‘Texas says the apron is a place of the skull’

    

Marcus Delzell

Honorem Memento Mori by Marcus Delzell.

The Grand Lodge of Texas hosted its Grand Annual Communication this weekend at Waco, and one of the proposed amendments to the Laws approved by the voters (known as the Grand West) was Resolution No. 21.

Listen, to some of the guys, this was a really big deal: As of yesterday, it is legal to include the skull among the symbols adorning Masonic aprons.

Does Texas include the skull among the symbols revealed during their degrees? I have no idea. Most of the rest of us have the hourglass, the scythe, and the weeping virgin to remind us of mortality—to say nothing of the reading of minutes.

In coincidence, Bro. Marcus Delzell, of Parsons Lodge 222 in Austin, is an artist who painted the apron at top. On social media a week ago, he says:

My latest Masonic artwork in a series of symbolic paintings on aprons. This work was inspired by the memorial for the death of Hiram Abiff, and the symbols therein are represented in this work, abstracted to expand on different facets of symbolic meaning.

Since the monument is functionally a memento mori, I’ve included a skull from whose cranium is growing a sprig of evergreen; except this specific evergreen is that of eucalyptus, because of its property to be split in two to grow another plant with the second part. The red ribbon is representative of the weeping virgin. In many western fairy tales, a lock of hair is emblematic of innocence, and when illustrated is typically presented with a red ribbon to accentuate its carnal meaning. I’ve split Father Time into two symbols, one to highlight the invaluable time each of us have remaining, and the other to highlight his Saturnian aspects: The clock set at five seconds to midnight reminds us that our time on this mortal plane may end abruptly and soon. With this in mind, we should maintain the imperative to use our remaining seconds intentionally. The crow eating from the egg is the frontispiece of the artwork. This represents Chronos, or Saturn, who ate his children out of fear that they would overthrow him; even the Greek gods were not immune to the consumption of time. The potential for life from the creature in the egg has been stolen, and his eggy fortress of safety and vitality has been vanquished.

 

Marcus Delzell

The consternation evoked by this symbol should remind us to be patient, warm, and to keep the sanctity of innocence and potential in the forefront of our thoughts. In western esotericism, borrowing from Hinduism, there is a concept of the right and left hand paths. With each symbol facing towards the right, this artwork has a rightward chirality. This is a symbol for the right-hand path, which consists of a belief in the separation of mind, body, and soul; and the belief that judgment awaits us—something familiar to us as Masons.

 

Honorem Memento Mori

2026

16x16, acrylic on leather, cotton tassels

Not everything at the Communication was so pleasant. There is some kind of awful scandal concerning control of the board that governs the Masonic Grand Lodge Library and Museum of Texas. I may revisit this subject later, but right now I don’t know or even follow everything this entails. I anticipate knowledgeable coverage on the Dummies blog before long anyway.