‘DC’s Albert Pike statue is felled, burned’

     

Courtesy NBC4-Washington

The soul hath its senses, like the body, that may be cultivated, enlarged, refined, as itself grows in stature and proportion; and he who cannot appreciate a fine painting or statue, a noble poem, a sweet harmony, a heroic thought, or a disinterested action, or to whom the wisdom of philosophy is but foolishness and babble, and the loftiest truths of less importance than the price of stocks or cotton, or the elevation of baseness to office, merely lives on the level of commonplace, and fitly prides himself upon that inferiority of the soul’s senses, which is the inferiority and imperfect development of the soul itself.

Albert Pike
Morals and Dogma


The above is excerpted from Albert Pike’s lecture in Morals and Dogma for the 5° of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry: the Perfect Master Degree. By “perfect,” this lecture intends another Masonic lesson in achieving equilibrium for the self and harmony in the world.

The adjective “perfect” that we use in the English language derives from the French word for “flawless” and “complete.” It is a coinage as apt for use by those engaged in the good work, square work of operative masonry as it is for those in the speculative art. Otto Jespersen, one of the great linguists, said:


The difference between the Preterit and the Perfect is in English observed more strictly than in the other languages possessing corresponding tenses. The Preterit refers to some time in the past without telling anything about the connection with the present moment, while the Perfect is a retrospective present, which connects a past occurrence with the present time, either as continued up to the present moment (inclusive time) or as having results or consequences bearing on the present moment.


Perfect, as in connecting past to the current moment.

Courtesy Shelton Herald

Albert Pike was a complicated man. Yes, he served in the Confederate army for several months during the Civil War. He was, in fact, a general, until he resigned. Because of this brief military background the “news media” keep referring to his statue in Washington, DC as a Confederate statue. It was not. It was a monument erected by Scottish Rite Masons to honor Albert Pike the Freemason.

In Freemasonry, it was Albert Pike who provided Scottish Rite rituals to Prince Hall brethren so that they too could have Scottish Rite Masonry. It was he who eliminated the medieval religious bar in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite so that Masons who are not Christian may advance to the Rose Croix Degree and beyond—and he did that about a century before the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction got around to emulating that example.

You will see all over the internet today libels about how Pike was a member—or even the founder—of the Klan. He was no such thing. You also will see the accusation that he owned slaves. I have no idea about that, but Pike was a lawyer who moved about the country; he was not a farmer on a plantation.

The mobs in the streets will not be appeased. They are not going to stop destroying historical symbols until there is no more memory of Fill in the Blank. Unchecked by civil authorities, the mobs will continue rampaging. Today’s violence may be against figures, real or imagined, of the Confederacy, but tomorrow it surely will be against the Founders of the United States and many, many, many others who contributed to the complex, but magnificent, history of this unparalleled society.

You destroy a people by obliterating their history. Religious community mocked and marginalized? Check! The family unit discredited and dispersed? Check! Symbols and traditions of common identity rejected and renounced? Double Check! Education crimped to stunt the human mind? Triple Check! And the mobs will continue erasing the historical record itself until people won’t have a past they could protest. “Who controls the past controls the future,” George Orwell instructed in 1984, and “who controls the present controls the past.” Oh, that reminds me: They will defeat and erase language also.

Courtesy WTOP

The destruction of this statue in the middle of the nation’s capital while the police watched speaks to the impotence of Freemasonry in the United States today. The Scottish Rite Southern Jurisdiction had years of opportunity to retake possession of and relocate the monument. I appreciate how just maintaining the House of the Temple requires so much in precious resources, but an effort to raise funds and devise a plan toward that goal could have been possible had they cared—but they didn’t. So now what’s left of this historic likeness of the man who all but singlehandedly ensured that the Southern Jurisdiction would endure into the twentieth century and beyond will be trucked to some government graveyard where the remains of the mob’s Two Minute Hates will be dumped. He’ll be in good company with Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and many, many, many others.

Some history, from three years ago, here.
     

‘To remove the statue forthwith’

     
It seems the Scottish Rite has joined the growing consensus advocating the removal from public space in Washington of the Albert Pike statue at Judiciary Square, if the reporting of the Washington Post is to be believed—not something I recommend typically.

Nevertheless, a story published Monday quotes Ronald Seale writing in agreement on removing the 116-year-old giant bronze and marble rendering of his historic predecessor. The Post also claims Seale was party to an aborted scheme to “whisk away the statue at midnight,” meaning he almost linked himself to the ilk that recently damaged statues of Christopher Columbus, Theodore Roosevelt, and other figures historically essential to American society in the name of constant revolution. Fortunately, reason prevailed after it was realized how federal authority is required to move the monument lawfully.

