"Mouth To Ear"
Masonic Education
What does a symbol “mean”?
We are told that symbols are repositories of information, that they present an outward, superficial, commonly accepted idea, while conveying deeper
meaning. Take, for example, the Bald Eagle. When we hear this common name for a big bird, first, an image forms in our mind of a magnificent creature soaring above a tree covered ridge alongside a river, seeking prey. The words, “Bald Eagle”, are the outer wrapping, the name we give the bird. Our parents may have taught us name when we were very young. We may have learned it in school. We may even have been taught it by a scout leader or a neighbor or a friend. It is the first name we learn for that mighty bird. Some of us may have had that name removed from our minds in a college biology course, where we learned another name for the same bird, Haliaeetus leucocephalus.
By the time we entered secondary school, most, if not all of us knew that the Bald Eagle (by any name) was one of the symbols of our nation. We had heard stories of how the bird was chosen, implored to accept that the bird was a “symbol” of the strength of our nation, and encouraged to think patriotically when we saw the bird (or its image), rather than to dwell on the biology of the bird, the role of DDT in its demise, or to imagine that a young American Indian, in the 1600’s, might have sought an Eagle’s tail feather as a sign of manhood. Few, if any of us, were encouraged to remember that the Eagle had been used as a symbol by other nations in other times.
We were certainly not taught that symbols might evolve over time. Witness the black and white double headed Eagle that hangs in the center of the curtain over the stage at the Wichita SR Center.
I return to the question at hand, “What does a symbol “mean”?” The simple, yet poignant answer is that a symbol means exactly what it means to you, nothing more, and nothing less. While you may have been taught one "meaning" and I another, we might both be wrong. The meaning I attach to a symbol has a truth value to me, and/but I may be missing the point.
Albert Pike (Esoterika, page 115) says, “…the real and inner meanings of symbols have never been communicated in writing, but orally only…” He
continues, “All the monitorial explanations, I had become satisfied, had their origins in the minds of men who did not know their real meanings, but were wholly ignorant of the ancient symbolism and of little intellectual ability.” He goes on to describe his quest for understanding of the symbolic meaning of some common Masonic symbols.
Every Mason would do well to read Esoterika. Pike reveals the greatest secret. While it might be thought that secret is a word, or a grip, or a symbol, Pike reveals the secret is that each and every individual has the
power and ability within themselves to find the hidden inner meanings within any symbol, if only they will do the work. It is not enough that we seek out the opinions of others. It is not enough that we study the past through literature and/or science. We must think, analyze, criticize, dissect, reorganize, and rebuild our ideas and thoughts until we are able to organize
our beliefs into a systematic world view that meets the test of internal and external consistency. To be fair, we must be able to temporarily suspend disbelief when we encounter conflicts in our reasoning, and be able to
continually collect more information, allowing time to bring resolution to the inevitable conflicts in our reasoning.
Fraternally,
Fred Ayers, Secretary, SWKSRC
The Guiding Light / Sept. 2015 13