Page 21 - Montana Freemason Magazine March 2014

Montana Freemason Albert PMiakrceh 2’s014E soterika
Dan Gardiner (3)
Introduction
It is virtually unknown by Montana Masons that
Albert Pike not only visited Montana in his capacity
as a Mason, but did so at least twice - making stops
in a handful of places, including Butte, Deer Lodge,
and Helena - and remained in correspondence with
Montanans as well. It is probably almost as unknown
that while Pike was the champion of the Scottish Rite,
he defended the Blue Lodge, or three “Craft” degrees,
as being essential.
When most Masons think of Albert Pike, two
things immediately come to mind: his 860+ page
book, Morals and Dogma, and the organization he
wrote that book for, the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.
Many Masons are aware that Pike spent a large portion
of his life in Arkansas, was a popular Western figure,
participated in the American Civil War, and lived out
his remaining days in Washington, D.C. Still some
fewer Masons are familiar enough with Pike through
having made an attempt at reading some of Morals
and Dogma (M&D).
The bewildering number of topics that Pike covers
in M&D often left readers puzzling: what did “Uncle
Albert” mean when he wrote on a particular topic?
Was he advocating any particular religious or mystical
experiences? Did any of it pertain to “Blue Lodge,” or
was it all strictly of interest to Scottish Rite Masons? in fact endorsements, but just that – an attempt to
Given time, the impenetrability of Morals and
Dogma has meant that, upon landing on any given
passage in the work while casually flipping through it,
the reader is often left confused. Further writers have
made the situation no better, because Albert Pike is
often used as a mouthpiece for their own interests,
and those interests, through misunderstanding
(deliberate or otherwise), have tended toward the
“esoteric occult.”
Over the last several years, my own encounters
with fellow Freemasons has led me into conversations
dealing with the “esoteric occult,” and, invariably,
Albert Pike’s Morals and Dogma is trotted out to
support a(ny) position. When I offer contradictory
evidence, from Pike himself, my verbal partners
circle back to a cherry-picked passage of Morals and
Dogma.
In examining Pike’s life for an article that I was
writing for the Scottish Rite Research Society’s
newsletter, the Plumbline, I gave a second glance to
something that had struck me in the past: Albert Pike
Volume 90 Number 1
seems to be a man stuck in time; that is to say, that
when we speak of Albert Pike, he is almost always
taken in the context of Morals and Dogma, and we
ignore the fact that he lived for almost 20 more years
after the publication of the text. It occurred to me
then, as it had previously, that to continue to attribute
things to the Pike of 1872 (when M&D was published)
as if he had never matured, was to effectively silence
the remainder of his life. What did he have to say later
in life about many of the topics seized upon by those
so enamored of the esoteric occult?
As it turns out, Albert Pike, as he continued to
grow in Masonic knowledge and personal wisdom,
admitted time and again that he had been easily misled
at times, and at others, had changed his position as
new information became available. This is about the
neglected period of Pike’s life.
[1] Albert Pike, the Blue Lodge, and Montana Masons
The fact is, Pike did not remain on a “mystical”
joyride for the remainder of his life, but rather became
a hard traveling administrator. It is entirely fitting that
Pike would close a chapter of his life with completion
of Morals & Dogma, and later explain to others that
several of the things that were apparently endorsed
in M&D during his cataloguing of the processes of
human religions and quasi-mystical sects were not
systematize and understand morality and ethics
across various times and peoples. Several statements
will follow showing that Pike had no problem at
all sorting out fact from fancy, the real versus the
imagine.
Here is Arturo de Hoyos’ contextualization of
Pike during his active (Morals & Dogma) era: “Prior
to the emergence of the ‘authentic school’ Pike
had, like many others, read the speculations and
theories of earlier writers, sometimes accepting their
fantastic claims of the Fraternity’s supposedly ancient
origins. He tells us that, for a time, he put faith in the
‘fancies about the Egyptian origin’ of Freemasonry
(a notion spread today in the popular but uncritical
book, The Hiram Key), but he ultimately rejected
this and similarly unfounded ‘fancies.’ He lamented
over the baseless conclusions and contradictions he
encountered, at times wondering if there was actually
anything of value to be found. In frustration he
even considered abandoning the study of Masonic
symbolism altogether, but consequently resolved to
retain the symbols and abandon the expositors. Even
by today’s standards Pike was a rare type of FreemPaagseon21,