✍Mixed manuscript — transcription may contain uncertain readings

⚠Handwritten archival notes

500

A black and white photograph of General Albert Pike, an elderly man with a very long, flowing white beard and long white hair. He is seated in a dark chair, wearing a dark suit with a Masonic jewel or cross hanging from a ribbon around his neck. To his left is a large terrestrial globe on a stand.

GENERAL ALBERT PIKE, 33°

Sovereign Grand Commander of the Ancient and Accepted

Scottish Rite of Freemasonry of the Southern

Jurisdiction, U. S. A.

A framed portrait bust of Albert Pike, depicted as a classical philosopher or "Plato" figure, set within an ornate decorative border featuring scrolls and a pedestal base.

ALBERT PIKE

the Plato

of

Freemasonry

Pike—an uncritical mind
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IN THIS article it is not our purpose to write of Albert Pike, the Arkansas gentleman; nor of Albert Pike, the shrewd and successful jurist; nor again of Albert Pike, the American poet; nor shall we enlarge upon his military career which elevated him to the rank of a brigadier-general; nor the high merit of his literary style and the numerous honors bestowed upon him by Freemasons and Freemasonry in all parts of the civilized world. Men who knew him intimately and sat under the spell of his personality and words are better fitted to enlarge upon his many virtues. We shall only speak of his rare abilities as far as is necessary to establish the main subject of our discussion.

The memory of great men lives after them, but their wisdom is interred with their bones. We worship at the shrine of the illustrious, but seldom emulate the qualities for which they came to be so elevated. We recognize the merit of achievement, yet ourselves make small effort to attain it. There is a forgotten Albert Pike—Pike, the Platonic philosopher, the Hermetist, the alchemist, the Cabalist, and the transcendentalist. It is to rescue this genius from the oblivion of forgetfulness that we have framed this essay. Albert Pike was the great American Freemason. He found the organization in a log cabin and left it in a palace. He took all its numerous vicissitudes upon himself and labored unceasingly through a long and industrious life for the perfection of Masonic ideals. For thirty-two years he was the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council of the 33° for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States, with such dignity that at his death William Oscar Roome asked, "Who will dare aspire to fill his chair now vacant?" At the time of his passing, to this Masonic Prometheus was paid the following magnificent tribute: "Albert Pike was a king among men by the divine right of merit. A giant in body, in brain, in heart and in soul.

So majestic in appearance that whenever he moved on highway or byway, the wide world over, every passer-by turned to gaze upon him and admire him. Six feet, two inches tall, with the proportions of a Hercules and the grace of an Apollo. A face and head massive and leonine, recalling in every feature some sculptor's dream of a Grecian god; while his long wavy hair, flowing down over his shoulders, added a striking picturesque effect. * * * He was in himself the highest and grandest embodiment of the virtues and graces of Freemasonry, a living exemplification of the exalted and exalting principles of your great world-embracing brotherhood!" He ran the whole gamut of earthly honors. He climbed Fame's glittering ladder to its loftiest height, and stepped from its topmost round into the skies."

Henry R. Evans, Inspector General, Honorary, of the Supreme Council, 33°, thus describes this Grand Old Man of Masonry: "I often saw him on the streets of Washington, his snow-white hair falling about his shoulders like the mane of a lion. His broad expansive forehead, his serene countenance, and his powerful frame awoke thoughts in me of some being of a far-off time. The conventional dress of an American citizen did not seem suited to such a splendid personality. The costume of an ancient Greek would have been more in keeping with such a face and figure—such a habit as Plato wore when he discoursed upon divine philosophy to his students among the groves of the Academy at Athens, beneath the brilliant sun of Greece. Who knows but what Albert Pike was a reincarnation of Plato, walking these 19th century streets of ours?"

Fred W. Allsopp, in his book, Albert Pike, A Biography, says of Pike that "he was visited and consulted by important persons from all over the world. And, when not otherwise engaged, he sat and dreamed, and delved in ancient lore, as was his wont, smoking his long meerschaum pipe, and watching his