Sculptor Gaetano Trentanove and assistants building statue of Confederate General Albert Pike, most notably the creator of the modern form of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. The statue’s present site is between the Department of Labor building and the Municipal Building, between 3rd and 4th Streets, on D Street, NW.
A candidate for initiation must be a man unmutilated, free born and of mature age.
—from Dr. Albert Mackey’s Landmarks of Freemasonry
FREEMASONIC ORDERS and the hundreds of brotherhoods that came to exist as the result of Masonic influence have extolled a democratizing equality and a sense of kinship and acceptance. On the other hand, the most fundamental tenets, as found in Mackey’s Landmarks of Freemasonry, ruled out, among others, the membership of slaves. Only “free born” men were admissible, which typically meant white men in the New Land.
It wasn’t long before African Americans sought their own lodges. In 1775, a free black man named Prince Hall was initiated, along with fourteen black brothers, into a British military lodge in Boston, Massachusetts. They had limited privileges under a charter from the Grand Lodge of Ireland via the military and, after the Revolutionary War, petitioned the Grand Lodge of England for a full charter, which they received in 1784.
So did this mean that American Freemasonry welcomed Prince Hall’s lodge, particularly since he was free-born?
Proud member of Prince Hall lodge in the early ’90s
Prince Hall lodge member from the late 19th century
Not quite. If you ask white Masonic historians today, they’ll apportion blame for this segregation on Prince Hall. They tell us that Prince Hall wanted it separate but equal. But if he wanted to join, all he needed to do was ask. Let’s take a closer look at the dynamics in play.
Jay Kinney, 32nd Degree Freemason and recipient of the Albert G. Mackey Award for Excellence in Masonic Research, has written in his book The Masonic Myth: Unlocking the Truth about the Symbols, the Secret Rites, and the History of Freemasonry:
At this point [after receiving a full charter from the Grand Lodge of England], Prince Hall’s lodge found itself in an awkward position. Either it could seek inclusion in one of the newly sovereign grand lodges in the states, or it could strike out on its own. It chose the latter course.
Kinney suggests that a hand of friendship was extended from the white-dominated lodges to the African-American Prince Hall Lodges, which in turn decided to strike out on its own. Prince Hall is blamed for starting a Masonic Order that was characterized as “clandestine,” because there could only be one Grand Lodge per state, and they already happened to sit comfortably in the white man’s pocket.
If the fuss were solely about the disdain and purposeful miscommunication by blacks for white lodges, it would be hard to explain that it took until 1994 for Grand Lodges to start recognizing Prince Hall Lodges as “regular.”
The Civil Rights Act outlawing racial segregation had become law in 1964, three decades earlier than the Masons. The Mormon Church decided to allow blacks into the priesthood in 1978, a decade and a half sooner. Incidentally, during the Civil Rights battles of the 1960s, leaders of the segregationist movement, such as governors George Wallace of Alabama and Orval Faubus of Arkansas, were notable Freemasons. And there are Southern Grand Lodges that to this day still do not recognize Prince Hall Lodges.
An early 20th-century iconic postcard of a diapered child as adult fraternal member
We are told that the Prince Hall Affiliation sometimes refers to their Master as “The Cat with the hat.”
—from Tied to Masonic Apron Strings, by Stewart M.L. Pollard
Prince Hall has about 4,500 lodges worldwide with about 300,000 Masons. About half of the Grand Lodges in the United States still do not recognize them as “regular.” Since the right of visiting a lodge extends to “regular” Masons, that means that black Masons still viewed as “irregular” or “clandestine” cannot visit many a “regular” lodge, run by whites. Although there has been a softening of the color lines, some Masonic lodges still have an implicit understanding, even if there is no sign on the door stating NO BLACKS ALLOWED.
We are satisfied that no proposal to dispense with the requirement of unanimous consent before Masons made in Negro Lodges shall be received, either as Members or visitors, would be tolerated in this Grand Lodge.... The requirement of unanimous consent will bar each race from the Lodges of the other whenever objection exists.... The time is not yet ripe for the union of our Lodges and theirs, under one Grand Lodge. But your committee are very clearly of the opinion that if this Grand Lodge does not desire to grant charters to Masons made in the Negro Lodges, their right to procure charters elsewhere and set up a Grand Lodge on their own should be recognized; and that such a Grand Lodge, if we practically force our colored brethren to establish it, ought so long as it limits its jurisdiction to men of the colored race to be fraternally recognized by this Grand Lodge as a legitimate body, within that limit.
—from Negro Masonry: A Committee Report, 1897
Moorish Guide newspaper, September 14, 1928
MORE INTEREST has developed in the legal fight being made by Al Amit Temple of Little Rock to deprive the negroes of that city of their Shrine lapel buttons, their paper weights worn as watch charms, and their use of the word “Shrine” or “Shriner” as to indicate that the colored man is a recognized Arab of the deserts.
The negroes have filed an answer in the courts, claiming that they are regular old-fashioned Masons, have attained the “pre-requisites” that are required to become Shriners, that they have a perfect right to use Masonic emblems and Shrine insignia, that they have purchased $6,000 in paraphernalia which will be a dead loss to them if the court grants the injunction, and that they bought all the contraptions referred to in the stores of Little Rock.
The gentlemen of color just say their Egyptian Order of Shriners is just as old as the white man’s playground, and that it was slipped past the customs inspectors at Ellis Island in 1893.
All of which is poppycock to be sure.
The negroes have clandestine Masonry among their people, no doubt, but nobody with any sense, much less a judge on the bench, will be fooled by their claim for “regularity.”
How they got it, nobody knows.
Probably they acquired Masonry in the same way that they acquired the use of Shrine rituals—through purchasing exposés, and working out feeble imitations of the real thing as practiced by the whites. The courts of Georgia have already settled the matter, if precedent is to be followed. On petition of Yaarab Temple, the coons were treed down there and forbidden to do the things they are contending for in Arkansas.
—from Shriner magazine The Crescent, April 1921
The Ancient Egyptian Arabic Order Nobles Mystic Shrine of North and South America and Its Jurisdictions Inc. (abbreviated AEAONMS) is the African-American version of the very white Shriners (The Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, abbreviated AAONMS) who are generally remembered for their fezzes, white shoes, polyester slacks, and tiny parade cars. Although this Order contends that it is open to the participation of all races, few African Americans are members of this branch. Black Freemasons are generally grouped with the segregated Prince Hall Order, the primary reason being that new members must unanimously pass a secret, blind ballot, and one single racist vote would disallow entry for the new potential member.
Though most caucasian Shriners explain away their Islamic oaths on a Koran (always spelled with a “K”) as being essentially meaningless, Timothy Drew, renamed Noble Drew Ali, claimed to thousands of members that “Negroid Asiatics,” or “indigenous Moors,” “American Moors,” or “Moorish Americans,” inhabited America long before some tribes were brought to North America as slaves. As a result, claimed Noble Drew Ali, “confused” darker-complexioned Americans simply bought into slavemaster lies about their actual origins. Noble Drew Ali’s Moorish Science Temple, founded in 1913, aimed to set them straight about their Islamic roots and its links to Christianity, Gnosticism Islam, and Freemasonry. In full dress, members of the Moorish Science Temple looked quite like a Shriners chapter, complete with robes, sashes, and fezzes.
