From the Quarries

Few symbols in the Third Degree speak with such austere eloquence as the Hour-Glass and the Scythe. Though familiar to generations of American Freemasons, these emblems are—perhaps unexpectedly—comparatively modern additions, shaped by the ritual innovations of Thomas Smith Webb and visually disseminated through the Doolittle engravings in Jeremy Cross’s True Masonic Chart. Yet their deeper symbolic ancestry reaches far beyond early American ritual, connecting to ancient Egyptian reaping knives, the apocalyptic sickle of Revelation 14, the implacable Fates of Greek mythology, and the stark meditations on mortality found in the Book of Job.

Drawing on historical, biblical, and ritual sources, this presentation situates the Hour-Glass and the Scythe within a broader reflection on time, impermanence, and the Masonic assurance of immortality. We examine their contested legitimacy in English and American usage, the philosophical tensions between transience and hope, and the ways early ritualists—despite their preoccupation with death—crafted a vision of time that ultimately affirms the eternal destiny of the human soul.

This lecture draws on “Hour Glass and Scythe,” Short Talk Bulletin, Vol. XIII, No. 6 (June 1935).