Albert Pike
33rd Degree - Confederate General and Leader of the Scottish Rite - SMJ
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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 od 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.