The astonishing Moorish Science Temple directly influenced W.D. Fard Muhummad and Elijah Muhummad, and a decade and a half later the Nation of Islam was founded.
According to Peter Lamborn Wilson in Sacred Drift, “Moorish Science represents a more serious meditation on the Islamic current within Masonry. According to my informant M.A. Ahari, Noble Drew Ali was a Pythian Knight, a Shriner, a Prophet of the Veiled Realm, and of course a 32nd Degree Mason. He suggests that Masonic catechisms may have been the model for the Moorish Catechism. One is reminded here of Joseph Smith and the Masonic influence on Mormonism, which has undergone a veiling and metamorphosis similar to that of the Masonic roots of Moorish Science.”
Giving a sense of history back to displaced people was perhaps Noble Drew Ali’s greatest accomplishment. After his death in 1929, the Moorish Science Temple splintered over questions of succession, but this religion still exists and remains one of the first expressions of American-based Islam.
And what if Noble Drew Ali was right? As Wilson suggests in Sacred Drift, Morocco was indeed an early supporter of pre-Revolutionary America and worked closely with Thomas Jefferson and Freemason Benjamin Franklin to achieve the Moroccan Treaty of 1787. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin worked closely with the Moors in the Continental Congress to secure this treaty. Writes Wilson, “There were many Moors in the Continental Congress, working with the European Masons who learned masonry from the Moors, to form a ‘Novus Ordo Seclorum.’”
Moorish Temple members in finery at Harlem headquarters
Moorish Temple leader Noble Drew Ali
IN 1913, Prophet Noble Drew Ali founded the Canaanite Temple in Newark, New Jersey. The Canaanite Temple was an early indication that the so-called Negroes were of Asiatic origin from the Holy Land of Canaan. The Movement spread across the country during the 1920s as the Moorish Holy Temple of Science, as Prophet Noble Drew Ali pioneered in attempts to instill racial pride. Before he came to Chicago in 1925, the movement proliferated to Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, and some Southern cities. During his lifetime, membership may have risen as high as thirty thousand members.
In 1925, Noble Drew Ali wearing a flaming red fez appeared on the streets of Chicago, proclaiming to the people of the colored race that they were not Negroes, Colored Folks, Black People or Ethiopians. People began to gather to hear this young man speak. He stated that the fallen sons and daughters of the Asiatic Nation of North America need to learn to love instead of hate, and know of their higher self. His words were impressive because it wasn’t long before he established himself in a sizeable meeting hall on Clayborne Avenue on the north side of Chicago.
Finally by 1928, The Moorish Science Temple of America, Inc., was an established fact. It is believed that this procedure of elevating the movement to the Moorish Science Temple of America, Inc. from the Canaanite Temple in phases was to prepare the people for this great “new thought” movement; entirely different from the churches they had been used to. With the incorporation came a new charter, Divine Constitution and By Laws consisting of seven acts. There also follows seven additional laws to strengthen the guidelines for better cohesion in the organization. The object of our organization is to help in the great program of uplifting fallen humanity and teach those things necessary to make our members better citizens. The Moorish Movement is still alive today. There are many small temples all over America still following the great teachings of Prophet Nobel Drew Ali. The star and crescent, fezzes, turban, membership card, button, Moorish Flag, and the correction of “El” or “Bey” to the surname signify Moorish identity.
—from the Moorish Science Temple of America website: www.moorishsciencetempleofamericainc.com/MoorishHistory.html
Harlem’s Moorish Zionist Temple
1. The last Prophet in these days is Noble Drew Ali, who was prepared divinely in due time by Allah to redeem men from their sinful ways; and to warn them of the great wrath which is sure to come upon the earth.
2. John the Baptist was the forerunner of Jesus in those days, to warn and stir up the nation and prepare them to receive the divine creed, which was to be taught by Jesus.
3. In these modern days there came a forerunner of Jesus, who was divinely prepared by the great God-Allah and his name is Marcus Garvey, who did teach and warn the nations of the earth to prepare to meet the coming Prophet; who was to bring the true and divine Creed of Islam, and his name is Noble Drew Ali who was prepared and sent to this earth by Allah, to teach the old time religion and the everlasting gospel to the sons of men. That every nation shall and must worship under their own vine and fig tree, and return to their own and be one with their Father God-Allah.
4. The Moorish Science Temple of America is a lawfully chartered and incorporated organization. Any subordinate Temple that desires to receive a charter; the prophet has them to issue to every state throughout the United States, etc.
5. That the world may hear and know the truth, that among the descendants of Africa there is still much wisdom to be learned in these days for the redemption of the sons of men under Love, Truth, Peace, Freedom, and Justice.
6. We, as a clean and pure nation descended from the inhabitants of Africa, do not desire to amalgamate or marry into the families of the pale skin nations of Europe. Neither serve the gods of their religion, because our forefathers are the true and divine founders of the first religious creed, for the redemption and salvation of mankind on earth.
7. Therefore we are returning the Church and Christianity back to the European Nations, as it was prepared by their forefathers for their earthly salvation.
8. While we, the Moorish Americans are returning to Islam, which was founded by our forefathers for our earthly and divine salvation.
9. The covenant of the great God-Allah: “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be longer upon the earth land, which the Lord thy God, Allah hath given thee!”
10. Come all ye Asiatics of America and hear the truth about your nationality and birthrights, because you are not negroes. Learn of your forefathers’ ancient and divine Creed. That you will learn to love instead of hate.
11. We are trying to uplift fallen humanity. Come and link yourselves with the families of nations. We honor all the true and divine prophets.
—from “The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple of America,” extracted from the book The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ transliterated by Reverend Levi Dowling (May 18, 1844–August 13, 1911)
Advert from Moorish Science Temple
Members of a small town I.O.R.M., in full meeting regalia
Most students of American history are familiar with the Sons of Liberty, the Bostonian group famous for the Boston Tea Party of 1773, and a foundational player in the American Revolution. The Sons of Liberty itself included freemasonic colonial patriots like Paul Revere and John Hancock.
It’s a safe bet that fewer high school graduates know that the Sons of Liberty were the soil from which grew the first fraternal secret society original to America, the Improved Order of Red Men. Those who have heard of the IORM may also assume that “Red Men” included Native Americans. As a matter of fact, until 1974 Native Americans were banned. Several white U.S. presidents have also been members: “Rough Rider” Teddy Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding, FDR, and Richard Nixon.
After the British were defeated, the Sons of Liberty chapters renamed themselves the Society of St. Tammany. As these gradually grew more political, those who simply wanted to keep drinking in taverns split off into the Society of Red Men. The Red Men began in Fort Mifflin, Pennsylvania, in 1816. By 1834 some members wanted to tone down the drinking and boost the fraternal image a bit more along standard lines, including charitable work, so they formed the Improved Order of Red Men. Only whites were allowed to join.
