Morals & Dogma - Pt.1

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[Edited on 19-3-2004 by Cappa]

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[Edited on 19-3-2004 by Cappa]

MORALS AND DOGMA. by Albert Pike

I. APPRENTICE



THE TWELVE-INCH RULE AND THE COMMON GAVEL.

FORCE, unregulated or ill-regulated, is not only wasted in the void, like
that of gunpowder burned in the open air, and steam unconfined by science;
but, striking in the dark, and its blows meeting only the air, they recoil
and bruise itself. It is destruction and ruin. It is the volcano, the
earthquake, the cyclone;-not growth and progress. It is Polyphemus
blinded, striking at random, and falling headlong among the sharp rocks by
the impetus of his own blows.

The blind Force of the people is a Force that must be economized, and
also managed, as the blind Force of steam, lifting the ponderous iron arms
and turning the large wheels, is made to bore and rifle the cannon and to
weave the most delicate lace. It must be regulated by Intellect. Intellect
is to the people and the people's Force, what the slender needle of the
compass is to the ship--its soul, always counselling the huge mass of wood
and iron, and always pointing to the north. To attack the citadels built
up on all sides against the human race by superstitions, despotisms, and
prejudices, the Force must have a brain and a law. Then its deeds of
daring produce permanent results, and there is real progress. Then there
are sublime conquests. Thought is a force, and philosophy should be an
energy, finding its aim and its effects in the amelioration of mankind.
The two great motors are Truth and Love. When all these Forces are
combined, and guided by the Intellect, and regulated by the RULE of Right,
and Justice, and of combined and systematic movement and effort, the great
revolution prepared for by the ages will begin to march. The POWER of the
Deity Himself is in equilibrium with His WISDOM. Hence the only results
are HARMONY.

It is because Force is ill regulated, that revolutions prove failures.
Therefore it is that so often insurrections, coming from those high
mountains that domineer over the moral horizon, Justice, Wisdom, Reason,
Right, built of the purest snow of the ideal after a long fall from rock
to rock, after having reflected the sky in their transparency, and been
swollen by a hundred affluents, in the majestic path of triumph, suddenly
lose themselves in quagmires, like a California river in the sands.

The onward march of the human race requires that the heights around it
should blaze with noble and enduring lessons of courage. Deeds of daring
dazzle history, and form one class of the guiding lights of man. They are
the stars and coruscations from that great sea of electricity, the Force
inherent in the people. To strive, to brave all risks, to perish, to
persevere, to be true to one's self, to grapple body to body with destiny,
to surprise defeat by the little terror it inspires, now to confront
unrighteous power, now to defy intoxicated triumph--these are the examples
that the nations need and the light that electrifies them.

There are immense Forces in the great caverns of evil beneath society; in
the hideous degradation, squalor, wretchedness and destitution, vices and
crimes that reek and simmer in the darkness in that populace below the
people, of great cities. There disinterestedness vanishes, every one
howls, searches, gropes, and gnaws for himself. Ideas are ignored, and of
progress there is no thought. This populace has two mothers, both of them
stepmothers--Ignorance and Misery. Want is their only guide--for the
appetite alone they crave satisfaction. Yet even these may be employed.
The lowly sand we trample upon, cast into the furnace, melted, purified by
fire, may become resplendent crystal. They have the brute force of the
HAMMER, but their blows help on the great cause, when struck within the
lines traced by the RULE held by wisdom and discretion.

Yet it is this very Force of the people, this Titanic power of the
giants, that builds the fortifications of tyrants, and is embodied in
their armies. Hence the possibility of such tyrannies as those of which it
has been said, that "Rome smells worse under Vitellius than under Sulla.
Under Claudius and under Domitian there is a deformity of baseness
corresponding to the ugliness-of the tyranny. The foulness of the slaves
is a direct result of the atrocious baseness of the despot. A miasma
exhales from these crouching consciences that reflect the master; the
public authorities are unclean, hearts are collapsed, consciences
shrunken, souls puny. This is so under Caracalla, it is so under Commodus,
it is so under Heliogabalus, while from the Roman senate, under Caesar,
there comes only the rank odour peculiar to the eagle's eyrie."

It is the force of the people that sustains all these despotisms, the
basest as well as the best. That force acts through armies; and these
oftener enslave than liberate. Despotism there applies the RULE. Force is
the MACE of steel at the saddle-bow of the knight or of the bishop in
armour. Passive obedience by force supports thrones and oligarchies,
Spanish kings, and Venetian senates. Might, in an army wielded by tyranny,
is the enormous sum total of utter weakness; and so Humanity wages war
against Humanity, in despite of Humanity. So a people willingly submits to
despotism, and its workmen submit to be despised, and its soldiers to be
whipped; therefore it is that battles lost by a nation are often progress
attained. Less glory is more liberty. When the drum is silent, reason
sometimes speaks.

Tyrants use the force of the people to chain and subjugate--that is,
enyoke the people. Then they plough with them as men do with oxen yoked.
Thus the spirit of liberty and innovation is reduced by bayonets, and
principles are struck dumb by cannonshot; while the monks mingle with the
troopers, and the Church militant and jubilant, Catholic or Puritan, sings
Te Deums for victories over rebellion.

The military power, not subordinate to the civil power, again the HAMMER
or MACE of FORCE, independent of the RULE, is an armed tyranny, born
full-grown, as Athene sprung from the brain of Zeus. It spawns a dynasty,
and begins with Caesar to rot into Vitellius and Commodus. At the present
day it inclines to begin where formerly dynasties ended.

Constantly the people put forth immense strength, only to end in immense
weakness. The force of the people is exhausted in indefinitely prolonging
things long since dead; in governing mankind by embalming old dead
tyrannies of Faith; restoring dilapidated dogmas; regilding faded,
worm-eaten shrines; whitening and rouging ancient and barren
superstitions; saving society by multiplying parasites; perpetuating
superannuated institutions; enforcing the worship of symbols as the actual
means of salvation; and tying the dead corpse of the Past, mouth to mouth,
with the living Present. Therefore it is that it is one of the fatalities
of Humanity to be condemned to eternal struggles with phantoms, with
superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, the formulas of error,
and the pleas of tyranny. Despotisms, seen in the past, become
respectable, as the mountain, bristling with volcanic rock, rugged and
horrid, seen through the haze of distance is blue and smooth and
beautiful. The sight of a single dungeon of tyranny is worth more, to
dispel illusions, and create a holy hatred of despotism, and to direct
FORCE aright, than the most eloquent volumes. The French should have
preserved the Bastile as a perpetual lesson; Italy should not destroy the
dungeons of the Inquisition. The Force of the people maintained the Power
that built its gloomy cells, and placed the living in their granite
sepulchres.

The FORCE of the people cannot, by its unrestrained and fitful action,
maintain and continue in action and existence a free Government once
created. That Force must be limited, restrained, conveyed by distribution
into different channels, and by roundabout courses, to outlets, whence it
is to issue as the law, action, and decision of the State; as the wise old
Egyptian kings conveyed in different canals, by sub-division, the swelling
waters of the Nile, and compelled them to fertilize and not devastate the
land. There must be the jus et norma, the law and Rule, or Gauge, of
constitution and law, within which the public force must act. Make a
breach in either, and the great steam-hammer, with its swift and ponderous
blows, crushes all the machinery to atoms, and, at last, wrenching itself
away, lies inert and dead amid the ruin it has wrought.

The FORCE of the people, or the popular will, in action and exerted,
symbolized by the GAVEL, regulated and guided by and acting within the
limits of LAW and ORDER, symbolized by the TWENTY-FOUR-INCH RULE, has for
its fruit LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and FRATERNITY,--liberty regulated by law;
equality of rights in the eye of the law; brotherhood with its duties and
obligations as well as its benefits.

You will hear shortly of the Rough ASHLAR and the Perfect ASHLAR, as part
of the jewels of the Lodge. The rough Ashlar is said to be "a stone, as
taken from the quarry, in its rude and natural state." The perfect Ashlar
is said to be "a stone made ready by the hands of the workmen, to be
adjusted by the working-tools of the Fellow-Craft." We shall not repeat the
explanations of these symbols given by the York Rite. You may read them in
its printed monitors. They are declared to allude to the self-improvement
of the individual craftsman,--a continuation of the same superficial
interpretation.

The rough Ashlar is the PEOPLE, as a mass, rude and unorganized. The
perfect Ashlar, or cubical stone, symbol of perfection, is the STATE, the
rulers deriving their powers from the consent of the governed; the
constitution and laws speaking the will of the people; the government
harmonious, symmetrical, efficient, --its powers properly distributed and
duly adjusted in equilibrium.

If we delineate a cube on a plane surface thus:

we have visible three faces, and nine external lines, drawn between seven
points. The complete cube has three more faces, making six; three more
lines, making twelve; and one more point, making eight. As the number 12
includes the sacred numbers, 3, 5, 7, and 3 times 3, or 9, and is produced
by adding the sacred number 3 to 9; while its own two figures, 1, 2, the
unit or monad, and duad, added together, make the same sacred number 3; it
was called the perfect number; and the cube became the symbol of
perfection.

