Master Mason is publicly associated, across virtually every general account of Freemasonry, with a legend concerning Hiram Abiff, the master builder of Solomon's Temple in the Craft's own symbolic history. This narrative, its broad outline and its central themes of fidelity and loss, is discussed openly in encyclopedic and scholarly treatments of Masonic symbolism, distinct from the specific words and staging a Lodge uses to confer the degree itself.
The trowel is the working tool most consistently associated with Master Mason in published Masonic reference literature, following the pattern of the twenty four inch gauge and common gavel for Entered Apprentice and the level, plumb and square for Fellow Craft: a real tool from the operative stonemason's trade, given a moral reading as part of the degree's publicly taught symbolism.
Because Master Mason is the degree every higher Masonic body requires as a prerequisite, its symbolism, the Hiram narrative above all, is the most widely reproduced in general literature about Freemasonry, appearing in popular histories and encyclopedias far more often than the comparatively narrower symbolism of any single appendant degree built on top of it.