In 1878, the IORM formed a burlesque lodge, the National Haymakers Association. In 1887, IORM started an auxiliary for white women, the Daughters of Pocahontas.
Reflecting its strange racial ambivalence, IORM remained a whites-only Order while objecting to the Ku Klux Klan in 1922. IORM membership peaked in 1920 with more than half a million members.
From the Initiation Ceremony of the Improved Order of the Red Men
After the Report of the Chief of Records (or Collector of Wampum) that the questions have been answered and the fee paid, the ceremony of Adoption proceeds, as follows:
Sachem, one rap: Brothers, we are now about to teach a paleface the mysteries of Redmanship.... Candidate is brought in and seated near the inner wicket, under charge of the Guard of the Wigwam, so he can observe this part of the ceremony....
Cautiously approaching the tepee of the Senior, and being satisfied from its partially ruined condition that no one is within, they trail by imaginary paths to the tepee of the Prophet, then to that of the Sachem, exhibiting the usual Indian caution.... The Second Scout takes charge of candidate, instructs him to follow him (the Scout) around the outskirts. As they pass around, the First Scout, being alarmed, trails around in like manner. When nearing the Junior Sagamore, the Scout discovers strangers and immediately awakens the Junior Sagamore and informs him by signs that strangers are near. They both trail after the Second Scout and candidate, when a vivid flash of lightning reveals the strangers, and the Junior Sagamore exclaims in a loud tone of voice: Spies! Traitors in our camp!…
The Braves will firmly seize the candidate, the Second Scout escaping, the Junior Sagamore advancing toward the captive, saying: Hunters, this paleface has trespassed on our hunting grounds, the penalty for which you will now determine. Assemble at once in council and let us upon his fate decide.
The Hunters will then gather around the fire and deliberate, the Second and Third Braves standing, and in charge of candidate.
The official International Order of Red Men publication
Junior Sagamore: Hunters, what say you?
The charges herein designated for the First Brave may be divided among the four Braves.
First Brave: This paleface is of a hated nation; let us put him to the torture!
A pause.
First Brave: But he is a squaw and cannot bear the torture.
A pause.
First Brave: He fears a warrior’s death!
A pause.
First Brave: Let us burn him at the stake!
The Warriors will secure their war clubs, the Braves will gather the fagots and place them at the feet of the paleface and around the stake; cones of red fire will be placed behind the stake. The action here must be rapid, so that proper dramatic effect may be produced. When this is done the Junior says: Braves, light the fagots!
No discussion of the relations of race and freemasonry would be complete without exploring the towering Masonic figure of Albert Pike and his relations to the Ku Klux Klan—and his fondness for real Red Men. We open with controversy …
BEING DESIROUS of becoming acquainted with the mysteries of the Improved Order of Red Men, I do hereby solemnly promise and declare that I will keep secret from all persons, except such as I shall prove to be entitled thereto, all signs, ceremonies and passwords, now or hereafter communicated to me....
I do further promise, that I will not knowingly violate the sanctity of the home circle of a brother....
So help me, the Great Spirit.
This little red man needed to be born a white man to become a Red Man.
Albert Pike. The contrasting views could hardly be more glaring. Who was he, really?
All agree that he was the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Southern Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite from 1859 to 1891. He revised the rituals of the Scottish Rite, penned a voluminous tome, Morals and Dogma (with free-flowing plagiarism from the French Freemason and occultist Eliphas Lévi), and is interred in the House of the Temple in Washington, DC. Morals and Dogma was standard issue to Scottish Rite Freemasons for close to a century, and to this day Pike remains revered—or reviled, depending on whether one is talking to a Freemason or a fundamentalist.
Freemasons like to point out that the figure of Pike (who resembled a bit of a “bad Santa” in his later years) has been quoted out of context, was really a liberal-minded Christian of sorts, and had a spacious intellect, ranging from esoteric subjects that he viewed through his broad Christian outlook to poetry, which he penned aplenty. His resonance is such that he continues to pop up in movies like National Treasure 2 and background books to The Da Vinci Code.
But this view is hotly contested. The contrast for anti-Masons could hardly be greater, who have found in Pike a favorite whipping boy, chiefly for his glowing statements about Lucifer, his advocacy of a secret Masonic occultism, his winking hints that the Square and Compass (and masonry itself) are really all about a phallic-vulvic sexual gnosis, his admission that higher Masons deliberately mislead lower Masons by policy, his butchery of Union northerners during the Civil War with the help of scalp-happy American Indians, and his alleged founding of, or inspiration for, the Ku Klux Klan.
Who has it right? Let’s take a look.
Albert Pike was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 28, 1809. Masons claim that he came from poverty, rose rapidly through public school due to a dazzling intellect, and sailed into Harvard at fifteen. However, no known records of Pike’s actual Harvard attendance exist, and given the university’s requirement of two years’ tuition paid in advance, some have regarded the Harvard tale as a mythical embellishment.
Albert Pike
After lighting up Harvard (or not), Pike took off westward at age twenty-two, joined a trading expedition in St. Louis, Missouri, and headed for Santa Fe, part of Mexico at the time. The Masonic chroniclers tell us that Pike’s horse ditched him and he was forced to make most of the journey on foot. These stories paint Harvard Pike as an equally rugged frontiersman, as if his prodigious intellect were joined to an exceptionally hardy and rugged physique, making Albert Pike a sort of pre-Mensa mountain man.
Pike trapped and traded his way through the Great Plains and, after two years of post-university living, settled in Arkansas in 1833, taught school, worked as a reporter for Little Rock’s Arkansas Advocate, and married Mary Ann Hamilton. The young Mrs. Pike’s tidy dowry enabled Albert to buy the Advocate outright. Pike then studied law and became a member of the Arkansas Bar, circa 1835–37.
The Mexican-American War of 1846 proved a siren call to the young trapper in him, and he joined the cavalry. As a troop commander, Pike fought in the Battle of Buena Vista, but also bad-mouthed the Arkansas infantry so openly that he was forced to duel their commanding officer, Colonel John Roane. Fortunately both men were such bad shots that both lived. Roane later became governor of Arkansas in 1848, while Pike turned to lawyering in New Orleans and, in 1857, returned to Arkansas to get a foothold with the Freemasons, an enormous turning point for him.
In 1859 Albert Pike was elected Sovereign Grand Commander of the Southern Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite, a post he held until his death in April 1891. Pike began to revise the Scottish Rite rituals, and his revisions are still the model upon which the modern versions are based, although his prose style has been simplified for modern levels of comprehension. Pike also penned quite a few works, including Esoterika, a commentary highlighting topics such as the “generative” or sexual meaning in Euclid’s 47th problem. A man who could find sex in Euclid had a rare mind, and Pike applied it to topics ranging from poetry to the Pope, the Templars to the Gnostics, the Kabbalah to the “occult science of the ancient Magi,” the evils of abolition to the urgency of a union of white men.
