-Caveat Lector- http://www.indianamasons.org/imosanctum/pike/taxil.html#5 ====
The Taxil Hoax by Bro. Eric Schmitz, P.M. "On July 14, 1889, Albert Pike, Sovereign Pontiff of Universal Freemasonry, addressed to the 23 Supreme Confederated Councils of the world, the following instructions: "That which we must say to the world is – We worship a God, but it is the God that one adores without superstition. To you, Sovereign Grand Inspectors General, we say this, that you may repeat it to the Brethren of the 32 nd , 31 st , and 30 th degrees – The Masonic Religion should be, by all of us initiates of the high degrees, maintained in the purity of the Luciferian Doctrine. Yes, Lucifer is God, and the true and pure philosophical religion is the belief in Lucifer." Thus was instigated what would come to be the most sensational, the most widely abused, and the most tenacious of all hoaxes ever perpetrated against the institution of Freemasonry. The words I just quoted were attributed to Albert Pike, a prominent Freemason of the late 19 th century, by one Leo Taxil, and are commonly known as the "Taxil Hoax" – although many Freemasons have come to refer to this hoax as "the lie that would not die." Indeed, as Mark Twain once said, "One of the striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat only has NINE lives." Albert Pike, who lived from 1809 to 1891, was the Grand Commander of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite’s Southern Jurisdiction from 1859 until the end of his life. Many Freemasons consider him to be a Masonic genius, but he has not managed to avoid a certain degree of controversy. Pike wrote a book called Morals and Dogma, in which he quoted many religious and philosophical teachers’ works, on the theory that unless one knows the history of a concept, one cannot understand the concept itself.1 This book tends to be the focus of most of the controversy surrounding Pike. However, the real furor did not get fully underway until three years after his death, upon the 1894 re-publication of a work by a certain Leo Taxil, whose alleged purpose was to reveal a highly secret Masonic order called the "Palladium," which he claimed "practiced devil worship, murder, and other brutalities of an erotic nature."2 Born Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pages, Leo Taxil was a fervent anti-Papist, libertine, and pornographer. He was a member of a Masonic Lodge for a short time, but was expelled from the fraternity, possibly due to his reputation as an extremely Anti-Catholic writer. It may have been his expulsion which turned him into an anti-Mason as well, but it is also possible that he joined the order merely to acquire fuel for an already existing hostility to the Craft. At any rate, Taxil’s publication of Pike’s "Luciferian Doctrine" marked the beginning of an ongoing chapter in Masonic defamation that persists even to this very day. Why did Taxil pick Albert Pike as the target of his venomous prank? Possibly because Pike did make some mention of the name "Lucifer" in his own works. It is a little known fact that the name "Lucifer" is, in some sense, a hoax in and of itself. The name made its first biblical appearance in the King James Bible, in the book of Isaiah (14:12), where we read, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" One problem here is that the name "Lucifer" is actually Latin, a language that did not exist at the time the Hebrew manuscript of Isaiah was written. In fact, the context of this chapter of Isaiah is an account of a fallen Babylonian king, not a fallen angel, and the in the original Hebrew, the name used is "Helal, ben Shahar," or "Day star, son of the Dawn." The day star, or morning star, is Venus, which appears in the morning just before sunrise. Hence, "lucem ferre," or "bringer of light," becomes the name "Lucifer," and a fallen king becomes a fallen angel. Ironically, Christ is often identified as the "morning star," and in fact referred to Himself as such, as we read in Revelation 22:16. 