ALBERT PIKE, MYSTIC
by Bro. Henry R. Evans, Litt. D.
This article appeared in
The Master Mason - May 1925
"I have completed a monument more lasting than brass, and
more sublime than the regal elevation of pyramids, which
neither the wasting shower, the unavailing north wind, nor
an innumerable succession of years, and the flight of
seasons, shall be able to demolish." - HORACE: O de XXX.
"Somehow, it seems to me that the spirit of a writer is in his
books, and if they are not read, it is imprisoned there like the
body of an old king of Egypt in its sarcophagus." - ALBERT
PIKE: Official Bulletin IX, p. 22.
IT IS WELL known to all students of Masonry that the degrees of the Scottish
Rite of Freemasonry for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States are, more
or less, tinctured with the occult doctrines of Jewish Cabala and the Hermetic
and Rosicrucian teachings, to say nothing of the principles of Neo-Platonism and
other mystical schools of philosophy. The Rite ascribes this, to some extent, to
its old French rituals, but more particularly to the genius of General Albert
Pike, who was a deep student of the Cabala, and well versed in the religious and
philosophical systems of the Orient. The Vedas and the Zend-Avesta were open
books to him, and not the "iron-bound, melancholy volumes of the Magi." He was
the reviser and transformer of the obscure old French rituals, which have come
down to us from the Rite of Perfection and other Continental sources. In many
instances be rewrote them. For all of them he prepared lectures which are
distinguished for deep scholarship and beauty of expression. Speaking of this
"Master of the Veils," Past Grand Commander Moore, 33d, in an eulogy delivered
some years ago at the House of the Temple, Washington, D. C., said:
It was Albert Pike, the Mason, who, by the divine alchemy of
the love of his fellow men, transmuted all his mental
possessions into the pure gold of wisdom, poesy, patriotism,
and law, and embodied them in our Scottish Rite Rituals as
they were revised and spiritualized by him.
This was his Great work - his Magnum Opus - as he called
it. In 1853, six years before be was elected Grand
Commander, he began his work on the Rituals at his home
in Little Rock. We have, in our archives, a letter from him to
Dr. Albert G. Mackey, the famous Masonic scholar, and
Secretary - General of the Supreme Council, in which he
said clearly, that he was then at work on the Rituals, and
was trying to spiritualize them. And this continued to be one
of the chief objects in Freemasonry throughout his life. In his
"address," delivered to the Supreme Council at its session in
1860, he said that four years before that time, a Ritual
Committee had been appointed; that although he was then
only a thirty-second, he was appointed on it; that the
committee had never met and that he had him self revised
the Rituals from the Fourth to the Thirty-second degree, and
had printed his work for the benefit of the Supreme Council
at a cost to himself of $1,200.
The rituals of the Scottish Rite are indeed lasting
monuments to Pike's genius more lasting than brass, and
more sublime than the regal elevation of pyramids. General
Pike saw in Masonry what many have failed to see. In a
letter to Robert Freke Gould, the celebrated Masonic
historian, January 28, 1888, he said that he had for some
time been collecting the old Hermetic and alchemical works,
in order to discover what relation their symbols bore to
Freemasonry. He asserted that the Square and Compasses,
the Triangle, the Oblong Square, the Three Grand Masters,
the idea embodied in the Substitute Word, the Double-
Headed Eagle of the Scottish Rite, the Sun, Moon, and
Master of the Lodge were all derived from Hermetic and
Rosicrucian sources. He wrote as follows :
I cannot conceive of anything that could have induced
Ashmole, Mainwaring, and other men of their class to unite
themselves with a lodge of working Masons, except this -
that as the Alchemists, Hermeticists, and Rosicrucians had
no association of [their] own in England or Scotland, they
joined the Masonic lodges in order to meet one another
without being suspected, and I am convinced that it was the
men who inherited their doctrine who brought their symbols
into Masonry, but kept the Hermetic meanings to
themselves. To these men we owe, I believe, the Master's
degree. The substitute word means "the Creative Energy
from the Father" - the Demiourgos and Hiram, I think, was
made the hero, because his name resembled Hermes, "The
Master of the Lodge"; the Divine Word (the Egyptian Thoth),
the Mercury of the Alchemists.
I do not think there can be much doubt about this, and I
have written out in full my notions in regard to our
symbolism, making a manuscript book of some 200 pages,
and have deposited it where it will remain safe and secure;
and believing that I have shown how Masonry became
speculative, having at least satisfied myself, I rest content.
