found in Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites. Where they show images of the sex-act, the genitalia of women represented as V of a women’s pubic hair or slit symbols and the very many naked images of women themselves. The picture that comes from these ancient times is that people then regarded the sex-act, menstruation, childbirth and breast-feeding as all being very sacred. When these images were first discovered in the 19th and 20th centuries male scientists just dismissed them as “fertility symbols”. But since then very large numbers of these symbols and images that have been found in many parts of he world. This has made some people realise that these were the images of a major worldwide religion.


[Photograph from book, "The Once And Future Goddess" by Elinor W. Gadon]
Some palaeontologists have speculated that people in the Stone Age were unaware that the sex act produced childbirth. So women suddenly producing children would be seen as a wondrous miracle. They also went on to imagine that when men realised this role in conception, he no longer worshipped women as magical beings and took over the role of Creator himself. To support this theory we do find in Ancient Egypt that the God Atum created the world in an act of masturbation. The problem is that we do find the sexual act portrayed in Stone-Age art. Also the numbers 13 and 9 are important numbers in cave art. There are 13 menstrual cycles or moon months in a year and it takes on average 9 months for a baby to conceive and be ready for birth. So the people then, may not be as daft as we assume they might be. Also the input of men in the act of creation can be over in a few seconds, (wham, bam, thank you ma’am). Which is not anywhere equal to women carrying a foetus for nine months, the pain and drama of childbirth itself and then the ability of the women to feed the newborn baby from her breasts. Not to mention all the mysteries of menstruation, which was seen as something very holy and sacred in ancient societies, and something as unclean and taboo in later patriarchal societies.
So we can see from this, that the ancient religion of the Great Mother would be a very feminine religion and empathise the feminine and maternal instincts of compassion, caring, nurturing, loving and creativity. This is supported by the fact that in the first civilisations of the Neolithic age, warfare and violence against other people was completely unknown. Archaeologists only begin to find weapons of war, fortifications and images of violence in the later bronze and iron ages. Where it seems people began to worship male warrior Gods.
It seems that men started to began to dominate our world about five thousand years ago through violence and conquest. They then also created male dominated religions that made the Creator a male and claimed that the sexual act, menstruation, childbirth and breast-feeding were all unclean, sinful and taboo. This was to undermine the role of women. Even today few women dare to breast feed in public, while back in the 1950s and 60s male doctors all but banned breast feeding claiming that cow’s milk was better for human children! It was only later, scientific research showed the obvious fact that that human milk was best for human babies. As it had been discovered that mothers pass on their immunity to disease through the breast milk. Unfortunately there is still resistance because mothers are still not encouraged to keep breast-feeding too long, and to switch to cow’s milk as soon as possible. In spite of the fact that the research shows that mothers keep on feeding their immunity to the baby right up to time the baby is weaned. Also more modern research shows that feeding babies cows milk contribute to cot baby deaths.
Some Christian women, even now will after giving birth still go to priests for a cleansing ritual, to clean them of the “sin” of childbirth. Children also go through the cleansing ritual of baptism, which originally was to clean them of the sin of being, “born of women”. So we can see through patriarchal attitudes an attack on the importance of women’s roles. As Feminists have pointed out so often, child rearing is the most devalued work in our society. When some Feminist in the 1960s and 70s suggested that women should be paid to bring up children they were laughed at and ridiculed. After all bringing children and caring for them is clearly not as important as the activities of men. Like generals who have trillions of dollars in which to buy exciting toys like machine guns, flame throwers, napalm bombs or nuclear weapons.
So this is the difference between matriarchal and patriarchal religions. The feminine Goddess religions were about the celebration of whole act of creation from the sexual act to giving birth and breast-feeding. It also empathised the maternal instincts of women of compassion, caring and love. The masculine religions on the other hand have throughout history have been about the glorification of violence. Where religious wars have been commonplace and still go on even today. The irony of this is that in Christianity, Jesus preached love and compassion yet Christianity has been one of the world’s most violence religions, throughout it’s history.
This has been the great tragedy of the last five thousand years. While humans believed that the Great Mother created the world; the feminine maternal instincts of compassion, nurturing and love became the ideal for everyone. Then people began to question this belief and accept that our Creator could be male. This allowed people to accept masculine principles and instincts of competition and aggression. In time this was allowed to grow until it turned into violence, and conquest. Creating the world we know throughout recorded history of war, oppression, poverty and suffering.
Modern scholars claimed that Goddess religions where only fertility cults because of the way ancient peoples used to worship images and carvings of vaginas. Probably with their Christian bias they may of thought that they were all sex-mad in these Goddess Religions.
Now many Freemasons claim that their roots are very ancient, going back to the first civilisations. The first civilisations were created in the Neolithic times where we find people then still worshipped the Great Mother. The V and the diamond shapes we see in the Compass and Square symbol are similar to what has been found in ancient Palaeolithic and Neolithic art.
So it suggests that the Freemasonry secret name of God would be Goddess. This then would be a true secret because Freemasonry is suppose to be a male dominated organisation where women were not allowed into it until recent times. Also as Freemasonry originated in Christian countries they wouldn’t want to be seen worshipping a Goddess in a sex-mad fertility cult.
The word God comes from the ancient Indo-European languages and originally it meant vagina. So God was originally a female deity and only became a male later on. (The word “man” was also feminine in ancient Indo-European languages, and only came used for the male sex later on.) Even in North Indian today "Khod," (God) means Vulva; Female Organ of Regeneration, Creation and Eternal Beginning. So the secret name of God would be the Great Mother or Great Architect as the Freemasons call her, in coded form.
It would also make sense of why some Freemasons have put the letter M in the space between the two tools because M would stand for Mother, which is the Ancient name for the Goddess. The word Mother is common in all ancient languages like Ma-ma, Mu, Mah, Maa, Mtat and Mana. They all mean both a mortal mother and the Great Mother.
New initiates of Freemasonry are told to search for the, “lost Word” which is apparently the real name of God. In the third degree initiation they are given a clue and told to look, “to that bright and Morning Star”. Now the Morning Star is Venus who was a Roman Goddess. Though the Morning Star was also once called Lucifer, the god of light which people who claim that Freemasons are Devil worshippers, latch onto. Yet long before the creation of Lucifer it was the Babylonian Goddess Astarte who was the Morning Star. Further back in time she was known as the “Queen of the Star” and the Ancient Great Mother. (Jesus was also called the Morning Star in Revelations in the New Testament.)
So this is why, in the first drawing in chapter one, the two angels represent Faith and Hope while Charity is represented by the vagina/Goddess symbol. There also could be another meaning in this picture. Perhaps the two angels were Faith and Charity, while the central image is Hope. Hope would then represent not only a Goddess but Freemasonry as well. Suggesting that it is Freemasonry that gives us hope in returning us to the non-violent religion of the Great Mother.
There are even more feminine symbols in the compass and the square or the knife and fork symbols. Because the top half clearly shows the letter W and we have the letter M at the bottom. The first letter of woman is W and first letter of Mother is M. Symbols of the zigzag goes back to palaeontology art and it seems this sign means water. It is from the zigzag we get the letters W, M, Z and N. It also represented female vagina moisture and the fluid that surrounds a baby in the womb.



