Handwritten note in the top margin: "Pike learned Sanskrit when he was over 70 years old. He refused the Doctor of Laws degree."

pet birds. In the Centenary Souvenir of His Birth, published in 1909, there are a number of tributes to Albert Pike from men high in Masonic circles. James D. Richardson, Sovereign Grand Commander, calls Albert Pike the greatest son of Freemasonry. He adds that Pike stands without a rival in the hearts of all Masons of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite throughout the world. The Sovereign Grand Commander also pays a direct tribute to Pike's scholastic achievements: "He had been a fine Greek and Latin scholar. He had taught himself many languages and a great number of dialects. Among them were Sanskrit the ancient language of India, Hebrew, Old Samaritan, Chaldean, Persian, and American Indian. From these he went on to a study of the Parsee and Hindu beliefs and traditions, and of the Rig-Veda the oldest of the sacred Hindu scriptures and Zend-Avesta the primary collection of religious texts of Zoroastrianism. He left fifteen manuscript volumes of translations and commentaries of these Aryan the Indo-Iranian people of ancient India and Iran writings."

George F. Moore, 33rd degree, Grand Prior, made this beautiful statement: "It was Pike, the Mason, who, by the divine alchemy the mystical process of transformation of the love of his fellow men, transmuted all his mental possessions into the pure gold of wisdom, poetry, patriotism, and law. He embodied them in our Scottish Rite Rituals as they were revised and spiritualized by him." Many endearing titles have been bestowed upon Pike by those who knew and loved him. He was called Albertus Magnus Albert the Great, the Homer of America, the Master Builder, the Real Master of the Veils, the Oracle of Freemasonry, and the Zoroaster the founder of the ancient Persian religion of modern Asia.

This is the man who is identical in his purposes and ideals with the highest aspects of Freemasonic thought. He is the man who taught himself Sanskrit after he was seventy years of age. His unpublished manuscripts in the library of the Supreme Council represent, together with his published writings, the most important known collection of research work into the symbolism of the Craft. In time these manuscripts will be published for the good of the Craft and the world.

In every sense of the word, Albert Pike was a self-made man. As a mere youth, he desired education above all things. Too poor to pay his matriculation fee at Harvard, young Pike set himself the task of self-education. How well he succeeded in this labor of love is well attested when in later life Harvard

A black and white circular portrait depicts Albert Pike as an elderly man with a long white beard and balding head, looking slightly to the right. Below the portrait is the caption: THE MASTER BUILDER.

bestowed upon him the honorary degree of Master of Arts, in 1859. Pike declined the honor with thanks. He said that when he was penniless and needed an education, the doors of the institution had been closed to him. He cared nothing for the degree so long after it was needed.

From the foregoing it is evident that Freemasonry not only accepts Albert Pike as a standard of Masonic excellence, but by the dignities showered upon him, gives official recognition to the systems of thought which he applied to the rituals and symbols of the Craft. To Albert Pike, Freemasonry was synonymous with scholarship. Having searched as few men have searched into the hazy background of Freemasonic tradition, Pike is undoubtedly the best qualified authority to whom one can turn in the effort to discover the essential elements of Freemasonry. Let us then consult this splendid oracle, gathering from his own words the essentials of Freemasonic philosophy.

It is neither necessary nor especially desirable that all men should hold similar beliefs concerning the nature of God or the substances and purposes of the world. Nor is it in harmony with the highest good that any should viciously revile or denounce the beliefs of their fellow men. The occult hidden or secret and metaphysical sciences are the oldest known to this race. Freemasons of the higher degrees who ignore the importance of the transcendental relating to a spiritual realm beyond the physical branches of learning, and who viciously criticize those who have discovered their importance, reveal their utter ignorance. They are ignorant of the text of their own textbook—Morals and Dogma—and also of that fundamental Masonic principle which gives to each man the guarantee of unpersecuted freedom of thought.

