The Company Within: The Winding Stair and the Making of the Masonic Self, 1730–1922

In 1730 Prichard gave a winding stair "Seven or more" steps because seven or more men make a perfect lodge. In 1922 Wilmshurst wrote that "Man himself is a Lodge", applying the catechism's definition of a company to one person, and that its seven officers "typify the mechanism of human consciousness". This article traces, from dated printed texts, how a rule about who must be present became a description of one person. The same numerals have counted persons, subjects, faculties, stages of a life, and parts of a consciousness. The hinge is a lecture printed by Carlile in 1825, in which three, five and seven become stops on one stair, filled with faculties of mind, the senses and the arts. The degrees had turned inward by 1775, but the stair's numbers kept counting persons: a rule in use could be explained, but not easily re-referred. The article also reconstructs the stair. The English series 1, 3, 5, 7, 11 is a lodge list, which is why it lacks nine, and Mackey's stairs of twenty-seven and sixteen steps are most probably Oliver's stops added up. The American fifteen may have arisen in the same way or from degree sizes laid end to end, and it first appears without a reason of its own. Comparison with Bede, Bunyan and other ascent traditions suggests what is distinctive: elsewhere the steps were stages of a journey from the start; here they began as a count. Dating remains provisional, and the tests are named. Working paper. Dating is provisional and several secondary sources are still to be read in full; these limits are stated in the text.