Square and compasses
The best-known emblem of Freemasonry: a builder's square and a pair of compasses joined together, often with the letter G between them.
Meaning
The Grand Lodge of California calls it probably the most common symbol in Masonry, used to represent Freemasons and lodges around the world. Masons read the two tools as moral lessons: for the Grand Lodge, the square is an emblem of morality and the compass stands for the relationship between the individual and society. The older American monitors give the words of the ritual: the square is to square our actions, and the compasses to circumscribe our desires and keep our passions in due bounds. In the lodge the square and compasses lie on the open book of scripture on the altar, and together they are called the three great lights of the lodge. A 1924 bulletin of the Masonic Service Association named that book as the Bible; the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon, reprinting it, notes that 'Volume of Sacred Law' is the more fitting term.
Origin and history
No one knows exactly where the emblem began. The Scottish Rite's Northern Jurisdiction says it is thought to come from the stonemasons' guilds of the Middle Ages, and dates the familiar badge, with a G in the middle, to as early as the 1780s. The two tools were in Masonic ceremonies long before: the Edinburgh Register House manuscript of 1696 has a candidate sworn 'by the Square and compass', the earliest evidence of tools in the ceremonies that Harry Carr of the Quatuor Coronati research lodge could find. The phrase 'keeping within compass' was widely known in the 1700s, and teapots, plates and engravings carried the compasses as decoration with no connection to Freemasonry.
Write in the Freemasons’ cipher
stringmash.comPigpen cipherThe grid cipher once used for lodge records, drawn from any text you type.See also
The letter G, All-seeing eye, Double-headed eagle, Boaz and Jachin, Checkered pavement, Rough and perfect ashlars.
Sources
- Freemasonry Symbols, Masons of California (Grand Lodge of California)
- Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason, George Thornburgh, 1903, approved by the Grand Lodge of Arkansas, Project Gutenberg, Entered Apprentice degree
- The Square (Short Talk Bulletin), Masonic Service Association of the United States, vol. 2, no. 4 (April 1924), Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon
- The Origins of the Square and Compasses, Scottish Rite, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction
- Origin of the Working Tools, Harry Carr (ed.), Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, vol. 78 (1965), pp. 278–80, Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon
Last reviewed September 25, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research