Jacob's Ladder
The Heavens as the central motif. From Masonic Chart.
What is happening
Jeremy L. Cross, 1826 “F. H. C.”
Symbolica Plate 7 of the chart, in the Entered Apprentice degree. The monitor prints no lecture on the ladder; the sentence it prints where that lecture falls is quoted on the mark, and the match of its three virtues to the three lettered rungs is the archive's observation.
Key · 1 motif
Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line, with the reading its author gave it.
- Primary motif
The picture
A ladder rising from a hillside into a cloud full of stars, its three rungs lettered F, H and C from the ground up. By eye
The reading
The picture read whole, in the archive's words, from the sources quoted on the marks. Read on, and the picture follows: the motif under discussion keeps its colour.
Plate 7 is a ladder from a hillside into a cloud full of stars, with three rungs lettered F, H and C from the ground up. The monitor prints no lecture on the ladder: that part of the Entered Apprentice degree belonged to the unwritten work, and the printed page skips from a psalm to a single sentence.
The sentence is the one the rungs are lettered for. ‘The greatest of these is Charity; for our Faith may be lost in sight; Hope ends in fruition; but Charity extends beyond the grave, through the boundless realms of eternity.’ Faith, Hope, Charity, F, H, C, in the order they are climbed; and the top rung, Charity, is the one that reaches into the cloud, which is where the sentence puts it, beyond the grave and among the stars. The match between the letters and the sentence is the archive's observation. Cross printed the picture and the sentence on the same subject and left the reader to put them together.
Seven stars are in the cloud. The monitor counts nothing here, and the archive does not count for it.
Decoded: every motif is marked, and each mark carries the reading its author gave it, quoted from the text, or says that it is observed on the picture and not read. The reading above is the archive's own, made from those sources and no others.
A diagram of everything, drawn so that a person can be found inside it. Note where the human figure stands in the scheme.
In plain words The ladder goes up into a cloud with seven stars in it. The monitor does not print the lecture on the ladder; what it prints, on the page where that lecture would fall, is a sentence comparing the three things the rungs are lettered for: faith may be lost in sight, hope ends in fruition, but charity extends beyond the grave through the boundless realms of eternity. The top rung is C, and it is the one that reaches the cloud.
Jeremy L. Cross, 1826 “The greatest of these is Charity; for our Faith may be lost in sight; Hope ends in fruition; but Charity extends beyond the grave, through the boundless realms of eternity.”
Symbolica The rungs are lettered F, H and C from the ground up, and the monitor's sentence names Faith, Hope and Charity in that order; the ladder itself is not explained in print. The match is the archive's observation, not a statement of Cross's.
Also carrying the Heavens
61 works carry it. The 6 where it is the central motif are here. The symbol.
In the same series
Record
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