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The Masonic Apron

presented by: 
Bro. Bogdan Marin
presented on: 
Tuesday, September 13, 2005 (All day)

We can see in Lodge different types of aprons and it is only natural to ask ourselves what they depict, because we know that Masonry is “a beautiful system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols”. Therefore we might regard the Masonic apron also as being an allegory illustrated by symbols.

The 1st degree: the Entered Apprentice Mason

The Entered Apprentice Mason is invested with his “badge of honour”, his Entered Apprentice Mason apron. As the soul needs the body to be in this world, so any Mason needs his apron in his Masonic world. It depicts his body, and it is made of white lambskin showing the purity of a newborn.

In old English Lodges the triangular flap was raised, thus forming a five pointed figure. This depicts our 5 senses with which we interact in this world.

The triangular flap represents the soul, and the square the body. 3+4=7. The number 7.

“God blessed and loved the number 7 more than anything under His throne”.

We know that 7 make a Lodge perfect, and so, the individual man, in virtue of his 7-fold constitution, in himself constitutes the “perfect Lodge” if he will but know himself and analyze his own nature aright.

The 2nd degree: the Fellow Craft Mason

Now the flap lays on the square illustrating that the higher nature of man (the trinity) has descended into and is permeating his lower nature.

The rosettes represent the light that begins to shine from within.

The 3rd degree: the Master Mason

The apron is now more elaborate. It has a U-shaped blue border which is mean to represent the Light that flows freely through him, that he has attained mastery of it, and the rosettes showing the higher Light now permeating him is radiating from his person, and that the wilderness of the natural man is now blossoming as the rose.

Right and left two columns of light descending from above, streaming into his depths of his whole being and are terminating in the 7-fold tassels illustrating the 7-fold prismatic spectrum of the supernal Light.

Thus the apron shows the progress of the Mason and his tasks according of his degree:

  1. purify and subdue his sensual nature;

  2. purify and develop his mental nature igniting the inner light;

  3. letting and mastering the inner flow of light and letting it radiate outwards, thus becoming a light himself for the whole humanity.

-- Inspired by W. L. Wilmshurst, The Meaning of Masonry, 1922