The manuscript book referred to above, which is the
property of the Supreme Council of the Ancient and
Accepted Scottish Rite for the Southern Jurisdiction of the
United States, is entitled "The Symbolism of the Blue
Degrees of Freemasonry copied and illustrated for the
author by Bro. Edwin B. Macgrotty, 33d, who was an expert
with pen and pencil. The book is bound in full blue Morocco
and lettered on the back Esoterika. It bears the date,
Washington, D.C., 1888. There are over thirty-eight Masonic
manuscripts by Albert Pike in the library of the Supreme
Council under lock and key, of course, and highly prized.
Albert Pike's inquiry into the origins of Masonry is most
interesting to the student of occultism, Neoplatonism, the
Cabala, and Rosicrucianism. There is in the possession of
the Supreme Council some interesting correspondence
between General Pike and the heads of Rosicrucian
movement in this country and England.
IT IS INTERESTING to note that Pike was Chief Adept and
Archimagus of the Societas Rosicruciana of America, and
wrote a ritual for the Order. He eventually withdrew from the
organization, however, presumably for lack of time to give to
its work. This ritual not long ago came into the possession of
the library of the Supreme Council. The manuscript is
entitled: Societas Rosicruciana. Rerum publicarum unitarum
Americae. Regulations and Ritual. It is a volume of 114
pages, sixty-three pages of which are in Pike's hand, and
the others In the handwriting of William Morton Ireland, 33d,
at one time Secretary-General of the Supreme Council,
Southern jurisdiction. At the end of the list of regulations is
the following: "In Supreme College, May 29, 1880. The
foregoing Regulae are adopted, Albert Pike, IX, Chief Adept
and Archimagus; William Morton Ireland, IX, Magus and
Junior Substitute."
Most of Albert Pike's, manuscripts are in the library of the
Supreme Council, written with a quill pen. In addition to
translations of the Rig-Veda, General Pike made the
following Oriental studies: "Ancient Faith and Worship of the
Aryans, as Embodied in the Vedic Hymns," 1872-73;
"Commentaries on the Kabbala," 1873; "Irano-Aryan
Theosophy as Contained in the Zend-Avesta," 1874;
"Lectures on the Arya," 1873, and "Vocabularies of Sanscrit
Words."
The "Irano-Aryan Theosophy," recently published by, the
Scottish Rite, under the editorial supervision of Bro.
Marshall W. Wood, 33d, is a work of the highest importance
to scholars. It is issued under the title of Irano-Aryan Faith
and Doctrine as Contained in the Zend-Avestas, 1924.
ALBERT PIKE, explorer, soldier, jurist, poet, philosopher,
and Freemason, was born in Boston, Mass., December 29,
1809, He received his education in the grammar schools of
Newburyport, Mass.; in an academy at Framingham, Mass.,
and at Harvard University, but he did not graduate from the
university. He taught school for a while in Massachusetts,
and then went as a pioneer into the Great West. He
eventually settled in Little Rock, Ark., where he contributed
a series of political articles to the Little Rock Advocate,
under the nom de plume of "Casca." These papers attracted
so much attention that he was offered and accepted an
editorial position on the Advocate. In 1833 he was elected
Assistant Secretary of the Council of the Territorial
Legislature of Arkansas, studied law, and was admitted to
the bar in 1834. In 1835 he purchased the Advocate, but
finding the editing and management of the journal interfered
with his law practice, he sold it. In 1846, he raised a
squadron of cavalry which he commanded with the rank of
captain, and served gallantly in the Mexican War. He was
admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United
States in 1849. He was regarded as an authority on Roman
law, and translated the Pandects into English. When the war
between the States broke out in 1861, he was made a
brigadier-general in the Confederate Army, and placed in
command of the Indian Territory. In 1864, he resigned his
commission in the army to accept a place on the bench of
the Supreme Court of Arkansas. After the close of the Civil
War he went to Memphis, Tenn., where he practiced law
and edited a morning paper. In 1868 he removed to
Washington, D. C., where he lived for the remaining thirty-
three years of his life. He died on April 22, 1891, at the age
of 82 years, and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery,
Washington, D.C. A fine bronze statue, by the Italian
sculptor, Trentanove, was erected to his memory in 1901 by
the Supreme Council. It is located not far from the house in-
here he lived for so many years in Washington. and where
he died. General Pike is depicted standing erect, with a
book in his right hand. At the base of the granite pedestal is
a second figure representing the genius of Freemasonry,
holding aloft the banner of the Scottish Rite.
