Paradise Lost: Freemasonry & The Fall of Hawaii, Part II
The ignoble end of the Kamehameha dynasty...
“Almost all of Kamehameha IV's cabinet members were Masons, as were many other important officials.”
— Frank J. Karpiel, Jr., Freemasonry and Hawaiian Monarchs (Pg. 376)
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From the 1840’s onward, the Lodge wove itself into the very fabric of Hawaii’s monarchy.
In 1843, the kingdom’s first Masonic lodge was founded in Honolulu. Over the ensuing decades, Hawaiian royals would welcome the Craft to their shores as civic life and secret society grew intertwined: the young King Kamehameha IV became an Entered Apprentice in 1857 (as the official account goes); by the next year he was elected Worshipful Master of his lodge. Cornerstone layings, state ceremonies, royal funerals — all became occasions for Masonic pomp. As Hawaiian historian Frank Karpiel details in his indispensable article, Mystic Ties of Brotherhood, almost every high ranking official in the Hawaiian government wore the apron by the 1850’s.
In short, the Hawaiian crown had thrown in its lot with Freemasonry, hoping to fortify its rule with the Lodge’s worldly prestige and connections.
Despite the monarchy’s open celebration of the Masonic religion, the Craft’s apologists, then and now, have largely attempted to downplay the significance of this public alliance on Hawaii’s development — particularly as it relates to its inherently religious character. Part I of this study has thoroughly dispelled such notions. We have seen Albert G. Mackey (33°) flatly declare that “Masonry is, in every sense of the word… an eminently religious institution”. We have seen how Mackey’s fellow architect of the Scottish Rite, General Albert Pike, openly boasted of the Craft’s “false explanations and misinterpretations”, intended “to mislead those who deserve only to be misled” while concealing the dark secret of their Mystery religion.
No Hawaiian ruler learned this bitter lesson more poignantly than King David Kalākaua.
In 1872, Kamehameha V’s lavish lifestyle led the monarch into an early grave, dying at the age of 42 before producing a legitimate heir. Lunalilo — the last male scion of the Kamehameha line — followed him to the grave in 1874 after a brief battle with tuberculosis. The fate of the monarchy now lay in the hands of the island’s legislature. What unfolded was a bruising legislative battle that pitted the widow of Kamehameha IV, Queen Emma, against David Kalākaua. To any keen observer of Hawaiian politics during this era, it should come as no surprise that the Master Mason Kalākaua would ultimately prevail in this contest (emphasis mine):
1874 was quite a year for Kalākaua. He had been a Freemason for years, and his involvement in the craft was well-known even before he took the throne. As the reigning king, he and his brother-in-law John Owen Dominis established the Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite in Hawaii. Kalākaua and Dominis were the first 33° Freemasons in the Hawaiian Islands. That same year, King Kalākaua became the first Wise Master of the Nuʻuanu Chapter of Rose Croix. In 1876, Kalākaua served as the Worshipful Master of Lodge Le Progres de l’Oceanie, following in the footsteps of Alexander Liholiho (King Kamehameha IV) nearly 17 years later. Kalākaua went on to serve as High Priest of Honolulu Chapter Royal Arch Masons, No.1 in 1883, as well as Eminent Commander of Honolulu Commandery No.1, Knights Templar from 1876-1877.
The riots that exploded after the vote become public were crushed under the boots of British and American marines.
Kalākaua’s ascent was a Masonic coup that ended the Kamehameha dynasty in everything but name.
— King Kalākaua (33°) and court officials in Masonic regalia.
— Masonic tools and artefacts belonging to King Kalākaua (33°).
