Scottish Rite
Albert Pike Medallion
This bronze piece is
unusual. It still has what looks like a ribbon hanger still attached, so
it could have been a part of a jewel at one time. Whatever it is, it is
a wonderful picture of Pike in high relief. On the front side it
reads: Albert Pike 33 Degree 1809 - 1891 (the dates of his birth
and death). Engraved on the side of the piece it reads: Presented By
Frederick Webber 33 Degree 1899. On the reverse it shows a double
headed eagle surrounded by the words; Gr. Comdr. Ad Vitam. S. C. (Sovereign
Commander) 33 Degree So. Mas. Juris. U.S.A. 1857. The piece is very heavy and
measures 1 3/4 inches in diameter.
ALBERT
PIKE
Short Talk Bulletin - Vol.
I, July. 1923, No.7
Author Unknown
Albert Pike found
Freemasonry in a log cabin and left it in a Temple. He was the master genius
of Masonry in America, both as scholar and artist. No other mind of
equal power ever toiled so long in the service of the Craft in the New World.
No other has left a nobler fame in our annals. A great American and a
great Mason, the life of Pike is a part of the romance of his country. Outside
the Craft he was known as a poet, journalist, soldier, jurist, orator, and his
ability in so many fields fills one with amazement. Apart from the chief work
of his life in Masonry, he merits honor as a philosopher and a scholar.
Indeed, he was one of the richest minds of his age, resembling the sages of
the ancient world in his appearance and in the quality of his mind. Those who
do not know Masonry often think of him as a man whom history passed by and
forgot.
Pike was born in Boston,
Massachusetts, December 29, 1809, of a family in which are several famous
names, such as Nicholas Pike, author of the first arithmetic in America, and
the friend of Washington; and Zebulon Pike, the explorer, who gave his name to
Pike's Peak. His father, he tells us, was a shoemaker who
worked hard to give his children the benefit of an education; his Mother a
woman of great beauty, but somewhat stern in her ideas of rearing a boy.
As a child he saw the festivities at the close of the War with Great Britain,
in 1815. When Albert Pike was four his father moved to Newburyport, and
there the boy grew up, attending the schools of the town, and also the academy
at Framingham. At fourteen he was ready for the freshman class at
Harvard, but was unable to pay the tuition fees for two years in advance, as
was required at that time, and proceeded to educate himself. Had he been
admitted to Harvard he would have been in the class of Oliver Wendell Holmes.
As a lad, Albert Pike was sensitive,
high-strung, conscious of power, very shy and easily depressed; but, ambitious and determined to make his place
in the world. Always a poet, while teaching school at Fairhaven he wrote a
series of poems called "Hymns to the Gods," which he afterward
revised and sent to Christofer North, editor of "Blackwood's
Magazine," at Edinburg, receiving in reply a letter hailing him as a
truly great poet. Had Pike given himself altogether to poetry he would have
been one of the greatest of American Poets; but, he seemed not to care for
such fame but only for the joy, and sometimes the pain, of writing. Indeed,
the real story of his inner life may be traced in his poems, a volume of which was published as
early as 1813, in honor of which event his friends gave him a reception.
In a poem called "Fatasma" he pictures himself at that
time as a pale-faced boy, wasted by much study, reciting his poems to a crowded room. As
his lips move his eyes are fastened on the lovely face and starry eyes of a
girl to whom he dared not tell his love, because she was rich and he was poor.
No doubt this hopeless love had much to do with his leaving New England to
seek his fortune in the West. Anyway, it made him so sore of heart that the
word God does not appear in his poetry for several years.
Another reason for going away was
the rather stern environment of New England, in which he felt that he could
never do and be his best. So, he sings: Weary of fruitless toil he leaves his
home, To seek in other climes a fairer fate. Pike left New England in March,
1831, going first to Niagara, and thence, walking nearly all the way, to St.
Louis. In August he joined a party of forty traders with ten covered wagons
following the old Santa Fe Trail. He was a powerful man, six feet and
two inches tall, finely formed, with dark eyes and fair skin, fleet of foot
and sure of shot, able to endure hardship, and greatly admired by the Indians.
