Page 21 - WM Manual Guide and Monitor 2024 - 2025

In what sense has brotherhood always been a reality, a "law of the world"?
Does Freemasonry create brotherhood?
Define the kingdom of heaven and can you think of a better definition?
In what sense was brotherhood "true" during savage times?
Does brotherhood seem like a frail tender thing to you?
In what sense is this an erroneous thought?
What are the enemies of brotherhood?
What is the hoodwink that prevents men from discovering it in their own lives?
What is the real hoodwink?

Give examples of this same idea from religion, politics, and science.

THE CABLE TOW

I
The cowboy who "lassoes" a pony and the Laplander who throws a noose about the
neck of a reindeer are making use of a device for fettering and controlling animals
that was discovered by man long before the beginnings of history. Because of the
many uses to which he put the rope, or noose, and because it was a natural thing
for his imagination to play about simple every day implements, and experiences
man early made a symbol of the noose. It may be that the emblematic use of the
rope could be traced to yet other sources, but that given is reasonable enough and
may stand in our mind for a suggestion of the manner in which symbols and
emblems often come into existence. The candidate in a number of the Ancient
Mysteries was led into the place of initiation at the end of a rope; Brahmins and
Dervishes continue to make a similar use of it at the present time. In every such
case the noose, rope, or cable tow has been used to signify control, obedience, and
direction. (See "Ars Quatuor Coronatorum," Vol. I, p. 264. Hereafter, in referring
to these familiar volumes, which contain the published transactions of a great
Lodge of Masonic Research of London, England, I shall use the well-known
initials, A.Q.C.)
This symbol, as every candidate has learned, is used in Masonic ceremonies.
When, by whom, and in what manner it was introduced there is still an open
question, though our scholars have searched far and wide to discover. Its use may
have been borrowed from earlier fraternities; or it may have been inherited from
the Operative Lodges who may have used it for the purely practical purpose of
maintaining bodily control of the candidate. The latter supposition receives a
certain amount of support from the fact that English lodges still give the cable tow
a non-symbolical function, and then in the First Degree only; and there are echoes
of such a meaning in the First Degree as practiced here in the United States.
II
Mackey defines a cable tow as "a rope or line for drawing or leading" and suggests