1883 Testimony of the Rocks
DESCRIPTION
Through a landscape rich with biblical references, esoteric symbology and tunnels, this up to now undocumented map charts the journey of an initiate to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows across the fraternal organization's degrees of membership.
Starting in its lower left corner, a winding path populated with biblical scenes, an array of symbols, and figures from across space and time moves upward across this print. Along it lie 8 stations labelled Initiation, Friendship, Love, Golden Rule, Rebekah, Truth, Patriarchal, and Royal Purple—each standing for one of the International Order of Odd Fellows 8 degrees of membership at the time. The journey's starting point at the dual stations of Friendship, Love, Truth and Faith, Hope, Charity presumably stand for the foundational, prerequisite values of any IOOF member. Its destination, Deaths Narrow Bridge Nobly Won, is here read as the promised fruit of membership with the organization.
The illustrations accompanying each of these stations stand for the stories, ideas, and initiatory rituals associated with a given degree. Notably, the symbology surrounding the Truth and Royal Purple stations are uniquely secular compared to the biblical references seen at the other six. These references include David and Jonathan (Friendship), the good Samaritan (Love), Rebekah at the well (Rebekah), the sermon on the mount and the ten commandments (Golden Rule), and Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac (Patriarchal).
More symbols both Biblical and secular including Noah's ark, the all-seeing eye, an axe, the Rod of Ascelpius, and the whole Earth appear as well, not marked along any particular point on the path. To the side of Truth, the abbreviations P.G., P.S., and P.V.G. stand for the IOOF's three Past Official Degrees, honorary degrees given to lodge officers who had finished their terms. Notable also is the recurrence of the tunnel motif throughout, an inclusion that may reference the title's geological origins (see below) or the invisible, subterranean presence of the IOOF in everyday life. Though unattributed, the text in the lower left corner's inset text box is Leigh Hunt's Abou Ben Adhem, a poem that tells the story of the watchful Angel seen above tasked with notating the names of all whose actions make clear their love for the Lord.
Although this piece is untitled, it can be inferred as "Testimony of the Rocks," the title appearing on the only documented iteration of this illustration—an unfinished proof submitted as a deposit copy sent to the Library of Congress to procure a copyright. This title references self-taught Scottish geologist and theologian Hugh Miller's work of the same name whose title had at this point become a somewhat common phrase. Miller's book, an attempt to reconcile geological findings with the Biblical account of creation, stands as one of the last major attempts to reconcile geological and Biblical historical accounts before Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published two years later. As a stock phrase stemming from the work, "testimony of the rocks" names a perspective that sees the natural sciences as bearing witness to the design of a Creator and agreeing with scripture rather than contradicting it.
This piece can be dated to between 1881 and 1885. The floor of this range comes from the date of the deposit copy's submission to the Library of Congress while its ceiling comes from the absence of the Patriarch's Militant within the piece, a degree of the IOOF added in 1885.
CONDITION
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