Produced by FORCE, acting by RULE; hammered in accordance with lines
measured by the Gauge, out of the rough Ashlar, it is an appropriate
symbol of the Force of the people, expressed as the constitution and law
of the State; and of the State itself the three visible faces represent the
three departments,--the Executive, which executes the laws; the
Legislative, which makes the laws; the Judiciary, which interprets the
laws, applies and enforces them, between man and man, between the State
and the citizens. The three invisible faces, are Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity, the threefold soul of the State--its vitality, spirit, and
intellect.

Though Masonry neither usurps the place of, nor apes religion, prayer is
an essential part of our ceremonies. It is the aspiration of the soul
toward the Absolute and Infinite Intelligence, which is the One Supreme
Deity, most feebly and misunderstandingly characterized as an "ARCHITECT."
Certain faculties of man are directed toward the Unknown--thought,
meditation, prayer. The unknown is an ocean, of which conscience is the
compass. Thought, meditation, prayer, are the great mysterious pointings
of the needle. It is a spiritual magnetism that thus connects the human
soul with the Deity. These majestic irradiations of the soul pierce
through the shadow toward the light.

It is but a shallow scoff to say that prayer is absurd, because it is not
possible for us, by means of it, to persuade God to change His plans. He
produces foreknown and foreintended effects, by the instrumentality of the
forces of nature, all of which are His forces. Our own are part of these.
Our free agency and our will are forces. We do not absurdly cease to make
efforts to attain wealth or happiness, prolong life, and continue health,
because we cannot by any effort change what is predestined. If the effort
also is predestined, it is not the less our effort, made of our free will.
So, likewise, we pray. Will is a force. Thought is a force. Prayer is a
force. Why should it not be of the law of God, that prayer, like Faith and
Love, should have its effects? Man is not to be comprehended as a
starting-point, or progress as a goal, without those two great forces,
Faith and Love. Prayer is sublime. Orisons that beg and clamour are
pitiful. To deny the efficacy of prayer, is to deny that of Faith, Love,
and Effort. Yet the effects produced, when our hand, moved by our will,
launches a pebble into the ocean, never cease; and every uttered word is
registered for eternity upon the invisible air.

Every Lodge is a Temple, and as a whole, and in its details symbolic. The
Universe itself supplied man with the model for the first temples reared
to the Divinity. The arrangement of the Temple of Solomon, the symbolic
ornaments which formed its chief decorations, and the dress of the
High-Priest, all had reference to the order of the Universe, as then
understood. The Temple contained many emblems of the seasons--the sun, the
moon, the planets, the constellations Ursa Major and Minor, the zodiac,
the elements, and the other parts of the world. It is the Master of this
Lodge, of the Universe, Hermes, of whom Khurum is the representative, that
is one of the lights of the Lodge.

For further instruction as to the symbolism of the heavenly bodies, and
of the sacred numbers, and of the temple and its details, you must wait
patiently until you advance in Masonry, in the mean time exercising your
intellect in studying them for yourself. To study and seek to interpret
correctly the symbols of the Universe, is the work of the sage and
philosopher. It is to decipher the writing of God, and penetrate into His
thoughts.

This is what is asked and answered in our catechism, in regard to the
Lodge. * * * * * *

A "Lodge" is defined to be "an assemblage of Freemasons, duly
congregated, having the sacred writings, square, and compass, and a
charter, or warrant of constitution, authorizing them to work." The room
or place in which they meet, representing some part of King Solomon's
Temple, is also called the Lodge; and it is that we are now considering.

It is said to be supported by three great columns, WISDOM, FORCE or
STRENGTH, and BEAUTY, represented by the Master, the Senior Warden, and
the Junior Warden; and these are said to be the columns that support the
Lodge, "because Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty, are the perfections of
everything, and nothing can endure without them." "Because," the York Rite
says, "it is necessary that there should be Wisdom to conceive, Strength
to support, and Beauty to adorn, all great and important undertakings."
"Know ye not," says the Apostle Paul, "that ye are the temple of God, and
that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man desecrate the temple of
God, him shall God destroy, for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye
are."

The Wisdom and Power of the Deity are in equilibrium. The laws of nature
and the moral laws are not the mere despotic mandates of His Omnipotent
will; for, then they might be changed by Him, and order become disorder,
and good and right become evil and wrong; honesty and loyalty, vices; and
fraud, ingratitude, and vice, virtues. Omnipotent power, infinite, and
existing alone, would necessarily not be constrained to consistency. Its
decrees and laws could not be immutable. The laws of God are not
obligatory on us because they are the enactments of His POWER, or the
expression of His WILL; but because they express His infinite WISDOM. They
are not right because they are His laws, but His laws because they are
right. From the equilibrium of infinite wisdom and infinite force, results
perfect harmony, in physics and in the moral universe. Wisdom, rower, and
Harmony constitute one Masonic triad. They have other and profounder
meanings, that may at some time be unveiled to you.

As to the ordinary and commonplace explanation, it may be added, that the
wisdom of the Architect is displayed in combining, as only a skillful
Architect can do, and as God has done everywhere,--for example, in the
tree, the human frame, the egg, the cells of the honeycomb--strength, with
grace, beauty, symmetry, proportion, lightness, ornamentation. That, too,
is the perfection of the orator and poet--to combine force, strength,
energy, with grace of style, musical cadences, the beauty of figures, the
play and irradiation of imagination and fancy; and so, in a State, the
warlike and industrial force of the people, and their Titanic strength,
must be combined with the beauty of the arts, the sciences, and the
intellect, if the State would scale the heights of excellence, and the
people be really free. Harmony in this, as in all the Divine, the
material, and the human, is the result of equilibrium, of the sympathy and
opposite action of contraries; a single Wisdom above them holding the beam
of the scales. To reconcile the moral law, human responsibility,
free-will, with the absolute power of God; and the existence of evil with
His absolute wisdom, and goodness, and mercy,-- these are the great
enigmas of the Sphynx.

You entered the Lodge between two columns. They represent the two which
stood in the porch of the Temple, on each side of the great eastern
gateway. These pillars, of bronze, four fingers breadth in thickness,
were, according to the most authentic account--that in the First and that
in the Second Book of Kings, confirmed in Jeremiah-- eighteen cubits high,
with a capital five cubits high. The shaft of each was four cubits in
diameter. A cubit is one foot and 707/1000. That is, the shaft of each was
a little over thirty feet eight inches in height, the capital of each a
little over eight feet six inches in height, and the diameter of the shaft
six feet ten inches. The capitals were enriched by pomegranates of bronze,
covered by bronze net-work, and ornamented with wreaths of bronze; and
appear to have imitated the shape of the seed-vessel of the lotus or
Egyptian lily, a sacred symbol to the Hindus and Egyptians. The pillar or
column on the right, or in the south, was named, as the Hebrew word is
rendered in our translation of the Bible, JACHIN: and that on the left
BOAZ. Our translators say that the first word means, "He shall establish;"
and the second, "In it is strength."

These columns were imitations, by Khurum, the Tyrian artist, of the great
columns consecrated to the Winds and Fire, at the entrance to the famous
Temple of Malkarth, in the city of Tyre. It is customary, in Lodges of the
York Rite, to see a celestial globe on one, and a terrestrial globe on the
other; but these are not warranted, if the object be to imitate the
original two columns of the Temple. The symbolic meaning of these columns
we shall leave for the present unexplained, only adding that Entered
Apprentices keep their working-tools in the column JACHIN; and giving you
the etymology and literal meaning of the two names.

The word JACHIN, in Hebrew, probably pronounced Ya-kayan, and meant, as a
verbal noun, He that strengthens; and thence, firm, stable, upright.

The word Boaz is Baaz which means Strong, Strength, Power, Might, Refuge,
Source of Strength, a Fort. The prefix means "with" or "in," and gives the
word the force of the Latin gerund, roborando--Strengthening

The former word also means he will establish, or plant in an erect
position--from the verb Kun, he stood erect. It probably meant Active and
Vivifying Energy and Force; and Boaz, Stability, Permanence, in the passive
sense.

The Dimensions of the Lodge, our Brethren of the York Rite say, "are
unlimited, and its covering no less than the canopy of Heaven." "To this
object," they say, "the mason's mind is continually directed, and thither
he hopes at last to arrive by the aid of the theological ladder which
Jacob in his vision saw ascending from earth to Heaven; the three
principal rounds of which are denominated Faith, Hope, and Charity; and
which admonish us to have Faith in God, Hope in Immortality, and Charity
to all mankind." Accordingly a ladder, sometimes with nine rounds, is seen
on the chart, resting at the bottom on the earth, its top in the clouds,
the stars shining above it; and this is deemed to represent that mystic
ladder, which Jacob saw in his dream, set up on the earth, and the top of
it reaching to Heaven, with the angels of God ascending and descending on
it. The addition of the three principal rounds to the symbolism, is wholly
modern and incongruous.

