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Updated: June 21, 2025
And as the circumambulation is made around the lodge, just as the sun was supposed to move around the earth, we are brought back to the original symbolism with which we commenced that the lodge is a symbol of the world. The Rite of Intrusting, and the Symbolism of Light.
Lastly, I may refer to the preservation of this rite among the Druids, whose "mystical dance" around the cairn, or sacred stones, was nothing more nor less than the rite of circumambulation. On these occasions the priest always made three circuits, from east to west, by the right hand, around the altar or cairn, accompanied by all the worshippers.
A hymn of Callimachus has been preserved, which is said to have been chanted by the priests of Apollo at Delos, while performing this ceremony of circumambulation, the substance of which is, "We imitate the example of the sun, and follow his benevolent course." It will be observed that this circumambulation around the altar was accompanied by the singing or chanting of a sacred ode.
In reviewing what has been said on this subject, it will at once be perceived that the essence of the ancient rite consisted in making the circumambulation around the altar, from the east to the south, from the south to the west, thence to the north, and to the east again. Now, in this the masonic rite of circumambulation strictly agrees with the ancient one.
It is equally evident that the speculative masons have received from their operative predecessors the gloves as well as the apron, both of which, being used by the latter for practical uses, have been, in the spirit of symbolism, appropriated by the former to "a more noble and glorious purpose." The Rite of Circumambulation.
In the Master's degree we find it exhibited in its most religious form, in the restoration from death to life in the change from the obscurity of the grave to the holy of holies of the Divine Presence. In all the degrees we find it presented in the ceremony of circumambulation, in which there is a gradual inquisition, and a passage from an inferior to a superior officer.
Of the three parts of the ode, the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode, each was to be sung at a particular part of the procession. The analogy between this chanting of an ode by the ancients and the recitation of a passage of Scripture in the masonic circumambulation, will be at once apparent.
Though traces of solemn circumambulation are found in some lower tribes, it has been, and is, practiced chiefly in the higher cults. +113+. Sacred dances and processions are natural human expressions of emotions that have been adopted by religious sentiment, and are often supposed to have potency in themselves.
Among the Romans, the ceremony of circumambulation was always used in the rites of sacrifice, of expiation or purification. Thus Virgil describes Corynasus as purifying his companions, at the funeral of Misenus, by passing three times around them while aspersing them with the lustral waters; and to do so conveniently, it was necessary that he should have moved with his right hand towards them.
All the forenoon the court is a receptacle for cabbage leaves, fish scales, leeks, &c. &c. and as a French chambermaid usually prefers the direct road to circumambulation, the refuse of the kitchen is then washed away by plentiful inundations from the dressing-room the passages are blockaded by foul plates, fragments, and bones; to which if you add the smell exhaling from hoarded apples and gruyere cheese, you may form some notion of the sufferings of those whose olfactory nerves are not robust.
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