The Point Within a Circle.
The point within a Circle is another symbol of great importance in
Freemasonry, and commands peculiar attention in this connection with the
ancient symbolism of the universe and the solar orb. Everybody who has
read a masonic "Monitor" is well acquainted with the usual explanation of
this symbol. We are told that the point represents an individual brother,
the circle the boundary line of his duty to God and man, and the two
perpendicular parallel lines the patron saints of the order--St. John the
Baptist and St. John the Evangelist.
Now, this explanation, trite and meagre as it is, may do very well for the
exoteric teaching of the order; but the question at this time is, not how
it has been explained by modern lecturers and masonic system-makers, but
what was the ancient interpretation of the symbol, and how should it be
read as a sacred hieroglyphic in reference to the true philosophic system
which constitutes the real essence and character of Freemasonry?
Perfectly to understand this symbol, I must refer, as a preliminary
matter, to the worship of the _Phallus_, a peculiar modification of
sun-worship, which prevailed to a great extent among the nations of
antiquity.
The Phallus was a sculptured representation of the _membrum virile_, or
male organ of generation,[76] and the worship of it is said to have
originated in Egypt, where, after the murder of Osiris by Typhon, which is
symbolically to be explained as the destruction or deprivation of the
sun's light by night, Isis, his wife, or the symbol of nature, in the
search for his mutilated body, is said to have found all the parts except
the organs of generation, which myth is simply symbolic of the fact, that
the sun having set, its fecundating and invigorating power had ceased. The
Phallus, therefore, as the symbol of the male generative principle, was
very universally venerated among the ancients,[77] and that too as a
religious rite, without the slightest reference to any impure or
lascivious application.[78] He is supposed, by some commentators, to be
the god mentioned under the name of Baal-peor, in the Book of Numbers,[79]
as having been worshipped by the idolatrous Moabites. Among the eastern
nations of India the same symbol was prevalent, under the name of
"Lingam." But the Phallus or Lingam was a representation of the male
principle only. To perfect the circle of generation it is necessary to
advance one step farther. Accordingly we find in the _Cteis_ of the
Greeks, and the _Yoni_ of the Indians, a symbol of the female generative
principle, of co-extensive prevalence with the Phallus. The _Cteis_ was a
circular and concave pedestal, or receptacle, on which the Phallus or
column rested, and from the centre of which it sprang.
The union of the Phallus and Cteis, or the Lingam and Yoni, in one
compound figure, as an object of adoration, was the most usual mode of
representation. This was in strict accordance with the whole system of
ancient mythology, which was founded upon a worship of the prolific powers
of nature. All the deities of pagan antiquity, however numerous they may
be, can always be reduced to the two different forms of the generative
principle--the active, or male, and the passive, or female. Hence the gods
were always arranged in pairs, as Jupiter and Juno, Bacchus and Venus,
Osiris and Isis. But the ancients went farther. Believing that the
procreative and productive powers of nature might be conceived to exist in
the same individual, they made the older of their deities hermaphrodite,
and used the term ἀῤῥενοθέλυς, or _man-virgin_, to denote the union of the
two sexes in the same divine person.[80]