"An Introduction to Morals & Dogma, by Jay Halpern" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Albert)

"The North Ruled With An Iron Fist.."

The fact that the U.S. federal government is, itself, a republic, and not a tyranny, doesn't let if off the hook, in Pike's view; the economic system of the North rules with a tyrant's fist: When civil war tears the vitals of a Republic, let it look back and see if it has not been guilty of injustices; and if it has, let it humble itself in the dust!"

From Pike's perspective, it is the mercantile system of industrial politics, in contradistinction to the agrarian idealism of the South, that caused the rupture between the states and propelled the nation into civil war. The restrictions established against the expansion of slavery into the new territories of the West, for example, appeared to Southern gentry like Pike to be a serious and unmitigated infringement upon what they took to be the backbone of the Constitutional compromise, the balance between states' rights and federal authority. And in back of that infringement lay industrial mercantilism, the rank capitalism that was to lead to the Gilded Age, the Age of Morgan and Astor and Gould and the rest of the Robber Barons. And, of course, we are not Masons living in the South during Reconstruction; we are not defeated warriors living under occupation. The past is still the past, and therein lies, in my opinion, a great deal of the intellectual
fascination Pike's work holds for me, as a Mason. As I read his work, I try and extrapolate just how such a man of both word and deed could be expected to make his theories manifest themselves in the world-at-large. He is charged by many with helping to found the Ku Klux Klan, an active resistance movement against the federal forces stationed throughout the South. I can well imagine Pike putting deeds to his words and, when faced with the apolitical stance of Masonry then and now, seeking to found a similar body, an offshoot with degrees and symbols and occult titles, that would more vigorously pursue a spiritual
cum political transformation throughout the South. But I'd find it difficult to imagine the Klansman as we know him today, ignorant, self-important, anarchistic, hateful against all religions and races other than his own, to be the kind of soldier Pike would have called to his spiritual cause. Perhaps the KKK was an experiment that failed in its infancy and went off in the wrong direction, a subterranean cell of political and spiritual theorists turned redneck racists at the starting gate. I can then imagine Pike even more disgruntled and perhaps misanthropic after his years of theorizing and propagating his philosophy.

An Infinite Variety of Mankind...

It is evident from the symbolic portions of M&D that Pike was too intrigued by the infinite variety of mankind, its religions, its cultures, its spiritual struggles against the forces of darkness, to be blithely classed with the racists we have come to expect from a racist culture. It is true that in some societies Pike allows for slavery; didn't, in fact, the whole Greek and Roman world, packed full of philosophers, depend upon it as an institution? Pike writes, "Influence of man over man is a law of nature, whether it be by a great estate in
land or in intellect. It may mean slavery, a deference to the eminent human judgment (italics mine)." He writes elsewhere, "The wiser a man becomes, the less will he be inclined to submit tamely to the imposition of fetters or a yoke, on his conscience or his person. For, by increase of wisdom he not only better knows his rights, but the more highly values them, and is more conscious of his worth and dignity. His pride then urges him to assert his independence. He becomes better able to assert it also; and better able to assist others or his country, when they or she stake all, even existence, upon the same assertion. In Pike's day there was neither theory nor technology for social redemption. Certain forms of maladaptive behavior, certain affects of acculturation, were considered irredeemable and, at best, served as lessons to the rest of us who weren't so afflicted. In other words, slaves are both the victims of their masters, and by remaining enslaved, eventually deteriorate until they are worthy of their slavery. Don't mistake, however, my attempting to understand Pike's conception of slavery - given his philosophy and spirituality - with a justification. It is here that Pike and I part company, just as I part company with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, whose philosophic leisure depended upon a slave-based culture. I merely wish to paint as broad a portrait of the man who wrote M&D as I can, given my studies so far.

I can sympathize with Archie Stone's perplexity; here, in this remarkable book, side-by-side with drawings of occult symbols, Hebrew icons, Masonic forms, and all manner of diagrams and arcana, is embedded a political and social tract that is the proudly defiant outcry of one man against a nation that has overrun his own. It's easy for me to understand the veneration in which Pike's held by Masons in the Southern Jurisdiction; he represents, to them, the epitome of Southern aristocratic learning, philosophy and values. His words ring, and will always ring, alongside all other world-class philosophers who saw their societies crumbling from greed and mercantilism. It will, I'm sure, surprise some that a Northern Masonic Jew, a man with ingrained Northern and urban sympathies for multiculturalism and the enlightened use of technology, could glean so much from a man like Albert Pike, a man so different. But I feel that, at bottom, the spiritual truths that have always brought true Masons together, whether in formal Lodge or by informal happenstance, with or without Masonic sanction, are truths that we both share and for whose fullness and radiance we continue to
search. That part of contemporary Masonry which falls short of these truths, would, I feel, disturb Pike as much as they disturb me. I can only wish to meet and mingle with brothers who will pursue more light in
Masonry with the passion, erudition and reverence that Albert Pike put into his impressive work.

JAY HALPERN - Contributing Editor/Writer belongs to Cosmopolitan Lodge #125 in New Haven, CT. He published "The Jade Unicorn" in 1979 (Macmillan), an occult allegory of the battle between good and evil, and
is looking to have his novel,"Gris-Gris," a lyric meditation "Cell Fantastick", a collection of poems "The Emerald Canticle of Hermes", and a collection of short stories, "Ghosts & Bones,"published ASAP. Bro. Halpern is also a disability rights, civil rights, environmental activist who ran for Connecticut state representative last November to make a statement about a power plant being shoved down the region's throat, in lieu of a comprehensive renewable energy policy.