The Meaning Of Masonry
by W.L. Wilmshurst
From what has been said in these pages the full significance of the Apron will now be perceived and may be summarized thus:-
1. The Apron is the symbol of the corporeal vesture and condition of the soul (not so much of the temporal physical body, as of its permanent invisible corporeity which will survive the death of the mortal part).
2. The soul fabricates its own body or " apron " by its own desires and thoughts (see Genesis III, 7, " they made themselves aprons ") and as these are pure or impure so will that body be correspondingly transparent and white, or dense and opaque.
3. The investiture of the candidate with the Apron in each Degree by the Senior Warden as the Master's delegate for that purpose is meant to inculcate this truth; for the Senior Warden represents the soul which, in accordance with its own spirituality, automatically clothes itself with its own self- made vesture in a way that marks its own progress or regress.
4. The unadorned white Apron of the First Degree indicates the purity of soul contemplated as being attained in that Degree.
5. The pale blue rosettes added to the Apron in the Second Degree indicate that progress is being made in the science of regeneration and that the candidate's spirituality is beginning to develop and bud through. Blue, the colour of the sky, is traditionally associated with devotion to spiritual concerns.
6. In the Third Degree still further progress is emblematized by the increased blue adornments of the Apron, as also by its silver tassels and the silver serpent used to fasten the apron-strings. In the First and Second Degrees no metal has appeared upon the Apron. The candidate has been theoretically divesting himself of all base metals and transmuting them into spiritual riches. With Mastership he has attained an influx of those riches under the emblem of the tassels of silver, a colourless precious metal always associated with the soul, as gold by reason of its supreme value and warm colour is associated with Spirit. The silver serpent is the emblem of Divine Wisdom knitting the soul's new- made vesture together.
7. The pale blue and silver of the Master Mason's Apron become intensified in the deep blue and gold ornamentation worn by the Grand Lodge Officers, who in theory have evolved to still deeper spirituality and transmuted themselves from silver into fine gold. " The king's daughter (the soul) is all glorious within; her clothing is of wrought gold," i.e., wrought or fabricated by her own spiritual energies.
