The form of a masonic lodge is said to be a parallelogram, or oblong
square; its greatest length being from east to west, its breadth from
north to south. A square, a circle, a triangle, or any other form but that
of an _oblong square_, would be eminently incorrect and unmasonic, because
such a figure would not be an expression of the symbolic idea which is
intended to be conveyed.

Now, as the world is a globe, or, to speak more accurately, an oblate
spheroid, the attempt to make an oblong square its symbol would seem, at
first view, to present insuperable difficulties. But the system of masonic
symbolism has stood the test of too long an experience to be easily found
at fault; and therefore this very symbol furnishes a striking evidence of
the antiquity of the order. At the Solomonic era--the era of the building
of the temple at Jerusalem--the world, it must be remembered, was supposed
to have that very oblong form,[66] which has been here symbolized. If, for
instance, on a map of the world we should inscribe an oblong figure whose
boundary lines would circumscribe and include just that portion which was
known to be inhabited in the clays of Solomon, these lines, running a
short distance north and south of the Mediterranean Sea, and extending
from Spain in the west to Asia Minor in the east, would form an oblong
square, including the southern shore of Europe, the northern shore of
Africa, and the western district of Asia, the length of the parallelogram
being about sixty degrees from east to west, and its breadth being about
twenty degrees from north to south. This oblong square, thus enclosing the
whole of what was then supposed to be the habitable globe,[67] would
precisely represent what is symbolically said to be _the form of the
lodge_, while the Pillars of Hercules in the west, on each side of the
straits of Gades or Gibraltar, might appropriately be referred to the two
pillars that stood at the porch of the temple.