SHORT TALK BULLETIN - Vol.XIII   September, 1935   No.9

TWO PILLARS

by:  Unknown

Few references in Freemasonry are less understood than the two brazen 
pillars in the porch of King Solomon’s Temple.  Probably a greater 
mass of misinformation exists regarding these than any other symbol 
in the Craft.
Early ritualists confused the mythical pillars of stone, spoken of in 
almost all the old Charges, or Manuscript Constitutions of the Craft, 
with the Brazen pillars of the porch - the result is that modern 
Freemasons have composite pillars, fusing of the ancient and the 
mythical pillars on which were supposed to be engraved the arts and 
sciences of the time before the flood, and those which Hiram Abif 
erected - undoubtedly with Egyptian influences and memories of 
Egyptian Temples to guide him - before the great house of the Lord 
which Solomon built.
The fascinating, if wholly legendary, history of the Craft, repeated 
with variations in the majority of the old manuscript rolls, 
beginning with the Regius of 1390, is older than any Freemasonry we 
know in practice. The story varies from manuscript to manuscript, but 
in its essentials is much the same - it was evidently a tradition as 
strong in its day as is our legend of Hiram. To quote but a few line 
bearing on the pillars, consider these words from the York Manuscript 
No. 1, written about A.D. 1600:
“Before Noah flood there was a man called Lamech as is written in the 
Scriptures in ye Chatr of Genesis And this Lamech had two wives ye 
one named Adah by whome he had two sons ye one named Jabell ye other 
named Jubell And his other wife was called Zillah by whome he had one 
son named Tubelcaine & one Daughter named Naamah & these four 
children founded ye beginnings of all ye Sciences in ye world viz 
Jabell ye oldest Sone found out ye Science of Geomatre he was a keepr 
of flocks and sheep Lands in the Fields as it is noted in ye Chaptr 
before sd And his bother Jubell found ye Science of Musicke Song of 
the Tongue harpe & organ And ye third brother Tuball Caine found ye 
Science called Smith Craft of Gold Silvr Iron Coppr & Steele & ye 
daughter found ye ara of Weaving And these persons knowing right well 
yt God would take vengencance for sinne either by fire or water 
wherefore they writt their severall Sciences yt they had found in two 
pillars of stone yt might be found aftr Noah his Flood And ye one 
stonbe would not burn wth fire & ye othr called Lternes because it 
would not dround wth wtr etc.”
The word here spelled “Lternes” is rendered on other old 
Constitutions as “laterns,” usually translated “brick.” But marble 
does not resist fire; brick - especially early unscientifically 
vitrified brick - does not resist water.  If the word be considered a 
perversion of “latten,” which means brass or bronze, then the ancient 
legendary pillars are made of metal and marble, a more sensible idea, 
since metal would resist fire, and the marble, water.
In Tyre was the great Temple to Herakles with two pillars, one of 
gold, the other of smaragdus (polished green marble).  Other Tyrian 
Temples to Melkarth had two metal pillars or two monoliths.
Modern Masonry has hollow pillars to serve as safe repositories for 
the “archives of Masonry” and to preserve them from flood and fire, 
in spite of the fact that sacred history says nothing of Masonry, or 
the reason for the pillars being hollow.  It is reasonable to suppose 
that the ancient Masonic tradition of Lamech’s children and their 
pillars was confused, as knowledge of the Bible became more common 
after the invention of printing, with other “brazen pillars” of an 
ancient day, and finally with those of Solomon’s Temple.
How high were the pillars?  A question which has agitated American 
Freemasonry - largely without reason - for many years!  A majority of 
American rituals state that they were thirty-five cubits in heights.  
A minority hold to eighteen..  One compromises on thirty.  A few do 
not give the height at all.
Mackey (Revised Encyclopedia of Freemasonry) says:
“Immediately within the porch of the Temple, and on each side of the 
door, were placed two hollow brazen pillars.  The height of each was 
twenty-seven feet, and the diameter about six feet, and the thickness 
of the brass three inches.  Above the pillar and covering its upper 
part to the depth of nine inches, was an oval body or chapiter seven 
feet and a half in height.  Springing out of from the pillar at the 
junction of the chapiter with it, was a row of lotus petals, which 
first spreading around the chapiter, afterwards gently curved 
downward toward the pillar, something like the acanthus leaves on the 
capital of a Corinthian column.  About two fifths of the distance 
from the bottom of the chapiter, or just below its most bulging part, 
a tissue of network was carved, which extended over its whole upper 
surface.  To the bottom of this network was suspended a series of 
fringes, and on these again were carved two rows of pomegranates, one 
hundred being in each row.”