Pike’s soaring mind embraced large and spacious regions. It seemed untroubled by the need to properly attribute text that he borrowed or lifted. This tendency to absorb the writings of others and reproduce them as his own found a peak point in his magnum opus, Morals and Dogma (1871), a 900-plus-page behemoth that became a cornerstone of the Scottish Rite. In it, Pike plagiarized from the French occultist Eliphas Lévi (Alphonse Louis Constant, 1810–1875), including infamous passages about Lucifer. Morals and Dogma was traditionally given to the candidate upon his receipt of the 14th Degree or “Perfect Elu”—although since 1974 it has been replaced with A Bridge to Light, by Rex Hutchens, written as “a bridge between the ceremonies of the degrees and their lectures in Morals and Dogma” Hutchens’ significant remark reveals that the elevated status of Morals and Dogma remains ultimately intact.
Morals and Dogma is a sprawling tome that cemented Pike’s clout and stature within freemasonry. Those who read the book thoroughly noticed a trend. A.E. Waite writes in The Holy Kabbalah how Albert Pike “had a mind to transform the ancient and accepted Scottish Rite into a seminary of occult study.” Waite continues, “No person who is acquainted with Morals and Dogma can fail to trace the hand of the occultist therein.”
An eloquent albeit ponderous work, Morals and Dogma is perhaps most controversial for its statements concerning Lucifer.
In a sense, it’s unfair to focus on Pike’s writings about Lucifer, since they largely are not his own. However, he produced them as his own, and accordingly he has had to answer for them.
Pike’s statements about Lucifer have vexed Masonic apologists since the time of fibbing conspiracy maven Léo Taxil, who ratcheted up the notion of Pike as a Luciferian conspiring with his European Masonic pal Adriano Lemmi, the purported Satanist kingpin, to bring about an anti-Christ “Palladian” Order through the secrecy of the networks of the lodge. What did Pike say, exactly, that got him into trouble? Though lifted from Lévi, here are a couple statements from Morals and Dogma:
LUCIFER, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual, or selfish Souls? Doubt it not!
Albert Pike
Based on that remark, which sounds as though Lucifer has a positive role—giving Light (which Freemasons pledge to seek in their rituals) and only blinding unworthy types—Pike has been roundly bashed by fundamentalists as a secret worshiper of Lucifer. But that’s not all; he also took some of Lévi’s meditations about Satan, as we read here:
The true name of Satan, the Kabbalists say, is that of Yahveh reversed; for Satan is not a black god, but the negation of God. The Devil is the personification of Atheism or Idolatry. For the Initiates, this is not a Person, but a Force, created for good, but which may serve for evil. It is the instrument of Liberty or Free Will. They represent this Force, which presides over the physical generation, under the mythologic and horned form of the God PAN; thence came the he-goat of the Sabbat, brother of the Ancient Serpent, and the Light-bearer, or Phosphor, of which the poets have made the false Lucifer of the legend.
Confederate General and Scottish Rite leader Albert Pike in his “Bad Santa” look
Sandwiched within that tortured text is a line that dubs Satan or the Devil as the instrument of Liberty or Freewill, and even linking him to “physical generation” or sex. Finally, we have the tie-in to the “he-goat” and the “horned god Pan” motif.
Did Pike worship Lucifer? Or Satan? Are they the same being? What was he talking about?
By the time Léo Taxil wrote up Pike as a secret worshiper of Lucifer and Satan (different beings in this vein, similar to the views of the Process Church of The Final Judgment—Lucifer being a positive light-bearer and Satan being the force behind the Black Mass), Pike had set up a century of back-pedaling for his defenders. Apologists have tried to link the etymology of Lucifer to biblical texts to get Pike off the hook, or (in the case of the historian John Robinson who later in life became a Freemason) explain that what Pike meant by Lucifer was education. While no doubt well-intentioned, Robinson may have added another wrinkle for Pike’s defenders, since Masons have championed public education, and any suggestion that Lucifer is mixed into their educational plans just might put bonds for schools in trouble with less enlightened sections of the voting populace.
Albert Pike also linked various Masonic symbols—including the square and compass—to “generative” or sexual organs. But that’s not all:
To us, Creation is Mechanism; to the Ancients, it was Generation. The world-producing egg figures in all cosmogonies and modern science has discovered that all animal production is oviparous. From this idea of generation came the reverence everywhere paid the image of generative power, which formed the Stauros of the Gnostics, and the philosophical Cross of the Masons.
“LET THE NEGROES be made competent to hold office, let the losses of loyal men to the amount of millions be put upon the back of the State, like a burden on a patient camel! The sooner the better. Let the disenfranchisement of 80,000 white men, and the abuse of the privilege of voting by 50,000 ignorant negroes be continued: and let the people wait for the reaction that is sure to follow. They can afford to wait; for when it comes it will make a clean sweep of Radicalism and misrule... Tennessee will not always bear the disgrace of negroism.”
—Albert Pike, Memphis Daily Appeal
“SPEAKING FOR MYSELF, I emphatically say, that I would infinitely rather be defeated by the negro vote than succeed by means of it, if to gain it, it is necessary to vote. A victory so gained, I am sure, would be in the end far worse than a defeat.”
—Albert Pike
During the Civil War, Pike was assigned the task of leading a band of eight hundred Indians in the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas. Accusations followed that Pike’s Indian brigade scalped and mutilated Union soldiers. Pike was also charged with mishandling funds and threatened with jail; he accordingly went AWOL, and hid for several months but was finally arrested. Pike resigned in July 1862, but he was handily pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, a Freemason, in 1865. Pike calmly resumed his law practice and rose to serve a one-year term as an associate justice of the Arkansas State Supreme Court.
To explore Pike’s views on race, let us begin with an excerpt from a lengthy poem of Pike’s, “Ariel.”
XXI
Hypocrisy came next, prim, starched and staid,
With folded hands and upturned pious eyes,
As though God’s law he punctually obeyed;
His sordid greed seeks its base end by lies;
He lusts for every ripe, voluptuous maid,
Then wrings his hands, and prays, and loudly cries,
“Owner of men! Stand off, afar while I,
Holier than thou art, piously pass by!”
XXII
And next came Treason, with his blood-stained hand,
Deep, black, fierce eye, and bold, unquailing air;
While even as he passed his hot breath fanned
The groveling slaves into rebellion there:
His armour clashed, and his broad battle-brand
Did in the purple sheen like lightning glare;
And so his fiery courser he bestrode,
The echo of whose hoofs roared down the road.
XXXIX
Fanaticism preached a new crusade,
And Bigotry damned slavery as a crime;
Intolerance, brandishing his murderous blade,
Denounced the Southron in bad prose and rhyme;
The Pulpit preached rebellion; men, dismayed,
Saw the red portents of a bloody time.
These words of Pike make clear that he was passionately in favor of slavery. But what do the Masons have to say about all of this? After all, Pike is a Masonic icon.
First, there is the tactic of downplaying Pike’s significance when controversies emerge. Art De Hoyos, in Is It True What They Say about Freemasonry?, says:
Morals and Dogma is … not “the Bible of the Masons,” nor is it “the most readily available and universally approved doctrinal book of Freemasonry.” It is not even widely distributed or read. It is used only by the Supreme Council 33rd Degree, Southern Jurisdiction, which in 1871 had far less than 5% of American Masons as members and in 1993 claims only 20%. The Preface gives the best understanding of how Pike and all succeeding Supreme Councils have viewed his book.