3 Pike may well have known all this, or at least suspected it. His writing, when properly inflected, clearly indicates his shock and surprise at the idea of such a name being applied to the fallen angel and ruler of hell. He writes, "Lucifer, the light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it HE who bears the Light, and with its intolerable light blinds feeble, sensual or selfish souls?" Pike is clearly upset by the attribution, referring at one point to the "false Lucifer of the legend."4 Now, I have mentioned before that there are many instances where a Masonic author could be said to have chosen his words somewhat imprudently, and I believe that this may well have been one of those times. After nearly half a century of anti-Masonic persecution due in large part to another incident known as the "Morgan Affair" (a long story for another day), our "Uncle Albert" may have been wiser to remember the persistent efforts of his enemies to discredit his organization. Indeed, it was almost certainly the boldness of his own writings that opened the door for people like Leo Taxil to make their wild claims, and for successive generations of anti-Masons to perpetuate those assertions. And my my! How they have been perpetuated! The first instance was the 1894 re-publication of Taxil’s quote, which I mentioned before. This appeared in a publication known (in English) as Woman and Child in Universal Freemasonry, by A. C. DeLa Rive, another prominent anti-Mason. The quote appeared again, slightly modified, in the 1933 Occult Theocrasy, by a Lady Queenborough, also known as Edith Starr Miller. Since then, it has been repeated and excerpted (that is, plagiarized and mis-annotated) in the anti-Masonic works of such luminary notables as Jack Chick, author of the well-known series of comic tracts; James Holly, of the Southern Baptist Convention; Texe Marrs, author of many books on the "new age," and enemy of just about everyone, from the Church of Scientology and the Mormons to the Girl Scouts and the Smurfs; Pat Robertson, a name we all recognize, who repeated the Taxil quote in his "New World Order"; and the so-called Rev. Ron Carlson, a master of the mis-quote, who incorrectly implies that the text of the "Luciferian Doctrine" can be found in Pike’s Morals and Dogma.5 To many Masons of today, the Taxil Hoax has become almost a kind of sick joke, except for the sad fact that people are still taken in by it. Indeed, well-informed Masons can easily apply a kind of intelligence test upon the anti-Mason and his works, by looking for the passage that starts, "On July 14 th , 1889, Albert Pike, Sovereign Pontiff..." It is ridiculous enough that this "Doctrine," known to be a product purely of Taxil’s imagination, has enjoyed such immortality. It is even more ridiculous, then, when one realizes certain other things, the first and foremost being the fact that Taxil himself publicly recanted his hoax three years later! This was immediately seconded by DeLa Rive, who published the following sharply worded retraction in the April 1897 issue of Freemasonry Unmasked: "With frightening cynicism, the miserable person we shall not name here declared before an assembly especially convened for him that for twelve years he had prepared and carried out to the end the most extraordinary and s acrilegious of hoaxes. We have always been careful to publish special articles concerning Palladism and Diana Vaughn [the ‘priestess’ who allegedly carried Pike’s message to Paris]. We are now giving in this issue a complete list of these articles, which can now be considered as not having existed." DeLa Rive’s series of articles are not the only non-existent entities we are dealing with here. To add to his list, there is no such thing as the office or degree of "Supreme Pontiff of Universal Masonry" nor any organizations called "Universal Masonry" or "the Confederation of Supreme Councils." There is no "Palladian Rite of Masonry," and its "priestess, Diana Vaughn," was another creation of Taxil’s imagination. I have also wondered how a hoax that began "twelve years earlier" than 1897, which would have been 1885, could make reference to an event alleged to have taken place in 1889, as Taxil claimed, although it is not known exactly when his story was first written or published. As Leo Taxil himself finally admitted, Pike’s "Luciferian Doctrine" was a complete fabrication, but by the time he recanted, it was too late. The idea of a Satanic connection was already too juicy, too irresistible to Masonic detractors who were already defaming Pike as having said things like, "Lucifer is not the Devil. In fact, he might really be the good guy." As always, checking the facts is a good policy, but it must be remembered that, even without all the hoaxes and fabrications, there are many people in the world who have become very proficient at making any source say exactly what they want it to say. Freemasonic literature is no exception. 1 Dafoe, Stephen. Unholy Worship?, Templar Books, 1998, p57. 2 Ibid, p 59. 3 Robinson, John. A Pilgrim’s Path. (Quoted on MasonicInfo.Com.) 4 Ibid. 5 deHoyos, Art and Morris, S. Brent. Is It True What They Say About Freemasonry?, Masonic Information Center, 1993, p11. 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