The Second Degree - The Fellowcraft Degree

[Excerpt from “An Explanation of the Means of the Three Degrees of Freemasonry, A Discourse on Freemasonry,” by Harold J. Spelman, undated]

You have now completed the second part of your mystical Masonic journey through life. This Degree symbolizes your journey through the middle period of your life; that period in which your work is to build. You build your family, your business or profession, your reputation; and you are to be busy building your own fourth Temple, that Temple in your heart. In doing these you will be automatically building your character, your character as a Freemason.

In order to build you must have acquired and be willing to continue to acquire knowledge, to learn, and this Degree therefore represents the mind of man. It is the lessons of Freemasonry that will help you to acquire the knowledge that you need to do this building.

The important work of building your own individual Temple is also a learning process and is symbolized by the symbols and tools of architecture. You find this learning process in the history of architecture as man begins to build he starts simply as with his early Temples and churches and then as he learns more and more these Temples and churches become more grandiose culminating in the designs of those great buildings we call the gothic cathedrals. So shall it be with us as we learn and study so will our Temple become greater and all the more encompassing.

How do we learn? What shall we learn? This Degree answers these questions.

First we learn that the numbers 3, 5, and 7 are important numbers for us to learn and continually bear in mind.

Three has always been a sacred mystery number for mankind. For three stands for creation and in this case especially creative knowledge. From one you get an opposite, two. From the tension between one and two you get compromise, or creation, three. Simple explanations will show what is meant and allow you to go on to more complicated ideas. From one we have cold; two is its opposite heat. The tension between one and two will give you the creation three, or lukewarm. We can also apply this simple example to wet, dry and damp. Simple yes, but we can also apply this reasoning to the complicated Christian idea of the Trinity! By the use of these symbolic numbers we can see and prove that creative knowledge, or thinking, is a process evolving out of opposites.

Five is a number that advances our learning and thought processes.

Five represents he five senses and the five orders of architecture.

The five senses teaches us that we should learn by our own observation, through the knowledge imparted to us through our five senses and not by some dogma laid down by a person or institution. We must learn by what we experience and can prove through our senses. This method of learning is often termed the scientific process. It is the method we should employ in our building.

Five also stands for the five orders of architecture and symbolizes that there are many plans and ways that we can draw from to formulate our life plan and the building of our Temple. Just as did the architect of the past when he started to build his Temple, choose a plan of architecture to follow, so should we find a plan that fits our life and follow it in the building our Temple.

The number five is most important to our work.

To develop this life plan, to choose our style of architect for our Temple, we must seek education and learning. This is symbolized in the seven liberal arts and sciences which we are told to study. In the past these seven liberal arts and sciences encompassed all the world's knowledge; but today the world is much too complicated for this to be true but we still use the term seven liberal arts and sciences as a symbol for all knowledge. It is not possible today to learn all the worlds’ knowledge, but by choosing your plan of architecture you can limit your acquisition of knowledge to that required by your life style.

Then comes the great admonishment concerning Geometry. Why put such an emphases upon this subject? Geometry unites all and is the science upon which the cosmos functions. This was proven by our ancient Brother Pythagoras when he reasoned that the cosmos operated harmoniously and that harmony was the secret of order in the cosmos. Music he discovered is the most observable form of harmony. Studying music he found, by experimentation, that music is based on the principles of Geometry. Therefore, he reasoned, the cosmos operates on Geometric principals. Modem science has proven this to be correct and we now know that from the smallest part of an atom to our galaxy, The Milky Way, all follow in their structure the principles of Geometry.

We also learn from Geometry the profound truth of the proportion that is universal, a fact that proves we are all united, each to the other, by a mathematical principle.

Modem science shows the ancient statement that "God is a Geometrician " is more true today then ever before. From these studies Freemasonry has no trouble with saying that all mankind is united in "The Brotherhood of Man under the Fatherhood of God."

Man is different in kind from the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air in that he is capable of right reason. This is thought with the passions subdued. Right reason is based on logic and logic is a product of Geometry. So it is this "study of Geometry that your attention is specially directed." This then is the lesson of the Second Degree the training of the mind to reason correctly and the obtaining of knowledge. By this method you will be able to build your own Temple and allow your soul to do its work.

Now we have been introduced to the first two ages of Man, his youth and his middle age. We also have learned of his body and mind. We will now meet old age and death and the third part of man, his soul. These will be the subjects for the great lesson of the Third Degree.