The teachings of these Readings are not sacramental, so far as they go beyond the realm of Morality into those of other domains of Thought and Truth. The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite uses the Word “Dogma” in its true sense, of doctrine, or teaching; and is not dogmatic in the odious sense of the term. Everyone is entirely free to reject and dissent from whatsoever may seem to him to be untrue or unsound. It is only required of him that he shall weigh what is taught, and give it fair hearing and unprejudiced judgment. Of course, the ancient theosophic and philosophic speculations are not embodied as part of the doctrines of the Rite, but because it is of interest and profit to know what the Ancient Intellect thought upon these subjects, and because nothing so conclusively proves the radical difference between our human and the animal nature as the capacity of the human mind to entertain such speculation in regard to itself and the Deity.
That is a fair correction. But we should also take note that in “Pillars of Charity,” a church-like stained glass corridor within Scottish Rite’s head lodge, Albert Pike’s remains are held beneath his bust. In addition to Pike’s remains and bust, an Albert Pike Museum memorial is found at headquarters. Not only was Morals and Dogma the standard issue to brethren for a good century, it is still honored by its replacement (Hutchens’ A Bridge to Light).
Pike’s influence is undeniably considerable. So was his poem merely an angry, emotional, and artistic outburst about race?
It would appear otherwise. In his newspaper, The Memphis Daily Appeal, on April 16, 1868, publisher Albert Pike wrote, “With negroes for witnesses and jurors, the administration of justice becomes a blasphemous mockery. A Loyal League of negroes can cause any white man to be arrested, and can prove any charges it chooses to have made against him.... The disenfranchised people of the South... can find no protection for property, liberty, or life, except in secret association.... We would unite every white man in the South, who is opposed to negro suffrage, into one great Order of Southern Brotherhood, with an organization complete, active, vigorous, in which a few should execute the concentrated will of all, and whose very existence should be concealed from all but its members.”
Is it a coincidence that the Ku Klux Klan began at this time? Although he has been accused of being a founder, we are reassured that Pike had nothing to do with it in the quasi-hagiographical materials from his admirers.
Although one must be careful not to make hasty connections, it is nonetheless an uncomfortable fact that Pike stated a need for a “great Order of Southern Brotherhood,” and especially one which united white men to fight “negro suffrage”—views which could have been spouted by every Grand Cyclops of the Klan.
Finally, there appears to be other evidence. According to Tennessee historian, professor Walter L. Fleming, who was accused of writing history too favorable to slave owners, states in Ku Klux Klan: Its Origin, Growth, and Disbandment, “General Albert Pike, who stood high in the Masonic Order, was the chief judicial officer of the Klan. General [Nathan Bedford] Forrest heard of the Order after it began to spread, and... consented to become its wizard.”
Another page of the Fleming book has seven portraits of founders of the Klan. Pike’s picture is the largest and in the center.
In another KKK history, Authentic History: Ku Klux Klan by Susan Lawrence Davis, Pike is described beneath an impressive oil portrait as “Chief Justice of the Invisible Empire, Father of Scottish Rite Masonry.” The oil portrait is alleged to have been supplied by Pike’s son to the author for her use. She writes that Pike organized the Ku Klux Klan in Arkansas after General Forrest appointed him Grand Dragon of the Realm at the convention at Nashville, Tennessee; he was also appointed at that time Chief Judicial Officer of the Invisible Empire.
Is it all a sophisticated smear job? Perhaps. But KKK rituals are clearly patterned after freemasonry, as we will see below.
Pike’s defenders insist that his racist and pro-slavery views must be contextualized in the standards of his day; that to ignore such a context is to engage in the “worst kind of anachronism” (as writes 32nd Degree Scottish Rite Freemason Jay Kinney). This criticism would certainly hold true if there were no abolitionists in Pike’s day, or at a minimum, shared Yankee Civil War views. To ignore uncomfortable facts about Pike would exchange fact for faith.
Pope Leo XIII
Among matters of faith, Pike in Morals and Dogma accused Pope Clement V of “howling,” regarding the Church’s anti-lodge stance since 1738. On April 20, 1884, Pope Leo XIII published the most scathing indictment of freemasonry ever issued from the pen of a pontiff. Pike responded with his own encyclical of sorts, “in behalf of humanity,” in tones that met and matched Rome for vigor:
In its long war against Humanity and human progress, against Science and Civilization, and against the truth of God revealed in Nature, the Roman Church has been greatly shorn of power and influence, until it has become but the feeble effigy of what it was in 1483, when it made Tomas Torquemada Inquisitor of the Faith in Spain, and in the eighteen years of that Official’s rule burned at the stake in that Kingdom eight thousand eight hundred Hebrews and Heretics.
His sarcasm was finely honed:
It will be said that the English-speaking Freemasonry will not receive Catholics into its bosom. That is not true. It will not receive Jesuits, because no oath that it can administer would bind the conscience of a Jesuit.
Reconstruction era satire pointed at a cornerstone ceremony for buildings of the “new South”
Perhaps it was fitting for Pike to reply to the Pope. Pike himself was called a Masonic Pope (and a lot more) by no less than the Masonic historian John Yarker, himself a 33rd Degree Scottish Rite Mason. Yarker’s remark was quoted from a letter which he penned to a Catholic priest by the occult luminary A.E. Waite in his study, Devil-Worship in France:
The late Albert Pike of Charleston, as an able Mason, was undoubtedly a Masonic Pope, who kept in leading strings all the Supreme Grand Councils of the world, including the Supreme Grand Councils of England, Ireland, and Scotland, the first of which includes the Prince of Wales, Lord Lathom, and other peers, who were in alliance with him, and in actual submission. Its introduction into America arose from a temporary schism in France in 1762, when Lacorne, a disreputable panderer to the Prince of Clermont, issued a patent to a Jew named Stephen Morin. Some time after 1802, a pretended Constitution was forged and attributed to Frederick the Great of Prussia. This constitution gives power to members of the 33rd degree to elect themselves to rule all Masonry, and this custom is followed.... The good feeling of Masonry has been perpetually destroyed in every country where the Ancient and Accepted Rite exists, and it must be so in the very nature of its claims and its laws.
Albert Pike left a legacy that has been extolled in every Freemasonic compendium or history of worth. He was praised as a “master-genius of Masonry,” and in the oft-quoted words of Dr. Fort Newton, Pike found Masonry in a log cabin and left it in a temple.
Perhaps a mixed assessment might best end this section, taken from the New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry by A.E. Waite, Freemason and famed occultist. In this book, Waite writes that Pike “has attained long since that incorruptible monument which he sought, and his name will be ever green and of precious memory in all American Masonry.”
Ku Klux Klan pamphleting its dread about Irish and Eastern European Catholic immigration. Additionally an all-American and churchified advertisement for KKK dress and ceremony.
Handy blades for God, the Holy Ghost and the Disunited States
In 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, six young Confederate veterans formed a secret society that would eventually be associated with violence, with the images of men draped in sheets, and with the lynching of blacks and the bashing of Jews and Catholics. It was usually written off by mainstream America as a horse of its own color, but the Ku Klux Klan is less exceptional than Americans would probably like to believe.
