Ritual , Secrecy , and Civil Society
The center of the composition is taken up with different motifs that vary according to the tracing boards . Most often they are very small motifs that border a strange cross with four or five branches . Flags and gonfalons are animated due to the wind making them flap , sometimes in the same direction ( fig . 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ), sometimes in a different direction ( fig . 5 ), sometimes in an indeterminate direction when they either do not have poles or they are not animated by the wind ( fig . 6 ). The word “ animated ” is a very important one here , because it communicates the idea of an anima , a soul to these flags and a dynamic that brings them to life and places them into the three circles formed by the outer edges of the flags . The central circle is explicitly traced ( fig . 1 , 2 , 3 , 5 , 6 ). The other two circles that are determined by lines of the outer edges of the flags ( second circle ) and the pennons or gonfalons ( third circle ) are more implicit .
The central circle is inside a pentagon that bears the five flags , which is itself inside the heptagon ( which bears no flag !). The heptagon is in turn inside the nonagon , which bears the tents of the camp .
C . The Rules of Heraldry
Pastoureau reminds us of the rules
of heraldry , which are very precise and were set in the twelfth century . 7
Tinctures are divided into two groups : metals ( gold , silver ) on the one hand and the colors ( gules = red , sable = black , azure = blue , vert = green , purpure = purple ) on the other hand . It is prohibited to use two tinctures that belong to the same group together . If two tinctures overlap one must be a metal , the other a color . Exceptions to this are rare . Most often — and this is the case here — the main cross and smaller crosses are red on white background . Metals can in fact be represented by colors : gold by yellow , and silver by white . Between the beginning of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth , a hatching system was developed that represented tinctures using strokes and dots . 8 The tracing board in Vuillaume ’ s Tuileur , fig . 4 , or later on the tracing boards that are not shown here , such as those of Pike , Tessier , or the Suprême Conseil de France ( in 1995 ), use this system of hatching and dots .
D . Movement and Dynamics of the Tracing Board
The dynamics of the top and the bottom of the scale of degrees , and of the degree of apprentice to the thirty-second degree and vice versa ( since all thirty-seconds remain an apprentice and are in fact the same brothers who work in the consistory and in the blue lodge ), intersects with the center-periphery dynamic according to the logic of evolution-involution .
6
A gonfalon — the word is used in rituals — is a battle standard and war banner , made up of a strip that comes to several points . A pennant is a small flag . A flag is a piece of cloth attached to a pole . It bears the colors of a nation or a leader to serve as a rallying point and a symbol . The word “ ensign ” is used in a maritime context .
6
Pastoureau , Traité d ' héraldique , 100 – 112 .
6
Gold is represented by a clustering of small dots , silver by a blank space , gules by vertical lines , azure by horizontal ones , sable by horizontal and vertical lines that intersect at right angles , vert by diagonal lines descending from left to right , and purpure by diagonal lines descending from right to left .
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