In his interpretation of Masonic symbolism, Albert Pike naturally turned to those ancient institutions of learning from which has descended to this age the whole bounty of rational good. All scholars must ultimately do this. Nor does Pike hesitate, through any false pride, to acknowledge the origin of his enlightenment. In the Mysteries of Ceres and Proserpine Goddesses of agriculture and the underworld at Eleusis, of Isis and Osiris Egyptian deities representing nature and resurrection in Egypt, of Atys and Adonis in Syria, of the Druses of Lebanon and the Druids of Britain, of the persecuted Gnostics early Christian mystics who emphasized direct spiritual knowledge and the reviled Cabalists students of Jewish mystical traditions, as well as a score of others, he finds the roots of that great tree which was to grow up

IN GOD IS OUR TRUST. original: "IN DEO FIDUCIA NOSTRA"

A Masonic emblem features a double headed eagle wearing a crown and holding a sword in its talons. A triangle containing the number 33 sits above it. A ribbon below displays the Latin motto: God and my right original: "DEUS MEUMQUE JUS".

The Grand Commander:

VERY DEAR BRETHREN:
By this urgent Letter of Convocation I call you, laying aside all other business, to assemble here in Council for the good of the Order, in accordance with our Statute, on the twentieth day of October next. I have looked forward to the coming of that day with impatience and longing since the present year began, for I would gladly see you all once more. It is not possible, I know, that you can all be here. There have been vacant seats at every meeting for thirty years. Yet all of us who may be present will miss those whom we shall have in vain hoped to see; and the pleasure of our meeting will be sadly marred thereby, especially for those of us

"Who are now declined
Into the vale of years;" A quote from Shakespeare's Othello, referring to the onset of old age.
for the absence of a dear friend whom we can hardly hope ever to see again affects us like his death. How can it not distress us and deject us to know that there is but little likelihood that we shall ever have opportunity to see the dear faces and hear the loved voices again? How can it not sadden us to remember that one of our Brethren who became an Active Member in June, 1879, died in May, 1889, without ever having met with us, his business as a lawyer alone preventing; and that, three only of us having ever seen him, he is to all the rest but like
"The shadow of a name in the land of dreams?"
Surely, of a little group like ours, bound together by ties that ought to be strong as Fate, having joint responsibilities, held by solemn vows to the performance of joint duties, each owing to the other counsel and advice, each knowing how too many vacant chairs impair its authority, lessen its power for good, and detract from its respectability, every Brother should be willing to make even great sacrifices to see his Brethren once or twice at least in his lifetime.
Dear Brethren, let not this urgency of remonstrance against absence, when to be present is possible, be offensive to you. Undoubtedly we can do the work that is to be done, without the help of those absent, though perhaps not as well, nor with as much ease and satisfaction to ourselves: but their absence could not be a matter of indifference and unconcern to us, unless our love for them were mere idle liking, and our desire to see them a mere fleeting wish. Always the silver cord of Brotherhood is weakened by long separation. THEREFORE I CALL ALL COMPANIONS TOGETHER original: "SOCIOS ERGO CONVOCO OMNES".
May our Father Who is in Heaven have you always in His holy keeping!

A patriarchal cross with a hook at the bottom serves as a signature mark. Albert Pike? 33°
Grand Commander.

through the ages under the name of Freemasonry and spread its branches over the modern world.

He who denies this, denies Pike, the rituals and the evidence. The wealth of Freemasonry lies in those traditions with which it is bound to the great cultural systems of antiquity. Members of the Craft proudly refer to their Brother, Pythagoras an ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician, as an illustrious example of ancient initiation. But do they remember that this "Brother" was a transcendental magician?

He was possessed of all the supernatural powers which modern people ridicule. He was immortalized because of the superlative quality of his erudition.

Pike sensed a deeper dignity, a fuller meaning, and a higher purpose. He was a man apart, one of a small race of rational giants. To such men it is given to see beyond the narrow sphere of personal interest into that broader vista of high purpose and unselfish ends. When we say that Albert Pike was a Cabalist a practitioner of the Kabbalah, the mystical and secret traditions of Jewish origin, we acknowledge his connection to the ancient stream of wisdom.