The duly elected or appointed Exalted Cyclops and Terrors of K-Uno, by virtue of their election or appointment in K-Uno, hold the same stations in K-Duo.
Opening Ceremony
While the Probationers are leaving the Klavern, the Exalted Cyclops will procure a small silk flag and baldric and fold both under his belt. The Kludd will procure a copy of the Constitution and Laws of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klokard will procure an extra sword in scabbard, with belt, and the Klaliff will procure a baldric. During this time, all Knights Kamellia will don robes and baldrics. All salutes given in the Order of K-Duo are rendered in accordance with the custom prescribed by United States military regulations. All salutes rendered to the Exalted Cyclops will be returned by him, whether he be seated or standing. After permitting reasonable time for the Probationers to retire from the Klavern, the Exalted Cyclops gives one rap with his gavel and says:
For many decades, minstrelsy was used as a money-making mechanism for fraternal lodges.
EXALTED CYCLOPS: The Klaliff of the Klan.
KLALIFF (Rises in his place and salutes the Exalted Cyclops): The Klaliff, sir.
EXALTED CYCLOPS: You will see to it that from this moment none enter the Klavern save those who are Knights Kamellia, and you will so inform the Klexter.
KLAROGO (Opening his door and addressing the Klexter): Faithful Klexter, a Klonklave of Knights Kamellia is about to be convened. It is the command of the Exalted Cyclops, that from this moment none are to pass your door save those who are Knights Kamellia. (Closes door, salutes, and resumes seat)
Klan ritual diagrammed
Well-meaning though racist advert for Phoenix Elks Club Watermelon Bust
EXALTED CYCLOPS: All present Who have not attained the Primary Order of Knighthood will retire to the outer den, under escort of the Night-Hawk. (The Klarogo and Klexter, in the meantime, have secured their doors. The Exalted Cyclops gives three raps with his gavel, calling all to their feet.)
EXALTED CYCLOPS: The Kladd of the Klan.
EXALTED CYCLOPS: Knights Kamellia, a Klonklave of the Primary Order of Knighthood is about to be opened. Make the necessary changes at the sacred altar.
(Klokard will advance to the sacred altar from his station with extra sword in scabbard and belt, and standing in front of the altar, he will place the sword in scabbard and belt to the left of the altar. He will then carefully lift right end of flag and lap same over the BIBLE and blue field of flag, changing altar sword to position across altar, above and parallel with the flag, with hilt above blue field and extending a sufficient distance to allow it to touch the Fiery Cross when same will be placed in new position; replaces altar flag in former position; retires two paces; salutes the Exalted Cyclops and takes position.)
(As the Klokard renders his salute, the Kludd will advance to the altar with a copy of the Constitution and Laws of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and place same immediately below the Bible. But not on the flag.)
By the end of 1973, the Klan had grown dramatically. Not only were we reaching and recruiting many new people, most of them in their twenties or thirties, but we made sure that the quality of each new member was high.... Many young whites learned by experience how much damage integration did to their neighborhoods, schools, and communities. Its injustice became obvious to anyone who attended a heavily integrated school or who saw the decline in his neighborhood as it went black or Mexican. Young white people were anxious to stand up for themselves, but they did not know how.
—former Grand Wizard David Duke, My Awakening
Popular Ku Klux Klan sheet music
EXALTED CYCLOPS
(President)
KLALIFF
(Vice President)
KLOKARD
(Lecturer)
KLUDD
(Chaplain)
KLIGRAPP
(Secretary)
KLABEE
(Treasurer)
KLADD
(Conductor)
KLAROGO
(Inner Guard)
KLEXTER
(Outer Guard)
KLOKAN (singular)
(Investigator)
KLOKANN (plural)
(Board of Investigators)
NIGHT-HAWK
(Chg. Candidates)
Freemasonry eventually had to cope with the fact that the average Freemason had a family, which meant that women and children had to be given something to do. Involvement in some sense seemed like a good and preferable option, and appendant Orders eventually came into being which accommodated these needs.
One of the most famous of these Orders claimed President Bill Clinton as its senior-most member during his time in office. That was the Order of DeMolay.
The Order of DeMolay was founded in 1919 by Frank Sherman Land, an Illinois businessman, Scottish Rite Freemason, and Imperial Potentate of the Shrine of North America. The name he chose for this new Order was specifically crafted to pay homage to Jacques DeMolay, the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, who had been burned at the stake in 1314.
DeMolay members in uniform
Singing along with the Ku Klux Klan
from the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, 1924
Behold, the Fiery Cross still brilliant!
Combined efforts to defame
And all the calumny of history
Fail to quench its hallowed flame.
It shall burn bright as the morning
For all decades yet to be
Held by hearts and hands of manhood
It shall light from sea to sea.
We rally around this ancient symbol
Precious heritage of the past
And swear our all to home and country
And to each other to the last.
In the Fiery Cross I glory
‘Neath its glow my Oath was made
It shall live in song and story
I swear its light shall never fade.
The traditional history of the Knights Templar is fraught with accusations about the group falling into everything from worship of the legendary Baphomet to homosexual rites, being possibly sex-magickal, and of course amassing enormous wealth along their journeys. The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon—the full title of the Knights—was also known as the Order of the Temple, or simply as Templars. Endorsed by the Catholic Church around 1129—picking up the patronage of St. Bernard of Clairvaux—the Templars wore white mantles with a red cross and were famed as among the most skilled warriors of the Crusades.
The popular horror/occult author Dennis Wheatley (also British agent and friend of fellow agent Aleister Crowley) summarized some of the standard history of the Templars in The Devil and All His Works:
During the age of the Crusades, it was not only large bodies of knights, squires, spearmen and archers who set out from western Europe for the Holy Land. Many thousands of people made the long journey as pilgrims. To protect them from capture by Arab corsairs, the Order of Knights Templar was formed. The Knights were drawn from several nations, each company being known as a “tongue.” They were sworn to celibacy and poverty, but that did not prevent them from freely indulging in vice or their Order from becoming immensely rich. Their headquarters was Malta, and for many generations they dominated a great part of the Mediterranean.
They were military engineers of the first rank and built several hundred castles. The best preserved of these is on Rhodes; for, regardless of expense, it was splendidly restored by Mussolini....
The Order was founded in Jerusalem in 1119 by Hugues de Payns and his comrade Godeffroi de St. Omer. The latter was an Albigense [type of heretic], so from the beginning the Order had anti-Christian leanings; and, as its knights spent more of their lives in the Near East, it was not altogether surprising that certain of them become involved in Eastern practices. Before many years had passed, the whole Order gave itself up to the worship of Baphomet, a pagan deity envisaged by Arab mystics.
