Next let's consider the heliacal rising of Sirius as seen from the city of Paris in that same year of 1793. There, because of the change of latitude, it would have occurred not on 11 – 12 August but on 20 August. In plain observational terms, this means that when looking from the Place de l’Étoile towards the Louvre just before dawn on 20 August 1793, an observer would have see the star Sirius rising over the Louvre Palace's south wing, right above the apartments where the ‘Capetian miracle’ had taken place. Also at this precise moment the Sun would have been in conjunction with the star Regulus, Alpha Leonis, the star of the ‘solar-kings’. Indeed, this is why in ancient times the official ‘birthday’ of Alexander the Great was celebrated on 26 July Julian – because on that day the same conjunction of the Sun and Regulus likewise accompanied the heliacal rising of Sirius in Alexandria.
Such occult and astrological considerations seem in place in Alexandria in 332 BC, but we found it quite eerie and unsettling to be obliged to suspect that they also determined the positioning and alignments of major avenues and monuments in the great modern cities of the West.
And still the clues kept on presenting themselves …
An obelisk for Washington
In 1799, five years after the founding of Washington, DC, George Washington died. The Freemasons of the United States organised his stately funeral, and all the lodges both in America and in France were temporarily turned into ‘lodges of sorrow’.
In that same year of 1799 Napoleon's army occupied Egypt. To all Republican Masons, this must have seemed like a great historical moment when the ancient ‘home’ of Freemasonry was finally drawn into the new Masonic-cum-republican world order initiated by the United States and France.
Soon after Washington's death, plans were prepared to raise a great ‘national monument’ in Washington, DC due west of the US Capitol in commemoration of the first president of the Republic. In May 1800, the congressional committee formed for this purpose expressed itself in favour of building a pyramid, 100 feet square at the base and ‘of proportional height’, but lack of funds and, eventually lack of interest, meant that the project was shelved.142 In 1833, however, a group of patriots created the Washington National Monument Society, which was successful in raising funds. Approval was obtained from Congress for the design and construction of an edifice appropriate to the memory of the ‘Father of the Nation’.
The first design proposed was by Peter Force, an influential Freemason and one of the founding members of the society. His idea, too, was a pyramid, but this time even more enormous than the one envisaged in 1800.143 In 1836 a design was put forward by Robert Mills, a Freemason and architect, which consisted of a circular colonnaded temple with a statue of Washington in Graeco-Roman garb riding the solar chariot of Apollo with a huge obelisk rising above it adorned with an enormous ‘blazing five-pointed star’ at the top. The design that was finally retained, however, was that of a lone giant obelisk with a tapered pyramidal apex – the Washington Monument that we know today. The obelisk, which is slightly taller than 555 feet, had to be placed slightly offset from the centerline of the Mall due to poor groundbearing conditions in the ideal spot.
The notion of a pyramid (and an obelisk is simply a pyramid on a pillar) rising symbolically above the new Republic has a background. It had previously been proposed in 1776 when Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson designed the Great Seal of the United States (which can still be still seen today on the back of the US one-dollar bill, introduced in 1931 by Franklin D. Roosevelt, a 32nd degree Scottish Rite Freemason). In 1789 the same symbol was placed on top of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen signed in Paris under the guidance of the Freemasons Benjamin Franklin and the Marquis de Lafayette.