The ancients counted seven planets, thus arranged: the Moon, Mercury,
Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. There were seven heavens and
seven spheres of these planets; on all the monuments of Mithras are seven
altars or pyres, consecrated to the seven planets, as were the seven lamps
of the golden candelabrum in the Temple. That these represented the
planets, we are assured by Clemens of Alexandria, in his Stromata, and by
Philo Judaeus.

To return to its source in the Infinite, the human soul, the ancients
held, had to ascend, as it had descended, through the seven spheres. The
Ladder by which it reascends, has, according to Marsilius Ficinus, in his
Commentary on the Ennead of Plotinus, seven degrees or steps; and in the
Mysteries of Mithras, carried to Rome under the Emperors, the ladder, with
its seven rounds, was a symbol referring to this ascent through the
spheres of the seven planets. Jacob saw the Spirits of God ascending and
descending on it; and above it the Deity Himself. The Mithraic Mysteries
were celebrated in caves, where gates were marked at the four equinoctial
and solstitial points of the Zodiac; and the seven planetary spheres were
represented, which souls needs must traverse in descending from the heaven
of the fixed stars to the elements that envelop the earth; and seven gates
were marked, one for each planet, through which they pass, in descending
or returning.

We learn this from Celsus, in Origen, who says that the symbolic image of
this passage among the stars, used in the Mithraic Mysteries, was a ladder
reaching from earth to Heaven, divided into seven steps or stages, to each
of which was a gate, and at the summit an eighth one, that of the fixed
stars. The symbol was the same as that of the seven stages of Borsippa,
the Pyramid of vitrified brick, near Babylon, built of seven stages, and
each of a different colour. In the Mithraic ceremonies, the candidate went
through seven stages of initiation, passing through many fearful
trials--and of these the high ladder with seven rounds or steps was the
symbol.
You see the Lodge, its details and ornaments, by its Lights. You
have already heard what these Lights, the greater and lesser, are said to
be, and how they are spoken of by our Brethren of the York Rite.

The Holy Bible, Square, and Compasses, are not only styled the Great
Lights in Masonry, but they are also technically called the Furniture of
the Lodge; and, as you have seen, it is held that there is no Lodge
without them. This has sometimes been made a pretext for excluding Jews
from our Lodges, because they cannot regard the New Testament as a holy
book. The Bible is an indispensable part of the furniture of a Christian
Lodge, only because it is the sacred book of the Christian religion. The
Hebrew Pentateuch in a Hebrew Lodge, and the Koran in a Mohammedan one,
belong on the Altar; and one of these, and the Square and Compass,
properly understood, are the Great Lights by which a Mason must walk and
work.

The obligation of the candidate is always to be taken on the sacred book
or books of his religion, that he may deem it more solemn and binding; and
therefore it was that you were asked of what religion you were. We have no
other concern with your religious creed.

The Square is a right angle, formed by two right lines. It is adapted
only to a plane surface, and belongs only to geometry, earth-measurement,
that trigonometry which deals only with planes, and with the earth, which
the ancients supposed to be a plane. The Compass describes circles, and
deals with spherical trigonometry, the science of the spheres and-heavens.
The former, therefore, is an emblem of what concerns the earth and the
body; the latter of what concerns the heavens and the soul. Yet the
Compass is also used in plane trigonometry, as in erecting perpendiculars;
and, therefore, you are reminded that, although in this Degree both points
of the Compass are under the Square, and you are now dealing only with the
moral and political meaning of the symbols, and not with their
philosophical and spiritual meanings, still the divine ever mingles with
the human; with the earthly the spiritual intermixes; and there is
something spiritual in the commonest duties of life. The nations are not
bodies politic alone, but also souls-politic; and woe to that people
which, seeking the material only, forgets that it has a soul. Then we have
a race, petrified in dogma, which presupposes the absence of a soul and
the presence only of memory and instinct, or demoralized by lucre. Such a
nature can never lead civilization. Genuflexion before the idol or the
dollar atrophies the muscle which walks and the will which moves. Hieratic
or mercantile absorption diminishes the radiance of a people, lowers its
horizon by lowering its level, and deprives it of that understanding of
the universal aim, at the same time human and divine, which makes the
missionary nations. A free people, forgetting that it has a soul to be
cared for, devotes all its energies to its material advancement. If it
makes war, it is to subserve its commercial interests. The citizens copy
after the State, and regard wealth, pomp, and luxury as the great goods of
life. Such a nation creates wealth rapidly, and distributes it badly.
Thence the two extremes, of monstrous opulence and monstrous misery; all
the enjoyment to a few, all the privations to the rest, that is to say, to
the people; Privilege, Exception, Monopoly, Feudality, springing up from
Labour itself: a false and dangerous situation, which, making Labour a
blinded and chained Cyclops, in the mine, at the forge, in the workshop,
at the loom, in the field, over poisonous fumes, in miasmatic cells, in
unventilated factories, founds public power upon private misery, and
plants the greatness of the State in the suffering of the individual. It
is a greatness ill constituted, in which all the material elements are
combined, and into which no moral element enters. If a people, like a
star, has the right of eclipse, the light ought to return. The eclipse
should not degenerate into night.

The three lesser, or the Sublime Lights, you have heard, are the Sun, the
Moon, and the Master of the Lodge; and you have heard what our Brethren of
the York Rite say in regard to them, and why they hold them to be Lights
of the Lodge. But the Sun and Moon do in no sense light the Lodge, unless
it be symbolically, and then the lights are not they, but those things of
which they are the symbols. Of what they are the symbols the Mason in that
Rite is not told. Nor does the Moon in any sense rule the night with
regularity.

The Sun is the ancient symbol of the life-giving and generative power of
the Deity. To the ancients, light was the cause of life; and God was the
source from which all light flowed; the essence of Light, the Invisible
Fire, developed as Flame manifested as light and splendour. The Sun was
His manifestation and visible image; and the Sabaeans worshipping the
Light--God, seemed to worship the Sun, in whom they saw the manifestation
of the Deity.

The Moon was the symbol of the passive capacity of nature to produce,
the female, of which the life-giving power and energy was the male. It was
the symbol of Isis, Astarte, and Artemis, or Diana. The "Master of Life"
was the Supreme Deity, above both, and manifested through both; Zeus, the
Son of Saturn, become King of the Gods; Horus, son of Osiris and Isis,
become the Master of Life; Dionusos or Bacchus, like Mithras, become the
author of Light and Life and Truth.

* * * * *

The Master of Light and Life, the Sun and the Moon, are symbolized in
every Lodge by the Master and Wardens: and this makes it the duty of the
Master to dispense light to the Brethren, by himself, and through the
Wardens, who are his ministers.

"Thy sun," says ISAIAH to Jerusalem, "shall no more go down, neither
shall thy moon withdraw itself; for the LORD shall be thine everlasting
light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. Thy people also shall
be all righteous; they shall inherit the land forever." Such is the type
of a free people.

Our northern ancestors worshipped this tri-une Deity; ODIN, the Almighty
FATHER; FREA, his wife, emblem of universal matter; and THOR, his son, the
mediator. But above all these was the Supreme God, "the author of
everything that existeth, the Eternal, the Ancient, the Living and Awful
Being, the Searcher into concealed things, the Being that never changeth."
In the Temple of Eleusis (a sanctuary lighted only by a window in the
roof, and representing the Universe), the images of the Sun, Moon, and
Mercury, were represented.

"The Sun and Moon," says the learned Bro.'. DELAUNAY, "represent the two
grand principles of all generations, the active and passive, the male and
the female. The Sun represents the actual light. He pours upon the Moon
his fecundating rays; both shed their light upon their offspring, the
Blazing Star, or HORUS, and the three form the great Equilateral Triangle,
in the centre of which is the omnific letter of the Kabalah, by which
creation is said to have been effected."

The ORNAMENTS of a Lodge are said to be "the Mosaic Pavement, the
Indented Tessel, and the Blazing Star." The Mosaic Pavement, chequered in
squares or lozenges, is said to represent the ground-floor of King
Solomon's Temple; and the Indented Tessel "that beautiful tessellated
border which surrounded it." The Blazing Star in the centre is said to be
"an emblem of Divine Providence, and commemorative of the star which
appeared to guide the wise men of the East to the place of our Saviour's
nativity." But "there was no stone seen" within the Temple. The walls were
covered with planks of cedar, and the floor was covered with planks of fir.
There is no evidence that there was such a pavement or floor in the
Temple, or such a bordering. In England, anciently, the Tracing-Board was
surrounded with an indented border; and it is only in America that such a
border is put around the Mosaic pavement. The tesserae, indeed, are the
squares or lozenges of the pavement. In England, also, "the indented or
denticulated border" is called "tessellated," because it has four
"tassels," said to represent Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence, and Justice.
It was termed the Indented Trassel; but this is a misuse of words. It is a
tesserated pavement, with an indented border round it.

