Theos-Talk Archives (February 1997 Message tl00113)

> Date: Tue, 4 Feb 97 09:26:14 -0800
> From: Tim Maroney <maroney@apple.com>
> Subject: Fwd: Re: HPB & Lucifer
> Message-ID: <199702041727.JAA50690@scv3.apple.com>
>
> Subject:     Re: HPB & Lucifer
> Sent:        2/2/97 11:31 AM
> Received:    2/2/97 12:35 PM
> From:        Tim Maroney, maroney@apple.com
> ARCANA@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU
>
> Albert Pike in "Morals and Dogma" twice cites (actually, lifts from) Levi
> a redeemed doctrine of Lucifer, using the same passage later used by
> Crowley. I have had Freemasons deny to me that these passages even exist,
> even when I give page numbers and quote them in full. They rarely even
> try to rationalize them away, but simply repeat zombie-like that all
> attributions of Satanic interests to Pike are the results of the Taxil
> fraud.
>

Tom does not state which freemasons he is referring to.  Freemasonry is
not a monolithic structure, and there are many freemasons who have never
even heard of the Taxil fraud.  Masonry is not a research organization
as such, and it would not be difficult for Tom, out of the many millions
of (regular) masons out there, to find one who may be ignorant on some
historical point of masonry to which he wishes to refer.

There are masonic scholars who are superbly well informed about masonic
history.  I know masons who have documented the source of each and every
passage in "Morals and Dogma", including the one cited by Tom.  Albert
Pike stated in the introduction to his book that much of his material
was not original, and that he was simply quoting from other authors.
Therefore, he did not commit an act of plagiarism (which circumstance
exists only if there is willful deception).  Pike was simply an
indefatigable compiler of esoteric sources, melding them into an
continuously flowing text, and making extensive quotations, which he
found it too irksome or distracting to painstakingly footnote and
document himself.

The text "Morals and Dogma" is not an official textbook of freemasonry.
 It is viewed by freemasons as representing Pike's own opinions, from
which any freemason may freely agree or differ.

Pike revamped the Scottish Rite and turned it into the major
organization that it is today.  (I am referring to the regular
Scottish Rite, and not the irregular London Scottish Rite,
consisting of perhaps a handful of members, from which another
writer in this forum claimed to possess documentation of Crowley's
and Yarker's expulsion.  The regular Scottish Rite is composed of
millions upon millions of members, and Crowley was never affiliated with
it, nor expelled from it.)  Also, Pike received the 9th degree (magus
degree) of masonic rosicrucianism from the Canadian High Council (now
defunct).  Wynn Westcott wrote to Pike offering to make him member and
Head of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the United States, but
Pike respectfully declined that latter offer.

Robert Word