The cornerstone ceremony for the Washington Monument took place on Independence Day, 4 July 1848. We have already discussed the curious ‘Templar’ symbolism of this date, and also how it ‘converts’ to the St. John's Day of the Freemasons according to the Julian calendar. Appropriately, therefore, the cornerstone ritual for the Washington Monument was organised by the Freemasons of America, hundreds of whom attended in full Masonic regalia.144 The ceremony was conducted by a prominent Mason, Benjamin French, the Grand Master for the District of Columbia, who donned the Masonic apron and sash that George Washington had worn for the 1793 ceremony of the Capitol. According to author David Ovason, The moment of the ceremonial cornerstone laying of the Monument has been preserved, and from this it is possible to reconstruct the foundation chart … In many ways it is a remarkable horoscope, for it reflects precisely the same sort of stellar magic as was practiced in ancient Egypt, millennia ago.145
Due to lack of funds and political shenanigans, construction was delayed for several decades after the cornerstone had been laid, and it was not until 1880 that work began again at the site. A ‘second’ cornerstone ceremony was therefore arranged for 7 August 1880 at ‘one minute of 11 o'clock.’ Sensing that this curiously precise timing (10:59 a.m.) was for astronomical rather than astrological reasons, David Ovason worked out that the intention might have been to make a link with the rising of a particular star which, in this case, turned out to be Spica, the brightest star in the constellation of Virgo. The inspiration may have perhaps come from the Masonic astronomer Lalande who had been a founding member of the Nine Sisters lodge in Paris and who was present, along with Benjamin Franklin and the Tarot astrologer Court de Gébelin, at the initiation of Voltaire in 1778. Lalande had written that: The Virgin is consecrated to Isis, just as Leo is consecrated to her husband Osiris … They put a wheat-ear in the hand of the Virgin, to express the idea of the months, perhaps because the sign of the Virgin was called by the Orientalists … epi, or wheat-ear.146
It is likely that such ideas were entertained by those involved in the cornerstone ceremony of the Washington Obelisk which, after all, is a blatant ‘Egyptian’ symbol selected by Freemasons.
The final dedication of the obelisk took place on 21 February 1885, which was, curiously enough, just one day after George Washington's birthday. On that cold and snowy day, 21 Masonic lodges of the District of Columbia, as well as Masonic delegations from Massachusetts, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Texas, South Carolina and Georgia, along with a vast number of ‘brothers’, formed a huge procession. The president and members of Congress joined the Freemasons while a huge crowd of onlookers cheered and the US Marine Band played a ‘number of rousing marches.’ Ovason's calculations show that this ceremony, which took place in the afternoon, occurred at the moment of the rising of Sirius over the Capitol.147 ‘The extraordinary truth’, he concludes: … is that the very existence of the Washington Monument is intimately linked to the Egyptian star Sirius … that the ancients represented in their sacred hieroglyphics as an obelisk-like form as well as a star. How is it possible that this most important star of the ancient world should find itself, as it were, resurrected in the architecture of the United States?148
In 1998 Robert Bauval visited the Washington Monument, which had been completely shored up with scaffolding for repair and embellishments in preparation for the millennium celebration planned for Washington, DC. Inside the monument's entrance, right over the door lintel, Bauval noticed a bronze plaque on which the face of George Washington had been sculpted by the French artist Jean-Antoine Houdon, a Freemason, and member of the Nine Sisters lodge in Paris, whose other subjects had included Cagliostro and Empress Joséphine.149 Above the plaque was the unmistakable motif of the ancient Egyptian winged solar disc with a star prominently positioned at its centre.
We can now safely guess which star is represented here …
The Pentagon and Sirius
In 1941, fifty-six years after the final dedication ceremony of the Washington Monument, another cornerstone was laid in Washington, DC, this time for a gigantic five-sided, star-shaped edifice: the Pentagon. The notables attending were not in Masonic regalia but instead wore the uniforms, spangled with gold five-pointed stars of the
highest-ranking US military personnel.
Before the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the 24,000 civilian and military personnel of the US War Department in Washington, DC were scattered amongst 17 buildings throughout the District of Columbia. In view of the forthcoming entry of the United States into World War II, it was hastily decided to place all these personnel together into one gigantic, centralised headquarters.150 The job was given to the construction division of the US Army Quartermaster Corps, which produced a design for the future Pentagon in July 1941. The plans were approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt who, on 1 December 1941, signed legislation transferring the whole project to the US Army Corps of Engineers. The first section was completed in April 1942, and the full edifice was completed on 15 January 1943 at a total cost of $85 million.151
In view of the great importance of the project, all the major decisions were approved by President Roosevelt himself.152 It is often claimed that the distinctive and eponymous pentagonal shape of the building was derived from the fact that the first location proposed near Arlington cemetery was a five-sided plot of land. But if so, the question arises why the pentagonal design was retained even though another site was eventually chosen further to the south.
