Here's Pike at his best! Masonry is permeated with powerful symbolism-both verbal and pictorial-that arouses the mental, spiritual, and intellectual life of those who use them. This extremely interesting study, once limited to 150 copies, gives the correct spelling of, and analyzes all the "significant words" (pass words, etc.) in, the Scottish Rite from the 1st through 30th degrees inclusive. In addition to being an etymological dictionary Pike explains WHY any given word was chosen for a given degree thereby revealing THE HIDDEN SYMBOLISM OF EACH WORD. Illustrated and highly recommended!

About Author:

Albert Pike, a lawyer, brigadier general in the Confederate army, teacher, poet, newspaper editor, and author of Freemasonry texts, was born in Boston on December 29, 1809. When he was four his family moved to Newburyport, Massachusetts, where Pike spent his youth. He began Harvard but the family had no means to support his education and Pike became a teacher and then principal of the Newburyport Academy. After teaching at the Academy and elsewhere, he took up with some seriousness his education with private study.

Very few outsiders know about the intimate plans of the architects of the New World Order. One such architect was Albert Pike, who in the 19th Century, established a framework for bringing about the One World Order. Based on a vision revealed to him, Albert Pike wrote out a blueprint of events that would play themselves out in the 20th century, with even more of these events yet to come. It is this blueprint which we believe unseen leaders are following today to engineer the planned Third and Final World War.

Pike was born in Boston, Massachusetts, son of Ben and Sarah (Andrews) Pike, and spent his childhood in Byfield and Newburyport, Massachusetts. His colonial ancestors included John Pike (1613-1688/1689), the founder of Woodbridge, New Jersey. He attended school in Newburyport and Framingham until he was fifteen. In August 1825, he passed his entrance exams and was accepted at Harvard University though, when the college requested payment of tuition fees for the first two years, he chose not to attend. He began a program of self-education, later becoming a schoolteacher in Gloucester, North Bedford, Fairhaven and Newburyport.

In 1831, Pike left Massachusetts to travel west, first stopping in St. Louis and later moving on to Independence, Missouri. In Independence, he joined an expedition to Taos, New Mexico, hunting and trading. During the excursion his horse broke and ran, forcing Pike to walk the remaining 500 miles to Taos. After this he joined a trapping expedition to the Llano Estacado in New Mexico and Texas. Trapping was minimal and, after traveling about 1300 miles (650 on foot), he finally arrived at Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Settling in Arkansas in 1833, he taught school and wrote a series of articles for the Little Rock Arkansas Advocate under the pen name of "Casca." The articles were popular enough that he was asked to join the staff of the newspaper. Later, after marrying Mary Ann Hamilton, he purchased part of the newspaper with the dowry. By 1835, he was the Advocate's sole owner. Under Pike's administration the Advocate promoted the viewpoint of the Whig party in a politically volatile and divided Arkansas.

He then began to study law and was admitted to the bar in 1837, selling the Advocate the same year. He was the first reporter for the Arkansas supreme court and also wrote a book (published anonymously), titled The Arkansas Form Book, which was a guidebook for lawyers. Additionally, Pike wrote on several legal subjects and continued producing poetry, a hobby he had begun in his youth in Massachusetts. His poems were highly regarded in his day, but are now mostly forgotten. Several volumes of his works were self-published posthumously by his daughter. In 1859, he received an honorary Ph.D. from Harvard, but declined it.

Pike died in Washington, D.C., aged 81, and was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery (against his wishes--he had left instructions for his body to be cremated). In 1944, his remains were moved to the House of the Temple, headquarters of the Southern Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite.

When the Mexican-American War started, Pike joined the cavalry and was commissioned as a troop commander, serving in the Battle of Buena Vista. He and his commander, John Selden Roane, had several differences of opinion. This situation led finally to a duel between Pike and Roane. Although several shots were fired in the duel, nobody was injured, and the two were persuaded by their seconds to discontinue it.

After the war, Pike returned to the practice of law, moving to New Orleans for a time beginning in 1853. He wrote another book, Maxims of the Roman Law and some of the Ancient French Law, as Expounded and Applied in Doctrine and Jurisprudence. Although unpublished, this book increased his reputation among his associates in law. He returned to Arkansas in 1857, gaining some amount of prominence in the legal field and becoming an advocate of slavery, although retaining his affiliation with the Whig party. When that party dissolved, he became a member of the Know-Nothing party. Before the Civil War he was firmly against secession, but when the war started he nevertheless took the side of the Confederacy. At the Southern Commercial Convention of 1854, Pike said the South should remain in the Union and seek equality with the North, but if the South "were forced into an inferior status, she would be better out of the Union than in it."

He also made several contacts among the Native American tribes in the area, at one point negotiating an $800,000 settlement between the Creeks and other tribes and the federal government. This relationship was to influence the course of his Civil War service. At the beginning of the war, Pike was appointed as Confederate envoy to the Native Americans. In this capacity he negotiated several treaties, one of the most important being with Cherokee chief John Ross, which was concluded in 1861.

Pike was commissioned as a brigadier general on November 22, 1861, and given a command in the Indian Territory. With Gen. Ben McCulloch, Pike trained three Confederate regiments of Indian cavalry, most of whom belonged to the "civilized tribes", whose loyalty to the Confederacy was variable. Although victorious at the Battle of Pea Ridge (Elkhorn Tavern) in March, Pike's unit was defeated later in a counterattack, after falling into disarray. Also, as in the previous war, Pike came into conflict with his superior officers, at one point drafting a letter to Jefferson Davis complaining about his direct superior.

After Pea Ridge, Pike was faced with charges that his troops had scalped soldiers in the field. Maj. Gen. Thomas C. Hindman also charged Pike with mishandling of money and material, ordering his arrest. Both these charges were later found to be considerably lacking in evidence; nevertheless Pike, facing arrest, escaped into the hills of Arkansas, sending his resignation from the Confederate Army on July 12. He was at length arrested on November 3 under charges of insubordination and treason, and held briefly in Warren, Texas, but his resignation was accepted on November 11 and he was allowed to return to Arkansas.