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Albert Pike (December 29, 1809 – April 2, 1891) was an American author, poet, orator, editor, lawyer, jurist and Confederate States Army general who served as an associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court in exile from 1864 to 1865. He had previously served as a senior officer of the Confederate States Army, commanding the District of Indian Territory in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. A prominent member of the Freemasons, Pike served as the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council, Scottish Rite (Southern Jurisdiction, USA) from 1859 to 1891.
Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, or simply Morals and Dogma, is a book of esoteric philosophy published by the Supreme Council, Thirty Third Degree, of the Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction of the United States. It was compiled by Albert Pike, was first published in 1871 and was regularly reprinted thereafter until 1969. An upgraded official reprint was released in 2011, with annotations by Arturo de Hoyos, the Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction's Grand Archivist and Grand Historian.
One of Pike's influences was the French author Éliphas Lévi, the pen name of Alphonse Louis Constant. Lévi was a prolific writer on occult topics who, in Pike's day, was considered an expert on pagan mysteries and Gnosticism.
Éliphas Lévi Zahed, born Alphonse Louis Constant (8 February 1810 – 31 May 1875), was a French esotericist, poet, and writer. Initially pursuing an ecclesiastical career in the Catholic Church, he abandoned the priesthood in his mid-twenties and became a ceremonial magician. At the age of 40, he began professing knowledge of the occult. He wrote over 20 books on magic, Kabbalah, alchemical studies, and occultism.
He (Lévi)had a deep impact on the magic of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and later on ex–Golden Dawn member Aleister Crowley... Lévi's ideas also influenced Helena Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society.
In his book Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1855), Lévi claimed that Freemasonry had its roots in ancient pagan rituals, and Pike accepted many of these claims. According to Chris Hodapp, "whole passages of Levi's book [were] made into Pike's".
French philosopher René Guénon noticed that "a considerable part of ... Morals and Dogma of Freemasonry is clearly plagiarized from Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie by the French occultist Éliphas Lévi". Craig Heimbichner and Adam Parfrey write that Pike "seemed untroubled by the need to properly attribute text that he borrowed or lifted" and that in Morals and Dogma "Pike plagiarized from the French occultist Eliphas Lévi."
Pike was heavily influenced by the occultist Lévi. Lévi also influenced Aleister Crowley - an admitted occultist, as well as Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society.
The Theosophical Society is the organizational body of Theosophy, an esoteric new religious movement. It was founded in New York City, U.S. in 1875. Among its founders were Helena Blavatsky, a Russian mystic and the principal thinker of the Theosophy movement, and Henry Steel Olcott, its first president. It draws upon a wide array of influences among them older European philosophies and movements such as Neoplatonism and occultism, as well as parts of Asian religious traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam.
As recently as 2011 a new edition of Morals and Dogma was published.
Eventually Morals and Dogma entered the public domain and like many public domain works, it was reprinted many times by various publishers. In August 2011, the Supreme Council, 33°, S.J., announced that they had published a new annotated edition. Titled Albert Pike’s Morals and Dogma: Annotated Edition, the work was prepared by Arturo de Hoyos, 33° the Scottish Rite's Grand Archivist and Grand Historian. The text is reprinted in full, with about 4000 scholarly notes on difficult passages, touching on historical, religious, and philosophical issues. The new edition is augmented by subject headings, and illustrations from the original books Pike used, new paragraph numbers, and corrections based upon original texts.
Freemasonry continues to embrace the whole of Pike's work in Morals and Dogma. To not recognize Freemasonry's connection to occultism is to be willfully blind.