The Sine of Masonry (Part 3)

By Sir Knight Thomas J. Driber, Ph.D.
Excerpted from an article in the Knight Templar Magazine, August, 2015  for educational purposes.

Jacob's Ladder

In the allegory of Jacob's ladder, Jacob is said to have left his father's house at Beer-Sheba and traveled toward Haran.  He stopped for the night and gathered rocks for his pillow, and after falling asleep, he dreamed of a ladder extending from earth to heaven and from heaven to earth.  Angelic beings were descending and ascending the ladder (Gen. 28: 10-22).  At the top of the ladder is the voice of God which speaks to Jacob.  Clearly we find Jacob in the material world as symbolized by his head laying on the denseness of a rock as he dreams of the voice of God and the ongoing descent and ascent of those angelic beings going up and down the ladder from heaven to earth and back again.  Again, the periodic oscillation of proportional displacement is depicted in imagery for us as a sine wave of continuous undulation of up and down on the ladder.  With God's voice at the top of the ladder, there can be no doubt as to where those beings are going who are ascending up.  With Jacob asleep with his head on a rock there can be no doubt as to where those are going who descend the ladder into the density of the material world.

More to come...