In my previous article (Enlightenment from Ritual. FMT, Spring 1998) I quoted Emulation Ritual to state that the idea of ‘improvement’ is represented by the geometrical figure of a circle. Now I present a further consideration on this important topic.
    The idea of the ‘circle’ was already to be found in the ‘Rosicrucian’ manifesto known as the Fama Fraternitatis (The Fame of the Fraternity), published in Cassel in 1614:

Where Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras and others hit the mark, where Enoch, Abraham, Moses and Solomon also excelled, where the greatest and most extraordinary of books, the Bible, is in concordance, as in a sphere or globe, where all points are equidistant from the centre.

The figure of the circle with a point in its centre is also found in Città del Sole (City of the Sun) by the late-Renaissance Calabrian magus, Tommaso Campanella, who uses it to represent the sun. It was also traced by the divine compass of Dr Robert Fludd. However, the best explanation, at least for this writer, is given by Mircea Eliade in The Myth of the Eternal Return, in which he shows that in primitive cultures, reality is not experienced as history, ie: as a concatenation of individual actions and contingent events. The term ‘reality’ rather concerns the mythical Original and Divine, of which every historical event is considered both a reproduction and a repetition. Man’s actions are only significant if they refer back to the original Divine. When new events occur, primitive man gives them sense through rituals. The Divine is reproduced in the ritual and, through the ritual, man finds safety in God. Ritualising new events, different from preceding ones, also protects man against the chaos in which he lives.
    Primitive man knows two types of time: pure time – primordial and divine – and the historical time of everyday life. This present is characterised by fixed, divine archetypes which give meaning to his representations, experiences and perceptions of the world in which he lives and works.
    Time, for primitive man, is cyclic. His life pursues its course within the circuit of time, in which each instant recommences from the beginning. Nothing new happens: things, events, single actions all come and go but do not change, because time is conceived in the eternal return. The experience of time is not the experience of individual and irreversible events but the experience of their repetition. But the experience of this repetition is nothing other than the experience of eternity. And eternity means God.
    Plato, in The Timaeus, says that time can be understood as a reproduction of eternity only if its course is circular. Only the circle can be, in the finite, a reproduction or moving image of the infinite, since its orbit is infinite and each point of its circumference is equidistant from its centre. For Aristotle too, in his Physics, time is similar to a circle. If the passage of time is represented as an orbit, then time will periodically return to itself (Eliade’s idea of the eternal return). This, however, presupposes the immutability of being (the original Divine) without denying the finite condition of the world. The means through which the infinite manifests itself in the finite (history) is time, because it is in time that the finite condition of the world is grasped.
    However, if the eternal being is to show itself in the temporality of the finite world, the course of time must be capable of being represented in circular form, where each point is equidistant from the centre and the eternal being is equally near and distant to all times. Infinity, therefore, shows itself in the finite being through the temporal circuit, for it is contemporary to all times. Eternity, represented by a circle, is eternal contemporaneity.
    The circle is not only the expression of the Eternal and the Divine. It is also the space in which God manifests Himself: the sacred space, the temple. Once again it is Mircea Eliade who makes this clear in The Sacred and the Profane. For primitive or archaic man, the representation of space is of a religious type. Within it move animals, men, divinities and demons. These spaces must be respected as their vital spheres.
    Sacred space is always circumscribed and separated from profane spaces. It is protected from the hostility and hollowness of the profane world by rituality. Although separated from profane space, it is open upwards, towards the Divine. Jacob’s Ladder is a biblical example. Sacred spaces are, therefore, gateways to heaven which place man in communication with God. Sacred space is, by its very nature, the temple.
    Space in this sense is closely bound up with the symbolism of the centrality of the world, which is interpreted in various ways. The most important is as the axis mundi (axis of the world), represented by a column which supports the world, the pole of a tent, a mountain or the holy city. The centre of the world is the temple, ie: a copy of God’s home in heaven – hence the Temple of Solomon, the Christian basilica, the Romanesque church and the Gothic cathedral, which were intended as earthly reproductions of the celestial, eternal city.
    In the Emulation Ritual, the circle is a figure used to represent the improvement of the Mason. In the light of the foregoing reflections, it seems clear that a). this improvement cannot take place unless it is guided by God (the Eternal, the Origin), b). God becomes manifest through the ritual, and, c). the ritual teaches the Mason not only how to acquire the highest human virtues, but also how to live in relation to God.
    An analysis of the concept of ‘improvement’ reveals the philosophical foundation of Freemasonry. Anyone wishing to negate this foundation would have to declare that Freemasonry’s reference to the circle, like that of Plato, Aristotle and other thinkers, is mere chance. This, however, would be seriously to wrong the founding-fathers of Freemasonry, who were anything but ignorant on philosophical matters – one need only look at the figure of Elias Ashmole, heir to occult philosophy and a founder of the Royal Society.

Giuliano Di Bernardo is a Professor of Philosophy at Trento University and Grand Master of the Regular Grand Lodge of Italy.