The pavement, alternately black and white, symbolizes, whether so
intended or not, the Good and Evil Principles of the Egyptian and Persian
creed. It is the warfare of Michael and Satan, of the Gods and Titans, of
Balder and Lok; between light and shadow, which is darkness; Day and
Night; Freedom and Despotism; Religious Liberty and the Arbitrary Dogmas
of a Church that thinks for its votaries, and whose Pontiff claims to be
infallible, and the decretals of its Councils to constitute a gospel.

The edges of this pavement, if in lozenges, will necessarily be indented
or denticulated, toothed like a saw; and to complete and finish it a
bordering is necessary. It is completed by tassels as ornaments at the
corners. If these and the bordering have any symbolic meaning, it is
fanciful and arbitrary.

To find in the BLAZING STAR of five points an allusion to the Divine
Providence, is also fanciful; and to make it commemorative of the Star
that is said to have guided the Magi, is to give it a meaning
comparatively modern. Originally it represented SIRIUS, or the Dog-star,
the forerunner of the inundation of the Nile; the God ANUBIS, companion of
ISIS in her search for the body of OSIRIS, her brother and husband. Then
it became the image of HORUS, the son of OSIRIS, himself symbolized also
by the Sun, the author of the Seasons, and the God of Time; Son of ISIS,
who was the universal nature, himself the primitive matter, inexhaustible
source of Life, spark of uncreated fire, universal seed of all beings. It
was HERMES, also, the Master of Learning, whose name in Greek is that of
the God Mercury. It became the sacred and potent sign or character of the
Magi, the PENTALPHA, and is the significant emblem of Liberty and Freedom,
blazing with a steady radiance amid the weltering elements of good and
evil of Revolutions, and promising serene skies and fertile seasons to the
nations, after the storms of change and tumult.

In the East of the Lodge, over the Master, inclosed in a triangle, is the
Hebrew letter YOD. In the English and American Lodges the Letter G.'. is
substituted for this, as the initial of the word GOD, with as little
reason as if the letter D., initial of DIEU, were used in French Lodges
instead of the proper letter. YOD is, in the Kabalah, the symbol of Unity,
of the Supreme Deity, the first letter of the Holy Name; and also a symbol
of the Great Kabalistic Triads. To understand its mystic meanings, you
must open the pages of the Sohar and Siphra de Zeniutha, and other
kabalistic books, and ponder deeply on their meaning. It must suffice to
say, that it is the Creative Energy of the Deity, is represented as a
point, and that point in the centre of the Circle of immensity. It is to
us in this Degree, the symbol of that unmanifested Deity, the Absolute,
who has no name.

Our French Brethren place this letter YOD in the centre of the Blazing
Star. And in the old Lectures, our ancient English Brethren said, "The
Blazing Star or Glory in the centre refers us to that grand luminary, the
Sun, which enlightens the earth, and by its genial influence dispenses
blessings to mankind." They called it also in the same lectures, an emblem
of PRUDENCE. The word Prudentia means, in its original and fullest
signification, Foresight; and, accordingly, the Blazing Star has been
regarded as an emblem of Omniscience, or the All-seeing Eye, which to the
Egyptian Initiates was the emblem of Osiris, the Creator. With the YOD in
the centre, it has the kabalistic meaning of the Divine Energy, manifested
as Light, creating the Universe.

The Jewels of the Lodge are said to be six in number. Three are called
"Movable," and three "Immovable." The SQUARE, the LEVEL, and the PLUMB
were anciently and properly called the Movable Jewels, because they pass
from one Brother to another. It is a modern innovation to call them
immovable, because they must always be present in the Lodge. The immovable
jewels are the ROUGH ASHLAR, the PERFECT ASHLAR or CUBICAL, STONE, or, in
some Rituals, the DOUBLE CUBE, and the TRACING-BOARD, or TRESTLE-BOARD.

Of these jewels our Brethren of the York Rite say: "The Square inculcates
Morality; the Level, Equality; and the Plumb, Rectitude of Conduct." Their
explanation of the immovable Jewels may be read in their monitors.

Our Brethren of the York Rite say that "there is represented in every
well-governed Lodge, a certain point, within a circle; the point
representing an individual Brother; the Circle, the boundary line of his
conduct, beyond which he is never to suffer his prejudices or passions to
betray him."

This is not to interpret the symbols of Masonry. It is said by some, with
a nearer approach to interpretation, that the point within the circle
represents God in the centre of the Universe. It is a common Egyptian sign
for the Sun and Osiris, and is still used as the astronomical sign of the
great luminary. In the Kabalah the point is YOD, the Creative Energy of
God, irradiating with light the circular space which God, the universal
Light, left vacant, wherein to create the worlds, by withdrawing His
substance of Light back on all sides from one point.

Our Brethren add that, "this circle is embordered by two perpendicular
parallel lines, representing Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the
Evangelist, and upon the top rest the Holy Scriptures" (an open book). "In
going round this circle," they say, "we necessarily touch upon these two
lines as well as upon the Holy Scriptures; and while a Mason keeps himself
circumscribed within their precepts, it is impossible that he should
materially err."

It would be a waste of time to comment upon this. Some writers have
imagined that the parallel lines represent the Tropics of Cancer and
Capricorn, which the Sun alternately touches upon at the Summer and Winter
solstices. But the tropics are not perpendicular lines, and the idea is
merely fanciful. If the parallel lines ever belonged to the ancient
symbol, they had some more recondite and more fruitful meaning. They
probably had the same meaning as the twin columns Jachin and Boaz. That
meaning is not for the Apprentice. The adept may find it in the Kabalah.
The JUSTICE and MERCY of God are in equilibrium, and the result is
HARMONY, because a Single and Perfect Wisdom presides over both.

The Holy Scriptures are an entirely modern addition to the symbol, like
the terrestrial and celestial globes on the columns of the portico. Thus
the ancient symbol has been denaturalized by incongruous additions, like
that of Isis weeping over the broken column containing the remains of
Osiris at Byblos.

* * * * * *

Masonry has its decalogue, which is a law to its Initiates. These are its
Ten Commandments:

I. God is the Eternal, Omnipotent, Immutable WISDOM and Supreme
INTELLIGENCE and Exhaustless Love. Thou shalt adore, revere, and love Him
! Thou shalt honour Him by practising the virtues!

II. Thy religion shall be, to do good because it is a pleasure to thee, and
not merely because it is a duty. That thou mayest become the friend of
the wise man, thou shalt obey his precepts ! Thy soul is immortal ! Thou
shalt do nothing to degrade it !

III. Thou shalt unceasingly war against vice! Thou shalt not do unto
others that which thou wouldst not wish them to do unto thee ! Thou shalt
be submissive to thy fortunes, and keep burning the light of wisdom !

IV. Thou shalt honour thy parents ! Thou shalt pay respect and homage to
the aged! Thou shalt instruct the young! Thou shalt protect and defend
infancy and innocence !

V. Thou shalt cherish thy wife and thy children! Thou shalt love thy
country, and obey its laws!

VI. Thy friend shall be to thee a second self ! Misfortune shall not
estrange thee from him ! Thou shalt do for his memory whatever thou
wouldst do for him, if he were living!

VII. Thou shalt avoid and flee from insincere friendships ! Thou shalt
in everything refrain from excess. Thou shalt fear to be the cause of a
stain on thy memory!

VIII. Thou shalt allow no passions to become thy master ! Thou shalt
make the passions of others profitable lessons to thyself! Thou shalt be
indulgent to error !

IX. Thou shalt hear much: Thou shalt speak little: Thou shalt act well !
Thou shalt forget injuries! Thou shalt render good for evil ! Thou shalt
not misuse either thy strength or thy superiority !

X. Thou shalt study to know men; that thereby thou mayest learn to know
thyself ! Thou shalt ever seek after virtue ! Thou shalt be just! Thou
shalt avoid idleness !

But the great commandment of Masonry is this: "A new commandment give I
unto you: that ye love one another! He that saith he is in the light, and
hateth his brother, remaineth still in the darkness."

Such are the moral duties of a Mason. But it is also the duty of
Masonry to assist in elevating the moral and intellectual level of
society; in coining knowledge, bringing ideas into circulation, and
causing the mind of youth to grow; and in putting, gradually, by the
teachings of axioms and the promulgation of positive laws, the human race
in harmony with its destinies.

