Rhetoric

A Stroll Through The Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences

This article explores the crucial role of the liberal arts and sciences within Freemasonry, particularly highlighted during the Fellowcraft Degree's Winding Stair lecture.

Throughout our lives, we have heard of the liberal arts and sciences. But until we were presented with them in The Winding Stair lecture, most of us had only a vague notion of what they consisted. The Fellowcraft Degree commends Freemasons to study the Liberal Arts and Sciences, which are grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. When we study the historical background for this list, we will uncover layers of Masonic meanings for us in each of the seven areas of knowledge.

Esoteric Freemasonry A Growing Trend

pic Khunrath’s Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae (1595)

The body of Freemasonry is comprised of many types of individuals whose Masonic pursuits vary according to that individual’s personality and interests. Freemasonry has been very aptly been compared to a complex tapestry composed of many colourful overlapping individual threads which taken as a whole form a larger picture.

A Gentleman’s Introduction To The Seven Liberal Arts

The fundamental objective of engaging with the liberal arts lies in honing the mind's capacity for critical thinking, rather than merely instructing it on the contents to think about

The purpose of learning the arts is to train the mind how to think (as opposed to what to think).  By combining the seven liberal arts with the five senses, one can distinguish between reality and fiction. This can be visually represented with a Pythagorean triangle.


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