Symbols of the Order
A shared language rather than articles of belief.
The symbols of the Order are drawn from the Christian mystical tradition in which the Grail legend arose, from the Hermetic and alchemical tradition that grew beside it, from the Rosicrucian and Martinist streams, and from the literature of chivalry. The Order treats them as a shared language. No member is asked to believe in a symbol, and no symbol is thought to have power of its own. A symbol, in the Order's understanding, is a picture of something that cannot be said directly, given so that the one who contemplates it may come, in time, to see what it pictures. This page describes the emblem of the Order and nine of its principal symbols, so far as they may be described in public.
The Emblem of the Order
The Light is in the Cup, and the Cup is the heart made ready.
The emblem of the Order is a chalice with a broad bowl, a knot upon its stem and a spreading foot. Above its rim stands a small cross. Within its bowl is a flower of light: a round heart, four petals set at the four quarters, and four rays between them.
The chalice is the Grail, and the Grail is the heart. The cross above it is the Cross of incarnate life, upon which the Rose of the Rosicrucians opens, and the sign of the Christian mystical tradition in which the legend of the Grail was first told. The flower within the bowl is the Light received, which is the meaning of the Order's motto. Its four petals are the Rose. Its eight points recall the eighth sphere of the Hermetic writings, beyond the seven, to which the soul rises when it has given back all it acquired in its descent. And its place, at the very centre of the vessel, is the place the Martinists call the heart's sanctuary, where the soul turns in silence toward its source. Every stream of the Order is in the emblem, and none of them is in it alone.
Nine Symbols of the Work
The badges of the degrees, the emblems of the Vigil and the pictures by which the work is remembered.
The Cup
The central symbol of the Order: the human heart emptied, cleansed and offered, so as to receive the Light. It is the Grail of the romances, understood not as an object to be found but as a condition to be attained.
The Seven Stars
Set above the Cup in the badge of the Page. They are the seven planetary spheres of the Hermetic writings, through which the soul descends into life and by which it may ascend, giving back at each sphere the distortion it took there.
The Rose upon the Cross
The badge of the Squire: the soul opening at the centre of incarnate life when its conditions are accepted, and not before. The emblem of the Rosicrucian stream, which the Order holds for its meaning and not for any claim of descent.
The Lamp
Shown within the Cloak in the badge of the Knight or Dame: the Light kept and carried in secret. Also the flame kept burning at Harrowmere since 1987, from which the lamps of the Oratories are kindled at the Feast of Lights.
The Cloak and the Mask
Emblems of the later Martinist tradition: the cloak for the protection of the Divine, the mask for the anonymity of the servant. In the Third Degree they are joined to the sword and the spurs, so that the Knight or Dame is armed for service and veiled against pride.
The Sword and the Spurs
Given at the Vigil of Arms. The sword, made in the form of a cross, is discrimination, which divides the true from the false; the spurs are the will, which drives the self forward when it would rest. Neither is ever drawn in anger.
The Three Colours
Black, white and red: the three stages of the alchemical Great Work, dissolution, purification and recombination. The Order reads in them the three works described in the Discourse on the Cup: the heart emptied, the heart cleansed and the heart offered.
The Three Words
Quaere, Serva, Custodi: Seek, Serve, Guard. The words of the Page, the Squire and the Knight or Dame, each the whole of a degree in a single verb, and together the Three Words of the Order.
The Wounded King
The keeper of the Grail, who cannot be healed until someone asks him what ails him. The Order's reminder that the Cup is found not by the strongest knight but by the most compassionate, and that the question is the work.
On reading symbols
The Hermetic doctrine of correspondence teaches that the visible is a picture of the invisible, so that the seeker may learn of the inner from the outer. The Order applies the doctrine to its own symbols. Each is meant to be looked at for a long time, in meditation, until it begins to look back. The Squire's year-long meditation upon the Rose Cross is the clearest example, but every degree has its symbol, and every member is asked to live with it. What a symbol means is not exhausted by what this page says about it. What is said here is the beginning of the meaning, not the end.
What the symbols are not
The symbols of the Order are not talismans, and the Order teaches no use of them to obtain anything. They are not secret signs of recognition, and members do not wear them outside the Commandery. They are not claims: the Rose Cross does not make the Order Rosicrucian, the cloak and the mask do not make it Martinist, and the sword and the spurs do not make anyone a knight. As the Discourse on the Cup says of the Order's ceremonies, they are the picture of the thing and not the thing. The thing is a heart emptied, cleansed and offered, and it may be found in a person who has never seen any of these symbols at all.