To this duty and work the Initiate is apprenticed. He must not imagine
that he can effect nothing, and, therefore, despairing, become inert. It
is in this, as in a man's daily life. Many great deeds are done in the
small struggles of life. There is, we are told, a determined though unseen
bravery, which defends itself, foot to foot, in the darkness, against the
fatal invasion of necessity and of baseness. There are noble and
mysterious triumphs, which no eye sees, which no renown rewards, which no
flourish of trumpets salutes. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment,
poverty, are battle-fields, which have their heroes,--heroes obscure, but
sometimes greater than those who become illustrious. The Mason should
struggle in the same manner, and with the same bravery, against those
invasions of necessity and baseness, which come to nations as well as to
men. He should meet them, too, foot to foot, even in the darkness, and
protest against the national wrongs and follies; against usurpation and
the first inroads of that hydra, Tyranny. There is no more sovereign
eloquence than the truth in indignation. It is more difficult for a people
to keep than to gain their freedom. The Protests of Truth are always
needed. Continually, the right must protest against the fact. There is, in
fact, Eternity in the Right. The Mason should be the Priest and Soldier of
that Right. If his country should be robbed of her liberties, he should
still not despair. The protest of the Right against the Fact persists
forever. The robbery of a people never becomes prescriptive. Reclamation
of its rights is barred by no length of time. Warsaw can no more be Tartar
than Venice can be Teutonic. A people may endure military usurpation, and
subjugated States kneel to States and wear the yoke, while under the
stress of necessity; but when the necessity disappears, if the people is
fit to be free, the submerged country will float to the surface and
reappear, and Tyranny be adjudged by History to have murdered its victims.


Whatever occurs, we should have Faith in the Justice and overruling
Wisdom of God, and Hope for the Future, and Lovingkindness for those who
are in error. God makes visible to men His will in events; an obscure
text, written in a mysterious language. Men make their translations of it
forthwith, hasty, incorrect, full of faults, omissions, and misreadings.
We see so short a way along the arc of the great circle! Few minds
comprehend the Divine tongue. The most sagacious, the most calm, the most
profound, decipher the hieroglyphs slowly; and when they arrive with their
text, perhaps the need has long gone by; there are already twenty
translations in the public square--the most incorrect being, as of course,
the most accepted and popular. From each translation, a party is born; and
from each misreading, a faction. Each party believes or pretends that it
has the only true text, and each faction believes or pretends that it
alone possesses the light. Moreover, factions are blind men, who aim
straight, errors are excellent projectiles, striking skillfully, and with
all the violence that springs from false reasoning, wherever a want of
logic in those who defend the right, like a defect in a cuirass, makes
them vulnerable.

Therefore it is that we shall often be discomfited in combating error
before the people. Antaeus long resisted Hercules; and the heads of the
Hydra grew as fast as they were cut off. It is absurd to say that Error,
wounded, writhes in pain, and dies amid her worshippers. Truth conquers
slowly. There is a wondrous vitality in Error. Truth, indeed, for the most
part, shoots over the heads of the masses; or if an error is prostrated
for a moment, it is up again in a moment, and as vigorous as ever. It will
not die when the brains are out, and the most stupid and irrational errors
are the longest-lived.

Nevertheless, Masonry, which is Morality and Philosophy, must not cease to
do its duty. We never know at what moment success awaits our
efforts--generally when most unexpected--nor with what effect our efforts
are or are not to be attended. Succeed or fail, Masonry must not bow to
error, or succumb under discouragement. There were at Rome a few
Carthaginian soldiers, taken prisoners, who refused to bow to Flaminius,
and had a little of Hannibal's magnanimity. Masons should possess an equal
greatness of soul. Masonry should be an energy; finding its aim and effect
in the amelioration of mankind. Socrates should enter into Adam, and
produce Marcus Aurelius, in other words, bring forth from the man of
enjoyments, the man of wisdom. Masonry should not be a mere watch-tower,
built upon mystery, from which to gaze at ease upon the world, with no
other result than to be a convenience for the curious. To hold the full
cup of thought to the thirsty lips of men; to give to all the true ideas
of Deity; to harmonize conscience and science, are the province of
Philosophy. Morality is Faith in full bloom. Contemplation should lead to
action, and the absolute be practical; the ideal be made air and food and
drink to the human mind. Wisdom is a sacred communion. It is only on that
condition that it ceases to be a sterile love of Science, and becomes the
one and supreme method by which to unite Humanity and arouse it to
concerted action. Then Philosophy becomes Religion.

And Masonry, like History and Philosophy, has eternal duties-- eternal,
and, at the same time, simple--to oppose Caiaphas as Bishop, Draco or
Jefferies as Judge, Trimalcion as Legislator, and Tiberius as Emperor.
These are the symbols of the tyranny that degrades and crushes, and the
corruption that defiles and infests. In the works published for the use of
the Craft we are told that the three great tenets of a Mason's profession,
are Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth. And it is true that a Brotherly
affection and kindness should govern us in all our intercourse and
relations with our brethren; and a generous and liberal philanthropy
actuate us in regard to all men. To relieve the distressed is peculiarly
the duty of Masons--a sacred duty, not to be omitted, neglected, or coldly
or inefficiently complied with. It is also most true, that Truth is a
Divine attribute and the foundation of every virtue. To be true, and to
seek to find and learn the Truth, are the great objects of every good
Mason.

As the Ancients did, Masonry styles Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence, and
Justice, the four cardinal virtues. They are as necessary to nations as to
individuals. The people that would be Free and Independent, must possess
Sagacity, Forethought, Foresight, and careful Circumspection, all which
are included in the meaning of the word Prudence. It must be temperate in
asserting its rights, temperate in its councils, economical in its
expenses; it must be bold, brave, courageous, patient under reverses,
undismayed by disasters, hopeful amid calamities, like Rome when she sold
the field at which Hannibal had his camp. No Cannae or Pharsalia or Pavia or
Agincourt or Waterloo must discourage her. Let her Senate sit in their
seats until the Gauls pluck them by the beard. She must, above all things,
be just, not truckling to the strong and warring on or plundering the
weak; she must act on the square with all nations, and the feeblest
tribes; always keeping her faith, honest in her legislation, upright in
all her dealings. Whenever such a Republic exists, it will be immortal:
for rashness, injustice, intemperance and luxury in prosperity, and
despair and disorder in adversity, are the causes of the decay and
dilapidation of nations.

"Morals and Dogma" can also be read here:

users.libero.it...

Fiat Lvx.

Cappa, thanks for that link
Mr. Pike surely seemed to have been interested in NWO, way back when. It really gives a whole new dimension to the Mason's background, esp. if currenFreemasons subscribe to his dogma.

Originally posted by DontTreadOnMe
Cappa, thanks for that link

Mr. Pike surely seemed to have been interested in NWO, way back when. It really gives a whole new dimension to the Mason's background, esp. if currenFreemasons subscribe to his dogma.

Agreed. There are another 20 or so chapters, so, if a few people let me know they wanna see them I'll post them.

Masonic Light - Does that link contain all the chapters of the book?

Masonic Light - Does that link contain all the chapters of the book?

There's a link to each chapter, but I think a couple are broken (at least I wasn't able to open 2 of them; I had no trouble with the rest).
The book has 32 chapters, one for each of the regular degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
It's technically out of print, but if you want a hard copy, the Supreme Council 33� sells used copies for 50 bucks, but you can probably find one for less on Ebay.

Fiat Lvx.

In that case, anyone wishing to read certain chapters, say if they can't get to whatever chapter, simply post in this thread, and I will happily show you the light.

heh, sorry i couldnt resist.

Still in print, but at $125 a copy...

www.amazon.com...=1079798859/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/102-1598994-3168900?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Note that the Freemasons who reviewed it rave about it. But the Freemasons here all say it's not relevant to today.

I got mine used at www.abebooks.com... A broker for used booksellers.

Do yourself a favor, read the chapter about the 30th degree.

Originally posted by Researcher
Do yourself a favor, read the chapter about the 30th degree.

Since reading that post, Researcher, I went to the archive I downloaded with the .txt's in it. How fitting that chapter 30 would have to be the only chapter missing from this???

Please, enlighten me, what's in Chapter 30?

Alright... I explored the link that Masonic Light added, which DID have Chapter 30, regarding Knight Kadosh. Even though the website didn't allow right clicking (I hate when that happens), I was able to copy/paste the chapter into a .txt file. Here it is...


XXX KNIGHT KADOSH.