The Trowel is another popular Masonic symbol. It is also a triangle shape and so can represent the pubic hair triangle of women, while the handle is a phallic shape. Meaning the Towel can represent sexual intercourse or in more mystic terms, “The two becoming One”. The fact that Towel is placed in front of the Compass and Square symbols suggests they both mean the same thing. The compass along with the Square creates a diamond shape similar to the shape of a open vagina, and just to rub it in, the hinge of the compass can also represent a woman’s clitoris. A tree branch is also used frequently in Freemasonry symbolism. The Olive branch also a sign of peace. Another meaning is that ancient Goddess religions had sacred groves because they had a high regard for trees. Which suggest they were life-affirming religions. As well as understanding the importance of trees in preventing soil erosion, something that was never quite understood by later patriarchal religions and institutions, who cut down sacred groves as an attack on Goddess worship. This dislike of trees is even evident today, where rain forests are being cut down at an alarming rate in South America, South East Asia, Africa and Australia.

This Mason symbol on the left, is regards as blasphemy by fundamentalist Christians who were once Freemasons. This is because they were told that the circle represents the vagina and the point the penis, inserted in the vagina. Then to make matters worse we have the Bible above the circle/vagina symbol. Yet this is not unusual in Mason symbolism, as they use Goddess symbolism with the Bible in other of their symbols. As we can see in the drawing below.