COMPASSES

Sir Godfrey Gregg OHPM, ROMC

 Grand Commanding Officer (The Mystical Court)

I will like to enlighten you a little about this great instrument we talk about and at times lack meaning. While I am not the authority of such I trust that you will receive and apply

As a practising member of The Mystical Court, the compasses are used for the measurement of the architect’s plans, and to enable him (her) to give those just proportions which will ensure beauty as well as stability to his (her) work; so, in Speculative Freemasonry, is this important implement symbolic of that even tenor of deportment, that true standard of rectitude which alone can bestow happiness here and felicity hereafter.

Hence are the compasses the most prominent emblem of virtue, the true and only, a measure of a Mystical Court member’s life and conduct. As the Bible gives us light on our duties to God, and the square illustrates our duties to our neighbourhood (Mysticalbrotherhood), Sisters and Brother, so the compasses give that additional light which is to instruct us in the duty we owe to ourselves-the great, imperative duty of circumscribing our passions, and keeping our desires within due bounds. “It is ordained,” says the Grand Master Burgin, “in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate passions cannot be free; their passions forge their fetters.” Those Brethren who delight to trace our emblems to an astronomical origin, find in the compasses a symbol of the sun, the circular pivot representing the body of the luminary, and the diverging legs his rays.

In the earliest rituals of the eighteenth century, the compasses are described as a part of the furniture of a Court and are said to belong to the Master as in The Mystical Court to the Supreme Grand Commanding Officer.

I shall publish the article in its entirety at a later date.