Wheatley then goes on to give the standard description of Baphomet, made famous by Eliphas Lévi:
The idol of Baphomet represented in magical form the Absolute. It had the head and hoofs of a goat, with a black candle set between the horns; and the human hands, upheld and pointing to two crescents, the upper white, the lower black; the belly was green and had scales like a fish; the female breasts were blue; the sexual organs consisted of a penis and a vulva, as in a hermaphrodite; on its forehead it had a pentagram. The image was seated cross-legged on a cube, the symbol of four, the square and foundation of all things; the feet rested on a sphere, representing the world.
The initiation ceremony is described by Wheatley:
When initiated, a Knight Templar had to spit upon, then trample underfoot, the Cross, crying three times as he did so, “Je te renounce, Jésu.” He was then stripped naked and led in to the idol, his companions crying, “Yalla! Yalla!” There followed a male orgy, for the Templars, like other military castes such as the Spartans, were sodomites.
DeMolay himself and his Templars were arrested by Philippe le Bel, King of France. After torture, and a papally approved trial for the above accusations of idol-worship and orgies, DeMolay was burnt at the stake, hurling (according to legend) a curse in Hebrew upon both the King and the Pope.
Nowadays a spate of books debunks much of the above accusations, claiming that the charges were trumped up as a pretext for seizing the Templar wealth, making the Templars a high-profile group of martyrs, crushed under the powers of Altar and Crown. But one exception to the “good Templar” concept was raised by the official bibliographer for the Kinsey Institute and editor of Neurotica magazine, Gershom Legman. In The Guilt of the Templars, Legman reviews the details of the Templar trials and includes an essay, “The Templars and the Worship of the Generative Powers,” positing that the Knights Templar had a role “in the development of the religio-sexual worship of the Devil in Europe.”
The Order of DeMolay founded by “Dad” Land (as all senior DeMolays over twenty-one are called) is named after a man who was a tragic torture victim of Church and State, or a homoerotic sex magician and crucifix-trampling worshipper of the Goat of Mendes, depending on the source. Boys of course are not typically given the latter version of the history of their Order’s namesake. In any case, Land bypassed a lot of other figures in history with inspirational qualities in order to zero in on a traditional livewire of controversy. In so doing, he acted as a good Scottish Rite Freemason who paid homage to the Templars as Albert Pike had done.
Famous DeMolays include Bill Clinton, Walter Cronkite (who is also the voice of the gigantic owl at Bohemian Grove), Dan Rather, Paul Harvey, John Wayne, Walt Disney, Mel Blanc, Buddy Ebsen, Peter Rose, Burl Ives, John Steinbeck, and astronauts Frank Borman and Gordon Cooper.
“Dad” Land’s organization has 18,000 chapters in several countries (about 2,000 in the US) with a total membership of more than a million. Each has the sponsorship of a Masonic lodge and needs a Master Mason present for meetings.
They say the Pope will come
To make our land his home
But when that day?
When cats quit catching mice
And a Chinaman won’t eat rice
And chickens have no lice
Then he will come.
When bristles grow on geese
And rocks all turn to grease
Then he will come
When a Ford will make no noise
And the Irish raise no boys
Our battleships are all toys
Then he will come.
When car wheels are made of glass
And cows quit eating grass
Then he will come
When dogs no more will bark
And sing just like the lark
And baboons play the harp
The Pope will come.
When donkeys cease to bray
And catfish live on hay
Then he will come
When cash won’t tempt the Jew
And cows no cud will chew
And woodpeckers’ heads turn blue
The Pope will come.
When snakes upright will walk
And women cease to talk
Then he will come
When the negroes all turn white
And the sun will give no light
When the bulldogs will not fight
Then he will come.
When all men cease to think
And polecats do not stink
The Pope will come.
When we no more mine lead
And Klansmen all are dead
And the sea with their blood is red
The Pope will come.
—from Ku Klux Klan sheet music
HOW DID YOU choose the name DeMolay?
“After naming several historic figures, one of the boys asked me to name some connected with Masonry,” Dad Land explained. “I mentioned Jacques DeMolay and related how he was a Crusader of the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries, was the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar and was burned at the stake by the King of France as a martyr to loyalty and toleration. The boys liked the name and what it stood for—death rather than betrayal of one’s friends.”
Our next question was, “Is there actually anything that sets DeMolay apart from other youth organizations?”
“There certainly is,” Dad Land said. “It’s ritual—a dramatic and yet solemn presentation that impresses an obligation on a boy to live and do right. Of course all the rest of the formal ‘extras’ tend to brand DeMolay on the mind and in the heart of the boy.”
—from The DeMolay Handbook by Richard E. Harkins, The International Supreme Council Order of DeMolay, Kansas City, Missouri [undated]
A DeMolay serves God.
A DeMolay honors all womanhood.
A DeMolay loves and honors his parents.
A DeMolay is honest.
A DeMolay is loyal to ideals and friends.
A DeMolay practices honest toil.
A DeMolay word is as good as his bond.
A DeMolay is courteous.
A DeMolay is at all times a gentleman.
A DeMolay is a patriot in peace as well as war.
A DeMolay is clean in mind and body.
A DeMolay stands unswervingly for the public schools.
A DeMolay always bears the reputation of a good and law-abiding citizen.
A DeMolay by precept and example must preserve the high standards to which he has pledged himself.
The Moose was founded by Dr. John Henry Wilson and a group of his friends in 1888 in Louisville, Kentucky, as a social and drinking club to rival the Elks. While it remains essentially an American club, it changed its name to Moose International in 1991. The basic unit is the Lodge, which follows the pattern established by Masons: the Moose have a club room or rooms, plus a Lodge room with an altar. The Moose confer an initiatory degree, and after six months membership, the member becomes eligible for the second degree, Moose Legion. A Third Degree or Fellowship Degree is awarded for service to the fraternity. The fourth and highest degree, that of Pilgrim, is honorific and is awarded to few Moose. The Moose make community service a strong component of their activities.
—History of the Moose, from phoenixmasonry.org
Moose International sponsors sports and recreational programs in local lodge/chapter facilities called either Moose Family Centers or Activity Centers; health-oriented charity work is also part of the Moose orbit. The headquarters lies in Mooseheart, Illinois, which holds a 1,200-acre home and school for children in need. In Orange Park, near Jacksonville, Florida, lies Moosehaven, a retirement home for Moose and their wives:
Every resident whose physical condition will permit is assigned to some daily duty usually not to exceed three hours, and everyone receives a monthly allowance. Those no longer able to work are called “Sunshiners.” Their job is to sit in rocking chairs in the sun, and smile at passers-by.
—from phoenixmasonry.org
The former title of the leader of the Moose Lodge of “Dictator” was reconstituted as “Director General.”
Widely reproduced illustration shows a father fingering a devoted wolf cub’s apron to usher him into deeper Masonic ties.
It is to the spirit of the motto that the organizers attribute the phenomenal growth of the Order.
“The Loyal Order of the Moose is made up of working men,” said one of the officers, “and that takes in most of us. No man can join the Order who hasn’t a job. And no man can be a good Moose who isn’t intent on holding his job and at the same time fitting himself for a better job. Men of that sort want to help each other, as well as themselves. And so, in our Order, we have tried to combine with the social side a certain dignity of ritual and as many beneficiary factors as possible. That is why we are paying so much attention to our proposed university home for the orphans of the Order.”