He spent a year at Santa Fe, the unhappiest months of his life. Friendless,
homesick, haunted by many memories, he poured out his soul in sad-hearted
poems in which we see not only the desperate melancholy of the man but the
vivid colors of the scenery and life round about him. Shelly was his ideal,
Coleridge his inspiration but his own genius was more akin to Bryant than any
other of our singers.
What made him most forlorn is told
in such lines as these:
Friends washed off by life's ebbing tide, Like sands upon the shifting coasts,
The soul's first love another's bride; And other melancholy though. Happily,
new scenes, new friends, and new adventures healed his heart, and a new note
of joy is added to his rare power of describing the picturesque country in
which he was a pilgrim. In 1832, with a trapping party, he went down the Pecos
river into the Staked Plains, and then to the headwaters of the Brazos and Red
Rivers. It was a perilous journey and he almost died of hunger and thirst, as
he has told us in his poem, "Death in the Desert."
After walking five hundred miles he
arrived at Fort Smith, Arkansas, friendless, without a dollar, and well-nigh naked. He was soon teaching school
in a tiny log cabin near Van Buren, and, tired of wandering, his life began to
take root and grow.
Again his pen was busy, writing
verses for the "Little Rock Advocate," as well as political articles
under the pen name "Casca," which attracted so much notice that
Horace Greely reprinted them in the New York Tribune. Soon the whole state was
eager to know the genius who signed himself "Casca." Robert
Crittenden and Judge Turner rode through the wilderness and found the tall,
handsome young man teaching in a log schoolhouse on Little Piney River.
Charmed with his modesty and power, they invited him to go to Little Rock as
assistant editor of the Advocate. Here ended the winter of his wanderings, and
his brilliant summer began among friends who love him and inspired him to do
his best.
Pike made an able editor, studying
law at night, never sleeping more than five hours a day - which enabled him to do as much work as two men
usually do. By 1835 he owned the Advocate, which contained some of his best
writing. He delved deep into law, mastering its history, its philosophy; and,
once admitted to the bar, his path to success was an open road. About
this time we read a tender poem, "To Mary," showing that other
thoughts were busy in his mind. That same year he married Miss Mary Hamilton,
a beautiful girl whom he met on a June day at the home of a friend. A few
months later appeared this "Prose Sketches and Poems," followed by a
longer poem; bold, spirited, and scholarly entitled "Ariel." His
poems were printed, for the most part, by his friends as he seemed deaf to the
whispers of literary ambition.
In the War with Mexico Pike won fame
for his valor in the field of Buena Vista, and he has enshrined that scene in
a thrilling poem. After the war he took up the cause of the Indians, whose
life and languages fascinated him and who, he felt, were being robbed of their
rights. He carried their case to the Supreme Court. to whose Bar he was
admitted in 1849, along with Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin. His speech
in the case of the Senate Award to the Choctaws is famous, Webster passing
high eulogy upon it. Judged by any test, Pike was a great orator, uniting
learning with practical acumen, grace with power, and the imperious magnetism
which only genius can command.
Pike was made a Master Mason in
Western Star Lodge No. 1, Little Rock, Arkansas, July, 1850; and the symbolism
of the Craft fascinated him from the first, both as a poet and scholar.
Everywhere he saw suggestions, dim intimations, half-revealed and
half-concealed ideas which could not have had their origin among the common
craft Masons of old. He set himself to study the Order, his enthusiasm keeping
pace with his curiosity, in search of the real origin and meaning of its
symbols. At last he found that Freemasonry is the Ancient Great Mysteries in disguise, it's simple
emblems the repository of the highest wisdom of the Ancient World, to rescue
and expound which became more and more his desire and passion. Here his
words: "It began to shape itself to my intellectual vision into something
imposing and majestic, solemnly mysterious and grand. It seemed to me like the
Pyramids in the grandeur and loneliness, in whose yet undiscovered chambers
may be hidden, for the enlightenment of the coming generations, the sacred
books of the Egyptians, so long lost to the World; like the Sphinx,
half-buried in the sands. In essence, Freemasonry is more ancient than any of
the world's living religions. So I came at last to see that its symbolism is
its soul."
