CHAPTER XX.—A. PIKE, ONE OF THE MAGICIAN KINGS AND

HIGH PRIESTS IN ENGLISH FREEMASONRY.
Long before A. Pike was enthroned uncrowned King and untiared Pope of the Cosmopolite English Masonry, he had been anointed King and High Priest according to the Order and Rite aping Melchisedeck, when he was yet in Arkansas. For this we have the testimony of the 80 Lumin- aries, p. 642:
“The Council of High Priests of Maryland was organized “May 7, 1824, and has had a continuous existence to the “present time. Its records, with the autographic signature of “all companions anointed since that date, are preserved and “are highly valued by the Companions of Maryland. Among “those who redeived the Order in that Council are the tollow-
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“jng companions of other jurisdictions, upon whom the Order “was conferred by courtesy:.... Albert Pike, of Arkansas.”
A. Pike was a Kadosh, nobody can deny it ; and surely he was not an ignorant one of the iiursery, but a genuine, well informed Kadosh and a true Prince and Sovereign of the Holy Empire of the Magi who pretend to attain to the science of the Magicians, the Sacerdotal and Royal Science which claims to be “exclusively acquainted with the One “Way of Rectitude and the Unerring Path of Light” If such a Kadosh happens to be acknowledged a Masonic Pope, as undoubtedly was A. Pike, he surely would, in his pre- tended “unerring path of light,” claim as great an infallibility as any Pope of Rome.
No well informed Mason could deny that A. Pike was a Magus King worthy to be led to the cradle of divine realiza- tion ; with the ‘ Holy and Mysterious Pentagram, the Blazing “Star, the Sign of Intellectual Omnipotence and Autocracy ”, he felt himself “armed with Intellectual Omnipotence.” With this, “the greatest and most potent of all signs,” he claimed that “he could exercise an incalculable influence over the “spirits freed from their material envelopes. By drawing on “the doorsteps this absolute sign, old as history, and more “than history,” he pretended, like “the ancient magicians, to “prevent evil spirits from entering, and good ones from going “out. This restraint resulted from the direction of the rays “of the Star. Two points directed outwardly repelled evil “spirits, two directed inwardly retained them prisoners, a “single point within captivated the good spirits.” All these teachings and practices are taken from the Haute Magic of Eliphas Levi in the manuscript of Pike; the publishing of it by the 80 Luminaries proves A. Pike to have been a zealot for the propagation of the magician teachings and practices of the apostate ABBE. In the same Pikean manuscript there is suggested a sacrilegious and immoral use of a Catholic medal of the Immaculate Virgin Mother of Christ set on a level with the Venus Urania of the Platonist ; even a phallic in- terpretation is given of one side of this medal which, he says, can be used as a talisman “so that those who have no “religion hang it on the necks of their children.” It cannot be objected that Pike and the 80 Luminaries are quoting these horrors of the Magic as scholars, who merely give a sample of Occultism for historical purpose, for, Pike and the So are all without exception Kadoshes, adepts and practi-
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tioners of Magic ; they are Princes or Sovereigns “of the Holy Empire, which signifies the attainment of the science and power of the Magi.” Moreover, at pp. 44 and 49, the 80 Luminaries give as their own, a phallic and gnostic doc- trine of Eliphas Levi's stamp. A Pike and the 80 have somewhat the same magic, but with chameleon-hues.
A. Pike was not only one cf the anointed kings and priests of Masonry aping Melchisedech, but he had also been a novice to the priesthood, doing figuratively a year of penance, a lighted taper in one hand and a human skull in the other, and had consummated his sacrilegious mimicry by the diabolical drinking in a human skull of the libation of double damnation.
A. Pike, as all other esoteric Masons of the English Hauts grades, was a Kabalist of some hue. A. E. Waite has told us that his Masonic ancesters, the Kabalists of the middle ages, “were professors of Kabalistic arts. ...directed “their mystic machinery to do injury to their enemies, and “the infernal magic of the middle ages, with its profanation of “Christian mysteries, its black masses and impious invoca- “tions, is, in part at least, their creation.” To accuse Pike of profaning the Christian mysteries, of celebrating the black mass, and using impious invocations would be merely accus- ing the progeny of being worthy of the progenitors. Granting A. Pike’s protest against Goety and the Black Art, he is undoubtedly a Magico-Luciferian ; call him whatever ‘name you wish, he surely was, according to Latin Christian orthodoxy, a magician devil worshipper. Moreover, R. F. Gould says positively that Pike was a firm believer in Rosi- crucianism and Hermeticism, and therefore with Hermes, he professed the high theurgic faith which, according to Aw E. Waite, “was that by means of certain invocations, performed “solemnly ‘»y chaste, sober, abstinent and mentally illuminated “men, it was possible’—for Pike, as for all Hermetists—“to “come into direct communication with those invisible powers “which fill the measureless distance between man and God. “A divine exaltation accompanied this communication with the superior intelligences of the universe, and man”-—Pike— “entered into a temporal participation of deific qualities, while “the power and wisdom thus acquired submitted many hier- “archies of spiritual beings to the will of this Magus,” Albert Pike, a Melchisedech, King and Priest of Magical Free- masonry, viz.: of the Kadosh Haut Grades, etc.
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