We often profit more by our enemies than by our friends. " We support
ourselves only on that which resists," and owe our success to opposition.
The best friends of Masonry in America were the Anti-Masons of 1826,
and at the same time they were its worst enemies. Men are but the
automata of Providence, and it uses the demagogue, the fanatic, and the
knave, a common trinity in Republics, as its tools and instruments to effect
that of which they do not dream, and which they imagine themselves
commissioned to prevent.
The Anti-Masons, traitors and perjurors some, and some mere political
knaves, purified Masonry by persecution, and so proved to be its
benefactors; for that which is persecuted, grows. To them its present
popularity is due, the cheapening of its Degrees, the invasion of its
Lodges, that are no longer Sanctuaries, by the multitude; its pomp and
pageantry and overdone display.
An hundred years ago it had become known that the were the
Templars under a veil, and therefore the Degree was proscribed, and,
ceasing to be worked, became a mere brief and formal ceremony, under
another name. Now, from the tomb in which after his murders he rotted,
Clement the Fifth howls against the successors of his victims, in the
Allocution of Pio Nono against the Free-Masons. The ghosts of the dead
Templars
haunt the Vatican and disturb the slumbers of the paralyzed Papacy,
which, dreading the dead, shrieks out its excommunications and impotent
anathemas against the living. It is a declaration of war, and was needed to
arouse apathy and inertness to action.
An enemy of the Templars shall tell us the secret of this Papal hostility
against an Order that has existed for centuries in despite of its anathemas,
and has its Sanctuaries and Asyla even in Rome.
It will be easy, as we read, to separate the false from the true, the
audacious conjectures from the simple facts.
"A power that ruled without antagonism and without concurrence, and
consequently without control, proved fatal to the Sacerdotal Royalties;
while the Republics, on the other hand, had perished by the conflict of
liberties and franchises, which, in the absence of all duty hierarchically
sanctioned and enforced, had soon become mere tyrannies, rivals one of
the other. To find a stable medium between these two abysses, the idea of
the Christian Hierophants was to create a society devoted to abnegation
by solemn vows, protected by severe regulations; which should be
recruited by initiation, and which, sole depositary of the great religious and
social secrets, should make Kings and Pontiffs, without exposing it to the
corruptions of Power. In that was the secret of that kingdom of Jesus
Christ, which, without being of this world, would govern all its grandeurs.
"This idea presided at the foundation of the great religious orders, so often
at war with the secular authorities, ecclesiastical or civil. Its realization was
also the dream of the dissident sects of Gnostics or Illuminati who
pretended to connect their faith with the primitive tradition of the
Christianity of Saint John. It at length became a menace for the Church
and Society, when a rich and dissolute Order, initiated in the mysterious
doctrines of the Kabalah, seemed disposed to turn against legitimate
authority the conservative principle of Hierarchy, and threatened the entire
world with an immense revolution.
The Templars, whose history is so imperfectly known, were those terrible
conspirators. In 1118, nine Knights Crusaders in the East, among whom
were Geoffroi de Saint-Omer and Hugues de Payens, consecrated
themselves to religion, and took an oath between the hands of the
Patriarch of Constantinople, a See always secretly or openly hostile to that
of Rome from the time of Photius. The avowed object of the Templars was
to protect
the Christians who came to visit the Holy Places: their secret object was
the re-building of the Temple of Solomon on the model prophesied by
Ezekiel.
"This re-building, formally predicted by the Judaizing Mystics of the earlier
ages, had become the secret dream of the Patriarchs of the Orient. The
Temple of Solomon, re-built and consecrated to the Catholic worship
would become, in effect, the Metropolis of the Universe; the East would
prevail over the West, and the Patriarchs of Constantinople would possess
themselves of the Papal power.
"The Templars, or Poor Fellow-Soldiery of the Holy House of the Temple
intended to be re-built, took as their models, in the Bible, the Warrior-
Masons of Zorobabel, who worked, holding the sword in one hand and the
trowel in the other. Therefore it was that the Sword and the Trowel were
the insignia of the Templars, who subsequently, as will be seen,
concealed themselves under the name of Brethren Masons. [This name,
Fr�res Ma�ons in the French, adopted by way of secret reference to the
Builders of the Second Temple, was corrupted in English into Free-
Masons, as Pythagore de Crotone was into Peter Gower of Groton in
England. Khair�m or Kh�r-�m, (a name mis-rendered into Hiram) from an
artificer in brass and other metals, became the Chief Builder of the Haikal
Kadosh, the Holy House, of the Temple, the ; and the words
Bonai and Banaim yet appear in the Masonic Degrees, meaning Builder
and Builders.]
"The trowel of the Templars is quadruple, and the triangular plates of it are
arranged in the form of a cross, making the Kabalistic pantacle known by
the name of the Cross of the East. The Knight of the East, and the Knight
of the East and West, have in their titles secret allusions to the Templars
of whom they were at first the successors.
"The secret thought of Hugues de Payens, in founding his Order, was not
exactly to serve the ambition of the Patriarchs of Constantinople. There
existed at that period in the East a Sect of Johannite Christians, who
claimed to be the only true Initiates into the real mysteries of the religion of
the Saviour. They pretended to know the real history of Yesus the
ANOINTED, and, adopting in part the Jewish traditions and the tales of the
Talmud, they held that the facts recounted in the Evangels are but
allegories, the key of which Saint John gives, in saying that the
world might be filled with the books that could be written upon the words
and deeds of Jesus Christ; words which, they thought, would be only a
ridiculous exaggeration, if he were not speaking of an allegory and a
legend, that might be varied and prolonged to infinity.
"The Johannites ascribed to Saint John the foundation of their Secret
Church, and the Grand Pontiffs of the Sect assumed the title of Christos,
Anointed, or Consecrated, and claimed to have succeeded one another
from Saint John by an uninterrupted succession of pontifical powers. He
who, at the period of the foundation of the Order of the Temple, claimed
these imaginary prerogatives, was named THEOCLET; he knew HUGUES
DE PAYENS, he initiated him into the Mysteries and hopes of his
pretended church, he seduced him by the notions of Sovereign Priesthood
and Supreme royalty, and finally designated him as his successor
"Thus the Order of Knights of the Temple was at its very origin devoted to
the cause of opposition to the tiara of Rome and the crowns of Kings, and
the Apostolate of Kabalistic Gnosticism was vested in its chiefs. For Saint
John himself was the Father of the Gnostics, and the current translation of
his polemic against the heretical of his Sect and the pagans who denied
that Christ was the Word, is throughout a misrepresentation, or
misunderstanding at least, of the whole Spirit of that Evangel.
"The tendencies and tenets of the Order were enveloped in profound
mystery, and it externally professed the most perfect orthodoxy. The
Chiefs alone knew the aim of the Order: the Subalterns followed them
without distrust.
"To acquire influence and wealth, then to intrigue, and at need to fight, to
establish the Johannite or Gnostic and Kabalistic dogma, were the object
and means proposed to the initiated Brethren. The Papacy and the rival
monarchies, they said to them, are sold and bought in these days,
become corrupt, and to-morrow, perhaps, will destroy each other. All that
will become the heritage of the Temple: the World will soon come to us for
its Sovereigns and Pontiffs. We shall constitute the equilibrium of the
Universe, and be rulers over the Masters of the World.
"The Templars, like all other Secret Orders and Associations had two
doctrines, one concealed and reserved for the Masters, which was
Johannism; the other public, which was the Roman Catholic. Thus they
deceived the adversaries whom they sought
to supplant. Hence Free-Masonry, vulgarly imagined to have begun with
the Dionysian Architects or the German Stone-workers, adopted Saint
John the Evangelist as one of its patrons, associating with him, in order
not to arouse the suspicions of Rome, Saint John the Baptist, and thus
covertly proclaiming itself the child of the Kabalah and Essenism
together."
[For the Johannism of the Adepts was the Kabalah of the earlier Gnostics,
degenerating afterward into those heretical forms which Gnosticism
developed, so that even Manes had his followers among them. Many
adopted his doctrines of the two Principles, the recollection of which is
perpetuated by the handle of the dagger and the tesselated pavement or
floor of the Lodge, stupidly called " the Indented Tessel," and represented
by great hanging tassels, when it really means a tesserated floor (from the
Latin tessera) of white and black lozenges, with a necessarily denticulated
or indented border or edging. And wherever, in the higher Degrees, the
two colors white and black, are in juxtaposition, the two Principles of
Zoroaster and Manes are alluded to. With others the doctrine became a
mystic Pantheism, descended from that of the Brahmins, and even
pushed to an idolatry of Nature and hatred of every revealed dogma.
[To all this the absurd reading of the established Church, taking literally
the figurative, allegorical, and mythical language of a collection of Oriental
books of different ages, directly and inevitably led. The same result long
after followed the folly of regarding the Hebrew books as if they had been
written by the unimaginative, hard, practical intellect of the England of
James the First and the bigoted stolidity of Scottish Presbyterianism.]
"The better to succeed and win partisans, the Templars sympathized with
regrets for dethroned creeds and encouraged the hopes of new worships,
promising to all liberty of conscience and a new orthodoxy that should be
the synthesis of all the persecuted creeds."
[It is absurd to suppose that men of intellect adored a monstrous idol
called Baphomet, or recognized Mahomet as an inspired prophet. Their
symbolism, invented ages before, to conceal what it was dangerous to
avow, was of course misunderstood by those who were not adepts, and to
their enemies seemed to be pantheistic. The calf of gold, made by Aaron
for the Israelites, was but one of the oxen under the layer of bronze, and
the Karobim on the Propitiatory, misunderstood. The symbols of the wise
always become
the idols of the ignorant multitude. What the Chiefs of the Order really
believed and taught, is indicated to the Adepts by the hints contained in
the high Degrees of Free-Masonry, and by the symbols which only the
Adepts understand.
[The Blue Degrees are but the outer court or portico of the Temple. Part of
the symbols are displayed there to the Initiate, but he is intentionally
misled by false interpretations. It is not intended that he shall understand
them; but it is intended that he shall imagine he understands them. Their
true explication is reserved for the Adepts, the Princes of Masonry. The
whole body of the Royal and Sacerdotal Art was hidden so carefully,
centuries since, in the High Degrees, as that it is even yet impossible to
