The History & Symbolism of Masonic Tracing Boards

On Wednesday, January 18th Bro. Daniel J. Di Natale, of Harmonie Lodge's Concordia Collegium: Academy of the Progressive Science of Freemasonry, will be presenting a lecture on the "History & Symbolism of Masonic Tracing Boards" at Charlotteville Lodge No. 73 in Newfane, New York. Dinner is at 6:30pm with the lecture to follow at 7:30pm. "Masonic Tracing Boards are training devices. In the earliest days ofspeculative Masonry, the Master used to sketch designs on the floor of theLodge before the meeting using chalk. Then he would talk about the drawingduring the meeting. . . However, this sort of preparationwas a time-consuming, laborious and difficult task; and in time it appears thatthe hand drawn diagram was replaced by a floor cloth on which the 'standarddesigns' were available ready to be talked about. Floor cloths (which aresometimes referred to as 'the Master’s Carpet') occupied significant space inthe Lodge, however; and as the ritual became increasingly better developed andmore important during the course of the 18th century the standardized drawingsseem to have been transferred (at least in England) to the 'Tracing Boards,' one Board for each Degree, which are pictures that encapsulate the symbols ofeach of the Degrees." - W. Kirk MacNulty (Masonic Tracing Boards and the Western MetaphysicalTradition, 1996)