Loge Carpets

Purpose and origin

The Lodge Carpet, also known as the Lodge Chart or Lodge Drawing, is a central element of the Masonic ritual, if only because it is most often placed in the centre of the Lodge, on the Mosaic Pavement. Today, it is generally produced on a permanent medium, painted or printed on canvas or satin. It can be unrolled to reveal the symbols on it, then rolled up to conceal them.

This was not always the case. Originally, Masonic Lodges did not meet in permanent, purpose-built premises, and the Tableau was drawn on the floor with chalk and charcoal. At the end of the work, the tracing was erased. For the sake of authenticity, some of today's Lodges have reinstated this ancient ritual practice, which is admittedly rather demanding for the person who has to make the tracing.

lodge carpet

But what is the function of the Lodge Mat? It can be considered to have a dual function. The first is educational: the Tapis de Loge contains the main symbols for each Masonic grade, so it is a kind of aide-memoire for Freemasons. Most Masonic rituals also include an explanation of the Chart, which is read to the new Mason at the end of the initiation ceremony. The second function is more ritualistic, even sacred. The Carpet of Lodge materializes the Temple in which the Freemasons assemble, it is a Temple in miniature. Even if today we are used to working in premises that are permanently decorated with symbolic objects such as the two Columns, the Sun, the Moon, the Luminous Delta and the Knotted Rope...., the concrete presence of these ritual elements is not essential: everything that appears on the Lodge Carpet is ritually present and basically does not need to be materialised.

And what is the origin of the idea of tracing the main symbols that characterise Masonic rituals on the floor or displaying them on a carpet? It is probable that it is a reminiscence of the ancient practices of operative Masons. We find a clue in the fact that the Lodge Mat is placed on the Mosaic Pavement. Understood today as a symbol of the duality of the world, of the opposition of light and darkness, the Mosaic Pavement (called Square Pavement in ancient Anglo-Saxon rituals) was originally nothing more than a tool for transferring plans to another scale. In those days, there were no black and white squares, just a grid in which to transfer a drawing drawn on the plotting board. And it was undoubtedly with chalk or charcoal that the life-size line was drawn.

By tracing the symbols of each grade on the floor at the beginning of the Masonic work, the first speculative Freemasons were rediscovering the ancestral gesture of the Masters of the past, who used this method to move from the plan to the realisation. The Lodge Carpet placed on the Mosaic Pavement can therefore symbolise for us today the passage from idea to realisation, from thought to action.