Three lights

The Three Great Lights are the Volume of Sacred Law (or Holy Bible), the Square, and the Compasses 123. Together they serve as a primary rule and guide for faith and practice within the lodge 3.

Wilmshurst interprets these lights as a map of spiritual consciousness 2. In his reading, the written Word represents the external expression of the unwritten Eternal Word or Logos out of which every living soul emanated 2. He argues the volume should lie open at the first chapter of the Gospel of St. John so that a candidate restored to light is reminded of the Divine Word resident within his own dark, unawakened nature 2. The Square, placed upon the open volume, symbolizes the human soul as originally generated in perfection, taking the form of an inverted triangle representing the psychic constitution of man 2. The Compasses, interlaced with the Square, represent the active Spirit or "Fire" of the soul—the essential functional energy that balances the soul's otherwise passive state 2.

Historically, early eighteenth-century catechisms recorded the furniture of the lodge as the Bible, Compasses, and Square, framing them alongside God and morality as governing principles 1. Beyond philosophical readings, the Craft broadly views the combined Square and Compasses as a token of brotherhood and a emblem of a Freemason's duty both to the fraternity and to himself 1.