In the English working, the tools of a Master Mason are the pencil, the skirret, and the compasses 1. Symbolically, the pencil serves to remind the Mason that every word and action is observed and recorded by the Almighty Architect, to whom a final account of conduct throughout life must be given 1. The skirret and compasses complete this triad 1, with Arthur Edward Waite noting that the compasses represent perhaps the most spiritual of all the working tools in Craft Masonry 2.
American practice differs from the English system in that the pencil is not specifically recognized among the tools of the degree 1. More broadly, as Joseph Fort Newton observes, the operative tools of the builder are brought into the lodge as emblems of the thinker, turning physical instruments into parables for spiritual development and moral duty 3.
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Much of what a Freemason would like to know is already written down —
in Anderson's Constitutions and Dermott's Ahiman Rezon, in
Preston and Mackey, in Knoop and Jones on the mediaeval mason, in Claudy
for the newly made Mason, in Pike for the Scottish Rite, and in papers read
before lodges of research over three centuries. The difficulty has never
been that the answers do not exist. It is that they sit in works few of us
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This site takes for its emblem the point within a circle, bounded by two
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the lines are what make those bounds knowable — which seemed right
for a tool that will not claim more than its sources bear, and that shows
you where the lines fall.
FreemasonryGPT reads a library of Masonic books and papers spanning three
centuries, from Anderson's Constitutions of 1723 to the transactions of
lodges of research, and has answered several thousand questions, each one
published with its sources. It is built and maintained by Bro. J Arasu
Shankher of Chennai. Thoughts, corrections
and suggestions are all welcome —
do write.
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