Morals and Dogma

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. It has since been reissued in a new edition.