Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. Prepared for the Supreme Council of the Thirty-Third Degree for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States and Published by Its Authority. With Digest-Index of ‘Morals and Dog…

v, 861, iii, 218 pp. Black-and-white frontispiece of Albert Pike. Compiled and published in 1871 - brings together 32 separate essays that offer supporting philosophy to the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. Each of these essays is intended to focus on a single degree of this rite. The book was originally produced by Albert Pike, a Bostonian polymath whose varied career took him from schoolmaster to journalist and from poet to jurist via stints as a Confederate general during the Civil War period and as an Associate Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. Pike's work is an intriguing and sometimes baffling one, highlighting some of the philosophical contexts around this rite of Freemasonry, while intentionally shrouding many of the order's more specific details in secrecy. Accusations of plagiarism, as well as outrage over some of Pike's previously stated beliefs and political actions, have made the book a controversial one. Despite this, Morals and Dogma achieved great popularity throughout the late 19th and early to mid-20th centuries before it fell out of circulation in the late 1960s. 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 and a staunch opponent of racial equality, Pike served as the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council, Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction from 1859 to 1891.