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| Prise de la Bastille by Jean-Pierre Houël. Watercolor, 1789. |
Today is French National Day, known colloquially as Bastille Day, the commemoration of the most celebrated event of the French Revolution: the seizing of the Bastille, the notorious prison-fortress, on this date in 1789.
“Liberté, égalité, fraternité,” the French national motto, was coined with the spirit of the revolution. It echoes throughout the degrees of Freemasonry, particularly in the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, itself a descendant of a French system of Masonic degrees.
Of the 32º (Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret), Albert Pike writes:
“...that Equilibrium between Authority and Individual Action which constitutes Free Government by settling on immutable foundations Liberty, with Obedience to Law; Equality, with Subjection to Authority; and Fraternity, with Subordination to the Wisest and Best [is representative of] the True Word of a Master Mason, the true Royal Secret, which makes possible, and shall at length make real, the Holy Empire of the true Masonic Brotherhood.”
The Magpie Mason sends best wishes to the French brethren and lodges wherever so dispersed over the face of the Earth and water, regardless of jurisdiction and status of recognition.