Kalākaua — the “Merrie Monarch” — advanced through the highest echelons of the Craft. He had been initiated as a young man in 1861, at age 25. By the time he *unexpectedly* won election to the throne in 1874, Kalākaua was already a master political operator and a Master Mason. He lost no time flaunting these credentials (emphasis mine):
Kalakaua introduced Hawaiians (and part-Hawaiians) to Masonry in the 1870s and 1880s, as Kamehameha IV had done earlier. Among the Masons he promoted were John E. Bush, an editor and cabinet minister, and Samuel Nowlein, an aide. Bush later became a leading strategist of the Hawaiian Nationalist movement in the early 1890s, Nowlein a key military assistant to Queen Lili'uokalani. John Lota Kauluko'u and Frank Pahia, two Hawaiian legislators who held various offices under Kalakaua and Lili'uokalani, also became Masons, as did William Pitt Leleiohoku (Kalakaua's brother and an heir to the throne), John M. Kapena (his Foreign Minister), and Samuel Parker (a rancher and influential adviser to Kalikaua and his sister and successor, Lili'uokalani). Many other Kalikaua appointees were Masons, including about one-third of his thirty-member Privy Council and a majority of his cabinet appointees. During the first decade of Kaldkaua's reign, three of the four governors of the major islands were also Masons: John Dominis on O'ahu, John Bush on Kauai, and Abraham Fornander on Maui.
In 1880, Kalākaua received the Grand Cross of the Court Honor, the highest individual honor that the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry can bestow.
— Frank J. Karpiel, Jr., Freemasonry and Hawaiian Monarchs (Pg. 383)
Under Kalākaua, the Lodge achieved a dominance at court and in government like never before.
By all accounts, Kalākaua’s Hawaii appeared to be the zenith of “Monarchical Masonry.” On his world tour in 1881, the king made a point of visiting grand lodges and temples from California to Europe. Everywhere he went, Kalākaua was received as both a monarch and a Masonic celebrity — feted at lodge banquets and accorded special courtesies. In New York City for instance, he was greeted by an honor guard of Knights Templar and presented with a rare Grand Master’s diploma.
Yet, it was precisely during Kalākaua’s reign that the long alliance between the crown and the Lodge began to fracture.
Several factors converged, both economic and political. Firstly, the economic boom that followed the 1875 Reciprocity Treaty with the United States (a deal Kalākaua brokered with the help of his Masonic contacts abroad) brought a wave of new American planters and financiers to Hawaii. These men held little love for the Hawaiian monarchy or its customs: the newcomers became the natural base for an opposition movement led by the Masons. By the mid-1880’s, the old guard of Lodge brethren who had stood by the monarchy in its earlier years were aging, dying, or growing disillusioned.
For their part, King Kalākaua and his clique began to take the loyalty of the local Lodges for granted — and in doing so, they committed a fatal blunder. Kalākaua made this mistake in dramatic fashion in 1882 when he snubbed Albert Pike during his travels through America, resulting in the withdrawal of Pike’s favor toward the Hawaiian monarch. This error was compounded a few years later when he abruptly dismissed Marshal William C. Parke from his post. Parke had been Marshal of the Kingdom (essentially chief of police) for thirty years and was not only a pillar of Hawaiian law enforcement but a respected former Master of the Lodge. He had personally thwarted several coup plots in the 1850’s and ran an extensive intelligence network for the crown. Parke was the eyes and ears of the monarchy — and a trusted brother among Honolulu’s Masons to boot. The abrupt dismissal of so integral an ally certainly raises eyebrows, a telltale sign of the growing distrust between the Hawaiian monarch and the Lodge.
His sudden removal by King Kalākaua sent shockwaves through the Island’s lodges. It was seen, in the words of one contemporary observer, as a gross betrayal. The Hawaiian Supreme Court (themselves largely Freemasons) condemned Parke’s ouster as a grave injustice and a gross insult to the brotherhood. Not long after, Kalākaua’s government also forced out Col. William F. Allen from his long-held position as Collector of Customs. Allen, another prominent Mason and former cabinet minister, had been a key ally of Kamehameha IV. His removal provoked further Masonic outrage. The king’s half-hearted apologies did little to mend the damage.
“…this man [Albert Pike] has tremendous power, exceeding perhaps the power of every Monarch on earth, intermingled with a humble heart and true Christianity.”
