TRIAD. Three in one. An important symbol in Free masonry. The number three was thought holy in the earliest antiquity. Numbers, six. 12, furnishes an instance. This must have its reason in the nature of the number. It repre sents to us unity and opposition, the principle and its development or opposition, and the connecting unity—syn thesis. It is the first uneven number in which the first even one is found: herein lie its peculiar signification and perfec tion. Even in antiquity it could not escape attention, that this number is to be found wherever variety is developed. Hence we have beginning, middle, end, represented in the heavenly rise, point of culmination and setting; morning, noon, evening, and evening, midnight, morning; and in general, in the great divisions of time, the past, the present, and the future. In space, also, this number three occurs, as in above, midst, and below; right midst, and left; and in general, in the dimensions of space, as length, breadth, and thickness, or depth. To the eye, the number is repre
sented in the regular figure of the triangle, which has been applied to numberless symbolical representations; the ear perceives it most perfectly in the harmonic triad. As the triple is also the basis of symmetry, that three-figured form is found in architecture, and in simple utensils, without any particular reference to symbolical or other significations. Of this kind are the triglyphs in architecture, the tripod, trident, the three thunderbolts of Jupiter, the ancient three stringed-lyre, though the number has in these objects, as well as in the three-headed Cerberus, other more symbolical relations. The Triad, represented by the delta, is a signifi cant emblem in a large number of Masonic degrees.