The Four Principal Banners

                                                                                          by

Harry Mendoza

 

     The four Principal Standards bear devices of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle.  When were these emblems first used in the Royal Arch?  Whence did they come?  What or whom do they represent?

 When were they first used in the Royal Arch?

      It is not possible to be sure whether the four Principal Standards with the emblems they bear were in use at the start of Royal Arch masonry, which is believed to have been during the 1740s.  We have no information on the subject for that period.

     What we do know is that in 1764 Laurence Dermott, the Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of the Antients, referred in their Constitutions to armorial bearings said to belong to Rabbi Jehuda Leon, who had been displaying in Holland, Paris, Vienna, and London a model he had made of King Solomon’s Temple.

      Dermott quotes the emblazonment of these Arms, which can be simplified as follows:

     in the first quarter               blue, with a gold lion, rampant;

     in the second quarter         gold, with a black ox, walking;

     in the third quarter             gold, a man in crimson robe edge with ermine and                                                                                                    his hands erect;

     in the fourth quarter           blue, with an eagle perched, its wings raised, gold.

  

      The Grand Lodge of the Antients actively encouraged the Royal Arch.  Indeed, Dermott called it the “Root, Heart and Marrow of Freemasonry.”  Further, Dermott associated the Arms just described with Freemasonry, including the Royal Arch, and in 1775 that Grand Lodge adopted these Arms as their own.  They were not authorized to do so by the College of Heralds.

      At the Union of the two Grand Lodges in 1813, this Arms were place alongside those borne (without the appropriate authority) by the premier Grand Lodge.  It was some years later before a Grant of Arms from the College of Heralds regularized the use of the Arms.

      We know, therefore, that the emblems of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle have been associated with the Royal Arch from at least 1764.

Whence did the emblems come?

      There is some evidence that the man, the lion, the ox, and the eagle were emblems used by some ancient peoples in connection with their deities.  The source of the emblems so far as Freemasonry is concerned is undoubtably the Volume of Sacred Law.  There are three references to consider.

      Firstly, Numbers 2, vv. 3, 10, 18 and 25, which give details of the encampment of the tribes of Israel whilst they were in the wilderness.  The four leading divisions of the army of Israel were Judah, Reuben, Ephraim and Dan.  The biblical commentators give the devices borne on the standards of these four as respectively, a lion, a man, an ox, and a serpent or a horse rearing, his heels being bitten by a snake and the rider falling off. 

     Next, we have the vision in Ezekiel, Chapter 1 of which refers to (v. 5) “four living creatures . . . they had the likeness of a man (v. 6) . . . and every one had four faces . . . (v. 10) . . . as for their faces . . . the face of a man and the face of a lion . . . the face of an ox . . . the face of an eagle.”

      The third reference is from Chapter 4 of the Revelation of Saint John which records “four beasts” (v. 7), “and the first was like a lion, and the second was like a calf, and the third had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.”

      According to the Midrash, Rabbi Albin said four kinds of exalted beings have been created in the world.  The most exalted of living creatures is man; of birds, the eagle; of cattle, the ox; and of wild beast, the lion.  All of these received royalty and had greatness bestowed upon them, and they are set under the chariot of G-d, as it says, “As for the likeness of their faces . . . ,” and then goes on to quote Ezekiel 1.10 to which reference has just been made.

      The same source tells us that Rabbi Abbahu said “There are four lordly creatures.  The lord among birds is the eagle; the lord among cattle is the ox; the lord among beasts is the lion, and the lord over them all is man.  The Holy One, Blessed be He, took them and engraved them on the Throne of Glory, as it say. “The Lord has established His throne and His kingdom ruleth over it.’ ”

 What or whom do the emblems represent?

      Our ritual tells us that the four Principal Standards represent the leading standards of the four divisions of the army of Israel, the lion representing the division headed by the tribe of Judah, the man the division of the tribe of Reuben, the ox the division of the tribe of Ephraim, and the eagle the division headed by the tribe of Dan.

      There is nothing in the verse relative to Dan in Genesis 49, or indeed, Deuteronomy 33, that has any bearing or any connection with an eagle.  Why, then, is an eagle used on the Principal Banner for Dan?  And why do we occasionally find the eagle with a serpent in its talons on both the Principal Standard for Dan and also on his ensign?  An example of the latter can be seen in a Bible published in 1756 by the Rev. Thomas Stackhouse which has a page showing The Camp of the Israelites, in which the distinctive bearings for the tribes are seen quite clearly; that for Dan bears an eagle with a serpent in its talons.

      In Commentary on the Torah Nachmanides quotes Rabbi ibn Ezra (1092 – 1167), saying “The ancient sages say that . . . on Dan’s standard was the figure of an eagle.”  A footnote reads “This was because of the expression ‘as an eagle stirreth up its nest’ ” (Deuteronomy 32:11), and of Dan it is written “he was the rearward of all the camps” (Numbers 10:25) who stirred the attention of all the camps to lurking dangers.  Rashi (Rabbi Shelomoh Yitschaki Solomon ben Isaac, 1040 – 1105) explains the words in Deuteronomy 32:11 (The Soncino Chumash footnote page 1161) as follows:  “The eagle, whose instinct of love and piety for her young is very great, does not enter her nest suddenly, but gradually awakens them by flapping her wings before entering.”

      Neither of these comments give a satisfactory explanation of why Dan’s standard bore an eagle.  A request was made to the Rev. Geoffrey Shisler, Cantor of Kenton Synagogue, to go back to the original Hebrew for a possible explanation.  He has stated that he finds it exceedingly difficult to trace the reason for the suggestion that Dan’s standard bore an eagle, and that the source everyone comes back to is Rabbi ibn Ezra.

