The Phoenix. An illustrated review of occultism and philosophy

Pike learned Sanskrit when he was over 70 years old. He refused the Doctor of Laws degree.

Pike on Freemasonry as in the stream of occult tradition

we say no more than he himself maintains. In Morals and Dogma Pike's primary philosophical work for the Scottish Rite is to be found the following statement: "One is filled with admiration, on penetrating into the Sanctuary of the Kabalah the Jewish mystical tradition, at seeing a doctrine so logical, so simple, and at the same time so absolute. The necessary union of ideas and signs, the consecration of the most fundamental realities by the primitive characters; the Trinity of Words, Letters, and Numbers; a philosophy simple as the alphabet, profound and infinite as the Word; theorems more complete and luminous than those of Pythagoras; a theology summed up by counting on one's fingers; an Infinite which can be held in the hollow of an infant's hand; ten ciphers and twenty-two letters, a triangle, a square, and a circle: these are all the elements of Kabalah. These are the elementary principles of the written Word, reflection of that spoken Word that created the world!"

If more evidence be necessary, consider the 235 pages of manuscript commentary on the Cabala an alternate spelling of Kabbalah in Pike's autograph now in the library of the Supreme Council. Nor should we forget that in his Masonic writings Pike drew considerably from the books on transcendental magic by Eliphas Levi, a Cabalist and a magician, whose concepts Pike must have highly admired since he quoted them so frequently. There are hundreds of references to Cabalism in the Magnum Opus the Great Work and the Legenda readings or legends of the degrees from the 4th to the 32nd. Any Freemason studying these carefully could not but become acquainted with the leading tenets of Cabalistic tradition as these are derived from the Sepher Yetzirah Book of Formation and the Sepher ha Zohar Book of Splendor.

As a Hermetist a follower of the teachings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, Pike is an equally distinguished exponent of primitive revelation. In his lecture on the Knight of the Sun, or Prince Adept, Pike reveals his intimate knowledge of the arcanum a profound secret or mystery: "The Hermetic Art is, therefore, at the same time a religion, a philosophy, and a natural science. As a religion, it is that of the Ancient Magi wise men or priests of ancient Persia and the Initiates of all ages; as a philosophy, we may find its principles in the school of Alexandria and the theories of Pythagoras; as a science, we must inquire for its processes of Paracelsus, Nicholas Flamel, and Raymond Lulle." Pike then hazards all by a magnificent occult statement. None of that race of philosophical metaphysicians whom materialists despise so heartily ever soared more gloriously into the hermetic heavens. "The Science is a real one only for those who admit and understand the philosophy and the religion; and its process will succeed only for the Adept who has attained the sovereignty of will, and so become the King of the elementary world; for the grand agent of the operation of the Sun, is that force described in the Symbol of Hermes, of the table of emerald referring to the Smaragdine Tablet, a foundational Hermetic text; it is the universal magical power; the spiritual, fiery, motive power; it is the Od a hypothetical vital force, according to the Hebrews, and the Astral light, according to others. Therein is the secret fire,

living and philosophical, of which all the Hermetic philosophers speak with the most mysterious reserve: the Universal Seed, the secret whereof they kept, and which they represented only under the figure of the Caduceus of Hermes the staff entwined with two serpents. This is the grand Hermetic arcanum. What the Adepts call dead matter are bodies as found in nature; living matters are substances assimilated and magnetized by the science and will of the operator." Pike binds Hermetism to Freemasonry and thus demonstrates the line of its descent: "The Hermetic Science of the early Christian ages, cultivated also by Geber, Alfarabius, and others of the Arabs, studied by the Chiefs of the Templars, and embodied in certain symbols of the higher Degrees of Freemasonry, may be accurately defined as the Kabalah in active realization, or the Magic of Works.

A black and white portrait shows a young Albert Pike with a full beard and dark hair, wearing a formal suit. Below the image is a facsimile of his signature, Albert Pike.

Pike's high admiration for Plato, as well as his cultivation of the orderly rational procedure of the Platonic philosophers, entitle him to be regarded as a legitimate exponent of Platonism. In Morals and Dogma, Pike distinguishes Plato as the greatest of human revelators, and in another places declares that Plato drew his doctrines from the East and from the Mysteries. In his lecture on the Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Mason, the Grand Commander summarizes the philosophical aspects of the Craft in the following words: "It is philosophical, because it teaches the great Truths concerning the nature and existence of one Supreme Deity, and the existence and immortality of the soul. It revives the Academy of Plato, and the wise teachings of Socrates. It reiterates the maxims of Pythagoras, Confucius, and Zoroaster, and reverentially enforces the sublime lessons of Him who died upon the Cross."

Pike's summary of the path which men must walk for the achievement of immortality, or the greatest good, is essentially Platonic and the same which was obscurely depicted in the ceremonials of the ancient Mysteries, especially in the death and resurrection of the martyred Sun God. He declares: "That the noblest purpose of life and the brightest duty of a man are to strive incessantly and vigorously to win the mastery in everything of that which in him is spiritual and divine, over that which is material and sensual." This is the inevitable moral conclusion which Pike arrived at after analyzing the confused anthropomorphism of ancient peoples. In accepting Plato as supreme among the revelators of truth, Pike aligned himself on the side of metaphysical philosophy as opposed to the natural philosophy of the Aristotelians.

We have yet to speak of Albert Pike, the alchemist, or, rather, we shall let him speak for himself. "The Hermetic Gold is not only a true dogma, a light without Shadow, a Truth without alloy of falsehood; it is also a material gold, real, pure, the most precious that can be found in the mines of the earth. * * *"

EVERY YEAR

Whatever is matter contains salt; and all salt (nitre) may be converted into pure gold by the combined action of Sulphur and Mercury alchemical principles representing active/soul and passive/spirit, which sometimes act so rapidly, that the transmutation the change of one substance into another may be effected in an instant, in an hour, without fatigue to the operator, and almost without expense. At other times, and according to the more refractory temper of the atmospheric media, the operation requires several days, several months, and sometimes even several years."

By the foregoing we believe it has been amply demonstrated that to the enlightened vision of Albert Pike Freemasonry was a repository and perpetuator of the most precious and essential doctrines of mankind. His impetus to Freemasonry was an uplifting one, calling the Brothers to their dignity and estate, and rescuing from the confusion of misinterpreted symbols the principal elements of the arcane secret or hidden doctrines. To this grand

soul, Freemasonry must be adorned with the insignia of learning in all its various departments. His life and actions reveal that Freemasonry was Albert Pike's religion: not Freemasonry in its outer sense, but in a deified aspect, in which all the rites and degrees blazed forth with the light of divine wisdom and authority. We have but to study the life of the man to discover that through the symbols, to the interpretation of which he devoted his life, Pike found his Creator and was brought face to face with that living Word which is the consummation to all Masonic travel.

Albert Pike was great because he recognized greatness. He is immortal because he refused to accept mortality. He was a true Master Mason because he refused to see in Freemasonry less than the most sacred and most profound of all mortal tradition. In his Legenda the ritualistic explanations of the degrees of the Scottish Rite, Pike