Renquist - 07 December 2007 09:48 AM

Now this may be my memory or it might be a regional thing, but doesn’t the All Seeing Eye go under the compass?

Not being a Mason I couldn’t say for sure but I seem to remember the Eye being there. It might be a local thing though.

According to what I’ve seen about them, they seem to have different “Grand Lodges” that have control over all the various lesser lodges in their geographical area.  Perhaps the Glasgow or the Scottish Grand Lodge has the eye as part of a symbol unique to them?

Doing an image search in Google for “freemason symbol”, the only time I see any sort of an eye in connection with the compass and square is in one image on the first page of results.  It shows the eye floating above the compass, with the G inside the compass.

I used to have a spirograph when I was a kid.  I got some really cool designs out of that too.   

Accipiter - 07 December 2007 10:03 AM

Renquist - 07 December 2007 09:48 AM

Now this may be my memory or it might be a regional thing, but doesn’t the All Seeing Eye go under the compass?

Not being a Mason I couldn’t say for sure but I seem to remember the Eye being there. It might be a local thing though.

According to what I’ve seen about them, they seem to have different “Grand Lodges” that have control over all the various lesser lodges in their geographical area.  Perhaps the Glasgow or the Scottish Grand Lodge has the eye as part of a symbol unique to them?

Doing an image search in Google for “freemason symbol”, the only time I see any sort of an eye in connection with the compass and square is in one image on the first page of results.  It shows the eye floating above the compass, with the G inside the compass.

Well Scotland is heavily connected to Freemasonry (one of the biggest branches actually being Scottish Rite Freemasonry) so it’s entirely possible the stuff I’ve seen is some off-shoot. Or maybe I’m just not remembering correctly.

But I looked it up on Google Image search, I couldn’t find any picturs with an eye at all! And let me tell you- even if I’m wrong and there’s no eye in the compass, all the Masonic paraphanalia I’ve seen has been the compass, the mitre and the all seeing eye. Definately must be different branches of it.

Renquist - 07 December 2007 07:52 PM

But I looked it up on Google Image search, I couldn’t find any picturs with an eye at all! And let me tell you- even if I’m wrong and there’s no eye in the compass, all the Masonic paraphanalia I’ve seen has been the compass, the mitre and the all seeing eye. Definately must be different branches of it.

Mm hmm.

*Scribbles notes*

And what proof, exactly, do you have of this conspiracy theory?

Tah - 07 December 2007 09:25 PM

Renquist - 07 December 2007 07:52 PM

But I looked it up on Google Image search, I couldn’t find any picturs with an eye at all! And let me tell you- even if I’m wrong and there’s no eye in the compass, all the Masonic paraphanalia I’ve seen has been the compass, the mitre and the all seeing eye. Definately must be different branches of it.

Mm hmm.

*Scribbles notes*

And what proof, exactly, do you have of this conspiracy theory?

The fact that Google is run by…wait for it…NON-MASONIC JEWS!!!

Yeah! That’s right bitch! NON-MASON Jews run Google and have stopped you from seeing THE TRUTH!!! Like how you can’t find pictures of tanks in Tiannamen Square in Chinese Google!

They’ve removed the REAL TRUE Mason iconography from Google to keep you all in the dark! WHY? Becuase Jews can’t be Masons! Yeah! That’s right! This is their revenge! Stopping you from seeing the REAL symobls of Freemasonry! You never knew the All-Seeing Eye was in there, did you? No!

PROVE ME WRONG!!!

*proves both Tah and Renquist wrong, then hides the proof*

At its highest level the G(like all letters and numbers)is a symbol. If you overlay the complete flower with a sheet of tracing paper,you will be able to trace out any known alphabet.

andymonk - 08 December 2007 05:59 AM

At its highest level the G(like all letters and numbers)is a symbol. If you overlay the complete flower with a sheet of tracing paper,you will be able to draw out any known alphabet.

Like join-the-dots?

If you can draw out a symbol from any known alphabet on the FoL then what makes the ‘G’ so special? Surely that would make any letter at all special? I mean, if EVERY symbol on earth could be drawn over the FoL (and let’s face it, you can say the same thing of a sheet of graph paper. You can draw anything over that as well) then by them all being ‘special’, none of them are. If they all represent something then the frequency of this fact makes it redundant.

Indeed.  The FoL is a repeating geometric pattern.  As such, it makes a regular grid of points.  The bigger you make it, the more points you have to play with.  So you can join the points together to make anything you want.  In this, it is no different than a sheet of graph paper as Renquist pointed out.  Or from any other repeating pattern.  All this proves is that the FoL is not special, because it doesn’t do anything in particular.  It’s as mystical as a checkerboard.

The FoL could only be said to be related to making any particular symbol if the FoL wasn’t a regularly repeating pattern.  If there were irregular points on it that stood out from the others, and if you could connect those points to form a G or whatever, then you would have a case for the FoL inspiring the G in the Mason symbol.  But you’ve just shown that this isn’t the case.

andymonk - 08 December 2007 05:59 AM

At its highest level the G(like all letters and numbers)is a symbol. If you overlay the complete flower with a sheet of tracing paper,you will be able to trace out any known alphabet.

I should have wrote trace instead of draw.

andymonk - 08 December 2007 12:09 PM

andymonk - 08 December 2007 05:59 AM

At its highest level the G(like all letters and numbers)is a symbol. If you overlay the complete flower with a sheet of tracing paper,you will be able to trace out any known alphabet.

I should have wrote trace instead of draw.

Whether it’s “trace” or “draw”, that doesn’t change the matter any.

You see, your geometric pattern is doing nothing but setting up a regular repeating series of points, which you’re connecting to form whatever shape you want.  Yes, it is true that you can make any letter in any alphabet by sticking together various points in the FoL.  But it’s not the FoL forming those shapes naturally, it’s you choosing what points are needed to force the letter into the pattern of points.

Consider this geometric pattern based off of my bathroom floor, for example.  It does the exact same thing that your FoL does, in that it sets up a regular and repeating pattern of points.  Notice how it has no curved lines, making it quite different from your FoL.  And yet, we can easily create a letter “G” from it.  And that’s not all.  Here we see that we can make the letter pi with no problem.  We can make any letter we want to, just by connecting the points that we want.  Look at this example, where we not only have the ancient sacred symbol known as the “Smy Li Fase”, but also the numbers one through ten and the word “falafel” in Arabic (hmmm, perhaps I’ll call my pattern the Complete Flower of Falafel?).

All it takes is to connect the points that we need to make the symbol.  There’s nothing special about those points in particular that set them apart from all the other points on the pattern.  It’s not as though I could have only formed that “G” with those exact points and no other.  I’m just randomly choosing a starting point and forcing the letter onto whatever points I want.  The pattern doesn’t form the letter; I form the letter on the pattern.  And it’s the same with the FoL.

It doesn’t even have to be a regular repeating pattern.  That just makes it easier.  Consider Escher’s “Ascending and Descending”.  That’s not an image of just a completely symmetrical repeating pattern the way that your Flower of Life or my Flower of Falafel are.  And yet, I can connect points on it to form a “G”.  I could probably make all sorts of other letters as well.

Your Flower of Life isn’t special in that it can be used to draw or trace symbols.