Freemasonry · Solomon's Temple · Duality · Threshold

Boaz & Jachin

In Strength — In Establishment. The twin pillars that stood at the entrance of Solomon's Temple are the most ancient threshold symbol in Western esotericism — and they still stand at the entrance of every Masonic lodge in the world.

Biblical source

1 Kings 7:21 · 2 Chronicles 3:17

Builder

Hiram of Tyre · Architect of Solomon

Material

Hollow brass · 18 cubits high

Placement

Left (Boaz) · Right (Jachin) of temple porch

Section 01

The Symbol

Two pillars standing at a threshold — one on the left, one on the right, with the entrance of the temple between them. This is the oldest and most universal form of sacred architecture: the gateway marked by duality, the passage into the sacred space preceded by the acknowledgment that reality is structured by complementary forces. The pillars do not support the building; they are freestanding, placed at the porch of Solomon's Temple not as structural elements but as pure symbols — their function is entirely meaning, not architecture.

Boaz stands on the left (north in Masonic placement, south in the original Temple orientation facing east). Its name in Hebrew — בֹּעַז — is translated as "In strength," "In him is strength," or "By strength." It is the pillar of force, of the raw material of existence, of what powers the world before it is shaped. In Kabbalah it corresponds to the left pillar of the Tree of Life — the pillar of Severity, associated with Binah (Understanding), Geburah (Strength) and Hod (Splendour). It is feminine in the Kabbalistic reading — the receptive, constraining, form-giving principle.

Jachin stands on the right (south in Masonic placement). Its name — יָכִין — is translated as "He shall establish," "God will establish," or "In establishment." It is the pillar of divine order, of the principle that gives form and permanence to what Boaz provides as raw force. In Kabbalah it corresponds to the right pillar of the Tree of Life — the pillar of Mercy, associated with Chokmah (Wisdom), Chesed (Loving-kindness) and Netzach (Victory). It is masculine in the Kabbalistic reading — the expansive, establishing, creative principle.

Between the two pillars lies the threshold — the space that is neither one nor the other, but the product of their relationship. This threshold is the most significant element of the symbol: it is the space of initiation, the point of passage from the outer to the inner, from the profane to the sacred. The Mason who passes between Boaz and Jachin does so as an act of conscious acknowledgment — that one is entering the space where opposites are held in creative tension, where duality is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be lived with wisdom.

Left Pillar · North

Boaz

In Strength · בֹּעַז

Force before form — raw potential
The feminine principle — receiving
Pillar of Severity in Kabbalah
Darkness — the unknown, the unconscious
The moon — cyclical, receptive, fluid
Matter — the material of creation
The past — what has been given
Colour: black in Masonic tradition

Right Pillar · South

Jachin

He Shall Establish · יָכִין

Order from force — form given to potential
The masculine principle — establishing
Pillar of Mercy in Kabbalah
Light — the known, the conscious
The sun — constant, directive, illuminating
Spirit — the shaping intelligence
The future — what is being established
Colour: white in Masonic tradition

Section 02

Known History

The biblical account in 1 Kings 7:13–22 describes Hiram of Tyre — a master craftsman in bronze, the son of a widow of the tribe of Naphtali — being brought to Jerusalem by Solomon to cast the two pillars. Each was eighteen cubits high (approximately eight metres), twelve cubits in circumference, with elaborately decorated capitals of lily-work, pomegranates and chain-work. They were hollow, the bronze four fingers thick. Hiram set them at the porch of the temple: Jachin on the right, Boaz on the left. The account in 2 Chronicles 3:17 confirms the names and positions. No further explanation of their meaning is given in the biblical text — the interpretation is left to the reader.

Archaeological and historical research confirms that twin pillars at temple entrances were common throughout the ancient Near East. Excavations at Megiddo, Hazor and other Canaanite and Phoenician sites have uncovered temple structures with pillar-flanked entrances dating to the same period as Solomon's Temple. The temples at Cyprus and at Paphos — described by ancient writers — featured twin columns. The practice appears to have been part of a shared sacred architectural vocabulary across the Levant, which makes the Solomonic pillars part of a broader regional tradition rather than a unique invention.