solve many of the enigmas which they contain. It is well enough for the
mass of those called Masons, to imagine that all is contained in the Blue
Degrees; and whoso attempts to undeceive them will labor in vain, and
without any true reward violate his obligations as an Adept. Masonry is the
veritable Sphinx, buried to the head in the sands heaped round it by the
ages.]
"The seeds of decay were sown in the Order of the Temple at its origin.
Hypocrisy is a mortal disease. It had conceived a great work which it was
incapable of executing, because it knew neither humility nor personal
abnegation, because Rome was then invincible, and because the later
Chiefs of the Order did not comprehend its mission. Moreover, the
Templars were in general uneducated, and capable only of wielding the
sword, with no qualifications for governing, and at need enchaining, that
queen of the world called Opinion." [The doctrines of the Chiefs would, if
expounded to the masses, have seemed to them the babblings of folly.
The symbols of the wise are the idols of the vulgar, or else as
meaningless as the hieroglyphics of Egypt to the nomadic Arabs. There
must always be a common-place interpretation for the mass of Initiates, of
the symbols that are eloquent to the Adepts.]
"Hugues de Payens himself had not that keen and far-sighted intellect nor
that grandeur of purpose which afterward distinguished the military
founder of another soldiery that became formidable to kings. The
Templars were unintelligent and therefore unsuccessful Jesuits.
"Their watchword was, to become wealthy, in order to buy the world. They
became so, and in 1312 they possessed in Europe
alone more than nine thousand seignories. Riches were the shoal on
which they were wrecked. They became insolent, and unwisely showed
their contempt for the religious and social institutions which they aimed to
overthrow. Their ambition was fatal to them. Their projects were divined
and prevented. [Rome, more intolerant of heresy than of vice and crime,
came to fear the Order, and fear is always cruel. It has always deemed
philosophical truth the most dangerous of heresies, and has never been at
a loss for a false accusation, by means of which to crush free thought.]
Pope Clement V. and King Philip le Bel gave the signal to Europe, and the
Templars, taken as it were in an immense net, were arrested, disarmed,
and cast into prison. Never was a Coup d' Etat accomplished with a more
formidable concert of action. The whole world was struck with stupor, and
eagerly waited for the strange revelations of a process that was to echo
through so many ages.
"It was impossible to unfold to the people the conspiracy of the Templars
against the Thrones and the Tiara. It was impossible to expose to them
the doctrines of the Chiefs of the Order. [This would have been to initiate
the multitude into the secrets of the Masters, and to have uplifted the veil
of Isis. Recourse was therefore had to the charge of magic, and
denouncers and false witnesses were easily found. When the temporal
and spiritual tyrannies unite to crush a victim they never want for
serviceable instruments.] The Templars were gravely accused of spitting
upon Christ and denying God at their receptions, of gross obscenities,
conversations with female devils, and the worship of a monstrous idol.
"The end of the drama is well known, and how Jacques de Molai and his
fellows perished in the flames. But before his execution, the Chief of the
doomed Order organized and instituted what afterward came to be called
the Occult, Hermetic, or Scottish Masonry. In the gloom of his prison, the
Grand Master created four Metropolitan Lodges, at Naples for the East, at
Edinburg for the West, at Stockholm for the North, and at Paris for the
South." [The initials of his name, J\ B\ M\ found in the same order in
the first three Degrees, are but one of the many internal and cogent proofs
that such was the origin of modern FreeMasonry. The legend of Osiris
was revived and adopted, to symbolize the destruction of the Order, and
the resurrection of
Kh�r�m, slain in the body of the Temple, of KH�R�M ABAI, the Master, as
the martyr of fidelity to obligation, of Truth and Conscience, prophesied the
restoration to life of the buried association.]
"The Pope and the King soon after perished in a strange and sudden manner.
Squin de Florian, the chief denouncer of the Order, died assassinated. In
breaking the sword of the Templars, they made of it a poniard; and their
proscribed trowels thenceforward built only tombs."
[The Order disappeared at once. Its estates and wealth were confiscated, and
it seemed to have ceased to exist. Nevertheless it lived, under other names
and governed by unknown Chiefs, revealing itself only to those who, in
passing through a series of Degrees, had proven themselves worthy to be
entrusted with the dangerous Secret. The modern Orders that style
themselves Templars have assumed a name to which they have not the
shadow of a title.]
"The Successors of the Ancient Adepts Rose-Croix, abandoning by degrees
the austere and hierarchial Science of their Ancestors in initiation, became a
Mystic Sect, united with many of the Templars, the dogmas of the two
intermingling, and believed themselves to be the sole depositaries of the
secrets of the Gospel of St. John, seeing in its recitals an allegorical series of
rites proper to complete the initiation.
"The Initiates, in fact, thought in the eighteenth century that their time had
arrived, some to found a new Hierarchy, others to overturn all authority, and
to press down all the summits of the Social Order under the level of Equality."
The mystical meanings of the Rose as a Symbol are to be looked for in the
Kabalistic Commentaries on the Canticles.
The Rose was for the Initiates the living and blooming symbol of the
revelation of the harmonies of being. It was the emblem of beauty, life, love,
and pleasure. Flamel, or the Book of the Jew Abraham, made it the
hieroglyphical sign of the accomplishment of the great Work. Such is the key
of the Roman de la Rose. The Conquest of the Rose was the problem
propounded to Science by Initiation, while Religion was laboring to prepare
and establish the universal triumph, exclusive and definitive, of the Cross.
To unite the Rose to the Cross, was the problem proposed by the High
Initiation and in fact the Occult philosophy being the
Universal Synthesis, ought to explain all the phenomena of Being.
Religion, considered solely as a physiological fact, is the revelation and
satisfaction of a necessity of souls. Its existence is a scientific fact; to deny
it, would be to deny humanity itself.
The Rose-Croix Adepts respected the dominant, hierarchical, and
revealed religion. Consequently they could no more be the enemies of the
Papacy than of legitimate Monarchy; and if they conspired against the
Popes and Kings, it was because they considered them personally as
apostates from duty and supreme favorers of anarchy.
What, in fact, is a despot, spiritual or temporal, but a crowned anarchist ?
One of the magnificent pantacles that express the esoteric and
unutterable part of Science, is a Rose of Light, in the centre of which a
human form extends its arms in the form of a cross.
Commentaries and studies have been multiplied upon the Divine Comedy,
the work of DANTE, and yet no one, so far as we know, has pointed out its
especial character. The work of the great Ghihellin is a declaration of war
against the Papacy, by bold revelations of the Mysteries. The Epic of
Dante is Johannite and Gnostic, an audacious application, like that of the
Apocalypse, of the figures and numbers of the Kabalah to the Christian
dogmas, and a secret negation of every thing absolute in these dogmas.
His journey through the supernatural worlds is accomplished like the
initiation into the Mysteries of Eleusis and Thebes. He escapes from that
gulf of Hell over the gate of which the sentence of despair was written, by
reversing the positions of his head and feet, that is to say, by accepting
the direct opposite of the Catholic dogma and then he reascends to the
light, by using the Devil himself as a monstrous ladder. Faust ascends to
Heaven, by stepping on the head of the vanquished Mephistopheles. Hell
is impassable for those only who know not how to turn back from it. We
free ourselves from its bondage by audacity.
His Hell is but a negative Purgatory. His Heaven is composed of a series
of Kabalistic circles, divided by a cross, like the Pantacle of Ezekiel. In the
centre of this cross blooms a rose and we see the symbol of the Adepts of
the Rose-Croix for the first time publicly expounded and almost
categorically explained.
For the first time, because Guillaume de Lorris, who died in 1260, five
years before the birth of Alighieri, had not completed
his Roman de la Rose, which was continued by Chopinel, a half century
afterward. One is astonished to discover that the Roman de la Rose and
the Divina Commedia are two opposite forms of one and the same work,
initiation into independence of spirit, a satire on all contemporary
institutions, and the allegorical formula of the great Secrets of the Society
of the Roses-Croix.
The important manifestations of Occultism coincide with the period of the
fall of the Templars; since Jean de Meung or Chopinel, contemporary of
the old age of Dante, flourished during the best years of his life at the
Court of Philippe le Bel. The Roman de la Rose is the Epic of old France.
It is a profound book, under the form of levity, a revelation as learned as
that of Apuleius, of the Mysteries of Occultism. The Rose of Flamel, that of
Jean de Meung, and that of Dante, grew on the same stem.
Swedenborg's system was nothing else than the Kabalah, minus the
principle of the Hierarchy. It is the Temple, without the keystone and the
foundation.
Cagliostro was the Agent of the Templars, and therefore wrote to the
Free-Masons of London that the time had come to begin the work of rebuilding
the Temple of the Eternal. He had introduced into Masonry a new
Rite called the Egyptian, and endeavored to resuscitate the mysterious
worship of Isis. The three letters L\ P\D\ on his seal, were the initials of
the words "Lilia pedibus destrue;" tread under foot the Lilies [of France],
and a Masonic medal of the sixteenth or seventeenth century has upon it
a sword cutting off the stalk of a lily, and the words " talem dabit ultio
messem," such harvest revenge will give.
A Lodge inaugurated under the auspices of Rousseau, the fanatic of
Geneva, became the centre of the revolutionary movement in France, and
a Prince of the blood-royal went thither to swear the destruction of the
successors of Philippe le Bel on the tomb of Jacques de Molai. The
registers of the Order of Templars attest that the Regent, the Duc d'
Orleans, was Grand Master of that formidable Secret Society, and that his
successors were the Duc de Maine, the Prince of Bourbon-Conde, and the
Duc de Cosse-Brissac.
The Templars compromitted the King; they saved him from the rage of the
People, to exasperate that rage and bring on the catastrophe prepared for
centuries; it was a scaffold that the vengeance of the Templars
demanded. The secret movers of the
French Revolution had sworn to overturn the Throne and the Altar upon
the Tomb of Jacques de Molai. When Louis XVI. was executed, half the
work was done; and thenceforward the Army of the Temple was to direct
all its efforts against the Pope.
Jacques de Molai and his companions were perhaps martyrs, but their
avengers dishonored their memory. Royalty was regenerated on the
scaffold of Louis XVI., the Church triumphed in the captivity of Pius VI.,
carried a prisoner to Valence, and dying of fatigue and sorrow, but the
successors of the Ancient Knights of the Temple perished, overwhelmed
in their fatal victory.