ALBERT PIKE was made a Mason in Little Rock, Ark., in
1850. He held conspicuous posts in all of the York Rite
bodies, but it was in the Scottish Rite that he made his
greatest fame and left his most enduring monument. He
received the Scottish Rite degrees, fourth to thirty-second,
inclusive, in Charleston. S.C., March 20, 1853; was made
Inspector General Honorary, April 25, 1857. at New Orleans,
La., and an active member of the Supreme Council,
Southern jurisdiction, March 20, 1858. General Pike was
chosen Sovereign Grand Commander ad vitam, January 2,
1859, in which position he continued until his death. Judge
Hallum, in his "Biographical and Pictorial History of
Arkansas," 1887, Vol. 1, calls him "Albertus Magnus - Albert
the Great!
Many years before his death General Pike uttered these
significant words: "When I am dead, I wish my monument to
be builded in the hearts and memories of my brethren of the
Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite." Albert Pike is
assuredly enshrined in the hearts and minds of the brethren.
At every Scottish Rite banquet the participants arise and
drink a silent toast to his memory. A memorial service in
honor of Albert Pike is held at every meeting of the Supreme
Council in Washington, the youngest active member of the
body delivering the oration on that occasion.
Albert Pike was essentially a scholar. He was well versed in
the classics, translated several modern languages, and in
his old age acquired Hebrew, and Sanskrit. He appreciated
fully the underlying philosophy of the Vedas and Zend-
Avesta, and sought to link the Orient with the Occident. The
Scottish Rite degrees, as interpreted by him, may be called
a study in comparative religions. His translations and
commentaries of the Rig-Veda, the Cabala, etc., still await
publication. Students may consult them, but not take them
from the library of the Rite. Let us hope they may eventually
become available to all the world, for as Pike said: "The
spirit of a writer is in his books, and if they are not read, it is
imprisoned there like the body of an old king of Egypt in its
sarcophagus." Some years ago, Bro. George Fleming
Moore, 33d, published in the New Age Magazine, some
portions of General Pike's extensive "Materials for the
History of Freemasonry in France and Elsewhere on the
Continent of Europe, from 1718 to 1859."
IN THE LIBRARY left by Albert Pike are a number of books
on the occult, by "Eliphas Levi" (Alphonse Louis Constant),
which in the seventies were not translated into English. Levi
was, perhaps, the greatest of French mystics and Cabalists.
General Pike borrowed considerably from Levi in his
degrees of "Knight of the Sun" and "Prince of the Royal
Secret." The Doctrine of the Balance, which Pike elucidates
in the latter degree, is obscurely hinted at in the Zohar. Levi,
in his interpretation of the Cabala, says that "the science of
equilibrium is the key of occult science. Unbalanced forces
perish in the void." Albert Pike magnificently illustrates the
Mystery of the Balance in his Morals and Dogma (pp. 838-
61). The Mystery of the Balance is the secret of the
Universal Equilibrium which exists in the universe between
conflicting energies and forces, whether they be mental or
physical. Says Pike: "Sympathy and Antipathy, Attraction
and Repulsion, are contraries in the souls of men and in the
universe of spheres and worlds; and from the action and
opposition of each against the other result Harmony and that
movement which is the Life of the Universe and the Soul
alike."
THE CABALA - the symbols, sacred words and esoteric
doctrine - which has so influenced the degrees of the
Scottish Rite,. represents the theosophy of the Jews. "It
contains," says Joseph Jacobs, in his Jewish Contributions
to Civilization, "in itself all the mystic elements of the
cultures through which Judaism has passed - the ectasies of
the Bible theophanes, the Neo-Platonism of Alexandria, and
the Sufism of the Arabs." The word Cabala means to
receive; it is a mystical and religious doctrine handed down
by oral transmission or tradition. It has been described as a
system of cosmogony illustrating the nexus between God
and man; a system based to a large extent on numbers like
the Pythagorean philosophy; a subtle metaphysics that
treats of the nature of God and His emanations, veiled in
symbols, often by a huge fig-tire of an emblematical
character.
When Jerusalem was captured by Titus, the son of
Vespasian, and the second temple was destroyed, many of
the inhabitants of the Holy City fled from the victorious
Romans and sought refuge in the neighboring mountains.
