how does the 12 tribes relate to masonry

In Royal Arch Masonry, the twelve tribes of Israel appear primarily through the four principal banners positioned at the veils. These four banners represent the leading tribes of Judah, Ephraim, Reuben, and Dan, bearing the symbolic devices of a lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle on white, scarlet, purple, and blue fields respectively, carried by the veil-bearing officers 1.

Wilmshurst takes the twelve tribes in the Royal Arch to signify the purified essences or zodiacal divisions of man's lower nature 2. In his mystic reading of the ceremony, these twelve individual elements assemble convergently during exaltation, coalescing into a single celestial body or unified organism—the symbolic "city that is compact together" achieved upon escaping captivity and passing the veils into spiritual light 2.

Historically, an older system known as the "twelve original points" explicitly matched each of the twelve tribes to a specific part of the candidate's initiation ceremony, from Simeon symbolizing preparation to Benjamin symbolizing the closing of the lodge 1. However, this elaborate correspondence belonged to early English Craft lectures rather than the Royal Arch, was never adopted in American workings, and has since fallen entirely into disuse 1.