Page 22 - WM Manual Guide and Monitor 2024 - 2025

that it may have been derived from the German "Kabeltau" which has that
significance. Mackey adds that "the word is purely Masonic" but this is not quite
true because it is found in the Standard Dictionary of 1913 and there defined as "a
rope or line for drawing or leading; in Freemasonry, symbolizing in the Second
and Third Degrees the covenant by which Masons are bound." This last-named
point is inaccurate, as the reader will have instantly noted, because the cable tow is
used in the First as well as the other two degrees; this is one more example of the
woeful ignorance of Freemasonry displayed by profane editors of encyclopedias
and dictionaries and reminds one how careful a student should be to make sure of

the authenticity of his sources of information. Albert Pike traced the word back to
the Hebrew "Khabel," which meant variously "a rope attached to an anchor" and
"to bind as with a pledge." J. T. Lawrence finds its origin in two languages:
"cable," a Dutch word "signifying a great rope, which, being fastened to the
anchor, holds the ship fast when she rides"; "tow" he believes to be a Saxon word
"which means to hale or draw and is applied, nautically, to draw a barge or ship
along the water."
III
What does this symbol mean? Many have contended, Albert Pike among them, that
the cable tow is nothing more than a device for the bodily control of the candidate;
but this interpretation is not borne out by the Second and Third Degrees in both of
which it carries an undeniably symbolical meaning. Others see in it an emblem of
the natural untaught man's bondage to ignorance and lust, which bondage it is the
mission of Masonry to remove. Of such an opinion is Arthur Edward Waite, who,
seeing in the rope a suggestion of the cord that binds the unborn babe, or the babe
newly born, to its mother's body, finds in the symbol a representation of the gross
earthly ties that hold unregenerate men to their appetites and passions. In view of
the fact that the symbolism of rebirth runs through the Ritual this interpretation is
not at all far-fetched.

Paton finds in the cable tow a "simple and natural tie which unites the Fraternity":
Lawrence sees it as "the Mystic Tie binding the initiate to God, to the Order, and to
Righteousness; a tie which both binds and draws, and which holds a man fast, lest
he drift like a ship at sea." Churchward, who loves to go far afield, traces the
symbol back to ancient Egypt, where he believed himself to have discovered so
many Masonic origins, in whose Mysteries, some of them, the candidate wore a
chain about the neck "to signify their belief in God and their dependence on Him."
(See his "Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man.") Others have believed that the
cable tow is the symbol of all bad obedience—obedience to lust, to passion,
selfishness, worldliness, etc., and consequently must be removed from the
emancipated finder of the Light: others have found in it the opposite symbol of all
good obedience—the ties that bind a man to his fellows, to laws, to duty, and to
ideals.