Among them was the Rabbi Simon Ben Jochai, who had
been condemned to death by the Roman general. According
to tradition, he lived for twelve years in a cave, hermit-like,
where he was visited by a faithful band of disciples. He had
constant ecstatic visions like all mystics. He communicated
the occult doctrines, orally transmitted from the Patriarchs of
olden times, to his son Rabbi Eliezer, and his secretary,
Rabbi Abba, who put them into writing for the first time.
From this material was subsequently built up the famous
Zohar, or splendor. This book, together with the Sepher
Jetzirah and the Commentary of the Ten Sephiroth,
constitutes the body and doctrine of the Cabalistic
teachings.
Says Jacobs:
The Zohar was probably put together in the thirteenth
century, but contains traces of much earlier strains of
mystical doctrine. It attracted the attention of men like
Raymond Lully, Picus de Mirandula, and traces of it are
even to be found in Dante. But its chief effect upon
European thought was in the period of the Reformation
when it served to supply to Protestantism that mystical
element which had been the chief attraction in the older
forms of faith. . . . In combination with a revival of
Pythagoreanism, it appealed to Reuchlin and Cornelius
Agrippa; in connection with the new study of Nature it
affected Paracelsus, Carden, Van Helmont, and Robert
Fludd, as well as, one may add, the rest of the Cambridge
Platonists; so far as Luther was philosophical, he derived his
philosophy from the Cabala, with a touch of Gnosticism and
a coloring of Manichaeism, and in this he was followed by
Melancthon. The great German mystics, like Weigel and
Jacob Boehme, were also Cabalistic in general outline. Just
as Catholicism had sought to temper the divine mysteries by
the rationalism of Maimonides, so Protestantism, in its turn,
modified its rationalistic tendencies by a resort to the
mysticism of the Cabala.
THE CABALA is divided into two parts: (1) The
practical; (2)
the theoretical. The first treats of amulets and talismen, and
possesses no value for the student of philosophy. The
second is divided into the Dogmatic and the Literal. The
Dogmatic Cabala is an exposition of the rabbinical
theosophy and philosophy: the Literal Cabala is the science
which teaches a mystical method of explaining sacred things
by a peculair use of the letters of words, and a reference to
their value. The Book of Zohar, which is the great exponent
of the Dogmatic Cabala, begins by positing the First Cause
as En Soph, the endless, the boundless, abiding in "the
simplicity and undifferentiation of perfect unity." By act of the
Supreme Will the universe flows forth from the divine
essence in a series of emanations, which are called the
sephiroth. Says Lewis Spence in his Encyclopedia of
Occultism:
The doctrine of the sephiroth is undoubtedly the most
important to be met with in the pages of the Cabala. To
justify His existence the Deity had to become active and
creative and this. He achieved through the medium of the
ten sephiroth or intelligences which emanated from Him like
rays proceeding from a luminary. The first sephiroth or
emanation was the wish to become manifest, and this
contained nine other intelligences or sephiroth, which again
emanate one from the other - the second from the first, the
third from the second, and so forth. These are known as the
Crown Wisdom, Intelligence, Love, justice, Beauty:
Firmness, Splendor, Foundation and Kingdom. From the
junction of pairs of sephiroth, other emanations were
formed: thus, from Wisdom and Intelligence proceeded Love
or Mercy and from Mercy and justice, Beauty. The sephiroth
are also symbolical of primordial man and the heavenly
man, of which earthly man is the shadow. They form three
triads which respectively represent intellectual, moral and
physical qualities: the first, Wisdom, Intelligence and Crown;
the second, Love, Justice and Beauty; the third, Firmness,
Splendor and Foundation. The whole is circled or bound by
Kingdom, the ninth sophiroth. Each of these triads
symbolizes a portion of the human frame: the first, the head
; the second, the arms; the third, the legs. It must be
understood that though those sephiroth are emanations from
God, they remain a portion, and simply represent different
aspects of the One Being.
Cabalistic cosmology posits four different worlds, each of
which forms a sephiric system of a decade of emanations,
which were verified in the following manner: the world of
emanations or the heavenly man, a direct emanation from
the En Soph. From it is produced the world of creation or the
Briatic world of pure nature, but yet not so spiritual as the
first. . . . From this is formed the world of formation or the
Yetziratic world, still less refined, which is the abode of
angels. Finally from these emanates the world of action or
matter. . . . But the universe was incomplete without the
creation of man: the heavenly Adam, that is the tenth
sephiroth created the earthly Adam, each member of whose
body corresponds to a part of the visible universe. The
human form, we are told, is shaped after the four letters
which constitute the Jewish tetragrammaton, Yod-he-vau-he.
