From the Quarries

This lecture introduces Harold W. Percival’s Masonry and Its Symbols (1952), a distinctive twentieth-century interpretation of Freemasonry that approaches the Craft through the lens of symbolic philosophy rather than institutional history. Percival presents Masonic ritual and imagery as expressions of a broader metaphysical system, centred on the concept of consciousness and articulated through his model of the “Triune Self.” In this reading, familiar elements of the Masonic tradition—its degrees, officers, and symbols—are reinterpreted as representations of stages in the development and reintegration of the human self, with the pursuit of “Light” understood as a process of awakening.

Rather than engaging with the historical evolution of Freemasonry, the work explores the internal logic and potential meaning of its symbolic forms, with particular emphasis on geometry as a vehicle for abstract thought. This lecture presents selected passages from the text, allowing its ideas to be encountered on their own terms, and situating them within the broader tradition of esoteric interpretations of Masonic symbolism.