The Age of Enlightenment is defined as the period when the universal ideas of
progress, deism, humanism, naturalism and others were materialized and became a
golden age for freemasons. It is wrong to assume that old and conservative Christian
ideas were rejected. Conversely, freemasons put them into new general shapes
and expressed them with the help of symbols in their daily routine. Symbols of
freemasons had close ties with the past and gave them, on the one hand, a visible
instrument, such as rituals and ideas to sense the transcendental, and on the other,
intense gnostic aspirations. Freemasons put in a great amount of effort to improve
themselves and to create their identity with the help of myths and symbols. It traces
its origins to the biblical builders of King Solomon’s Temple, the posterity of the
Templar Knights, and associations of the medieval craft guilds, which were also
symbolical and became their link not only to each other but also to the secular
world. In this work we analysed codified masonic symbols used in their rituals.
The subject of our research is the universal Masonic idea and its aspects
through the symbols in the daily life of the freemasons in Vilnius. Thanks to
freemasons’ signets, we could find continuity, reception, and transformation of
universal masonic ideas in the Lithuanian freemasonry and national characteristics
of lodges.
Taking everything into account, our article shows how the universal idea
of freemasonry spread among Lithuanian freemasonry, and which forms and
meanings it incorporated in its symbols. The objective of this research is to find
a universal Masonic idea throughout their visual and oral symbols and see its
impact on the daily life of the masons in Vilnius.
Keywords: Freemasonry, Bible, lodge, symbols, rituals, freemasons’ signets.
An Artist in the Secular World