The story never quotes Seale directly, but cites a letter he allegedly sent in August to a DC councilman saying the Scottish Rite Southern Jurisdiction “will support an action by the District of Columbia to remove the statue forthwith so that it should not serve as a source of contention or strife for the residents of our community.”

Sounds good to me, as I said in the previous Magpie post on this subject, if the statue can be relocated to a Masonic property where, presumably, private property still can be kept safe from mobocracy. However, “contention or strife” are among the principal nutrients for a certain segment of American society that is insatiable for perpetual insurrection, replete with violence against people and property, so they will be back.

It is asked often, including in this Post story, why a Confederate Army general is memorialized in the capital city of the United States. Of course it is a fact that this statue of Pike celebrates Albert Pike the Freemason, and has nothing to do with his brief and undistinguished tenure as a CSA military officer, but perhaps Abraham Lincoln broaches this subject in his second inaugural address, delivered only weeks before he was murdered:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
     

‘2018 World Conference on Freemasonry coming to DC’

     
The “World Conference on Fraternalism, Freemasonry, and History—Including Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society” will come to Washington, DC next spring.

Hosted by Policy Studies Organization, and normally in Paris, the conference will take place at The Whittemore House in the Federal City. (WCFFH will return to Paris in 2019.) The theme for May 17-18, 2018 will be “Not Men Only: Sisters, Sororities, and Ritualistic Societies.”

List of speakers so far here.

From the publicity:

The World Conferences on Fraternalism are held alternatively in Paris in odd numbered years (2019, 2021), and in Washington in even numbered years (2018, 2020). The Paris conferences are held at the French national library, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and the Washington conferences at the historic Whittemore House.

The conferences have themes but they are not exclusionary of other topics. For example, the 2017 Paris conference examined the career of the Chevalier Ramsay, a famous 18th century figure in French fraternalism, but there were many papers on other themes. We welcome papers on all aspects of fraternalism and its ties with social capital. The papers on Freemasonry should not foreclose papers on many other aspects of the subject, including gender, college fraternities, clubs like Rotary, African-American topics, guilds, labor unions. The conferences gain from having a variety of subjects discussed. The committee is also open to presentations of art, dance, folk music, and others, if related.

Papers are both published in the Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society Journal, and in books by Westphalia Press. Simultaneous translation is offered at the French conference. Both Paris and Washington are preceded by workshops to which scholars are invited to consider original materials and problems in fraternal research.

A theme of the May 2018 conference in Washington will be women’s fraternalism. A theme of the June 2019 conference in Paris will be the origin and creation of degrees and rites in fraternalism.

A look at past conferences on this site will help in answering questions about panel possibilities, hotels, and other queries.

Conference Chairs:

• Paul J. Rich, President of the Policy Studies Organization, Westphalia Press
• Pierre Mollier, Editor-in-Chief of the Ritual, Secrecy & Civil Society Journal
• Guillermo de los Reyes, University of Houston

     

‘The Art of the Pipe at Hiram-Takoma’

     

Magpie file photo

It’s been too many years since I last visited Hiram-Takoma 10 in the District of Columbia. (Nothing personal. I’m 250 miles away.) But I’d love to make the trip next week for this meeting. From the publicity:

The Art of the Pipe

Thursday, September 28 at 7:30

Hiram-Takoma Lodge 10

Takoma Masonic Center

115 Carroll Street NW

Washington, DC

This open program is about the art of pipe smoking, presented by Bro. Jacob E. Easton. Dress is business casual. RSVP to W. Bud Michels here to ensure sufficient amount of refreshment.

Dinner (all welcome) at 6:30 p.m. Lodge (Masons only) at 7:30. Program (non-Masons, ladies welcome) at eight o’clock.


Maybe the brethren will form a pipe club. Yeah. A pipe club that meets during Masonic Week! Yeah, that’s it.

Magpie file photo

     

‘Albert Pike in bronze: A statue of limitations?’

     
UPDATE: On the eve of the opening of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite Southern Jurisdiction’s Biennial Session, vandals splashed red paint onto the Albert Pike statue. WRC-TV, the Washington NBC affiliate, reports:

Demonstrators and some D.C. leaders have said Pike was a racist and supported slavery. Friday morning, a banner was draped against the statue with the message

“#ModernConfederates John Kelly. Gary Cohn. Rex Tillerson.”