The pillars of Solomon's Temple were destroyed when Nebuchadnezzar's army sacked Jerusalem in 587 BCE. The account in 2 Kings 25:13–17 describes the Babylonians carrying away the bronze pillars, the bronze sea and the bronze stands to Babylon — the metal was too valuable to leave. The Second Temple, built after the return from exile, apparently did not replicate the pillars. Their physical existence ended there; their symbolic life had barely begun.

Speculative Freemasonry adopted Boaz and Jachin as central symbols in the 18th century, incorporating the legend of Hiram Abiff — the master builder of the Temple murdered before he could transmit the secrets of a master mason — as the central narrative of the third degree. In every Masonic lodge worldwide, two pillars — one on each side of the lodge entrance, or represented on a tracing board — perpetuate the memory of the originals. The Worshipful Master's chair faces east; Boaz stands to his left (north), Jachin to his right (south).

Section 03

Esoteric Meaning

The two pillars encode one of the most fundamental insights of esoteric philosophy: that reality is structured by complementary dualities, and that wisdom consists not in choosing between them but in navigating the threshold they create. The initiate who passes between Boaz and Jachin does not choose strength over order, or order over strength — they learn to hold both simultaneously, to move through the world with the strength of Boaz and the ordered purpose of Jachin working together.

Reading 01 · Kabbalistic

The Tree of Life

Boaz corresponds to the left pillar of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life — the pillar of Severity (Binah, Geburah, Hod), which governs form, limitation and the shaping of raw force. Jachin corresponds to the right pillar of Mercy (Chokmah, Chesed, Netzach), which governs expansion, love and the creative outpouring of divine energy. The middle pillar — the path of the initiate — runs between them through the central Sephirot: Kether, Tiphareth, Yesod, Malkuth.

Reading 02 · Cosmological

Sun & Moon · Fire & Water

In alchemical and astrological readings, Boaz is lunar — the receptive, cyclical, feminine principle of water and the unconscious. Jachin is solar — the directive, constant, masculine principle of fire and consciousness. Their union in the temple's entrance enacts the sacred marriage: the alchemical coniunctio of sol and luna that produces the philosophical gold. The temple is the vessel in which this union becomes possible.

Reading 03 · Initiatic

The Threshold of Transformation

The most important meaning is architectural and experiential: the threshold between the pillars is the space of initiation itself. To pass between them consciously — acknowledging both what gives strength and what establishes order — is the first act of the Mason's inner work. Every genuine threshold in life has this structure: you cannot pass through by claiming one side and ignoring the other. Wisdom requires holding the tension.

Reading 04 · Practical

The Checkerboard Floor

The Masonic lodge floor between the pillars is laid in black and white squares — the mosaic pavement. This is not decoration: it is the visual encoding of the same duality the pillars represent, extended across the entire space the Mason walks through. Life itself, as the Masonic teaching goes, is a checkerboard of light and dark, joy and sorrow, success and failure. Wisdom is learning to walk across it without being dominated by either colour.

Section 04

Who Has Used It

Freemasonry — Every Lodge

1717 to present · Universal

Every regular Masonic lodge in the world displays or represents Boaz and Jachin — either as physical pillars flanking the lodge entrance, as miniature pillar models on the Master's pedestal, or depicted on the lodge's tracing board. The second-degree tracing board typically features the pillars prominently, with the globes on their capitals representing the terrestrial and celestial spheres. They are among the first symbols a Mason encounters.

Kabbalah — The Tree of Life

Jewish mysticism · Medieval Spain

The three pillars of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life — Severity (left), Mercy (right) and Equilibrium (middle) — are the same structure as Boaz and Jachin with the middle path added. The Zohar's extensive treatment of the Temple's symbolism explicitly identifies the pillars with these cosmic principles. Western esotericists from Pico della Mirandola onward have recognised the convergence and used both systems to illuminate each other.

Ancient Near Eastern Temples

c.3000–500 BCE · Regional tradition

Twin pillars flanking temple entrances appear throughout the ancient Near East: at Canaanite temples, at Phoenician sanctuaries, in Minoan palace architecture, at Egyptian temple pylons. The Egyptian pylon — the monumental gateway with two towers flanking the entrance — is the most architecturally developed form of the same symbolic structure: the threshold of duality marking the passage from the profane to the sacred.

