No symbol in all Freemasonry has the universal significance of the Square. It is the typical jewel; the emblem known the world over as the premier implement of the stone worker and the most important of the Masonic working tools.
Every schoolboy learns that an angle of ninety degrees is a right angle. So common is the description that few - even few Masons - pause in busy lives to ask why. The ninety-degree angle is not only a right angle, but it is the right angle - the only angle which is right for stones which will form a wall, a building, a cathedral. Any other angle is, Masonically, incorrect.
About the symbolism of the Square is nothing abstruse. Stonemasons use it to prove the Perfect Ashlars. If the stone fits the square, it is ready for the builders use. Hence the words try square and hence, too, the universal significance of the word square, meaning moral, upright, honourable, fair dealing.
Five centuries before the Christian era - to mention only one ancient use of the Square as an emblem of morality - a Chinese author wrote a book called The Great Learning. In it is the negative of the Golden Rule, that a man should not do unto others that which he does not wish others to do unto him. And then the Chinese sage adds, This is called the principle of acting on the Square.
The initiate walks around the lodge turning corners on the square. On the altar is again the Square. He sees the Square hung about the neck of the Master - particularly is the Square the jewel of the Master, because from him must come all Masonic light to his brethren, and his teachings must be square. The Square shares with the Level and the Plumb the quality of immovability in the lodge, meaning that as it is always the jewel of the Master, so is it immovably in the Symbolic East. An emblem of virtue , it is always in sight of the brethren in the lodge; for him who carries his Masonry into his daily life, it is forever in sight within, the try square of conscience, the tool by which he squares his every act and word.
I have chosen the pseudonym Square Tyre for one other purpose, and it is to ask the question: how do you make a square wheel turn?
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