Editing Albert Pike (section)

=== Masonic baptism ===
In 1865, Pike publicly performed a ceremony of Masonic [[baptism]] in New York City.<ref>{{Cite news |title=Interesting Masonic Ceremony Baptism of Six Children by Albert Pike, of Arkansas. |language=en |work=The New York Times |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1865/10/01/83208749.html |access-date=December 29, 2022}}</ref> The ceremony was greeted with skepticism by many American Masons including [[Albert Mackey]], but was based on older European Masonic baptism ceremonies that began in the 1820s.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Chariton |first=Jesse D. |date=2021 |title="Some Ceremony Peculiar to Themselves": The Continuation of a European Masonic Ceremony in Nineteenth-Century Wisconsin |url=https://journals.ku.edu/ygas/article/view/20050 |journal=Yearbook of German-American Studies |language=en |volume=56 |pages=21–40 |issn=0741-2827}}</ref> However, some, like the ''New York Times'', reacted positively to the ceremony describing it as "interesting" and "novel." In the ritual, six children were baptized by Pike with water and consecrated oil.<ref>{{Cite news|title=Interesting Masonic Ceremony Baptism of Six Children by Albert Pike, of Arkansas|language=en|work=The New York Times|date=October 1865 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1865/10/01/archives/interesting-masonic-ceremony-baptism-of-six-children-by-albert-pike.html|access-date=2023-11-16}}</ref>