Courtesy WRC-TV

D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said she plans to meet with the National Park Service to discuss removing the statue. “He certainly has no claim whatsoever to be memorialized in the nation’s capital,” Norton said in a statement.

Following the weekend of violence at the University of Virginia initially sparked by anger over the disposition of a statue of Robert E. Lee, dormant calls for the removal of the statue of Albert Pike in Washington, DC have been revivified by local politicians.

Courtesy dcist.com

Today dcist.com reports rallies Sunday and Monday nights at the statue, located at the corner of Third and D streets NW in the Federal City, brought together activists and city officials to renew calls from a generation ago for the removal of the monument because it memorializes a general in the army of the Confederate States of America during the U.S. Civil War. It is the only statue in Washington dedicated to a Confederate figure, but it is Pike the Freemason, not Pike the general, that is commemorated by the 11-foot bronze.

Sculptor Gaetano Trentanove executed the work, creating what National Parks Service records say is Albert Pike:

“...in civilian dress and presented as a Masonic leader rather than a military man. Pike stands 11 feet tall upon a high granite pedestal. Below his feet about halfway down the west face of the pedestal, sitting on a ledge, is the allegorical Goddess of Masonry, holding the banner of the Scottish Rite. The figure is in Greek dress and posed as looking down. Pike holds a book in his left hand, perhaps his popular Morals and Dogma of Scottish Rite Masonry.”

The statue is situated on federal land, so the calls of the local pols are not an eviction notice; the matter will have to be decided by the NPS. I suppose there may come a day when the House of the Temple will become the statue’s next home. The Southern Jurisdiction’s Biennial Session will convene on Saturday. The leadership may want to empanel a committee to prepare for that possibility. It would not be the statue’s first move, but relocating it to private property may be the best thing. While it was the U.S. Congress that authorized the pedestrian statue, it was the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite that raised the $15,000 to create and install the bronze Pike, dedicating it October 23, 1901.

Letter, dated today, from DC officials to the Acting Director of NPS:

Click to enlarge.

     

‘Washington Monument closed indefinitely’

     
The National Park Service closed the Washington Monument for an indefinite period, it announced today, citing nagging elevator malfunction that persists even after years of repairs made to the landmark, located on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

During Masonic Week 2009, Jim Dillman and I successfully escaped the hotel to do some sightseeing in DC, namely the National Mall and the House of the Temple. Magpie file photo

The NPS used its Facebook page this morning to say:

Despite the continuing work on the Washington Monument elevator, we have not been able to determine the causes of the ongoing reliability issues. As a result, we have made the difficult decision not to reopen the Washington Monument until we can modernize the elevator control system. The scope of work to be accomplished while the monument is closed and the duration of the closure are still being determined; we expect to have an announcement with those additional details in the next couple of weeks.

If you didn’t know, the Washington Monument was built, in part, with stones contributed by America’s Freemasons to honor their most revered brother. Others throughout the United States, as individuals and groups, also participated, but the Monument always had the distinct tie to the Masonic Order. Whether that is because it is an obelisk, or because of its placement within the formation of the nation’s most prized architecture, or what other intangible force people think they discern, the Washington Monument stands as a nexus where U.S. history and the story of Freemasonry intersect—and, true to form, the elevator is out.
     

‘Tree of Life Seminars’

    
The brethren of the Scottish Rite of Washington, DC and the fratres of the Masonic Rosicrucians of DC will co-host a series of seminars beginning next month, featuring knowledgeable speakers offering eight approaches to learning about the Tree of Life as a “Pathway to Enlightenment.”

More great news: one need not be physically present in DC. These sessions will be available via the web. Admission to all eight seminars, whether in person or via the internet, costs $90, but those who register before Saturday, March 10 will benefit from a discount, bringing the total cost to $75.

You can’t go to the movies eight times for $75. Or $90.

The schedule: All sessions will take place on Sundays, from 4 to 6 p.m. Panelists for discussion: TBA.

March 25 – Kabbalah and the Tree of Life, Pathway to Enlightenment, presented by Dr. Darryl Carter.

April 22 – Sufism and the Tree of Life, Pathway to Enlightenment, presented by Dr. Julianne Hazen, Director of Sufi Studies, Sufi Center, Medina, New York.

May 20 – Vedanta Yoga and the Tree of Life, Pathway to Enlightenment, presented by Ill. George R. Adams, 33°, GC.

June 17 – Science and the Tree of Life, Pathway to Enlightenment, presented by Dr. Pierre Gaujard, Physicist.

September 16 – Buddhism and the Tree of Life, Pathway to Enlightenment, presented by Ven. Bhante Katugastota Uparatana, Buddhist Chaplain, American University, Washington.