But the Freemasons here all say it's ("Morals and Dogma" by Albert Pike) not relevant to today.

I would say that this book remains very relevant in the Scottish Rite of Masonry for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States, which it was intended for. It is not relevant in other Rites, or in the Scottish Rite of other Jurisdictions, which it was not intended for.
"Morals and Dogma" may be a bit much for those not trained in philosophy, but it nevertheless isn't all that difficult to comprehend. Personally, I consider it one of the greatest philosophical works of the 19th century.
Pike was also a very proficient poet, and had published several volumes of poetry aside from his books on Freemasonry, history, and law.
Pike's daughter, Lilian, writes the following about her father in a preface to a collection of his poetry, published after his death:

"Although he never in later years referred to it with any expression of bitterness, he lived constantly in an atmosphere of restraint when a boy; for he was by heredity and by nature a thinker, a student, and a poet; large-minded, high-strung, sensitive, chivalrous, munificent, communicative with those he loved, but reserved to strangers and uncongenial persons; ambitious and conscious of his powers, yet diffident and modest, easily depressed by unkind words and sneers, but steadfast in his determination to do something, to be a power in the world. Thrown with rigid Puritans, who had little toleration for sentiment, and scorned poetry and �flowery talk�, as they called anything imaginative and ideal, it is not to be wondered that he longed to breathe a freer air, to lead a wider life than the purely materialistic one of wage-earning and eating and drinking, with no thought of greater things, no interchange of ideas, no aspirations toward intellectual development.�


Following is one of Pike's most famous poems, called "Every Year".


Life is a count of losses,
Every year;
Lost springs with sobs replying,
Unto weary autumn's sighing,
While those we love are dying,
Every year.

The days have less of gladness,
Every year;
The nights more weight of sadness
Every year.
Fair springs no longer charm us,
The winds and weather harm us,
The threats of death alarm us,
Every year.

There come new care and sorrows,
Every year;
Dark days and darker morrows,
Every year.
The ghosts of dead hopes haunt us,
The ghosts of changed friends taunt us,
And disappointments daunt us,
Every year.

To the past go more dead faces,
Every year;
As the loved leave vacant places,
Every year;
Everywhere the sad eyes meet us,
In the evening's dusk they greet us,
And to come to them entreat us,
Every year.

"You are growing old," they tell us,
Every year;
"You are more alone," they tell us,
Every year;
"You can win no more affection;
"You have only recollection,
"Deeper sorrow and dejection,
Every year."

The shores of life are shifting,
Every year;
And we are seaward drifting,
Every year;
Old places, changing, fret us,
The living more forget us,
There are fewer to regret us,
Every year.

But the truer life draws nigher,
Every year;
And its morning star climbs higher,
Every year;
Earth's hold on us grows slighter,
And the heavy burden lighter,
And the dawn immortal brighter,
Every year.

XXX was truly fascinating to read.
If there are others that stand out, post them, otherwise I can use the link Masonic Light provided.
Thanks so much. Reading Pike's words mean more to me than debating what the Mason are or are not.

If there are others that stand out, post them, otherwise I can use the link Masonic Light provided.

Personally, I think they all stand out, but one really needs to read the whole book in order to understand what he's really saying. Pike originally intended each chapter to be the lecture for the degree it corresponded to, but he was never able to edit it before his death so that it could fulfil that function.
That's also why its hard to keep up with if its not read chronologically. He might remember to add something in chapter 12 that should have gone in chapter 2, etc.
The Supreme Council considered editing it after his death, but wisely decided not to. Even though the unedited book appears to ramble sometimes, at least it is in truth the work of Brother Albert Pike, while an edited version would be a version tampered with by somebody else.

Reading Pike's words mean more to me than debating what the Mason are or are not.

Pike's book is an excellent overview of how ethical morality and religious dogma has emerged and evolved since the dawn of man.
It must be stressed, however, that this book (nor any other) can speak for all Masons. Pike was a noted scholar, and is respected by most Masons who have read him; but that doesn't necessarily mean that the Masons who respect him agree with him on everything.
For my part, I agree with the majority of what he is written. One of the things I disagree with him on, is his theory that the Sephiroth (a diagram used in studying the Kabbalah) was derived from the Tetractys of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras. Pike believed that Pythagoras developed the Tetractys after studying Magism, with the individual points representing the manifestations of Ahura Mazda, the name of God used by the Magi. This is an interesting hypothesis, but there is no evidence that the Hebrew Kabbalists were influenced by the Tetractys when constructing the Sephiroth.
But this would not have phased Pike, who himself wrote in the book's introduction:

"Everyone is entirely free to reject and dissent from whatsoever herein may seem to him to be untrue or unsound. It is only required of him that he shall weigh what is taught, and give it fair hearing and unprejudiced judgement."

Fiat Lvx.

Hey Kappa, Boaz is descreibed as a man of great wealth.

It is the book of Ruth in the Holy Bible.

read about it.

www.biblenews1.com...

Hey Kappa, Boaz is descreibed as a man of great wealth.

The Boaz that Pike referred to above is not the husband of Ruth, but is the name of one of the Pillars that stood at the Porch of the Temple in Jerusalem, which was an architectural masterpiece (see I Kings 7:21).

Fiat Lvx.

Are there two versions of Morals and Dogma? I'm reading Masonary Beyond the Light by William Shnoebelen who says ," Its not the same book if it doesn't have on the front of it: ESOTERIC BOOK ,FOR SCOTTISH RITE USE ONLY; TO BE RETURNED UPON WITHDRAWAL OR DEATH OF RECIPIENT. Does anyone know about this?

TG, the story I got is they got rid of that quote because it interfered with "plausible deniabilty". Now they can claim that no man speaks for Masonry. The KKK, Mafia, Crips, Bloods and Hells Angels can make the same claim.

So there all the same book okay thanks, Researcher.

Originally posted by cardsharp
Hey Kappa, Boaz is descreibed as a man of great wealth.

It is the book of Ruth in the Holy Bible.

read about it.

www.biblenews1.com...

Wait, did I say something-- err, ANYthing about Boaz? I don't think I did. All I did was post chapters of M&D.

Are there two versions of Morals and Dogma? I'm reading Masonary Beyond the Light by William Shnoebelen who says ," Its not the same book if it doesn't have on the front of it: ESOTERIC BOOK ,FOR SCOTTISH RITE USE ONLY; TO BE RETURNED UPON WITHDRAWAL OR DEATH OF RECIPIENT. Does anyone know about this?

Same book. Originally, the book was printed to give as a gift to new Scottish Rite members in the Southern Jurisdiction. The first few printings had the "TO BE RETURNED UPON WITHDRAWAL OR DEATH OF RECIPIENT" on the front page in hope that the family of deceased Brothers would return the books to the Temples, so it could be given to other members, saving the Supreme Council extra printing costs.
This didn't pan out, so eventually they stopped putting that on the front page. The Supreme Council stopped printing the book in the '60's, and it is no longer given to new members, although they are recommended to obtain copies ("A Bridge To Light" by Dr. Rex Hutchens, 33�, Grand Cross of the Court of Honour, is now given to new members.
Kessinger now reprints M&D in paperback, but as I mentioned previously, you can often find older hardback Supreme Council printings in good condition on Ebay. If you can't, the Supreme Council will be happy to sell you a used one for 50 bucks.
www.srmason-sj.org...

Fiat Lvx.