Regarding the mystic properties of these numbers, Pythagoras, the illustrious Greek mathematician and philosopher, made a discovery many centuries ago that proved very useful to the operative masons in perfecting the rectangular alignment of their edifices, according to Masonic tradition. This discovery was contained in the Forty-Seventh Proposition of Euclid’s First Book, whose diagram is now the Worshipful Master’s jewel. In this argument, the sides of the triangle have lengths of 3, 4, and 5, and the triangle’s area is 6. It was thus thought a particularly fortunate portent when Grand Lodge used the same sequence 3, 4, 5, and 6 to identify the Authors’ Lodge
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