October 7 – Esoteric Christianity and the Tree of Life, Pathway to Enlightenment, presented by Fratre Marcel Derouches.

October 21 – Taoism and the Tree of Life, Pathway to Enlightenment, presented by Dr. Darryl Carter.

November 11 – Freemasonry and the Tree of Life, Pathway to Enlightenment, presented by Ill. George R. Adams.

Read about the presenters here.
   

‘Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job!’

     
By the way, have you heard Dan Brown has a new novel out? The Lost Symbol is setting sales records and, naturally, has the Masonic world wondering what its impact on the fraternity will be. Early concerns remembered the treatment Opus Dei received in Brown’s previous mega-seller, The DaVinci Code, which portrayed the Roman Catholic lay organization as practically a murder cult, and wondered if Freemasonry was in for a similar ride.

Truly, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the problem posed by The Lost Symbol is that Freemasonry is presented with too much idealism. Dan Brown’s Freemasonry consists of the most powerful men in Washington – the Senate Majority Leader, the Director of Central Intelligence, the Secretary of Homeland Security, et al. – not united in a conspiracy to oppress and exploit, but banded together to preserve ancient wisdom until the time is right to reintroduce humanity to these mysteries.

Establishing parallels between, to borrow a title, the Secret Teachings of All Ages and noetic science, which in the story is explored by a lone scientist toiling inside a secret lab on the campus of the Smithsonian Institution, our author echoes a stirring message imparted by none other than Robert Davis and Jim Tresner, two of the leading educators of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. Incidentally (or maybe not merely incidentally), the Scottish Rite is the specific form of Freemasonry the novel explores.

At the 2004 session of New Jersey Council of Deliberation, Bob and Jim were flown in from Oklahoma to speak on the potential Scottish Rite Masonry has to stir within its brethren the desire to help mankind recognize a new phase of collective awakening. The talk was so well received that Ill. Davis was brought back in 2006, when he presented his paper titled “The Purpose of the Scottish Rite and the Spiritual Awakening of the New Millennium: an Unworldly Partnership.”

Excerpted:

My Brethren, in the history of the world, there have been two periods when a spiritual awakening has taken place across every culture at the same time; where a striking transformation of consciousness occurred in unison across every major population group – all independently of one another – and which resulted in a re-definition of religion and a global awakening of man’s understanding of things spiritual and religious. These have been called Axial Periods because they gave birth to everything which, since then, man has been able to be. It was during these periods that we meet with the most deepcut spiritual dividing lines in history.

The first, and most profound period, occurred in a 500-year span from 800 B.C. to 300 B.C. It was during this time that China saw its two great teachers, Confucious and Lao-tze, from whose wisdom emerged the schools of Chinese philosophy. In India, the Hinduism of the Vedas was transformed by the Upanishads, which changed Hinduism from a polytheistic to a monotheistic religion; where Buddha, the “Awakened One” and Mahavira ushered in two new religious traditions – Buddhism and Janism. The concept of individual enlightenment came from this tradition. In the eastern Mediterranean region, the transformative prophets – Elijah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, called forth from their people a new moral awareness which took Judaism to a higher level based on individual moral responsibility and where the idea of a messiah came into being. In Greece, Western philosophy was born. From Phales and Socrates to Plato and Aristotle, a new rational explanation of the universe was conceived; where moral consciousness was awakened and new metaphysical systems were born. “Know Thyself” became the watchword.

It was an extraordinary global transformation. Although the leaders who effected this change were philosophers and religious teachers, the change was so radical that it affected all aspects of culture because it transformed consciousness itself. It was, in fact, within the horizons of this form of consciousness that the great civilizations of Asia, the Middle East, and Europe developed. It was this form of consciousness that spread to other regions and became dominant worldwide. It was a consciousness that was self-reflective, analytical, and which could be applied to nature in the form of scientific theories, to society in the form of social critique, to knowledge in the form of philosophy; to religion in the form of mapping an individual spiritual journey. To this day, regardless of where we have been born, we live in the structure of consciousness that was shaped in this 500 year period. And it was within this structure that the intellectual and spiritual substance of Freemasonry was born....

Western civilization as we know it today is the product of four great movements that occurred over another 400-year period, all tied to the structure of consciousness which came out of the first Axial Period. These four movements were the Renaissance, the Reformation, the French Revolution, and the Industrial/Social Revolution....

It is time that we create an identity for the Scottish Rite that is uniquely ours in the family of Freemasonry – one which focuses on this original intent of our enlightened society of men....

