Few of the Original Meanings of the Masonic Symbols are Known to the Modern Order

33rd Degree Freemasons, Many P. Hall had said that the modern rituals in Freemasonry do not in every case represent the original rites of the Craft. He also adds that Pike had said that the true meanings of much of the symbolism such familiar emblems as the apron and the pillars were locked mysteries, whose “keys” had been thrown away by the uninformed.

Hall had said, “The average Masonic student is content, therefore, to trace his Craft back to the workmen’s guilds who chipped and chiselled the cathedrals and public buildings of medieval Europe. While such men as Albert Pike have realized this attitude to be ridiculous, it is one thing to declare it insufficient and quite another to prove the fallacy to an adamantine mind.

So much has been lot and forgotten, so much ruled in and out by those unfitted for such legislative revision that the modern rituals do not in every case represent the original rites of the Craft.

In his Symbolism, Pike (who spent a lifetime in the quest for Masonic secrets) declares that few of the original meanings of the symbols are known to the modern order, nearly all the so-called interpretations now given being superficial.

Pike confessed that the original meanings of the very symbols he himself was attempting to interpret were irretrievably lost; that even such familiar emblems as the apron and the pillars were locked mysteries, whose “keys” had been thrown away by the uninformed. “The initiated,” also writes John Fellows, “as well as those without the pale of the order, are equally ignorant of their derivation and import. (See The Mysteries of Freemasonry.)”