Symbols of the Lost Secrets

Symbols of the Lost Secrets
by Brother Jay R. Snyder
1. Symbol System
Freemasonry uses a symbol system of stone-masons’ tools to teach allegorical secrets, and learning the importance of these secrets is part of the initiation. Apart from the speculative allegories, these stone-masons’ tools are also sequential, analog processes that make and prove measurements. A complete set of these tools, used in sequence, is essential for accurate three-dimensional observations and building. The operative tools themselves require instruction for their use, and instructions are aided by symbol systems. In this operative context the knowledge and use of these symbols means having power over the elements.
2. Lost Secrets
Secrets revealed are secrets lost. They can also be lost to remembrance or destruction. They can be coded in symbols to protect them from discovery by the uninitiated. Scriptures, fairy tales, tarot cards, zodiacs, and fraternity have carried symbols of lost secrets from deep-frozen ages. Lost knowledge can be rediscovered, and knowledge we all share today was, once upon a time, a well guarded secret. Surviving ice ages meant knowing how to forecast the elements. Without language and measurement men, women, and children would be lost. The secrets they shared have long since been forgotten or destroyed, but their secrets were literally written in stone, and have only recently been rediscovered.
3. Secret Keepers
Duncan-Enzmann translations of inscriptions from 14,500 years ago tell of inter-continental language and measurement systems in place before the last ice age of Dryas II. Most records depict the process of weaving and quilting textiles. The numbers of records about manufacturing textiles nearly surpass those about obtaining the raw materials, and most records were kept by women. Yet, we hardly ever hear of the contributions women made to human survival when temperatures were -50° below zero. Basic needs at those temperatures were the same as our basic needs today, and similar conveniences were developed for the same chores we have today. The skills needed to provide clothing and childcare are all-encompassing, life-long tasks in an iron-cold ice age. Having children requires provision and eternal vigilance in any Age. Calendars and maps are vital for knowing when and where to acquire the necessary materials for weaving, food, shelter, and clothing, and women have been teaching their children these survival secrets all along. Therefore, brothers, “women and children first.”
4. Metrology
The science of metrology (measuring of time, distance, weights, volume, and direction) has been written on stone, bone, ivory, abri, and cavern walls for a very long time. The heavens were observed as being the same everywhere, and a constant from which any measure could be calculated. Paleolithic sites and symbols give evidence of far more advanced Homo sapiens than we have previously been led to believe. Lunar cycle calendars etched in bone from Bilzingsleben, Germany, are dated to c. 400,000 BC. Inter-continental networks of ancient language and measurements stretch for thousands of miles across land and sea, and the same symbols survived for thousands of years. Trading means knowing weights and measures, and traveling means knowing times, distances, and directions. Travelling for trade provides a variety of advantages for a local clans’ survival. Masters of metrology were able to travel great distances using calendars and maps, and knew how to return with valuable materials in time for winter preparations. Therefore, knowledge of astronomy is a matter of life and death during an ice age.
5. Dividing Circles
Rightly dividing a circumpunct, or a sphere, by angles from its center point (the observer) is the secret of measuring direction, and navigation. North was placed in darkness at 0°. Square is east at 90°, and is the first of four equally-measured points around the proof of the compass. Plumb is south and opposite the north (zenith) at 180°. The plumb is the perpendicular “axis mundi” of the geological and celestial spheres. Level is west and opposite the east at 270°. While the square, compass, and level measure two-dimensions, the plumb measures the third dimension, or z axis.
6. Stone Observatories
Stone masons provided the tools and measurements for building great observatories, and developed inter-continental utilities. There are dozens of ancient observatory sites, strategically and sequentially connected, from Iberia to the Urals, south through Mesopotamia and Palestine into Egypt, across Africa to Morocco, and the Azores – their engineering secrets lost. Discovered in 1994, a massive megalithic complex under excavation at Gobekli Tepe has been dated c. 11,000 BC, and had been deliberately buried to conceal its secrets since c. 7800 BC. Stones provide a benchmark from which to “read” the heavens, and the heavens in return provide the measures. Stones that are level (i.e., Baalbek) provide a consistent horizon from which to measure, stones that are plumb (menhirs) provide a gauge of elevation, and parallel pillars measure the fourth dimension – the movement of stars, or time.
7. Planning Ahead
Tools that stone masons used for the past Great Year continue to survive as symbols in today’s Masonic lodges. These secrets and oral traditions that formed the foundations of our world have been passed down to us, and we are charged to preserve them for the next generation, lest they be forgotten or destroyed. Old generations provide foundations that new generations may improve upon, from wooden observatories to stone, from analog to digital, from Earth to the moon and back. Planning ahead to pass down these symbols provides our descendants the same opportunity we have to move in right, square, plumb, and level directions.