For the candidate, the perambulations may seem like a baffling obstacle course, and for some of the older brethren, they may no longer hold much interest; but for me, they are among the most moving parts of our whole body of ritual, and a very real reminder of what life is all about.
     If, in my present role as senior warden, I may seem to be in a daze when a deacon presents me with the candidate, it is not because I have forgotten the words - honest! - but because I am so lost in meditation about what I have just been watching.
     To my mind, the perambulations represent the ways we experience time, and each degree illustrates a different kind, which we might label specific, general, and universal. A specific experience refers to one event, or one moment, and whatever qualities that moment contains.
     A general experience is one which many people have, or which one person has many times. These are the things we all recognise and share, the regular and familiar experiences of daily life. A universal experience, however, is one which everybody has, but each person in their own way. The difference between these last two classes of experience is not easy to define, but it seems to me that lessons drawn from experiences of the general kind mount upwards from repetition and accumulation, while universal lessons are those which permeate downwards from some higher source. To call it ‘hindsight’ only partially describes the process: there is something more - and in any case, whatever it is, it looks up, not back.
     Let us return to the perambulations. The perambulation of the first degree refers to time at a specific point, the moment of birth, and the awakening of the spirit by initiation. That of the second degree is about time in general, referring to the daily routines of life and work, and how by practice we test and improve ourselves. Instead of the magical moment of sunrise, the double circuit of the lodge shows the regular routines which build into a lifetime’s experience, sunrise to sunset, day after day.
     The most moving of all is the perambulation of the third degree. Here the circuits of the lodge show not just one day, as at initiation, or any day, as in the second degree, but all our days, completed and counted; and although the candidate is closely accompanied by both deacons, almost every candidate I have seen seems to be totally alone at this point, wrapped in his own thoughts as he trudges westwards towards his final sunset. I am reminded each and every time that this is one journey we must all eventually take, and that ‘the wisest of us knows not how soon.’ The conversation the candidate has with the senior warden is like being stopped at the customs-post of eternity: asked if he has anything to declare, the candidate affirms, albeit in Masonic terms, the age-old saying that you can’t take it with you.
     The idea of a life in a day is a very potent one, and it works equally well both ways round. Not only can birth, maturity and death be made to correspond to sunrise, noon and sunset - prompting us all to check, incidentally, what time it might be on our personal clocks - but any single day, taken from the mainstream of our years, can also be used to gauge our life as a whole, and the way that we live it.
     This relationship between each day and every day was explored in a deep yet warm and funny way a few years ago in the film Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray plays a man who is forced, without ever knowing why, to live and relive the same day forever. As the repetitions mount, he goes through frustration, boredom, and anger to a realisation that he could fill each minute of each day with worthwhile activity. The events of each day remain unchanged, but in his attitudes and responses he improves not only his own life, but that of those around him. He also discovers and develops talents he never knew he had, and which he certainly never made time for in his previous existence. Then, just as he has come to find satisfaction in his new life, he is returned to the normal flow of time, also without explanation, and each day is different again.
     There are obvious parallels here with our Masonic endeavours. To make each day better than the last, and at the same time to make ourselves better than we were before, is something to which we are all pledged as masons; and as we watch the perambulations, we should be reminded that each day contains a new sunrise - and, like the degrees themselves, has the potential to take us higher than we were before.

Bernard Eccles is a writer and lecturer on astrology, and next year will be the Master of Cotteswold Lodge, No.592, Gloucestershire.