Contemporary usage Ĭeremonial masonry stone of the Los Angeles Central Library building, laid in 1925 This is intended to signify the unity of the North associated with darkness and the East associated with light.
The initiate (Entered Apprentice) in Freemasonry is placed in the north-east corner of the Lodge as a figurative foundation stone. So mote it be.' The choir and congregation then sang the Hundredth Psalm. May He protect the workmen from danger and accident, and long preserve the structure from decay and may He grant us all our needed supply, the corn of nourishment, the wine of refreshment, and the oil of joy, Amen. The Provincial Grand Chaplain of the Masonic Order in Munster then read out the following prayer: 'May the Great Architect of the universe enable us as successfully to carry out and finish this work. The Deputy Provincial Grand Master of Munster poured offerings of corn, oil and wine over the stone after Bishop Gregg had declared it to be 'duly and truly laid'. He then gave the stone three knocks with a mallet and declared the stone to be 'duly and truly laid'. The Deputy Provincial Grand Master of Munster, applying the golden square and level to the stone said " My Lord Bishop, the stone has been proved and found to be 'fair work and square work' and fit to be laid as the foundation stone of this Holy Temple".' After this, Bishop Gregg spread cement over the stone with a trowel specially made for the occasion by John Hawkesworth, a silversmith and a jeweller. This ceremony was described by The Cork Examiner of 13 January 1865 as follows: Historically, Freemasons sometimes performed the public cornerstone laying ceremony for notable buildings. Īncient Japanese legends talk about Hitobashira (人柱, "human pillar"), in which maidens were buried alive at the base or near some constructions as a prayer to ensure the buildings against disasters or enemy attacks. Thus the custom is a substitute for the old practice of immuring a living person in the walls, or crushing him under the foundation-stone of a new building, in order to give strength and durability to the structure, or more definitely in order that the angry ghost may haunt the place and guard it against the intrusion of enemies. In these cases the measure of the shadow is looked on as equivalent to the shadow itself, and to bury it is to bury the life or soul of the man, who, deprived of it, must die. The Roumanians of Transylvania think that he whose shadow is thus immured will die within forty days so persons passing by a building which is in course of erection may hear a warning cry, Beware lest they take thy shadow! Not long ago there were still shadow-traders whose business it was to provide architects with the shadows necessary for securing their walls. It is believed that the man will die within the year. But sometimes, instead of killing an animal, the builder entices a man to the foundation-stone, secretly measures his body, or a part of it, or his shadow, and buries the measure under the foundation-stone or he lays the foundation-stone upon the man's shadow. The object of the sacrifice is to give strength and stability to the building. In modern Greece, when the foundation of a new building is being laid, it is the custom to kill a cock, a ram, or a lamb, and to let its blood flow on the foundation-stone, under which the animal is afterwards buried. Nowhere, perhaps, does the equivalence of the shadow to the life or soul come out more clearly than in some customs practised to this day in South-eastern Europe. This in turn derived from the practice in still more ancient times of making an animal or human sacrifice that was laid in the foundations.įrazer (2006: pp. 106–107) in The Golden Bough from 1890 charts the various propitiary sacrifices and effigy substitution such as the shadow, states that: These were symbolic of the produce and the people of the land and the means of their subsistence. The ceremony typically involved the placing of offerings of grain, wine and oil on or under the stone. The 1925 cornerstone ceremony of the Washington, D.C.
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