The Square and Compasses: A Short History

Ask a member of the public what Freemasonry looks like, and the image they will most likely describe is the square and compasses, often with a letter G between them. It is the most widely recognised masonic emblem, and it appears on lodge buildings, regalia, certificates and rings across the world.\n\nBut where does it come from? The answer lies in the medieval stonemasons' guilds from which speculative Freemasonry directly descends. The operative masons of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries used actual squares and compasses every working day, and these tools naturally became their most potent symbols of skill and accuracy.\n\nThe earliest surviving depiction of a square and compasses used together as a joint emblem appears on the seal of the Lodge of Edinburgh (Mary's Chapel) No. 1, and dates from the year 1599. That lodge is the oldest continuously-operating masonic lodge in the world, and its minutes — which survive in full — record the use of these symbols well before the formation of the first Grand Lodge in 1717.\n\nThe moral interpretation is well known but worth repeating. The square is for morality: it teaches us to square our actions by the rule of right and wrong. The compasses are for restraint: they teach us to circumscribe our desires and keep our passions within due bounds. Together they represent the balance of the active and contemplative virtues.\n\nThe letter G at the centre is a slightly later addition, and its meaning is the subject of honest disagreement among masonic scholars. It has, at various times, been read as standing for Geometry, for God, or for that inner light which every candidate is promised at his initiation. In our jurisdiction, it is left to the individual brother to form his own understanding.\n\nWhat is not in doubt is the power of the symbol. A century and a half of rational inquiry has not dimmed it. A brother who wears the square and compasses today wears something that was already old when William Shakespeare was a young man.