The Number Three

The first three steps represent the three principal officers of a lodge, and – though not stated in the ritual – must always refer to Deity, of which three, the triangle, is the most ancient symbol.

Their principal implication here is to assure the Fellowcraft just starting his ascent that he does not climb alone.

The Worshipful Master, Senior, and Junior Wardens are themselves symbolic of the lodge as a whole, and thus (as a lodge is a symbol of the world) of the Masonic world – the Fraternity.

The Fellowcraft is surrounded by the Craft. The brethren are present to help him climb.

In his search for truth, in his quest of his wages in the Middle Chamber, the Fellowcraft is to receive the support and assistance of all in the Mystic Circle; surely an impressive symbol.

If we examine a little into the powers and duties of the Worshipful Master and his Wardens, we may see how they rule and govern the lodge and so by what means they may aid the Fellowcraft in his ascent.

The Number Five

Five has always been a sacred and mystical number; Pythagoras made of it a symbol of life, since it rejected unity by the addition of the first even and the first odd number.

It was therefore symbolic of happiness and misery, birth and death, order and disorder – in other words, life as it was lived.

Egypt knew five minor planets, five elements, five elementary powers.

The Greeks had four elements and added ether, the unknown, making a cosmos of five.

Five is peculiarly the number of the Fellowcraft’s Degree; it represents the central group of the three which form the stairs; it refers to the five orders of architecture; five are required to hold a Fellowcraft’s Lodge; there are five human senses; geometry is the fifth science, and so on.

In the Winding Stairs the number five represents first the five orders of architecture.

The Number Seven

Most potent of numbers in the ancient religions, the number seven has deep significance.

The Pythagoreans called it the perfect number, as made up of three and four, the two perfect figures, triangle and square.

It was the virgin number because it cannot be multiplied to produce any number within ten, as can two and two, two and three, and two and four, three and three.

Nor can it be produced by the multiplication of any whole numbers.

Our ancient ancestors knew seven planets, seven Pleiades, seven Hyades, and seven lights burned before the Altar of Mithras.

The Goths had seven deities: Sun, Moon, Tuisco, Woden, Thor, Friga, and Seatur or Saturn, from which we derive the names of the seven days of our week.

In the Gothic mysteries the candidate met with seven obstructions.

The ancient Jews swore by seven, because seven witnesses were used to confirm, and seven sacrifices offered to attest truth.

The Sabbath is the seventh day; Noah had seven days’ notice of the flood; God created the heaven and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh day; the walls of Jericho were encompassed seven times by seven priests bearing seven rams’ horns; the Temple was seven years in building, and so on through a thousand references.

It is only necessary to refer to the seven necessary to open an Entered Apprentice’s lodge, the seven original officers of a lodge (some now have nine or ten or even more) and the seven steps which complete the Winding Stairs to show that seven is an important number in the Fraternity.

The Seven Liberal Arts And Sciences

In William Preston‘s (1742 – 1818) day a liberal education was comprised in the study of grammar, rhetoric and logic, called the trivium, and arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, called the quadrivium.

Preston endeavoured to compress into his Middle Chamber lecture enough of these to make at least an outline available to men who might otherwise know nothing of them.

In our day and times grammar and rhetoric are considered of importance, but in a secondary way;

Logic is more or less swallowed up as a study in the reasoning appropriate to any particular subject;

Arithmetic, of course, continues its primary importance; but from the standpoint of science, geometry and its offshoots are still the vital sciences of measurement.

Music has fallen into the discard as part of a liberal education; it is now one of the arts, not the sciences.

Astronomy is so interrelated with physics that it is hard to say where one leaves off and the other begins.

As for electricity, chemistry, biology, civics, government, and the physical sciences, they were barely dreamed of in Preston’s day.

So it is not actually but symbolically that we are to climb the seven steps. If the author may venture to quote himself (Foreign Countries, 1925).

William Preston, who put so practical an interpretation upon these steps, lived in an age when these did indeed represent all knowledge.

But we must not refuse to grow because the ritual has not grown with modern discovery. When we rise by Grammar and Rhetoric, we must consider that they mean not only language, but all methods of communication.

The step of Logic means a knowledge not only of a method of reasoning, but of all reasoning which logicians have accomplished.

When we ascend by Arithmetic and Geometry, we must visualize all science; since science is but measurement, in the true mathematical sense, it requires no great stretch of the imagination to read into these two steps all that science may teach.

The step denominated Music means not only sweet and harmonious sounds, but all beauty – poetry, art, nature, loveliness of whatever kind.

Not to be familiar with the beauty which nature provides is to be, by so much, less a man; to stunt, by so much, a starving soul.

As for the seventh step of Astronomy, surely it means not only a study of the solar system and the stars as it did in William Preston’s day, but also a study of all that is beyond the earth; of spirit and the world of spirit, of ethics, philosophy, the abstract – of Deity.

Preston builded better than he knew; his seven steps are both logical in arrangement and suggestive in their order.

The true Fellowcraft will see in them a guide to the making of a man rich in mind and spirit, by which riches only can true brotherhood be practiced.