Freemasonry

After a story about the boards themselves and another one about the design, I now arrived at the point when I am looking at details.

A while ago I bought ‘official reprints‘ of the three Frieda Harris tracing boards. These prints hang nicely framed in the living room and when I was looking at the third degree tracing board, I saw some details that I want to look into. Before I do that, I want to have a look at the possible history of Harris’ designs.

I bought Robert Davis’ The Mason’s Words, because I wanted to understand American Freemasonry better, in particular the ritual diversity. This proves to be a difficult subject and even though Davis sketches an interesting portrait of the prehistory of American Freemasonry, I was still unsure how things developed towards the current situation. I did some asking around and digging and perhaps what follows is helpful to someone in some way.

In August 2025 I got an email from Ebay that a sale had been added concerning the Masonic tracing boards of Frieda Harris. Apparently I had been looking for them and created a reminder at Ebay. The description was: “Frieda Harris Masonic Tracing Boards Litho Prints 1976 1st Printing” and the price was fixed.

I quickly looked around the internet to find out if the fixed price was reasonable, but I did not find much. There is one past auction in which I cannot see the price. Taking the gamble, I quickly made the purchase to prevent somebody else being faster than me. Then it was waiting for a couple of weeks for the prints to arrive.

Spoiler alert. This text is about an item/image, variations of which still appear in some French (style) versions of the Rite Moderne (IInd order), the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (14º) and Memphis-Misraim (2º/4º). I do not explain the images on the “cubic stone” or its place in the ritual. The text is mostly a search for the origin of the image, but if you are afraid of seeing an image that is used in a degree you have yet to reach, remember this text for another time.

A couple of years ago, I bought two of the coloured prints that Adam McLean partly thanks his alchemical fame to. I went for not too obviously alchemical prints and opted for the Masonic one on the right. It is dated 2012.

I knew this “Cubischer Stein” from another source. It is a four sided cubic that is often displayed folded out. McLean took one side and the top for his image.

The image I knew was this one (but it took some effort to find it again):

The Kirkwall scroll is a fascinating piece of Masonic history, but not too much has been published about it. The writings that I know about the scroll are either old (J.B. Craven in 1897 and W.R. Day in 1925, both in Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, the first is mostly history, the latter about the symbolism), or short. It seems that in Cooper’s The Rosslyn Hoax? from 2007 some pages are dedicated to the scroll. Today I want to have a look at a specific element on the scroll. The ‘seal’ in the third panel from the bottom. According to Craven and later authors, the Kirkwall lodge was founded in 1736. J.B. Craven writes/quotes: The Lodge Kirkwall Kilwinning No. 382 was founded on the 1st day of October, 1736, by “John Berrihill, free Meason from the Antient Lodge of Stirline, and Wm. Meldrum, from the Lodge of Dumfermline.” These two brethren, having… Read More »The Antient Kirkwall Scroll?

A question that interests me is when Freemasonry ‘became esoteric’. An unavoidable question when looking at that is ‘how did it ‘start’ in the first place?’

For centuries very different theories have been worked out. The most common is that in the days of the guilds there were also masons guilds and from these “operative” lodges, over time “speculative” Freemasonry grew. How, when and why non craftsmen joined is a matter of dispute. An often heard theory is that lodges asked ‘higher ups’ in society to join to raise their own prestige. Another idea is that these men joined by their own initiative because they thought to find something in these lodges. That ‘something’ can hardly be craft secrets, so what then? Interest in architecture as Knoop and Jones suggest? (1)

Fabio Venzi suggests (2) that initially Freemasonry was not yet esoteric, but this was introduced by the so-called “Cambridge Platonists” in the 17th century. He writes:

Elias Ashmole, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton were all scientists, members of the Royal Society who continued to practise alchemy side by side with the experimental methods applied by modern science.

Studies p. 190

So that is before the foundation of the ‘premier Grand Lodge’ in 1717. Yet, most old texts even from around 1717 are not very esoteric. The rituals were only developed later. Perhaps there are a few things to say about this.