This month’s issue of Masonic Education is about “The Letter G” with information provided in a booklet from our Grand Lodge’s Seminars and Workshop Committee.
From the booklet – A Walk Around the Lodge
“The Letter G”
The Letter G is one of the most sacred symbols of Freemasonry. The lodge cannot open, and no work can be performed unless the sacred letter is conspicuously seen in its regularly assigned place in the lodge hall. It actually has a double symbolism – referring to God, the Great Architect of the Universe, but also to the science of Geometry (study of the earth). If the two meanings are taken together. The “G” represents to the Mason a unity of heaven and earth, of the divine with the human, of the mortal with the eternal, of the finite with the infinite.
The Letter G in the lodge room should be displayed in the most prominent location, so that it can be viewed on entering the lodge. Therefore, it should be readable from the West.
The oldest references to its position all suggest that it was “in the centre”. In the early 1700s, it was usually on the floor in the middle of the tracing board sometimes drawn in chalk. In England, it usually hangs from the ceiling in the centre of the lodge, arranged so that it can be read from the West. In the U.S.A., it is displayed in the East over the Master’s chair. That is perhaps the surest guide as to how it should be placed, because, in that position, it only be read from the West.
R.W. Bro. Robert South