Symbolism

How do the steps in the Craft and Royal Arch degrees align with solar movements?

Movements within the lodge, including circumambulation, follow the course of the sun. Lodge officers take and vacate their stations as the sun returns to and departs from the East, reflecting the diurnal solar circuit. Arthur Edward Waite notes that candidates in the Craft degrees perform circumambulations around the lodge following this sunwise direction, a practice early commentators explained as representing humanity's journey from ignorance to enlightenment. Walter Leslie Wilmshurst similarly reads the cardinal points of the Craft lodge symbolically, associating the South with the sun's meridian height, representing the apex of intellectual power, while the East represents spiritual intuition.

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