Thus a great poet saw Freemasonry
and sought to renew the luster of its symbols of high and gentle wisdom,
making it a great humanizing, educational and spiritual force among men. He
saw in it a faith deeper than all creeds, larger than all sects, which, if
rediscovered, he believed, would enlighten the world. It was a worthy ambition
for any man, and one which Pike, by the very quality of his genius, as well as
his tastes, temper and habits of mind, seemed born to fulfill. All this
beauty, be it noted, Pike found in the old Blue Lodge - he had not yet
advanced to the higher degrees - and to the end of his life the Blue Lodge
remained to him a wonder and a joy. There he found universal Masonry, all the
higher grades being so many variations on its theme. He did not want Masonry
to be a mere social club, but a power for the shaping of character and
society.
So far Pike had not even heard of
the Scottish Rite, to which he was to give so many years of service. He seems
not to have heard of it until 1852, and then, as he tells us, with much the
same feeling with which a Puritan might hear of a Buddhist ceremony performed
in a Calvinistic church. He imagined that it was not Masonry at all, or else a
kind of Masonic atheism. His misunderstanding was due, perhaps, to the bitter
rivalry of rites which then prevailed, and which he did so much to heal.
At length he saw that Masonry was one, though its rites are
many, and he studied the Scottish Rite, its origin, history, and such ritual
as it had at the time, which was rather crude and chaotic, but sufficient to
reveal its worth and promise.
The Scottish appeared in America in
1801, at Charleston, South Carolina, derived from a Supreme Council
constituted in Berlin in 1786. For its authority it had, in manuscript, a
Grand Constitution, framed by the Prussian body - a document which Pike
afterwards defended so ably, though toward the end of his life he was led by
facts brought out by Gould and others, to modify his earlier position. The
Council so established had no subordinate bodies at first, and never very
many, in fact, until 1855, a very natural result in a country which, besides
having Masonry of its own, regarded the Rite as heresy. None the less Pike
entered the Scottish Rite, at Charleston, March 20, 1853, receiving its
degrees from the fourth to the thirty-second, and the thirty-third degree in
New Orleans, in 1857.
The following year he delivered a
lecture in New Orleans, by special request, before the Grand Lodge of Louisiana; his theme being "The Evil
Consequences of Schisms and Disputes for Power in Masonry, and of Jealousy and Dissensions Between Masonic Rites" - one of the greatest
single Masonic lectures ever delivered, in which may be found the basis of all
his Masonic thought and teaching. Masonry, as Pike saw it, is morality founded
in faith and taught by symbols. It is not a religion, but a worship in which
all good men can unite, its purpose being to benefit mankind physically,
socially, and spiritually; by helping men to cultivate freedom, friendship and
character. To that end, beyond the facts of faith - the reality of God, the
moral law, and the hope of immortality - it does not go.
One is not surprised to learn that Pike was made Sovereign Grand
Commander of the Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, in 1859. He
at once began to recast the Rite, rewriting its rituals, reshaping its
degrees, some of which existed only in skeleton, and clothing them in robes of
beauty. To this task he brought all his learning as a scholar, his insight as
a poet, and his enthusiasm as a Mason. He lived in Little Rock, in a
stately home overlooking the city, where he kept his vast library and did his
work. In the same year, 1859, he was reported dead by mistake, and had the
opportunity of reading many eulogies written in his memory. When the mistake
was known, his friends celebrated his "return from Hades," as it was
called, by a festival.