― Queen Lili‘uokalani (15th June, 1887)
At the same time, Kalākaua embarked on a quixotic cultural project that further alarmed white Masons and missionaries alike. In 1886, the Hawaiian monarch founded the Hale Naua (Society of Science), a secretive royal fraternity dedicated to reviving Native Hawaiian culture and mythology. The Hale Naua was structured uncannily like a Masonic lodge, but its content drew on Hawaiian traditions and esoteric lore instead. Kalākaua’s Masonic allies were unsettled by the Hale Naua — no doubt alarmed that the king was founding a rival order outside their control. By 1887, the damage was done: Kalākaua had lost the confidence of Hawaii’s power-brokers.
That July, an armed militia including the Honolulu Rifles made a list of demands of the King, eventually imposing the Bayonet Constitution on the monarchy under threat of force. Lorrin A. Thurston, the architect of the coup, Col. Volney V. Ashford, the Rifles’ commander, and his brother Clarence W. Ashford, were all Freemasons. Kalākaua was stripped of most of his authority and reduced to a figurehead, forced to accept a cabinet chosen by those same conspirators. The royal-Masonic alliance that had begun under Kamehameha IV was now in tatters. A new alliance — one equally filled with Freemasons — had risen in its place.
Amidst this turmoil, an almost tragicomic interlude occurred. In late 1887, Queen Kapiʻolani and Princess Liliʻuokalani (Kalākaua’s wife and sister, respectively) traveled to Britain. On their way home, they stopped in the United States — and in Washington, D.C., they were welcomed with great fanfare:
The royal party experienced a happy social whirl with dinner at the White House, an artillery drill, social affairs and receptions given in their honor. Queen Kapiolani and she were most impressed by the visit of thirteen members of the Thirty-Third Degree Scottish Rite of the Masonic Order, headed by General Albert Pike. He was “a venerable old gentleman with a long flowing beard and silky white hair resting on his square shoulders.”
— Helena G. Allen, The Betrayal of Liliuokalani, Last Queen of Hawaii, 1838-1917 (Pg. 200)
Pike bestowed flowery praises on Hawaii's royal family. “Next to the courtesies extended by the President,” she wrote, “the consideration shown to us by dignitaries of the Masonic order was the most heartwarming.”
The princess returned to Hawaii with a glowing impression of the Brotherhood’s benevolence (emphasis mine):
When the queen, the princess, and John Dominis, who had accompanied the two women, arrived in Washington, D.C., on May 3, 1887, they paid a social visit to President Grover Cleveland’s new bride, the beautiful, dark-haired Frances Folsom. A few days later, the Hawaiian party visited Mount Vernon, the former residence of George and Martha Washington. In its guest book, Lili‘u wrote in Hawaiian, “Ilihia i ka ike i keia,” which means, “I am overcome with awe at the sight of this.” …
The Hawaiian party also met with America’s most influential Freemason, Albert Pike, who had created a system for the secret society based on the so-called Scottish rite. Although the organization was for men only, Lili‘u and Kapi‘olani were presented with scrolls attesting that anywhere they traveled in the world they could count on the assistance of Freemasons.
— Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure (Ch. 7)
Before their departure, he presented Princess Liliʻuokalani with an ornate gold medal bearing the double-headed eagle emblem of the 33° on one side and Pike’s own profile in bas-relief on the other.
— Queen Liliʻuokalani (Left). Albert Pike (33°) (Right).
In January 1891, King Kalākaua died (under suspicious circumstances): his sister ascended the throne as Queen Liliʻuokalani. Within two years, the remaining support of Hawaii’s Masons had vanished and her ally Pike had passed away. Liliʻuokalani could not officially join the Lodge as a woman, and there were no Eastern Star lodges — the female branch of Masonry — in Hawaii. Yet the queen was a lifelong friend of the Craft, and, by marriage, the highest lady of Hawaii's Masonic circles (her late husband Dominis had been Grand Master of the local Knights Templar and a 33° Mason). She assumed, not unreasonably, that the fraternity would uphold its obligations of loyalty and support her as it had supported her predecessors.
