rity, and you are at
liberty in my name to give the most emphatic contradiction to the
statements quoted from the book. So far as I am aware, General Pike was
never anything more than Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme
Council of the 33rd Southern Jurisdiction of America."

The case of Mr John Yarker, Grand Master of the Memphis Rite in England,
I have already had occasion to mention, and have cited his explicit
denial of any acquaintance with the New and Reformed Palladium, but he
is included by Dr Bataille in his wonderful enumeration. Upon the
general question, Mr Yarker observes: (a) that the Scottish or Ancient
and Accepted Rite has nothing occult about it, but the Memphis and
Misraim Rites are wholly occultism. (b) That Pike has, however, in his
lectures added occult matters from these occult Rites. (c) That Pike, as
a very able man, ruled the whole of the Supreme Grand Councils of the
33 deg. (Ancient and Accepted), which almost all originated from Charleston.
(d) That this is the only form in which there can be said to have been a
Dogmatic Directorate.

In like manner, Mr William Officer of Edinburgh, an initiate of the
Scotch Rite, Inspector-General of the Supreme Council of the French
Grand Orient, and Hon. Member of its Grand College of Rites, denies his
alleged connection with any Central Directory, and has heard nothing of
such an institution.

I do not conceive that there is any call to fill space by the
multiplication of these denials, and I need therefore only add that I
have others equally explicit in my possession. The obvious conclusion is
that the alleged Table of High-Grade Masonry is a bogus document founded
on some official lists of the Ancient and Accepted Scotch Rite.

Lastly, there are certain statements made by Dr Bataille which warrant
the presumption that he could have had little, if any, active
acquaintance with the Memphis Rite. That he may have purchased a diploma
from Pessina is probable enough; what I learn of the Grand Master of the
Neapolitan Sovereign Sanctuary, through sources not tainted like those
of the witnesses of Lucifer, does not place him wholly above financial
considerations, but Pessina was, and is, totally unrecognised by any
Masonic power in the world of Craft Masonry. So far, therefore, from
such a diploma acting as an _Open Sesame_, it would have sealed all
doors against its owner, and this statement is true not only for
ordinary Craft Masonry, but for the gr