. . . The Cabala states that these esoteric doctrines are
contained in the Hebrew scriptures, but cannot be perceived
by the uninitiated; they are, however, plainly revealed to
persons of spiritual mind.
The ten sephiroth, represented in the order of their ascent
from the lowest to the highest, from the Foundation to the
Crown, bear a certain resemblance to the symbolical
ladders of the various systems, of initiation, for example, the
Brahmanical Ladder of the Hindoo Mysteries; the Ladder of
Mithras of the Persian Mysteries; and the Ladder of Kadosh
and the Jacob's Ladder of the Masonic Mysteries.
The Zohar is not easy reading. it is full of obscurities. It was
not intended for the hoi polloi but for Initiates. The language
used is highly figurative and not to be taken literally. Albert
Pike, in his Morals and Dogma, devotes considerable space
to the Cabala. He says (page 764) :
In the view of the Cabalists, all individuals are contained in
species, and all species in genera, and all particulars, in a
Universal, which is an idea, abstracted from all
consideration of individuals; not an aggregate of individuals;
but, as it were, an Ens, Entity or Being, ideal or intellectual,
but none the less real; prior to any individual, containing
them all, and out of which they are all in succession
evolved.
If this discontents you, reflect that, supposing the theory
correct, that all was originally in the Deity, and that the
Universe has proceeded forth from Him, and not been
created by Him out of nothing, the idea of the Universe,
existing in the Deity before its outflow, must have been as
real as the Deity Himself. The whole human race, or
humanity, for example, then existed in the Deity, not
distinguished into individuals, but as a unit, out of which the
manifold was to flow.
Everything actual must also first have been possible, before
having actual existence; and this possibility or potentiality
was to the Cabalists a real Ens. Before the evolvement of
the Universe, it had to exist potentially, the whole of it, with
all its individuals, included in a single Unity. This was the
Idea or Plan of the Universe, and this had to be formed. It
had to emanate from the Infinite Deity, and be of Himself,
though not His Very Self.
As regards the sephiroths or emanations, General Pike
writes as follows:
They were not only attributes of the Unmanifested Deity, not
only Himself in limitation, but His actual manifestations, or
His qualities made apparent as modes; and they were also
qualities of the Universal Nature-Spiritual, Mental, and
Material, produced and made existent by the outflow of
Himself.
In the view of the Cabala, God and the Universe were One;
and in the One General, as the type or source, were
included and involved, and from it have been evolved and
issued forth, the manifold and all particulars. Where, indeed,
does individuality begin? . . . The tree is one? but its leaves
are a multitude, they drop with the frosts, and fall upon its
roots, but the tree still continues to grow, and new leaves
come again in the spring. Is the Human Race not the Tree,
and are not individual men the leaves? How else explain the
force of will and sympathy, and the dependence of one man
at every instant of his life on others, except by the oneness
of the race? The links that bind all created things together
are the links of a single Unity, and the whole universe is
One, developing itself into the manifold.
Some writers have declared that the Cabala assigns sexual
characters to the very Deity, but Pike emphatically denies
this assumption. He says:
There is no warrant for such an assertion, anywhere in the
Zohar or in any commentary upon it. On the contrary, the
whole doctrine of the Cabala is based on the fundamental
proposition, that the Very Deity is Infinite, everywhere
extended, without limitation or determination, and therefore
without any conformation whatever. In order to commence
the process of creation, it was necessary for Him, first of all,
to effect a vacant space within Himself. To this end the
Deity, whose Nature is approximately expressed by
describing Him as Light filling all space, formless, limitless,
contracts Himself on all sides from a point within Himself,
and thus effects a quasi-vacant space, in which only a
vestage of His Light remains; and into this circular or
spherical space He immits His Emanations, portions of His
Light or Nature; and to some of these, sexual characteristics
are symbolically assigned.
The Infinite first limits Himself by flowing forth in the shape
of Will, of determination to act. This Will of the Deity, or
Deity as Will, is Kether, or the "Crown," the first sephira. In it
are included all other Emanations. This is a philosophical
necessity.
