From the East – June 2016

My Dear Brother,

With our youngest Master Masons finishing their Master Mason Degree we look at the use of the trowel.   Operative masons use trowels to spread the cement or mortar which unites the bricks or stones of a building into a common mass. The trowel is the instrument which is used to distribute the bonding material in the proper proportions between the separate building units of a structure.

Speculative Masons are taught to regard the trowel as the principal tool of a Master Workman. Its symbolical use is to spread the cement of brotherly love and affection; and it is no mere coincidence that the principal working tool of a Master Mason is linked to the central purpose which Freemasonry has always proclaimed.

Obviously, Freemasons should be concerned with a figurative trowel, a symbol, which represents a certain kind of behavior, a mode of conduct, which every Master Mason is charged to practice. In the transfer of ideas involved in such a metaphor, it is clear that the individual Brother is being exhorted to become a trowel, which distributes in proper proportion the bonding materials of brotherly love and affection. He is to be a force which helps to unite the divided human units of society into a harmonious structure of civilization.

The founders of Speculative Freemasonry bequeathed to their followers a book of moral charges. The “Ancient Constitutions” mean little if they are not interpreted as such, with the underlying idea being the ancient virtue of humanitas, the ability to express humane feelings, – kindness, gentleness, helpfulness, – by means of a benevolently disciplined character which has achieved good breeding and culture, and which displays them through brotherly love.

The principal object of Freemasonry has always been to perfect the individual and to guide mankind toward a better, more harmonious development. The individual Mason is a Builder on the Temple of Human Brotherhood; he is both the trowel and the cement which combine the units of society into a cohesive whole. The brotherly love he extends to others is the trowel; the appreciation and affection he arouses are the cement which helps to bind men closer to each other.

Congratulations to our newly raised Brother Master Masons!

I remain your friend and brother,

Jeremiah Phillips

Worshipful Master

Information on the trowel provided by http://www.themasonictrowel.com/masonic_talk/stb/stbs/60-10.htm