Mob Tears Down Pike Statue

It's been reported on the news and social media that a mob has pulled down the statue of Illustrious Brother Albert Pike, 33°, that was located at 3rd and D St. NW in DC. This statue was defaced early, but with the recent spree of ripping statues down, a group composed of around 80 people toppled the statue and then tried to light it on fire.

This statue was targeted because many believe it to be a statue honoring the Confederacy, but, in reality, the statue commemorates Pike as a Mason and specifically as a Scottish Rite Mason which is seen with him holding a copy of Morals & Dogma and that the Greek figure in front of Pike is holding a banner of the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite. He’s not in a military uniform, nor does he carry a firearm or sword, as would be found on statues commemorating war leaders. This statue was purely Masonic and had nothing to do either with slavery or the Confederacy.

In his book, Esoterika, Pike ironically spoke on the dangers of the mob mentality:

"The populace has always been ready to turn upon and rend its benefactors.... the mob or populace is aptly symbolized by the setting maul or club, the fit weapon of blind and frenzied brutality. And as nothing is so unreasoning as a mob, as it hates nothing so much as the superiority of the intellect, which it always regards as its enemy, always the ready instrument of the Priesthood and of the Kings, it always has rejoiced when it could destroy the wise and the great."

As I mentioned in a previous article, people are taking advantage of raw emotion to attack American culture and history. They are dividing rather than uniting.

Albert Pike is a controversial figure, mostly due to rabid anti-Masons fabricating conspiracies against him and Freemasonry. However, Pike was human and subject to the flaws inherent in mankind. As Brother Arturo de Hoyos stated, "We are all, to some degree, products of our environments, and have all changed our minds as we mature and receive better information." Such as it was with Pike who once disagreed with black men belonging to Freemasonry, but later changed his opinion. He even worked with the Prince Hall Scottish Rite with their ritual and corresponded with their Sovereign Grand Commander, who he acknowledged as such.

It's tragic to see such a destructive culture seek to destroy symbols of the past that they disagree with or do not understand. To me, these mobs are no better than the Taliban who destroyed Buddhist monuments, or ISIS who destroyed ancient Assyrian works. We shouldn't be destroying our history.