Architecture — Sacred & Secular

Ancient to present · Universal form

The twin-pillar threshold has persisted as an architectural form from the ancient temple to the modern courthouse, bank and government building. Classical architecture — the two columns flanking a portico — encodes the same symbolic logic in a secularised form: the threshold of institutional authority is marked by duality, just as the threshold of the sacred was. The Supreme Court, the New York Stock Exchange, countless banks — all use the twin-column form.

Tarot — The High Priestess

Rider-Waite deck · 1909

In Arthur Edward Waite's 1909 Rider-Waite Tarot, the High Priestess sits between two pillars — one black (marked B for Boaz), one white (marked J for Jachin). She is the figure who inhabits the threshold — neither on one side nor the other, but the living embodiment of the space between. The veil of pomegranates behind her (echoing the decorations of Solomon's Temple) marks the entrance to the inner sanctum she guards. She is the mystery that the duality contains.

Astrology — The Gemini Twins

Mythological parallel

The astrological sign of Gemini — the twins — encodes the same principle: two complementary forces that together define a threshold of experience. Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri of Greek mythology, were divine twins associated with navigation and the protection of sailors — those who move between worlds, as the Mason moves between Boaz and Jachin. The parallel is structural: duality that creates possibility through its tension.

Section 05

In Plain Sight

Masonic Lodges Worldwide

The most direct presence: every Masonic lodge either displays physical pillars, miniature models or tracing boards depicting Boaz and Jachin. In older lodge rooms — particularly the grand Victorian and Georgian temple spaces that survive in British and American cities — the pillars are often architectural features of the room itself, eight to ten feet tall, flanking the entrance to the lodge space.

Banks & Financial Institutions

The classical portico with twin columns that fronts virtually every 19th century bank building in the Western world is the secularised descendant of the temple threshold. The Bank of England, the New York Federal Reserve, countless regional banks — all use the twin-column entrance to communicate stability, authority and the ordering of wealth. The symbolism is structural and deliberate, if not always consciously Solomonic.

Courts & Government Buildings

Courthouses, parliaments and government buildings across the Western world use the twin-column portico to signal the authority of law — the establishment of order (Jachin) through the application of force (Boaz). The US Supreme Court building, the Old Bailey in London, the Palais de Justice in Paris — each marks the threshold of institutional justice with the same bilateral form the Temple of Solomon used three millennia earlier.

The High Priestess Card

In the Rider-Waite Tarot — the most widely used tarot deck in the world, with hundreds of millions of copies in print — the second trump card depicts the High Priestess explicitly seated between pillars marked B and J. Every tarot reading that draws this card places Boaz and Jachin at the centre of the spread. The symbol reaches millions through this medium alone.

Gothic Cathedrals

Gothic cathedral architecture — built by the operative masons from whose traditions Freemasonry claims descent — consistently features the twin-tower west facade: two towers flanking the rose window and main portal. Chartres, Notre-Dame de Paris, Cologne Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral — the twin towers mark the threshold of the sacred space with the same bilateral symmetry as Solomon's Temple. The connection is not coincidental; the operative masons knew their precedents.

The Human Body

The most intimate expression of the two-pillar symbol: the human body itself is bilaterally symmetric — left and right sides, two arms, two legs, two hemispheres of the brain. Every human being is, in this sense, a walking embodiment of the Boaz-Jachin structure, with the spine as the middle pillar. The esoteric traditions that recognise this — yoga's ida, pingala and sushumna; Kabbalah's three pillars mapped onto the body — are pointing at the same structure.

Section 06

Psychological Dimension

The two pillars are among the most psychologically rich symbols in the Western esoteric tradition — precisely because the duality they represent is not abstract but lived. Every human being navigates the Boaz-Jachin tension daily: the pull between raw impulse and ordered purpose, between what one has the strength to do and what one ought to establish, between the force of desire and the requirement of integrity.

