The Tracing Board
by GABRIEL VASILE OLTEAN
Expert Inspector of NGLR for Western Region; Past Worshipful Master, Zamolxis Lodge, no. 182, Deva
We continue today to present, in our already famous series, one of the most important symbols of Freemasonry, the first of "the immobile jewels" one learns about in the Entered Apprentice degree. This Masonic symbol "serves the Master to trace plans and draw projects". The ritual places it in relation to the Volume of the Sacred Law, the first piece of "furniture" of the workshop: "The tracing board serves the Master in the tracing of plans and the drafting of projects to allow the Brethren to build, regularly and exactly, the future edifice. Like the Book of the Sacred Law, it can rightly be called the spiritual tracing paper of the Great Architect of the Universe. On the tracing paper are inscribed the divine laws and the moral plans as they are known to us and, if we adhere wholly to them, we will be rewarded with an ethereal place now build by human hands, in the eternal Heavens".
"Brother Expert, please present the tracing board of the Apprentice Lodge, Brother Master of Ceremonies, please assist him" demands the Worshipful Master during the commencement Ceremony of the Lodge, after first making sure that all present are regular masons and that they are in a covered Temple. The tracing board, besides the raw and polished stone, are known by those who decorate the columns of the Lodges as the immobile Jewels of the Lodges.
When a construction site is described in the Encyclopedia, it is mentioned: "In the back there is a barn where the workers work in shelter, in bad weather. The floor is made of wood, to offer the workers a way to trace their work". I think this is where we can find the explanation for the expression: initially it would have been a "Tracing board", practically a "Projection board". In order to build the Earthly Temple, the operative mason worked by following architectural projects traced on a Board, or in the architect's planning notebook. Always using these traced plans, the operative mason cut and shaped the stone, raised the walls, with their help he built the arches, he calculated and mounted the keystones, and the force and beauty, the durability and sturdiness passed on to the edifices built by them. The tracing board becomes one the important symbols of Masonry because, in the Masonic ritual, the speculative mason is reminded that, like the operative worker who strictly follows the traced plans to raise the material temples, so must he raise his spiritual building (to which the material is a prototype) obeying the rules and Plans of the Great Architect of the Universe. The tracing board is, thus, the symbol of the moral law and of the natural law, being, as any other symbol of the Order, universal and tolerant about application, because if we, Christian masons admit the Bible as our Board, we naturally admit our companions to settle for the Koran, Talmud or Books of the Old Testament.
"Initially, writes Wirt, any enclosed rectangular place could very easily be transformed into a Masonic sanctuary." To this end, a chair was placed in front of the wall opposite to the door and two others on each side of this one; then a long square [symbolic rectangle] was traced on the floor, in chalk, within which were quickly drawn the essential emblems of freemasonry. It was part of the attribute of the Master of Ceremonies to "trace this painting on the occasion of the opening of the work and to carefully erase it, with a wet sponge, at the moment of closing." A police report from September 5, 1745 mentions a sort of carpet, marked with white stone (chalk), representing among other things the Sun, Moon, Compasses, Squares, Levelers, Stars, Columns etc., "and on the edges were also made in white stone the words: Septentrion, South, Orient and Occident..."
(P. Chevalier) in the middle of the century, a painted cloth appears, unfolded on the floor of the workshop. This painting is no longer maintained at all, except for the Fellowcraft degree, at least in the current practice of the French Blue Lodges.
How could a square be long without becoming a rectangle? That is the natural reaction of the uninitiated. The long square implies precisely the esoteric character of the mentioned geometrical figure. This expression presupposes that the square is extending, that it is becoming an initiatic geometrical figure. For these reasons, the long square is traced at the commencement of the work and erased at its end. "The painting of the Lodge, that Wirth describes as being the long square,
is, ultimately, the image of the world as it must hence-forward present itself to the neophyte following the initiatic path" said Daniel Ligou in Dictionar de Francmasonerie. The long square has at its basis the golden section, it is actually a 1 x 1,618 rectangle obtained via the circle whose radius corresponds to the line that connects the middle of the square's side with he opposite angle. It is also called "the solar square", the golden number being the solar dimension of this route.
The most important Rites of Perfection treat the Tracing Board as one of the most important symbols, an important element of their own esoteric arsenal. In the Emulation Rite, the tracing board is a part of the immovable jewels, impossible to replace, moved, or substituted. "The tracing board" is one of the essential elements of the symbolism, and it is figured on the plateau of the Junior Warden: "It serves the Worshipful Master for tracing lines and drafting." Within this Rite, it is accorded a sacred dimension: "As well the Book of the Sacred Law can be rightly considered the spiritual Tracing Board of the Great Architect of the Universe, on which he traced His Divine Laws and moral teaching; if they are familiar to us and we apply them, they will lead us to the eternal dwelling-place in the heavens, unmade by human hands."
In the Rectified Scottish Rite, the Worshipful Master, in the Ceremony of Raising, explains: "on this Tracing Board will you study your most convenient plans for the perfecting of the work and the leadership of the workers." Here also we find an appeal to the Divinity to underline this importance Jewel by stressing the fact that the Master Mason works on the Tracing Paper "as a reminder of the mysteriously traced plans that were transmitted to King David from the Great Architect of the Universe, regarding the construction of the Temple, and that were applied by Solomon"
In the French Rite, in the Lecture of the Master degree, the Worshipful Master tells the new raised: "now that acacia is known to you, sit with the compasses in your hand before the Tracing Board, to continue to realize the plans of a better humanity." French Masonry did not really develop this symbol. Boucher estimates that it belongs essentially to Masonry, but that "the Apprentice and the Fellowcraft must not ignore it, but to use it practicing - perhaps without craft - to sketch their ideas". The symol must figure on the Apprentice's Tracing Board. Wirth places it on the Fellowcraft's Tracing Board. The Master is the one who traces the plans, but a Fellowcraft must be able to follow them, and "the tracing board must not at all be alien to him." He insists especially on the correspondence between the letters of the alphabet marked on the paper and the "magical boxes."
In the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the new raised Master is invited by the Worshipful to work with the Tracing Board without the tool receiving comment. If it is reserved to the Master, it cannot and must not be ignored by the Apprentice and the Fellowcraft, who could understand by studying it the profound meaning of their work, and they could have an overview of the work to be done. It is for this reason that it is schematically figurated on certain Tracing Boards in the shape of a long square incorporating the grilles of the Masonic alphabet. "A rectangle on which are presented the sketches that constitute the key of the Masonic alphabet." (Boucher)
I ask that you allow me, at the end of this Paper, in a world dominated by de-sacralization, to wish you all the best along the road begun in the reflection chamber and continued in the halls of the labyrinth; a road materialized, rendered substantive, within the temple, by the reception of the light.
I transmit the Brotherly salute and the triple accolade from me personally and the Brethren in Hunedoara Valley, to all the readers of this prodigious and respectable publication, what is called Masonic Forum.
I have spoken!
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