Masons do role playing. They wear outfits and act out stories. Each degree is a story with esoteric significance. When a new person is acting out the role for the first time, he is being initiated into that degree. Usually there are some surprises for the new person as they play a particular character. Besides a story, each degree has lectures and other material to be studied and discussed.

Pike was the George Lucas of his day. He rewrote the stories and the other material for each of the Scottish Rite Degrees. The themes of the stories are similar in many ways to the Star Wars movies and the Indiana Jones movies. Pike even wrote down long descriptions of what the scenery was to look like and the costumes worn.

So for those of you who love to role play either the Sith or the Jedi, you can take comfort in the fact that the same was done at the time of the U.S. Civil War by renowned men of stature.