“It is but recently that a majority of the Supreme Councils of the Ancient and Accepted Rite assembled at Lausanne, justly revolting against such a blasphemous belief as that in a personal deity, invested with all human attributes, pronounced the following words: “Freemasonry proclaims, as it has proclaimed from its origin, the existence of a creative principle, under the name of the Great Architect of the universe.” Against this, a small minority has protested, urging that “belief in a creative principle is not the belief in God, which Freemasonry requires of every candidate before he can pass its very threshold.”
This confession does not sound like the rejection of a personal God. Could we have had the slightest doubt upon the subject, it would be thoroughly dispelled by the words of general Albert Pike, perhaps the greatest authority of the day, among American Masons, who raises himself most violently against this innovation. We cannot do better than quote his words:
“This Principle Createur is no new phrase – it is but an old term revived. Our adversaries, numerous and formidable, will say, and will have the right to say, that our Principle Createur is identical with the Principle Genateur of the Indians and Egyptians, and may fitly be symbolized as it was symbolized anciently, by the Lingae…To accept this, in lieu of a personal God, is TO ABANDON CHRISTIANITY, and the worship of Jehovah, and return to wallow in the styes of Paganism.”
And are those of Jesuitism, then, so much cleaner? “Our adversaries, numerous and formidable. That sentence says all. Who these so formidable enemies are, is useless to inquire. They are Roman Catholics, and some of the Reformed Presbyterians. To read what the two factions respectively write, we may well ask which adversary is the more afraid of the other. But, what shall it profit anyone to organize against a fraternity that does not even dare to have a belief of its own for fear of giving offense? And pray, how, if Masonic oaths mean anything, and Masonic penalties are regarded as more than burlesque, can any adversaries, numerous or few, feeble or strong, know what goes on inside the lodge, or penetrate beyond that “brother terrible, or the tiler, who guards, with a drawn sword, the portals of the lodge”?
Is, then, this “brother terrible” no more formidable than Offenbach’s General Boum, with his smoking pistol, jingling spurs, and towering panache? Of what use the millions of men that make up this great fraternity, the world over, if they cannot be so cemented together as to bid defiance to all adversaries? Can it be that the “mystic tie” is but a rope of sand, and Masonry but a toy to feed the vanity of a few leaders who rejoice in ribbons and regalia? Is its authority as false as its antiquity? It seems so, indeed; and yet, as “even the fleas have smaller fleas to bite ‘em”, there are Catholic alarmists, even here, who pretend to fear Masonry!
And yet, these same Catholics, in all the serenity of their traditional impudence, publicly threaten America, with its 500,000 Masons, and 34,000,000 Protestants, with a union of Church and State under the direction of Rome! The danger which threatens the free institutions of this republic, we are told, will come from “the principles of Protestantism logically developed.””
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 