Reprint of the original, first published in 1860.

One of the most misunderstood aspects of the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is its practice of plural marriage during the nineteenth century. In the twenty-first century century members of the Church and those outside the faith have a hard time comprehending why early Latter-day Saints agreed ta a marriage pattern so foreign to their traditional Victorian values. This book looks at the reasons they did so.

Masonry is permeated with powerful verbal and pictorial symbolism that arouses the mental, spiritual and intellectual life. One of the treasures of the SJ USA Supreme Council's Archives at the House of the Temple in Washington, D.C., is Albert Pike's manuscript of The Book of the Words. The book was originally printed, in an edition limited to 150 copies, in 1874. This remarkable study is an exploration of the symbolic words in Freemasonry. It gives the correct spelling of, and analyzes all the "significant words" in the Scottish Rite from the 1st through the 30th degrees inclusive. Pike explores and explains their origin (Hebrew, Samaritan, Phoenician and English), meaning, symbolism and relevance to the degrees and gives his insights. In addition to being an etymological dictionary Pike explains why any given word was chosen for a given degree, thereby revealing the hidden symbolism of each word.