General Pike then proceeds to define and elaborate all the
other sephiroths with their philosophical implications. The
lecture on the "Knight of the Sun, or Prince Adept" (28d), as
contained in the Morals and Dogma is the real Hermetic
ritual of the Rite. The Supreme Council of Belgium lays
particular emphasis on this abstruse but beautiful degree,
which goes to the bedrock of Gnosticism, Cabalism, and
Hermeticism. For a scholarly exposition of the Cabalistic
cosmogony the student is referred to the Jewish
Encyclopedia.
AN INTERESTING feature of the Zohar is its theory of a
prior creation and destruction of worlds, resembling
somewhat the Hindoo doctrine of the Out-breathing and In-
breathing of Brahma. Everything, too, must return to the
source whence it emanated. The Zohar says: "All things of
which this world consists, spirit as well as body, will return to
their principal, and the roots from which they proceeded."
The Zohar shows to what Sublime heights the human
imagination can soar.
The Cabala posits the pre-existence of the soul and its
repeated incarnations, but this particular doctrine forms no
part of Masonic instruction. Freemasonry teaches the
immortality of the soul, but does not dogmatize on the
subject.
I should like to elaborate upon the Sepher Zetzirah, or
"Book of the Creation," but space forbids. Suffice to say it
deals with the philosophy of numbers and letters. Says the
Royal Masonic Cyclopedia:
The design of this book is to exhibit a system whereby the
universe may be methodically viewed, showing from the
systematic development of creation, and from the harmony
visible in its parts that it must have proceeded from the One
and Only Creator. The order and correlative
correspondence of these parts are proved by the analogy
subsisting between visible things, and the signs of thought
whereby men are able to denote, communicate, and
perpetuate wisdom throughout time. From the fact that the
unknown author also employed the letters of the Hebrew
alphabet in a double sense, this book also received the
name of The Letters, or Alphabet of the Patriarch Abraham.
There being 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and 10
fundamental numbers, these are designated the thirty-two
ways of secret wisdom - the alphabet being used in
numerical sense. The treatise opens by the declaration: "By
32 paths of secret wisdom, the Eternal, the Lord of Hosts . . .
hath created the world by means of numbers. phonetic
language, and writing." The fundamental number ten is
divided into a tetrade and hexade, and from these is shown
the gradual evolution of the world from nothing. The Divine
Substance alone at first subsisted, with the creative idea
and the articulate Word as the Holy Spirit, identical with the
Divine Substance. Hence the Spirit of the
living God is at the head of all things, represented by the
number one. From this Spirit emanated the whole Cosmos,
etc. .
Do the thirty-two degrees of the Rite, from Entered
Apprentice to Prince of the Royal Secret, symbolize the
"thirty-two paths of secret wisdom," with the 33d and Last
Degree as the Grand Goal of Initiation? - Who knows!
THE CABALA is the efflorescence of the mystical schools of
Alexandria, and as such was duly appreciated by General
Pike, but he went further than this theosophical system of
the Jews in his quest for the origin of the great religious
symbols, when he formulated the Prince of the Royal Secret
or Thirty-second Degree of the Rite. He turned to the Orient,
to the uplands of Asia, where the Aryan race lived some
1400 years before Christ and afterwards descending to the
plains, divided and conquered the world. One division of this
Caucasian people migrated into what is now called Persia
and are known as Irano-Aryans; the other division invaded
India and are known as Indo-Aryans. From the Irano-Aryans
sprang our modern Europeans. The ancient Aryans were a
race of hardy warriors, but they had among them priests,
prophets and philosophers, who sought to unravel the
mysteries of the universe. Says Bro. Frederick H. Bacon,
33d, in an interesting dissertation on Scottish Rite Masonry,
(New Age, Oct. 1922, p. 589):
In their hymns or vedas they sought to declare their ideas of
the divinities which ruled the world. . . . They early formed
the idea that the divine powers were in the nature of a trinity.
The first trinity was represented by the three divinities, Agni,
Ushas, Mitra; the fire, the dawn, and the morning star which
was the herald of the Sun. As time passed the second trinity
succeeded it. The Divine Light, in which abided the Divine
Wisdom flowed forth as the Divine Word. Here it is seen that
the two latter are manifestations of the first. Ahura was the
light. The divine attributes are the emanations or potencies
of Ahura. These potencies or emanations, seven in all,
being manifestations of the divine power, were divided into
those from the sky - four - which were considered male
because generative, and those from the earth - three - which
were regarded as female, because productive.