We are moving into a new Axial Period.... We are on the cutting edge of something bigger than we know and, like the first Axial Period, the new one will redefine traditional paths of spirituality and shape the horizon of consciousness for future centuries. It too will have a great significance for world religions; and it will be driven by both an individual consciousness and a global one. And since this development will be global and connected with new forms of technology, religious futurists are suggesting that we can expect to see a convergence of cultures and religions this time, rather than a division as occurred in the first Axial Period. This has enormous implications for the Scottish Rite.

Seekers of Truth will search each other out and meet in conditions and atmospheres of mutual trust and understanding, with an eagerness to alter misconceptions about each other and prepared to appreciate the values of the other. Dr. Ewert Cousins, Professor of Religious Studies at Fordham University, forecasts that “the partners of this new conscious-raising enterprise will be mutually enriched by passing over into the consciousness of the other and discovering the synthesis of the greater and higher goal of their collective awakening.” In Masonry, we have long defined this as the search for the Lost Word....

I would love to give you all 4,262 words, but you get the idea. (To read more about Robert’s talk, click here, scroll down to the August 2006 issue of The Northern Light magazine, open the PDF, and turn to page 7.) For his part, Dan Brown crafts his protagonists as like-minded strategic thinkers. Brown, the optimist – maybe even the gnostic – wants his readers to view humanity as a brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of god, a global family poised to receive the wisdom of the ages, cleansed of obfuscatory dogma and stunting superstition. The message is delivered obliquely by the mystics of Masonry (not revealing too much to the uninitiated), but bluntly by the scientist. From page 504:

Katherine propped herself on her elbow. “And I promise, if we as humans can honestly grasp this one simple truth, the world will change overnight. I should preface this,” she said, “by reminding you of the Masonic mantras to ‘gather what is scattered,’ to bring ‘order from chaos,’ to find ‘at-one-ment.’ We have scientifically proven that the power of human thought grows exponentially with the number of minds that share that thought.”

Langdon remain silent, wondering where she was going with this idea.

“What I’m saying is this. Two heads are better than one, and yet two heads are not twice better, they are many, many times better. Multiple minds working in unison magnify a thought’s effect exponentially. This is the inherent power of prayer groups, healing circles, singing in unison, and worshipping en masse. The idea of universal consciousness is no ethereal New Age concept. It’s a hard-core scientific reality, and harnessing it has the potential to transform our world. This is the underlying discovery of Noetic Science. What’s more, it’s happening right now. You can feel it all around you. Technology is linking us in ways we never imagined possible: Twitter, Google, Wikipedia, The Magpie Mason, and others all blend to create a web of interconnected minds.” She laughed. “And I guarantee you, as soon as I publish my work, the Twitterati will all be sending tweets that say ‘learning about Noetics,’ and interest in this science will explode exponentially.”

Okay, I added the Magpie part.

...Langdon shut his eyes. In the darkness of his mind, he found himself thinking about universal consciousness, about Plato’s writings on “the mind of the world” and “gathering God,” [and] Jung’s “collective unconscious.” The notion was as simple as it was startling.

God is found in the collection of Many, rather than in the One....

Langdon’s thoughts were spiraling now – dreams, memories, hopes, fears, revelations – all swirling above him in the Rotunda dome. As his eyes began to close again, he found himself staring at three words in Latin, painted with the Apotheosis.

E pluribus unum.

“Out of many, one,” he thought, slipping off into sleep.

The Lost Symbol is divided into 133 chapters, which I do not think is arbitrary, because it ought to remind us of Psalm 133, the timeless verse of Scripture that begins: “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” This has been a narration of Western initiatic ceremonies for at least 1,500 years, when St. Benedict wrote it into his Rule for monastic life.



Knowing that many of you intend to read this novel, I won’t reveal plot twists and specific devices that concern Freemasonry, nor will I decode the puzzle above. However, I must say that what Ill. Bro. Davis says above about the Lost Word is heard in this story. Mr. Brown beat the copyright infringement suit brought against him in Britain by the co-authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, but I do suspect he owes Bob Davis a mention on the acknowledgments page of The Lost Symbol, at the very least.

I will say that I remain doubtful of Mr. Brown’s abilities as a novelist. The Lost Symbol is meant to be a thriller, yet it is notably unthrilling. Its plot takes place in a 24-hour period during which the heroes suffer unspeakable physical and psychological punishments, but carry on with a stoicism that would make the Black Knight look like a pansy. There are other problems, but you’ll discover them yourselves.

Read it if you must, but would someone please tell me where to find the big parking lot that Brown claims is behind the House of the Temple?