represented by the point within the circle, was intended by the ancients as a type of the prolific powers of nature, which they worshiped under the united form of the active or male principle, and the passive or female principle. Impressed with this idea of the union of these two principles, they made the older of their deities hermaphrodite, and supposed Jupiter, or the Supreme God, to have within himself both sexes, or, as one of their poets expresses it, "to have been created a male and an unpolluted virgin."
Now, this hermaphrodism of the Supreme Divinity was again supposed to be represented by the sun, which was the male generative energy, and by nature or the universe, which was the female prolific principle. And this union was symbolized in different ways, but principally by the point within the circle, the point indicating the sun, and the circle the universe of nature, warmed into life by his prolific rays.
The two parallel lines, which in the modern lectures are said to represent St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, really allude to particular periods in the sun's annual course. At two particular points in this course the sun is found on the zodaical signs Cancer and Capricorn, which are distinguished as the summer and winter solstice. When the sun is in these points, he has reached respectively his greatest northern and southern limit. These points, if we suppose the circle to represent the sun's annual course, will be indicated by the points where the parallel lines touch the circle. But the days when the sun reaches these points are the 21st of June and the 22d of December, and this will account for their subsequent application to the two Saints John, whose anniversaries the Church has placed near those days.
So the true interpretation of the point within the circle is the same as that of the Master and Wardens of a Lodge. The reference to the symbolism of the world and the Lodge is preserved in both. The Master and Wardens are symbols of the sun—the Lodge, of the universe or the world; the point also is the symbol of the same sun, and the surrounding circle of the universe, while the two parallel lines really point, not to two saints, but to the two northern and southern limits of the sun's course.