This is a conservative estimate to say that one man out of every ten in America is an unemployed parasite.
—from Elbert Hubbard’s Speech before the Moose convention
Early Moose magazine from Los Angeles in 1912
IT IS RITUAL that sets DeMolay apart from all other Youth Movements and keeps it in a class by itself. This is something that should be remembered and practiced at all times by all Chapters, members, and leaders. Ritual MUST be used to the utmost in the expansion and development of the Order.
It is Ritual that has held DeMolay together ever since it was founded in 1919. It is Ritual that has inspired numerous DeMolays to become state governors; many to reach flag rank in the U.S. Armed Services; more than 125 to become 33rd Degree Scottish Rite Masons, and hundreds of thousands to climb to the top of their chosen walks of life and community effort.
Ritual perfection is of the greatest importance. There should be no deviation—not even the slightest—in exemplification of the Initiatory and DeMolay Degrees and the presentation of the Flower Talk.
—from standard online explanation, “What is DeMolay?”
The wolf cub is the son of a Mason. This name is of very ancient origin. Those initiated into the mysteries of Isis wore a mask in the form of a jackal’s head or wolf’s head, even in public.... The son of one initiated was called a young wolf or wolf cub.
—Clavel, Historie Pittoresque de la Franc-Maconnerie, quoted by anti-Mason Dom Benoit
Moose magazine features on its cover conservatively dressed future Republicans.
The old Cub Scout promise included a pledge “to be square,” which had become a popular expression traceable to the square and compass of Freemasonry. Many Masonic slogans found their way into popular usage (explored in Chapter Four). Nevertheless, in 1972 the Cub Scout Promise was changed from “to be square” to “to help other people,” as the term square had gone from the association with honesty or integrity to dullness, conventionality, rigidity, and inhibition.
Turn-of-the-century postcard revealing a proud Moose family
OUR ATTENTION has been drawn this week for a member of Los Angeles Lodge who so far forgot his manhood that he not only practiced deception on his wife of his bosom who had loved him and cared for his wants, but also represented himself as a single man to young women with whom he became acquainted, at least one of whom he succeeded in causing serious trouble. Men are full of faults, but we believe and we think all true Moose believe with us that such conduct is not becoming to a member of our great Order, and the sooner such members are kicked into the street, where they belong, the better for the Order. When a man assumes the obligation of matrimony he should have finished sowing his wild oats—if such a thing is necessary—and should regard his marriage vow as the most sacred thing in life, and he who forgets this vow is not worthy of the respect of any true man.
—from 1912 Moose magazines
JOURNAL EDITORS reminded women not to criticize that which they did not understand. A story in the Masonic Review, entitled “Too Late at the Lodge,” described a young married couple who grew cold to each other after the husband had joined the Masons and begun to spend several evenings each week in the Lodge. In a final attempt to save their marriage, the Mason allowed his wife to accompany him on “lodge business.” The woman learned to her amazement that on lodge nights her husband had been delivering medicine to sick Masons and their families, doing chores for widows and orphans, and taking books to a cripple. The story neatly inverted the gender associations of the evangelical groups. The woman’s un-Christian suspiciousness and possessiveness were confuted by the example of the Mason’s charity and missionary zeal. His secrecy only confirmed his Christian selflessness.
—Carnes, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America
To the majority of Freemasons today (dominated by U.S. and Canadian brethren), the concept of women becoming Masons is, for all intents and purposes, an anathema.
—from Masonicinfo.com
The Grand Lodge of British Columbia does not recognize as regular freemasonry any self-styled body that initiates women. That said, there are several organizations calling themselves freemasonry that do initiate women.
—Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon
Freemasonry has not simply been an affair dictated largely by race but also by gender. Women attempting to break into a lodge meeting would be blocked by the Tyler who stands guard.
Wives of Masons have had, on occasion, questions about the lodge. Many of them have been proud of their husbands; others, suspicious or resentful. The role of women therefore inevitably was addressed in various ways by members of the lodge, ranging from advice or directives on how to run a household, to the creation of organizations which included women.
Over time, a number of affiliated organizations were created to accommodate women. None of them are officially Masonic, but all are within the orbit of freemasonry. The Order of the Eastern Star, for example, is considered “adoptive.” Started by Master Mason Robert Morris in 1850 with the publication of a ritual named “The Rosary of the Eastern Star,” the Order is limited to Master Masons and their close female relatives. The Chapter is run by the women with the Master Mason is present. The female relatives who may join are wife, sister, daughter, mother, and various grandparents, step-relatives and in-laws.
Masons who are members of lodges under the United Grand Lodge of England are prohibited from joining.
The inverted pentagram, which has become a staple symbol of the Eastern Star, has traditionally been explained as a symbol as highly Christian as the Star of Bethlehem, by members of the Order, or as an occult homage to Satan, by Christian fundamentalist anti-Masons who quote occult literature that normally associates the inversion of the pentagram with black magic. Some fundamentalists fit the head of the Goat of Mendes into the symbol—a common association, in fact, with the Church of Satan.
Integrating the family theme in popular Masonic magazine, 1888
Job’s Daughters, a Masonic-sponsored youth organization for girls and women, aged ten to twenty
Soroptomist Club, women’s affiliate of the Optimist Club
Order of the Rainbow for Girls
Member of Co-Masonry, the small and largely disputed American Masonic order that allows women members
Order of the Rainbow for Girls members display their uniforms.
The women’s affiliate of The Moose display their toys made for the Mooseheart orphanage.
In Voice of Masonry magazine, a tortuous explanation why women cannot join the boys in a Masonic lodge
It seems a stark contrast between the open, eclectic philosophy of Masonic fraternalism and the historical exclusions of blacks and Native Americans, women and youth, making most lodges simply clubs for the proverbial white male. Yet with all historical qualifiers noted—including the accommodations of “separate but equal” lodges such as Prince Hall and the Order of the Eastern Star—it remains true that certain realities of race and gender and age are part and parcel of most fraternal structures.
If we recall that the lodges grew out of stonemason guilds, which were filled with European men, and picked up patrons and alcohol along the way, this reality should be of little surprise. Tavern Masonry by its own character excluded children. And women were likely something most men were happy to leave at home for a night out. Racial issues seem to have persisted long past when most other areas of society have achieved some measure of integration, making the lodges for the most part far behind the times in American society. Some might argue that this reflects a strength of the lodges—that they can ignore social values and keep their own character. Others might see the lodges as the last bastion of privilege and discrimination.
In the distant future, perhaps the white man’s club will be viewed as the worst kind of anachronism. For now, it is a fraternal norm.
Other “family” organizations in the orbit of the Masonic:
Order of the Eastern Star & Order of the Amaranth
American androgynous Orders for Master Masons and their female relatives.
Poetic treatises to women and their affiliate orders from The Lodge Goat humor book
Social Order of the Beauceant (SOOB)
An American androgynous Order for Knights Templar, their wives and widows.
White Shrine of Jerusalem
An American androgynous Order for Master Masons and their female relatives.
Daughters of the Nile
Membership is limited to wives of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.
