Michael's Masonic Esoterica
As I look for hidden messages coded within Albert Pike's 1871 book Morals and Dogma, I am reflecting on what we learned this last year about how artists, poets, and authors encoded secret hidden information in their work. We learned about Shakespeare, or more likely Francis Bacon, who encoded information in the Book of Sonnets. We looked at Michael Drosnin's software which found information encoded in the first book of the Torah at a phenomenal level, like the book is closer to a hologram in how the encoded information appears to interpenetrate the entire document.
I have suggested that there occurs a natural interpenetration of information in communication mediums. We have looked at David John Oates work showing that when we speak forwards and have a hiccup of speech we are often saying something in reverse that is relevant to the truth of what is being said forwards. Michael Drosnin's software also found encoded information in Moby Dick and War and Peace, but more at the rare, naturally occurring level, like reverse speech happens, and I think Genesis was written using a technology that amplified or utilized an understanding of this natural phenomenon. I am calling this idea "spiritual technology".
I further conjecture that when Genesis was written (if that's even the correct term knowing what we now know), the capability of utilizing this natural phenomenon was at it's fullest expression, and that by the time we see examples like the art and texts we know have encoded information, it seems that while the technology was still employed, it was at a much less advanced level. Today of course few know that this occurs naturally, let alone know how to exercise it.
I believe Bacon employed a simplified version of this spiritual technology, but my focus lately has been Albert Pike who lived two hundred years later. (Bacon: 1561-1626, Pike: 1809-1891). I have no idea if Pike might have had knowledge of or access to whatever technology Bacon and his contemporaries might have used, but we can see that Pike did live during a time when there was a group of a sculptors from a small area in Italy were creating marble sculptures that researchers today believe were 3d printed from either molten rock or more likely powdered marble that was mixed like concrete. There exist paintings from this period of impossible complexity. There is an amazing theory that the paintings and sculptures that we see from this and earlier periods might not have been printed from a computer like we know today, but was rather a part of this spiritual technology, whereby the art was printed straight from the artist's mind.
It could very well be that remnants of this spiritual technology were still employed at the time of Albert Pike, and if so, he would certainly have been a candidate to have had access to it.
Anyway, back to Pike's Morals and Dogma, seeing as how I am not a cryptographer and am unlikely to discover a hidden code, it is nonetheless rather compelling to poke around in the book looking at 'cypher 101' ideas. Remember that the Scottish Rite is known as the university of Freemasonry. The York Rite completes the historical narrative set out in the first three degrees, and is valuable to know, but the Scottish Rite's degrees in a sense help demonstrate what the first three degrees are really all about. Well, in any case I thought it might be interesting to look at page numbers like 3, 33, 333, to see if there might be any oddity that might point to a hidden message, but what I found were very direct statements about core elements of Freemasonry. Remember I am using a 1947copy of the original 1871 book, with all it's typos and grammar oddities and original page numbering.
I find that often in the book Pike seems to be speaking to an audience of Master Masons rather than Scottish Rite masons per. se. Specifically his messaging often seems directed specifically to masters of blue lodges.
On page 3 he is speaking about the evils of the world. The first line at the top of the page demonstrates Pope's eloquent and impassioned language we find throughout the book: "They have the brute force of the HAMMER, but their blows help on the great cause, when struck within the lines traced by the RULE held by wisdom and discretion. Yet it is this very Force of the people, this Titanic power of the giants, that build the fortifications of tyrants, and is embodied in their armies."
Note the odd use of capital letters that we find scattered throughout the original copy of the text. There are other punctuation oddities, any of which might point to a hidden code.
On page 33 he is speaking about civil and religious freedom: "Civil and religious Freedom must go hand in hand; and Persecution matures them both." at the bottom of the page: "This vast power of endurance, of forbearance, of patience, and of performance, is only acquired by continual exercise of all the functions, like the healthful physical human vigor, like the individual moral vigor."
On page 333 he exhorts Masters of a lodge on the importance of sharing with the brethren the root philosophies of Freemasonry, and what those are. The page begins with: "Especially you are not to allow any assembly of the body over which you may preside, to close, without recalling to the minds of the Brethren the Masonic virtues and duties which are represented upon the Tracing Board of this Degree. That is an imperative duty." and "Urge upon your Brethren the teaching and the unostentatious practice of the morality of the Lodge, without regard to times, places, religions, or peoples."
I don't know if there's any hidden messages there, but what we can read is interesting. Can you think of any other interesting page numbers we should look at?
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Michael McKeown
