This, then, is my attempt at answering that question:

"In all regular, well-formed, constituted Lodges there is a point within a circle round which the Brethren cannot err.  This circle is bounded between north and south by two grand parallel lines..."

Those sentences are part of a passage in the 'Explanation of the First Tracing Board' in our Tasmanian rituals.  We are taught as Entered Apprentice Freemasons that one perpendicular parallel line represents Moses, and the other King Solomon.  We are further taught that the VSL rests at the top of the circle bounded by those lines.

Glance now at the pedestal; there is the circle, there are the lines, and there is the VSL figuratively sitting on top of the circle.

We are taught that in going around this circle we must touch on both those parallel lines, likewise on the S.V.; and, while a Mason keeps himself thus circumscribed, he cannot err.  Here the circle represents the course a Freemason should travel in his daily life.  He should be prevented from straying from the path of rectitude by the precepts of those grand parallel lines and by the moral teachings laid down by the VSL.

What does the point in the centre of the circle really mean?  A centre is necessary for the existence of every circle.  It may not appear in the form of a dot which has magnitude, but - visible or invisible - it must be there.

The First Degree leaves us in doubt as to what it actually represents, but in tracing our way backwards in time, the first alteration we find is that until comparatively recent times the two parallel lines represented the patron saints of Freemasonry - St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist.

Consider this:  Could the lines represent the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn over which the sun appears to pause before retracing its apparent course in the heavens?  These points are astronomically distinguished as the summer and winter solstices.  When the sun is at these points it reaches the greatest northern and southern declination, and produces the most evident effects on the temperature of the seasons, and on the length of the days and nights.  These points, if we suppose the circle to represent the sun's apparent course, will be indicated by the points where the parallel lines touch the circle.  The days when the sun reaches those points are - respectively - the 21st of June and the 22nd of December.  The feasts of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist fall approximately on the dates of the summer and winter solstices, and whose anniversaries have been placed by the church near those days.

This older significance of the two parallel lines gives us the key to a still more ancient meaning, by means of which we can trace the evolution of the meaning of the emblem back to the earliest times of which we have any record.

Is it possible that those early ritualists "borrowed" another legend from the ancients and made it fit allegorically with Masonic philosophy?  It is certain that the point within the circle once represented the sun, and as a matter of fact astronomers have adopted that figure as their symbol of that heavenly body, and still use it as such.

An alternative meaning of the symbol is that it depicts the sun surrounded by the universe, well represented by the circle, which is without beginning or ending.  The point represents the sun - the male principle - giving life to or 'impregnating' the universe - the female principle - which surrounds it.

The point symbol was used with this meaning (the sun) in very early times, and we find it in the Egyptian hieroglyphics where it represents Ra, the Sun God.  We can go back further than the Egyptian civilisation, for there is little doubt that the Egyptians obtained many of their ideas from Asia.

Among the Asiatics the same emblem was used and worshipped as symbols of the Great Father and Mother - or the reproducing causes of the human race after the destruction thereof by the deluge.  It is believed in India that at the general deluge, everything was involved in the common destruction except the male and female principles, which were destined to produce a new race and re-people the earth when the waters had subsided from its surface.

The female principle - symbolised by the moon - assumed the form of a crescent, while the male principle - the phallus symbolising the sun - placed itself in the centre of the crescent.  The two principles in the united form floated on the surface of the waters during their prevalence on the earth, and thus became the progenitors of a new race of man.  The concept of the emblem was a circular and conclave pedestal from the centre of which rises a column - still worshipped in India as representing the God Shiva.

Here we get the first outline of the point within a circle representing the principle of fecundity - but with a different history, that of Osiris - being transmitted to Egypt and other nations who derived all their rites from the East.  The phallus - or point - represented the Sun God in the guise of Osiris.  According to to Egyptian mythology, Osiris was slain by his brother Typhon, and his body thrown into the Nile.  This is symbolical of the destruction or deprevation of the sun's light by night.

Isis, his wife - the symbol of earth, the female principle and hence vivified by his rays - searched for his body and succeeded in finding all the parts except the male organs of generation.  Interpreters of this myth contend this to be amply symbolical of the fact that the sun having set, its fecundating and invigorating power had ceased.  Osiris is supposed by some commentators to be the god mentioned under the name of Baal-peor, and worshipped by the idolatrous Moabites.

The worship of the phallus prevailed to a great extent among the nations of antiquity and was universally venerated among the ancients as a religious rite without the slightest reference to any impure or lascivious application.  It was a sculptured representation of the membrum virile, or male organ of generation.

All the deities of pagan antiquity, however numerous they may be, can always be reduced to the two different forms of the generative principle - the active, or male, and the passive, or female.  Hence the gods were always arranged in pairs, as Jupiter and Juno, Bacchus and Venus, Osiris and Isis.

This union was symbolized in different ways, but principally by the point within the circle, the point indicating the sun, and the circle the universe, invigorated and fertilized by the sun's generative rays.  In some representations this allusion was made more manifest by the inscription of the signs of the zodiac on the circle.

In every age and in every country the circle has been considered of immense symbolical importance.  It is a figure that returns into itself, and has therefore no beginning or ending.  Sometimes it is used as the symbol of the universe, sometimes that of eternity.  Sometimes we find the circle represented by the symbol of Ouroboros, a serpent devouring his own tail.  In the oldest monuments of the Druids we find the circle of stones, a splendid example of which is at Stonehenge in England.  In fact, all the temples of the Druids were circular, with a single stone erected in the centre.

I contend that the symbol in our lodges of the circle with the central point and bounded by the perpendicular parallel lines represents the sun in three different positions in the Lodge.  The circle can be considered as representing the Lodge (or universe), the point within the circle the Master (or sun at meridian height), and the two lines the Wardens (or sun at rising and at setting).

Let me extrapolate on the foregoing paragraph:  In the opening of the Third Degree the Worshipful Master questions the Wardens wither they have been and what they were seeking.  They reply that they have been seeking the g…… s….ts of a M.M., and hope to find them with the C., a point within a circle from which a M.M. cannot err.  In the closing of that Degree the Wardens, when questioned by the Worshipful Master, state that they have been unable to find the g…… s….ts, but bring with them certain substituted s….ts to be communicated.

Now, then, substitute ‘Master of the Universe’ for ‘Master’ in my original contention.  Could it be that we are going to find the genuine secrets with the Supreme Master in the afterlife, but that in this life we will have only substituted secrets?

I think so.

References:
'Masonic Foundations' WJ Cryer & Co. Ltd., Sydney 1955, pp 78 - 87.