A type of object for remembering and teaching the many emblems favored by these groups was the tracing board, a picture illustrating different examples. One of several in the exhibition, made for the Odd Fellows between 1850 and 1900, has seven images realistically rendered against luminous skies in vignettes on an otherwise white canvas.

Among them are a bow and three crossed arrows; a set of balance scales; a skull and crossbones; and, at the center, a tent with open flaps in front and darkness within. In Masonic and Odd Fellows lore, each of these has a complex meaning. To learn and internalize them would be to ascend within a comprehensive, consciousness-raising system. For the uninitiated, too, such images have a mysterious, archetypal resonance. You might imagine this tracing board hanging in an alchemist’s laboratory.