Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of FreemasonryPike, Albert
Religion
Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry
Pike, Albert
Freemasons
Remember that every moral characteristic of man finds its prototype
among creatures of lower intelligence; that the cruel foulness of the
hyena, the savage rapacity of the wolf, the merciless rage of the tiger,
the crafty treachery of the panther, are found among mankind, and ought
to excite no other emotion, when found in the man, than when found in
the beast. Why should the true man be angry with the geese that hiss,
the peacocks that strut, the asses that bray, and the apes that imitate
and chatter, although they wear the human form? Always, also, it remains
true, that it is more noble to forgive than to take revenge; and that,
in general, we ought too much to despise those who wrong us, to feel the
emotion of anger, or to desire revenge.
At the sphere of the _Sun_, you are in the region of LIGHT. The
Hebrew word for _gold_, ZAHAB, also means _Light_, of which the Sun is
to the Earth the great source. So, in the great Oriental allegory of the
Hebrews, the River PISON compasses the land of _Gold_ or _Light_; and
the River GIHON the land of _Ethiopia_ or _Darkness_.
What light _is_, we no more know than the ancients did. According to the
modern hypothesis, it is _not_ composed of luminous particles shot out
from the sun with immense velocity; but that body only impresses, on the
ether which fills all space, a powerful vibratory movement that extends,
in the form of luminous waves, beyond the most distant planets,
supplying them with light and heat. To the ancients, it was an
outflowing from the Deity. To us, as to them, it is the apt symbol of
truth and knowledge. To us, also, the upward journey of the soul through
the Spheres is symbolical; but we are as little informed as they whence
the soul comes, where it has its origin, and whither it goes after
death. They endeavored to have _some_ belief and faith, _some_ creed,
upon those points. At the present day, men are satisfied to think
nothing in regard to all that, and only to believe that the soul is a
_something_ separate from the body and out-living it, but whether
existing before it, neither to inquire nor care. No one asks whether it
emanates from the Deity, or is created out of nothing, or is generated
like the body, and the issue of the souls of the father and the mother.
Let us not smile, therefore, at the ideas of the ancients, until we have
a better belief; but accept their symbols as meaning that the soul is of
a Divine nature, originating in a sphere nearer the Deity, and returning
to that when freed from the enthrallment of the body; and that it can
only return there when purified of all the sordidness and sin which
have, as it were, become part of its substance, by its connection with
the body.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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