      He also thought once source of influence might have been Proverbs 30:19 “The way of the eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock;” the mode of movement of both the eagle and the serpent is unfathomable.

      Another possible source, he says, is a serious suggestion made by Rabbi Solomon Zalman Netter (mid-nineteenth century), a famous commentator on the works of Rabbi ibn Ezra.  Netter refers to the Hebrew in Genesis 49:17, which reads:

      “Yehi Dan nahash ngale-derech shefifon ngale orah hanoshech ngike-beh-soos vayipol rochebo abhor.”

 The letters underlined form the word “nesher,” which means “eagle.”

      Yet another suggestion is offered by the Spanish exegete and statesman Don Isaac Abarbanel, namely that the device was meant to be a combination of eagle and serpent, a kind of winged dragon.

      All that can be said with a degree of certainty is that the old biblical commentators used a great deal of imagination in relating one thing to another to establish the connection they wanted!

      There is another explanation in the Midrash as to why Dan’s standard bore an eagle.  The Rabbis say that the four leading divisions of the army of Israel, name Judah, Reuben, Ephraim, and Dan, correspond to the four groups of angels surrounding the celestial Throne in the vision of Ezekiel.  They then draw the conclusion that the four faces referred to in Ezekiel 1:10, namely a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle, correspond to the emblems used on the standards of these four tribes.

      It must be remembered that early Royal Arch masonry had a very strong Christian bias.  This is reflected here in the emblems of the eagle and the eagle with a serpent in its talons.

      The eagle is the emblem of St. John the Evangelist, the author of the last of the four Gospels.  The opening words of the Gospel are “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with G-d, and the word was G-d.”  These words played a prominent part in early Royal Arch masonry.

      The serpent is an emblem of the sinful nature of mankind.  The earliest biblical indication of this is found in Genesis 3:14; “And the Lord G-d said unto the serpent, because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shall you eat all the days of thy life.”

      The significance of an eagle with a serpent in its talons, therefore, is the triumph of the Word of G-d over the sinful nature of mankind.

      The eagle and the serpent are prominent in many churches.  The lectern, from which the Word of G-d is proclaimed, is quite often in the shape of an eagle with outstretched wings, one of which represents the Old Testament, the other the New Testament.  The eagle is the natural enemy of the serpent and many lecterns in the form of an eagle have a serpent at the foot of the pillar, symbolizing the evil powers conquered by the Word of G-d.

      The sinful nature of the tribe of Dan is referred to in the Lecture describing the ensigns, where we are told that “The tribe of Dan, however, were the ringleaders of idolatry and the first to apostasize from G-d.”  There is a reference to I Kings 12:28 – 30, which tells of Jeroboam establishing the worship of a golden calf in the town of Dan, which the Danites captured and destroyed by fire; they then rebuilt it and called it Dan (Joshua 19:47).

      From the time of Iranaeus each of the creatures, a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle, have been held to symbolize one of the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John “without much point,” according to the Rev. N. Turner BD, MTh, PhD. (Peake’s Commentary on the Bible).  Just why Iranaeus chose to symbolize the Evangelists by these creatures is not known; the reason often heard, however, is that man became the symbol of Matthew because his Gospel traces the human genealogy of Jesus; the lion was chosen to symbolize Mark because his Gospel begins with the words “the voice of one crying in the wilderness,” and it has been suggested that this suggests the roar of a lion; the symbol for Luke is an ox, the animal of sacrifice, and Luke’s Gospel stresses the atoning sacrifice of Jesus; and the high-soaring eagle is the symbol of John because in his narrative he rises to the loftiest heights in dealing with the mind of Jesus.

      Another viewpoint is that the man represents the incarnation of Jesus, the ox His passion, the lion His resurrection, and the eagle His ascension.

      Yet another view is found in a description of Grand Sutherland’s tapestry in Coventry Cathedral which interprets the vision of St. John the Divine (Revelation 4:6-8).  Referring to the four creatures, i.e., the man, the lion, the ox, and the eagle, the writer R. Furneaux Jordan (Cathedral Reborn a souvenir publication) says:

     “St. John the Divine uses these four figures as symbols.  He sees in these mysterious figures a reputation of supremacy – they stand for everything that is noblest, strongest, wisest, and swiftest in Nature.  The Rabbis were supposed to have believed that there were four supreme orders in the world:  among created beings, mankind; among birds, the eagle; among domestic animals, the ox; and among wild animals, the lion.  Each of them outstanding in its own particular sphere.”

      Our ritual refers to “A man to personify intelligence and understanding; a lion to represent strength and power; an ox to denote the ministrations of patience and assiduity; and an eagle to indicate the promptness and celerity with which the will and pleasure of the great I Am is ever executed.”

 Is there any significance in the order of the standards?

      The order in which the Principal Standards appear in most Chapters is (starting with that above the Chair of H) ox, man, lion, and eagle.  This is not the order in which they are usually referred to.

      There is no known reason for this.  Nor do we know when the order was first used.  However, we do have some evidence in the form of a painting of a tracing board for the Royal Arch by Harris, dated 1834.  It shows quite clearly that the order and layout of the ensigns and Principal Standards is the same as that used in most Chapters today.  This painting was reproduced as a frontispiece for the first edition of The Perfect Ceremonies of the Royal Arch Lecture (1876).  Incidentally, the first known printed copy of the Lecture on the Royal Arch ensigns appears in the second edition, 1877.

 

(Adapted from The Ensigns of the Twelve Tribes of Israel:  the Royal Arch Banners, by Harry Mendoza.  Frome and London:  Butler and Tanner, Ltd; 1989.  p. 78 – 84.