That assumption proved to be entirely unfounded. In January of 1893, the queen was confronted by a coup d’état orchestrated by many of the same men that had cowed Kalākaua in 1887. Several of the conspirators behind the Orwellian Committee of Safety were prominent Freemasons, and “the establishment of a Hawaiian Republic was, as well, ushered in with the help of brother Masons.” (Lovell, 32°). When Liliʻuokalani sought help from local lodges to defend the monarchy, none came. The queen yielded her authority under protest to avoid bloodshed, trusting that her allies in the United States — President Cleveland was himself a longtime Mason — would undo the takeover.
In the weeks and months after her overthrow, Queen Liliʻuokalani appealed desperately to her friends in the Masonic establishment (emphasis mine):
After the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893, Queen Liliʻuokalani continually employed Masonic connections in Washington, D.C., and Honolulu in her efforts to regain power. But the disposition of the local Masonic membership had changed, and the high regard she enjoyed among Masonic officials in Washington, where she lobbied intensively, did not translate into meaningful support in Honolulu.
— Frank J. Karpiel, Jr., Freemasonry and Hawaiian Monarchs (Pg. 395)
She recalled the warm welcome the upper crust of the Scottish Rite had given her in 1887, hoping that some spark of that goodwill remained. But the responses, when they came at all, were full of hollow sympathy. The new Republican government in Hawaii led by Sanford Dole (the son of a Mason) faced no organized opposition from the fraternity or its members.
In 1895, after a failed royalist rebellion, the deposed queen was imprisoned by the Republic, accused of abetting treason. Not a single Freemason in Hawaii lifted a finger in her defense; many, in fact, sat on the committee that deposed and jailed her.
The Fraternity that had once draped Liliʻuokalani in honors was conspicuously silent as she languished for nearly two years under guard.
“What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.”
— Albert Pike (33°), Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council, Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction (1859-1891). Ex Corde Locutiones (1860)
Freemasonry’s role in the fall of the Hawaiian monarchy was hardly occulted: the lodges were the one network that stitched together merchants, jurists, editors, officers, consuls, colonels, and saboteurs.
Strategically, the island nation had been marked: in January of 1887, trade reciprocity was renewed upon the condition of exclusive American access to the Pacific port of Pearl Harbor. Politically, a native sovereign whose loyalties were not perfectly predictable became a problem; a committee of Freemasons whose loyalties were perfectly predictable became the solution. The 1893 removal of the Queen merely completed what the Bayonet Constitution had already begun.
The lodges furnished Hawaii with a ready-made cadre — men already socialized to trust one another, already trained to move money and intel. The monarchy borrowed that cadre to steady its house; when the house ceased to follow the cadre’s plan, the cadre found another occupant. Some will call this a contradiction — that Freemasonry protected the Hawaiian monarchy in one decade and midwifed their collapse in the next. But to the student of Masonic revolutions, there is no contradiction.
The principle is simple: Masonry will support the monarch so long as the monarch supports Masonry.
— Paradise Lost, digital art, 2025.
“[In] England and America, Masonry and Politics have been kept strictly apart.”
— Abraham Fornander (Freemason), Circuit Judge & Advisor to King Kamehameha V
The Wolves Within is a must-read for every believer who refuses to be deceived.
Hit the Tip Jar and help spread the message!
This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission or affiliate fee for purchases made through these links.
Unlock the mysteries of Biblical cosmology and enrich your faith with some of the top rated Christian reads at BooksOnline.club.
Click the image below and be sure to use promo code SCIPIO for 10% off your order at HeavensHarvest.com: your one stop shop for emergency food, heirloom seeds and survival supplies.
Further Research
Nation Within: The Story of America's Annexation of the Nation of Hawaii by Tom Coffman
The formula works, because human nature is consistent. Bribe the few to control the many. One brick at a time, the walls of our prison are built around us.....
Freemasonry has spread its tentacles around the entire world.