tubulcain420

"If you have been disappointed in the first three degrees, as you have received them, and if it has seemed to you that the performance has not come up to the promise, that the lessons of morality are not new, and the scientific instruction is but rudimentary, and the symbols IMPERFECTLY EXPLAINED, remember that the ceremonies and lessons of thos degrees have been for ages more and more accomodating themselves, by curtailment and sinking into commonplace, to the often limited memory of the Pupil and Initiate; that they have come to us from an age when symbols used, not to REVEAL but to CONCEAL; when the commonest learning was confined to a select few, and the simplest principles of morality seemed newly discovered truths; and that these antique and simple degrees now stand like the broken columns of a roofless Druidic Temple, in their rude and mutilated greatness; in many parts, also, corrupted by time, and disfigured by modern additions and absurd interpretations. They are but the entrance to the great Masonic Temple, the triple columns of the portico."
Albert Pike
Morals and Dogma