This description, it seemed to Dr. Mackey, is the only one that can 
be reconciled with the various passages which relate to these pillars 
in the Books of Kings, Chronicles, and Josephus, to give a correct 
conception of the architecture of these symbols.
In 1904 Brother John W. Barry, of Iowa, later to become Grand Master, 
rendered an exhaustive report to his Grand Lodge on the height of the 
pillars, proving anew the belief, practically accepted by Biblical 
students, the that “thirty-five” dimension is that of both pillars 
together, the actual height of each being eighteen cubits.
The confusion arises in the two accounts in Chronicles and Kings.  
Various explanations have been advanced as to the discrepancy between 
thirty-five as the height of each.  The missing cubit is explained on 
the theory that while actually each pillar from root to summit was 
eighteen cubits, only seventeen and one-half showed.  The rest being 
hidden in chapiter and base.
This explanation apparently began with the Genevan Bible (Breeches 
Bible) in which is a marginal note stating of the pillars “every one 
was eighteen cubits long, but halfe cubite could not be feene, for it 
was hid in the roundeneffe of the chapiter, and therefore he giueth 
to every one 17 and a halfe.”
To know the “actual” size of the pillars, it is necessary to know the 
length of a cubit.  And here is room for speculation and many 
authorities!  The Abingdon Bible Commentaries says:  “The common 
cubit, equal to about 18 inches, the longer Royal cubit to about 20-
1/2 inches.”  John Wesley Kelchner, whose restorations of King 
Solomon’s Temple are to be found in Masonic Bibles, considers the 
cubit to bee equal to two feet.  The Standard Dictionary gives the 
cubit as the measure of length determined by the average arm from 
elbow to middle finger tip.  The Britannica considers that the Temple 
cubit must have been in excess if 25 inches,  Canon J.W. Horsley, 
Past Grand Chaplain, England, who has studied and written much upon 
the pillars, give a table of sizes in which the cubit is but 14 2/5 
inches.
Many rituals set forth the fact that Hiram cast the pillars on the 
plains of the Jordan, in the clay ground between Succoth and Zarthan, 
or Zeredetha.  Both I Kings and II Chronicles are authority for the 
statement.  But if there ever existed a “clay ground” in the location 
specified, it has disappeared and left no trace.  Explorations (Lynch 
in 1847, Ridegway in 1874 not only found no clay ground, but no trace 
of smelters, furnaces, or other means of melting and casting brass.  
The point is of little importance - the pillars and the Temple 
vessels were cast, somewhere.  But a failure of fact in a statement 
so absolute may be an indication the other I Kings and II Chronicles’ 
statements about the pillars were also inaccurate as to facts - 
“vide” the height statements.
The “globes celestial and terrestrial” which usually surmount 
American Lodge room pillars are wholly modern inventions, without 
basis in Scriptural fact.  Somewhere, at some time, some ritual maker 
confused the spherical form of the chapiter with an additional an 
additional sphere.  Desiring to account for it, he drew a map of the 
world on one and a map of the heavens on the other!  But in the Kings 
and Chronicles accounts and in Josephus, there are no mentions of 
celestial and terrestrial globes.
All this is more interesting than important.  The symbolical meaning  
of the pillars is the vital matter to Freemasons.
In the eyes of critical scholarship, the ancient meaning was of the 
might and majesty of Deity.  From the dawn of religion the pillar, 
monolith or built up, has played an important part of the worship of 
the Unseen.  From the huge boulders of Stonehenge, among which the 
Druids are supposed to have performed their rites, through East 
Indian temples, to the religion of ancient Egypt, scholars trace the 
use of pillars as an essential part of the religious worship; indeed, 
in Egypt the obelisk stood for the very presence of the Sun God 
himself.
The ancient believed the earth to be flat and that it was supported 
by two Pillars of God, placed at the western entrance of the world as 
then known.  These are now called Gibraltar, on one side of the 
strait and Cueta on the other.
