Pike Fraternity Quotes

What did they want, those violent man, ragged, bellowing and wild-eyed, who with clubs and pikes poured through the ancient streets of distracted Paris? They wanted to put an end to oppression, tyranny, and the sword, they wanted work for all men, education for their children, security for their wives, liberty, equality, fraternity, food enough to go round, freedom of thought, the edenization of the world. In a word they wanted progress, that hallowed, good, and gentle thing, and they demanded it in a terrible fashion with oaths on their lips and weapons in their hands. They were barbarous, yes; but barbarians in the cause of civilization.

Savage. Let us explain this word. When these bristling men, who in the early days of the revolutionary chaos, tattered, howling, wild, with uplifted bludgeon, pike on high, hurled themselves upon ancient Paris in an uproar, what did they want? They wanted an end to oppression, an end to tyranny, an end to the sword, work for men, instruction for the child, social sweetness for the woman, liberty, equality, fraternity, bread for all, the idea for all, the Edenizing of the world. Progress; and that holy, sweet, and good thing, progress, they claimed in terrible wise, driven to extremities as they were, half naked, club in fist, a roar in their mouths. They were savages, yes; but the savages of civilization. They proclaimed right furiously; they were desirous, if only with fear and trembling, to force the human race to paradise. They seemed barbarians, and they were saviours. They demanded light with the mask of night. Facing these men, who were ferocious, we admit, and terrifying, but ferocious and terrifying for good ends, there are other men, smiling, embroidered, gilded, beribboned, starred, in silk stockings, in white plumes, in yellow gloves, in varnished shoes, who, with their elbows on a velvet table, beside a marble chimney-piece, insist gently on demeanor and the preservation of the past, of the Middle Ages, of divine right, of fanaticism, of innocence, of slavery, of the death penalty, of war, glorifying in low tones and with politeness, the sword, the stake, and the scaffold. For our part, if we were forced to make a choice between the barbarians of civilization and the civilized men of barbarism, we should choose the barbarians.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many Lodges in the United States and Europe conducted Masonic baptisms. During the ceremony, written by Albert Pike, the presiding officer gave the child Masonic emblems, promising him or her the protection of the fraternity.  While the ritual for the ceremony survives, it is rarely performed today.