Alas, then came the measureless woe
of Civil War, and Pike cast his lot with the South, and was placed in command
of the Indian Territory. Against his protest the Indian regiments were
ordered from the Territory and took part in the Battle of Elkhorn. The battle
was a disaster, and some atrocities by Indian Troops, whom he was unable to
restrain, cause criticism. Later, when the Union Army attacked Little
Rock the Commanding General, Thomas H. Benton, Grand Master of Masons in Iowa,
posted a guard to protect the home of Pike and his Masonic Library. After the
War Pike practiced Law for a time in Memphis. In 1868 he moved to Alexandria,
Virginia, and in 1870 to Washington.
Again he took up his labors in behalf of Masonry, revising its
rituals, and writing those noble lectures into which he gathered the wisdom of the ages
- as though his mind were a great dome which caught the echoes of a thousand
thinkers. By 1871 the Scottish Rite was influential and widely diffused, due,
in part, to the energy and genius of its Commander. In the same year he
published "Morals and Dogma," a huge manual for the instruction of
the Rite, as much a compilation as a composition, able but ill-arranged, which
remains to this day a monument of learning. It ought to be revised,
rearranged, and reedited, since it is too valuable to be left in so cumbersome
a form, containing as it does much of the best Masonic thinking and writing in
our literature. It is studded with flashing insights and memorable sayings, as
for example:
Man is accountable for the uprightness of his doctrine, But not
for the rightness of it. The free country where intellect and genius rule,
will endure. Where they serve, and other influences govern, its
life is short. When the state begins to feed part of the people, it
prepares all to be slaves. Deeds are greater than words. They have a
life, mute but undeniable, and they grow. They people the emptiness of Time.
Nothing is really small. Every bird that flies carries a thread of the
infinite in its claws. Sorrow is the dog of that unknown Shepherd who
guides the flock of men. Life has its ills, but it is not all evil. If
life is worthless, so is immortality. Our business is not to be better
than others, but to be better than ourselves.
For all his strength and learning,
Pike was ever a sensitive,
beauty-loving soul, touched by the brevity and sadness of life, which breathe
in his poems. His best known poem, but by no means his greatest, was written
in 1872 entitled, "Every Year," in which this note of melancholy is
heard:
Life is a count of
losses, Every year;
For the weak are
heavier crosses, Every year;
Lost springs with
sobs replying,
Unto weary Autumn's
sighing,
While those we love are dying, 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.
But the truer life
draws nigher, Every year;
And the 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.
Death often pressed the cup of
sorrow to his lips. Three of his children died in infancy. His first son
was drowned; his second, an officer, was killed in battle. His eldest daughter
died in 1869, and the death of his wife was the theme of a melting poem,
"The Widowed Heart." His tributes to his friends in the Fraternity,
as one by one they passed away, were memorable for their tenderness and simple
faith. Nothing could shake his childlike trust in the veiled kindness of the
Father of Men; and despite many clouds, "Hope still with purple flushed
his sky."
In his lonely later years, Pike
betook himself more and more to his studies, building a city of the mind for
inward consolation and shelter. He mastered many languages - Sanskrit,
Hebrew, old Samarian, Persian - seeking what each had to tell of beauty and of
truth. He left in the library of the House of the Temple fifteen large
manuscript volumes,
translations of the sacred books of the East, all written with an old-fashioned
quill, in a tiny flowing hand, without blot or erasure. There he held court
and received his friends amid the birds and flowers he loved so well. He was
companionable, abounding in friendship, brilliant in conversation, his long
white hair lending him an air of majesty, his face blushing like a child's at
merited praise, simple. kindly, lovable. So death found him in April, 1891,
fulfilling his own lines written as a boy:
So I, who
sing, shall die,
Worn thin and pale, by care and sorrow;
And, fainting. with a soft unconscious sigh,
Bid unto this poor body that I borrow,
A long good-by - tomorrow
To enjoy, I hope, eternal spring in high
Beyond the sky.
So passed Pike. No purer, nobler man has stood at the Altar of
Freemasonry or left his story in our traditions. He was the most eminent
Mason in the world, alike for his high rank, his rich culture, and his
enduring service. Nor will our Craft ever permit to grow dim the memory
of that stately, wise, and gracious teacher - a Mason to whom the world was a
Temple, a poet to whom the world was a song.
