surrounded the head of the
Father, was often made to assume a triangular form. Didron says on this
subject, "A nimbus, of a triangular form, is thus seen to be the exclusive
attribute of the Deity, and most frequently restricted to the Father
Eternal. The other persons of the trinity sometimes wear the triangle, but
only in representations of the trinity, and because the Father is with
them. Still, even then, beside the Father, who has a triangle, the Son
and the Holy Ghost are often drawn with a circular nimbus only." [138]

The triangle has, in all ages and in all religions, been deemed a symbol
of Deity.

The Egyptians, the Greeks, and the other nations of antiquity, considered
this figure, with its three sides, as a symbol of the creative energy
displayed in the active and passive, or male and female, principles, and
their product, the world; the Christians referred it to their dogma of the
trinity as a manifestation of the Supreme God; and the Jews and the
primitive masons to the three periods of existence included in the
signification of the tetragrammaton--the past, the present, and the
future.

In the higher degrees of Masonry, the triangle is the most important of
all symbols, and most generally assumes the name of the _Delta_, in
allusion to the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet, which is of the same
form and bears that appellation.

The Delta, or mystical triangle, is generally surrounded by a circle of
rays, called a "glory." When this glory is distinct from the figure, and
surrounds it in the form of a circle (as in the example just given from
Didron), it is then an emblem of God's eternal glory. When, as is most
usual in the masonic symbol, the rays emanate from the centre of the
triangle, and, as it were, enshroud it in their brilliancy, it is symbolic
of the Divine Light. The perverted ideas of the pagans referred these rays
of light to their Sun-god and their Sabian worship.

But the true masonic idea of this glory is, that it symbolizes that
Eternal Light of Wisdom which surrounds the Supreme Architect as with a
sea of glory, and from him, as a common centre, emanates to the universe
of his creation, and to which the prophet Ezekiel alludes in his eloquent
description of Jehovah: "And I saw as the color of amber, as the
appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins
even upward, and from his loins even downward, I saw, as it were, the
appearance of fire, and it had b