Entered Apprentice

What this is

The Entered Apprentice is the first degree of Craft Masonry, the seeker who has just crossed the threshold. Its emblem is the rough ashlar, the unworked stone freshly quarried, and its keyword is BOAZ, the left-hand pillar that stands for strength. The candidate is brought in poor and in darkness to receive his first light.

What it governs

This degree presides over beginnings and the laying of foundations; on the Oracle it governs Monday, Thursday, and Sunday, the three weekdays whose currents are read through the first degree. It rules the start of any undertaking and the state of the learner who must submit the unformed self to the working tools. Its emblem is BOAZ, the pillar on which strength must first be established.

Its properties

Its number is one, the first step. Its working tools are the Twenty-Four-Inch Gauge and the Common Gavel, the instruments of rough measure and the knocking-away of what is superfluous, by which the rough ashlar is first dressed. Its virtue is the obedience and self-mastery of one who lets the unformed self be shaped; its shadow is the impatience of the beginner who wants to be a master before he has consented to be taught, and the loose tongue that betrays the trust just given.

Where else it appears

This is the same note as every initiation into darkness before light: the neophyte led blindfold into the mysteries, the novice stripped of the old self, the rough stone of the Tree's lowest work waiting to be shaped. The candidate at the lodge door and the seeker entering any mystery school are one figure, the soul that must consent to be a beginner before it can be made new.

Where you meet it on the Oracle

On the Oracle, the Entered Apprentice appears on the Masonic surface on Monday, Thursday, and Sunday, framing those days through the first degree's lesson of beginnings and rough work. When it shows, read the day as one for starting, for submitting the unformed parts of yourself to honest shaping, and for guarding what has been entrusted to you. The gauge measures your hours; the gavel knocks away what does not belong.

Why it matters

The Entered Apprentice matters because no work, inner or outer, can stand without honest foundations laid in humility. It asks you to accept being a beginner whenever you are one, to give your rough self over to the working tools, and to let yourself be shaped before you presume to shape others.

Correspondences

number

1

day

Monday, Thursday, Sunday