The three-faced head is a symbol of tile triune Divinity of
Zarathustra and Pythagoras; the five-pointed star represents
Ahura. The various forms of the triangle and the mystic
numbers 3, 5, 7 and 9 are represented by the lights and
symbols.
The Aryan faith was that the intellects of great and good
men ascended at their death to the sky and became stars. . .
. Life, light, and intellect were one to the Indo-Aryans, and
the same idea remained with us. In God was life, and the life
was the light of men. The Divine Light in the mind is intellect
and knowledge, and is Masonic Light.
In the natural phenomena of the seasons, of birth, life and
death, the ancients saw manifested all these divine powers.
They represented darkness as the foe and enemy of light. . .
. The Hebrews follow the ancient Aryan doctrine of sacred
numbers and figures, and many of the angels and forms of
worship, of the Hebrew faith are but the natural successors
to the persons of ancient Aryan worship.
We do not clearly understand the ancient Aryan doctrines
nor what was meant by their mystic symbols and numbers,
but Ahura-Mazda contained the two other persons, Mainyu
(Divine Wisdom), and Vohumano (the Divine Word) ; thus,
one is three and three are one. The trinity is symbolized by
the sacred number nine or three times three.
The great interpreter of the Irano-Aryan faith was
Zarathustra, high priest and prophet, whose powerful
intellect was able to pierce the veil of matter that clouded
the primitive mind (and clouds our own to a great extent),
and behold the Divine Reason that lies back of all
phenomena. His religious doctrines are embodied in the
Zend-Avesta.
Says Albert Pike (Irano-Aryan Faith and Doctrine, etc.):
I think it will appear that while the Indo-Aryan mind was
slowly attaining the conception of a higher nature than those
of star worship . . . Zarathustra advanced from the Fire-
worship to that of an Infinite source of Light and Life,
containing within itself an infinite intellect and infinite
beneficence as weft as power; and to the philosophic
conception of Divine action by Emanations, personifying His
attributes and Potencies, and whereby only the infinite God
was revealed.
"We see in the vedic hymns," says Max Muller, "the first
revelation of Deity, the first expression of surprise and
suspicion, the first discovery that behind this visible and
perishable world there must be something invisible,
imperishable, eternal or divine." And then the philosophers
no longer adored the sun as a Deity or the sacred flame as
an incarnation of God; but Agni and Ahura-Mazda became
symbols of the Eternal One. According to the ancient sages,
God unfolded or revealed Himself in three ways. In Him was
the intellect or Divine Wisdom, and the Word or Thought
which when uttered flowed forth as the universe and
became incarnated in humanity. According to Zarathustra
the mind or Spirit of man is a ray from the great primal light
and must, therefore, be immortal and indestructible. A
portion of the Deity is incarnated or individuated in each one
of us. We are the temples of the living God.
GOD, according to the Indo-Aryans, is the Creator, the
Preserver, and the Destroyer or absorber of the universe.
The Hindoo sages declare that the cosmos is one of many.
When Brahma outbreathes, so to speak, the worlds go forth,
they are sustained for eons of time, and when the great
breath is withdrawn the worlds are reabsorbed within the
divine essence. Among the adepts of India the symbol of the
Deity is the mystic word Aum, sometimes spelled and
pronounced om. "A Brahmin," says Menu, "beginning and
ending a chapter on the Vedas, must always repeat to
himself the syllable "Om." This sacred triliteral monosyllable
is perhaps the oldest name of the Deity known to man. Its
origin is unknown. Brahma, it is said, extracted from the
Vedas the three letters which form the mysterious
monosyllable. Among the Surfis of Persia the pronunciation
of the word Aum represents the creative process: the
outgoing and incoming of the great breath. Pronounce the
letter A (ah); it is a sustained note indicative of being. Now
pronounce the letter U (oo); and your breath goes out. Then
utter the letter M (um), and the breath is cut short. Here, you
see, is a superb symbol of the creation idea of the mysteries
of India and Persia. The sacred syllable Aum is concealed in
the names of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, and in the Irano-
Aryan name of God, Ahura-Mazda. Its letters form the initials
of Agni, Ushas, Mitra. It was perpetuated among the
Egyptians by the word Amun, and is concealed in many of
the Masonic sacred words.
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