Some writers have suggested that the pillars represent the masculine 
and feminine elements in nature; others, that they stand for 
authority of Church and State, because on stated occasions the high 
priest stood before one pillar and the King before the other.  Some 
students think that they allude to the two legendary pillars of 
Enoch, upon which, tradition informs us, all the wisdom of the 
ancient world was inscribed in order to preserve it from inundations 
and conflagrations.  William Preston supposed that, by them, Solomon 
had reference to the pillars of cloud and fire which guided the 
Children of Israel out of the bondage and into the promise land.  One 
authority says a literal translation of their names is:  “In thee is 
strength,” and, “It shall be established,” and by a natural 
transposition mat thus be expressed:  “Oh Lord, Thou art almighty and 
Thy Power is established from everlasting to everlasting.”
Quoting Abingdon again:
“The fact that each pillar had a particular name further suggests 
that they were not simply a part of the architectural adornment, but 
originally bore some analogy to the pillars which, singly or in 
pairs, formed an important feature of the Semitic sanctuaries.  At 
Melkart’s shrine at Tyre there were, according to Herodotus, two 
costly obelisks at which Melkart (and probably his wife-consort) was 
worshiped.  Two pillars also stood before the temples in Paphos and 
in Hierapolis.  Ashurbanipal on the occasion of his expedition to 
Egypt and Ethiopia recounts that part of his spoil included ‘two 
obelisks high with resplendent plating of fine workmanship . . from 
the threshold of the gate of the Temple.’  Therefore these pillars at 
Jerusalem, built, like the Temple itself, by Phoenician workmen, were 
probably intended to be symbols of the Deity; they were an artistic 
refinement of the Mezzabah, or stone obelisk which, at many Israelite 
sanctuaries, still stood beside he altar in much later days.  But it 
does not necessarily follow that Solomon and his subjects so 
interpreted the significance of these novel and foreign brass 
objects:  for them the Ark in the ‘oracle’ seemed to have symbolized 
Jehovah. 
But it is possible that instead of Jachin (or Jakin,) ‘he (Jehovah) 
was carved on one pillar by Huram-abi and subsequently altered into 
his name; and Boaz (i.e., ‘in him is strength’) may be a later 
substitution for ‘Tammuz,’ whose cult was very prevalent in the 
Semitic world.”
The Entered Apprentice in the process of being passed to the degree 
of Fellowcraft “passes between the pillars.”  No hint is given that 
he should pass nearer to one than the other; no suggestion is made 
that he either may work a greater influence than the other.  He 
merely passes between.
A deep significance is in this very omission.  Masons refer to the 
promise of God unto David; the interested may read Chapter VII of II 
Samuel, and gather that the establishment promised by the Lord was 
that of a house, a family, a descent of blood from David unto his 
children and his children’s children.
Used to blast stumps from fields, dynamite is an aid to the farmer.  
Used in war it kills and maims.  Fire cooks food and makes steam for 
engines, fire also burns houses and destroys forests.  But it is not 
the power but the use of power which is good or bad.  The truth 
applies to any power; spiritual, legal, monarchical, political or 
personal.  Power is without either virtue or vice; the user may use 
it well or ill, as he pleases.
Freemasonry passes the brother in the process of becoming a 
Fellowcraft between the pillar of strength - power; and the pillar of 
establishment - choice or control.  He is a man now and no minor or 
infant.  He has grown up Masonically.  Before him are spread the two 
great essentials to all success, all greatness, and all happiness.
Like any other power - temporal or physical, religious or spiritual - 
Freemasonry can be used well or ill.  Here is the lesson set before 
the Fellowcraft; if he, like David, would have his kingdom of Masonic 
manhood established in strength he must pass between the pillars with 
understanding that power without control is useless, and control 
without power, futile.  Each is a compliment of the other; in the 
passage between the pillars the Fellowcraft not only has his feet set 
upon the Winding Stairs but is given - so he has eyes to see and ears 
to hear - secret instructions as to how he shall climb those stairs 
that he may, indeed, reach the Middle Chamber.  He is to climb by 
strength, but directed by wisdom; he is to progress by power, but 
guided by control, he must rise by the might that is in him, but 
arrive by the wisdom of his heart.
So considered, the inaccuracies and misstatements of ritual regarding 
the pillars become relatively unimportant; whether eighteen of 
thirty-five cubits high, whether cast in one place or another, 
whether or not surmounted in Solomon’s day with globes terrestrial 
and celestial, matter little.  The lesson is there, the meaning of 
the symbol to be read.  The initiate of old saw in the obelisk the 
very spirit of the God he worshiped.  The modern Masonic initiate may 
see in the two pillars the mans by which he may travel a little 
further, a little higher towards the secret Middle Chamber of life, 
in which dwells the Unseen Presence.


