Some Notes on the Lamb & Lambskin Apron of Freemasonry

Some Notes on the Lamb & Lambskin Apron of Freemasonry (Oct 29, 2009)

 

In Freemasonry, the lambskin apron is of signal importance. As I have been pondering its significance, I have discovered some rather interesting themes surrounding the lamb as a symbol in ancient times. I cannot include all aspects of it for this little essay, but there is enough to help me appreciate why Masonry emphasizes its meaning and use.

 

The Christian emphasis on the lamb and its spiritual significance is noted by most commentators, yet it is much broader and deeper in time than

Early Christianity. “Because a lamb was the sin offering of the ancient pagans, the early mystic Christians considered this animal as an appropriate emblem of Christ, whom they regarded as the sin offering of the world. The Greeks and the Egyptians highly venerated the lamb or ram, often placing its horns upon the forehead of their gods. The Scandinavian god Thor carried a hammer made from a pair of ram’s horns. The lamb is used in preference to the ram apparently because of its purity and gentleness; also, since the Creator Himself was symbolized by Aries, His Son would consequently be the little Ram or Lamb. The lambskin apron worn by the Freemasons over that part of the body symbolized by Typhon or Judas represents that purification of the generative processes which is a prerequisite to true spirituality. In this allegory, the Lamb signifies the purified candidate…”(1)

 

The lamb in the Apocalypse on the book which is on the altar in Freemasonry, “…represents the Shekhinah, that is, the presence of the glory of God on the Ark of the Covenant.”(2) The meek and lowly lamb “embodies the triumph of renewal.”(3) Interestingly, in a very similar vein with Freemasonry, we are to understand that in allegory there are three meanings to every symbol. “Taking sheep as an instance, there are three degrees: [I] the white and innocent thoughts of the mind; [2] the man himself who has become lamb-like; [3] the lamb of God.”(4)

 

The symbolism of the lamb of God originated because of the ancient cosmology. “The blood of the lamb is the solar life pouring into the world through the sign of Aries.”(5) Robert Eisler, in his fascinating exposition on Orpheus has demonstrated that the Ewe’s milk, instead of the cow or goat milk in antiquity was always used in a sacramental/Eucharistic sense. The theme of sacrificing the bull and the “magical reviving of the sacrificial lamb by boiling it in its mother’s milk,” take on an intensely interesting meaning when we are taught that these words have “an astral and cosmological significance, for according to a well known Pythagorean doctrine the souls had to pass on their way down as well as on their return to the sky through the galaxy… only as such could they pass through the galaxy and reach the blissful fields of heaven.”(6) The lamb is understood to be the “victory always to be won afresh of life over death.”(7) It was throughout the European and Asiatic (including China) regions over vast reaches of time that the lamb “was sacrificed on all the altars of pre-Christian cults.”(8) Because of its whiteness, as well as coming from the one animal understood as being pure and innocent, the milk of the lamb among all the pre-Christian peoples that we know anything of, “was a revered and precious liquid and nearly all the ancient religions used it as a perfect ritual substance…from one end of the ancient world to the other, it was related with the idea of prosperity and happiness.”(9)

 Endnotes

1.    Manley Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Philosophic Research Society, reprint, 1997: CLXXXVI.

2.    Louis Charbonneau Lassay, The Bestiary of Christ, Parabola Books, 1992: 74-75.

3.    Jean Chevalier, Alain Gheerbrant, The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, Penguin Books, 1996: 585.

4.     Harold Bayley, The Lost Language of Symbolism, 2 Vols., Citadel Press, 1988: Vol. 1: 97.

5.    Manley Hall,  The Secret Teachings of All Ages, XCI.

6.    Robert Eisler, Orpheus the Fisher, Kessinger Publishing reprint, n.d.: 7-8, and note 2.

7.    Chevalier, Gheerbrant, Ibid., p. 585.

8.    Lassay, p. 78-79.

9.    Lassay, p. 80.