Jung would have recognised in the twin pillars a symbolic expression of the fundamental tension of opposites that drives psychological development. His concept of enantiodromia — the tendency of any extreme to convert into its opposite — is precisely what the two pillars guard against: the collapse of the creative tension into one side or the other. The pillar of Boaz alone, without Jachin, is brute force without order — destructive, chaotic, ultimately self-defeating. The pillar of Jachin alone, without Boaz, is rigid order without life-force — brittle, controlling, dead. The threshold between them is the only place where genuine creation is possible.

The checkerboard floor of the Masonic lodge extends this psychological teaching across the entire space of life: the alternation of black and white squares represents the inevitable alternation of joy and sorrow, success and failure, light and shadow that characterises any lived human life. The Mason is taught not to seek only the white squares — a life without shadow — but to walk the full floor with equanimity, recognising that the pattern only has beauty because both colours are present.

In Jungian terms, Boaz might be understood as the shadow — the raw, undifferentiated force that the persona would prefer not to acknowledge — and Jachin as the persona — the ordered face presented to the world. The initiate's work is to stop choosing between them: to integrate the shadow's force into the persona's order, producing an authentic selfhood that has the strength of both without the rigidity of either.

Section 07

Working With It

The Threshold Meditation

Visualise yourself standing between the two pillars — Boaz to your left, Jachin to your right. Feel the quality of each: the cool, receptive strength of Boaz; the warm, ordering clarity of Jachin. Breathe in the tension between them. Now step forward through the threshold — not choosing either side but carrying both. Ask: what am I entering today that requires both strength and established purpose?

Mapping Your Dualities

Use the Boaz-Jachin framework to map the major tensions in your life. Where is there raw force (Boaz) without ordered purpose (Jachin)? Where is there rigid order (Jachin) that has lost its life-force (Boaz)? The exercise is not to resolve the tension but to name it clearly — because naming the two poles is the first step toward finding the threshold between them that allows movement.

Walking the Checkerboard

When you are in a period of difficulty — the black squares — recall the checkerboard deliberately. The black square is not the end of the pattern; the white square follows as inevitably as night follows day. When you are in a period of ease — the white squares — recall that the black squares are also part of the design. The practice is equanimity: neither clinging to the white nor fleeing the black.

The Body as Pillar

Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and feel the bilateral symmetry of your own body — the left side (Boaz) and the right side (Jachin), with the spine as the middle pillar. Breathe into each side alternately: left breath, right breath, then a central breath through the spine. This simple practice grounds the symbol in direct physical experience — the most immediate way to know what the duality actually means.

Section 08

Misconceptions — An Honest Look

Myth

The twin pillars on banks and courthouses are secret Masonic branding — evidence that these institutions are controlled by Freemasons.

Reality

The classical portico with twin columns is a feature of Greco-Roman architecture that became the standard form for institutions wishing to communicate permanence and authority — long before Freemasonry existed. The Parthenon, the Roman Pantheon and countless ancient temples used the same form. When 18th and 19th century architects designed banks and courthouses in the neoclassical style, they drew on this ancient tradition. The fact that Freemasonry also used the Solomonic pillars as symbols does not mean that every building with columns is a Masonic statement.

Myth

Boaz and Jachin are names for the devil — the pillars represent the two horns of Satan.

Reality

This claim has no foundation in any historical text, Masonic or otherwise. Boaz and Jachin are Hebrew names explicitly recorded in the Bible (1 Kings 7:21) as the names of the pillars Solomon's builder set at the temple entrance. Their meanings — "In strength" and "He shall establish" — are straightforwardly positive. The "devil horns" interpretation is a fabrication that circulates primarily in anti-Masonic conspiracy literature with no textual or historical basis.

Myth

The Masonic ritual involving the pillars contains hidden sexual symbolism — Boaz and Jachin are phallic symbols of a fertility cult.

Reality

Freestanding pillars at ancient temple entrances have been interpreted by some scholars as carrying fertility symbolism — this is a legitimate archaeological and anthropological reading that some researchers apply to the ancient Near Eastern context. But this is a scholarly hypothesis about Bronze Age Canaanite religion, not a description of what Freemasonry teaches or intends. Masonic ritual makes no such reference. Conflating ancient contextual scholarship with contemporary conspiratorial claims about Masonic practice is a category error.