A Mason's Work

In this episode, we examine Geometry not simply as a spatial discipline, but as a symbolic science of relationships, continuity, and structure. Continuing our series on the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences, this conversation invites Masons to reflect on how points, lines, shapes, and vectors model not only the world around us—but also our experiences, identities, and internal logic.
Geometry becomes a language for making ideas visible, creating coherence in memory, identity, and behavior by exploring how things relate to one another over time and space.
🔑 Key Takeaways
  • Geometry is symbolic—it reveals how things relate to each other, not just where they are.
  • Applying geometric concepts like parallelism or vectors helps clarify identity and personal history.
  • Geometric thinking externalizes and stabilizes thoughts, giving form to complexity.
💬 Featured Quotes
“You take simple geometric concepts like parallelism… and start to compare interesting ideas and concepts.”
 — [00:00:33]“The externalization of concepts into space allows you to operate on those concepts in meaningful ways.”
 — [00:01:34]“History, for example—let’s say you’re born, and that was a point. And you are traveling on a line in a direction. Now it’s a point and a line and a vector.”
 — [00:02:07]“Most relationships, for that matter, are triangular or more… and you start to understand that there’s relationships and ratios there that are fundamental and really important.”
 — [00:03:02]
🔗 Explore Related Episodes
🎧 Ep. 72 – The symbolic nature of arithmetic
Explores how numerical structure helps clarify thought and align internal models with external action.
🎧 Ep. 69 – The Grammar of the Lodge: Structure, Symbol, and the Spoken Word
Focuses on language structure as a reflection of internal discipline and symbolic function.
🎧 Ep. 60 – Thinking in Symbols
Discusses symbolic tools and their power to shape self-reflection, transformation, and communication.

 

Creators and Guests

Host
Brian Mattocks
Host and Founder of A Mason's Work - a podcast designed to help you use symbolism to grow. He's been working in the craft for over a decade and served as WM, trustee, and sat in every appointed chair in a lodge - at least once :D

What is A Mason's Work?

In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.

So, as much as arithmetic is a lens into the world to create and really meaningfully come

to grips with definitions as a concept, to define discrete variables, all of that kind

of stuff put form to subject, geometry then takes those forms and connects them to each

other in space. So, with geometric precision, you can do all sorts of things when you're

comparing interesting ideas and concepts. This all sounds perhaps a little bit intellectualized,

I guess, but when you start to look at this, you can take simple geometric concepts like parallelism

where two blinds that are parallel will never meet, right? Are there concepts in life

or in your own behavior that have a parallelism style relationship? This is how geometry

really informs the conversation between subjective experiences between those sort of erythmatic

concepts or these boundary conditions or what have you. So, you take shapes in space,

those shapes behave a certain way, understanding how those shapes interact and relate to each

other starts to be really significant in terms of a lens into your own sort of functioning

cognition, right? And as you pursue some of these ideas, the externalization of concepts or behaviors

or thought processes into space allows you to operate them on, operate on those concepts in

meaningful ways. In using geometric principles, you can start to really put relationships to

to those things that maybe you hadn't thought of before. So, you take things like your own personal

history, for example, let's say you're born and that was a point and you are traveling on a line

in a direction. So, now it's a point and a line and a vector. You can look at those points and

look at all the points on that line that have made your life and evaluate from its origin

to the present moment what one part has led to the other. You can't be aligned without

all of those points being in some level of continuity for folks that feel like they're not well

attached to their own story. Taking the time to create that geometric relationship in your own

history starts to really become a powerful way to get from point A to point B and there's lots

and lots of examples for how you can then take those geometric principles further.

You take parallelism as concepts, you take a lot of the basic geometric analysis for triangles,

most relationships for that matter are triangular or more and you start to understand that

there's relationships and ratios there that are fundamental and really important. So, as you're

sitting there with your arithmetic function and you've got your concepts laid out and you know

what you're doing, you've given things form. Now you take and apply geometry as a science to those

concepts and all of a sudden again there's just things are starting to become objective

and relational and that's the value of geometry and your study.