why is the north considered a place of darkness in craft masonry

King Solomon's Temple sat at a latitude of 31 degrees 47 minutes north, placing it beyond the tropics where neither the sun nor the moon at meridian could ever cast direct rays into its northern portion 2. The temple's position so far north of the ecliptic left its northern side without direct light, as the Masonic Service Association of North America explains.

Beyond this physical and astronomical explanation, Craft symbolism draws on philosophical and historical associations. Wilmshurst interprets the North as representing the sphere of benightedness, ignorance, and mere physical sense-impressions, marking the lowest mode of human perception in contrast to the intellectual and spiritual light of the South and East 1.

Historical and traditional practices further reinforced this symbolic darkness 3. In ancient mysteries, such as those of Dionysos, the initiate entered from the north to be purged of corruptions 3. Medieval judicial courts placed the accused on the northern side facing south, and northern European folklore consistently treated the north as a place of gloom and dire omen 3. Churchyard customs similarly reserved the northern ground for felons, mirroring the lodge's practice of placing no symbolic light in the North 3.

An article on the District Grand Lodge of Bombay's website notes that Roman tradition held the North to be a place of darkness, an association that was subsequently adopted into Masonic symbolism. Further, an article on the Grand Lodge of India's website describes the dark North as reflecting ancient understandings of the physical world, which conceived the earth as possessing a dark northern region and a radiant East.

The available records do not explicitly attribute this derivation uniquely to operative lodge practice or to later speculative development, leaving the precise point of its historical transition between operative and speculative Masonry unstated in these sources.