It is, of course, entirely possible that the prosaic explanation is the truth. But it is also true that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was raised as a Master Freemason in 1911 at the Holland Lodge No. 8 in New York and, in 1929 became a 32nd degree Scottish Rite Mason at the Albany Masonic Temple.153 He would have been acutely aware, as were all high ranking Scottish Rite Masons who had read Albert Pike's Morals & Dogma, that the pentagonal shape, or pentacle, was associated by Pike with the Masonic Blazing Star and, in turn, identified with the five-pointed star of ancient Egypt, Sirius.
In Robert Cameron's book Above Washington,154 there is a remarkable photograph taken by NASA with infrared film, which ‘demonstrates the ultimate refinement in aerial photography’. The photograph was taken by a U-2 spy plane from an altitude of 65,000 feet. Although the ‘technical reading’ for images of this sort is very specialised, even lay viewers can easily see that the positioning of the Pentagon on the west side of the Potomac seems to be guided by the general axis that leads southeast – and more or less parallel to Maryland Avenue across the river – straight towards the US Capitol.
Turning the observation around Robert Bauval calculated that the Pentagon lies some 24° south-of-west when viewed from the Capitol. Reconstructing the skies over Washington, DC for the epoch 1941 with Starry Night, and directing his attention to 24° south-of-west he typed the command to ‘run’ the sky. As he had half-expected the star Sirius positioned itself right over the spot where the NASA photograph shows that the Pentagon is situated. Naturally Bauval wondered if here, too, a cornerstone ceremony had taken place in 1941 …
The True ‘New Jerusalem’ in Israel?
Every American, indeed almost everyone in the world, is acutely aware of the date of 11 September 2001. This was the ‘day of infamy’ when Arab terrorists crashed a commercial plane into the US Pentagon and two other planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York.
It was therefore very strange, indeed almost surreal, to discover that the date of the ground-breaking ceremony for the Pentagon was also 11 September – in its case 11 September 1941. Little has been made of this, although the coincidence can hardly be said to be obscure since President George W. Bush himself drew attention to it in a speech he gave to Pentagon staff exactly a month after the attack. According to the Army Link News: President George W. Bush, Lt. Gen. John Van Alstyne and First Lady Laura Bush joined a joint-service chorus and thousands of flag-waving Pentagon personnel in singing ‘God Bless America’ during the memorial ceremony at the Pentagon Oct. 11, 2001 … He [the president] listed a number of victims: three school children travelling with their teacher on the hijacked jet, an Army general officer, a Department of the Army civilian who had worked 30 years in the Pentagon, and a naval reservist. The President recalled how construction on the Pentagon, ‘a symbol of America's freedom and confidence’ and ‘a symbol of our strength in the world,’ began 60 years ago on Sept. 11, 1941 … [Emphasis added]
At this point we ask the reader to recall two things: (1) the intense ‘Templar’ and ‘Judaic’ characteristics of the Scottish Rite ceremonies to ‘rebuild Solomon's Temple’ in the context of the lodges; and (2) the root of the Islamic terrorists’ grievance against the US – which is the oppression of the Palestinian people and the political and military support that the superpower extends to the state of Israel.
Could there have been more to President Roosevelt's – and President Truman's – involvement in the affair of the US Pentagon and the date of 11 September than at first meets the eye?
Is it a coincidence, for example, that the principal symbol used in 32nd degree Scottish Masonry is, in fact, a pentagon? And is it also a coincidence that in the same Masonic order, and same 32nd degree, the symbol of the pentagon is divided into five ‘military’ divisions of the ‘Scottish Rite Army’ in the same way the US Pentagon is divided into the five branches of the US Military?155 More to the point, the Masonic author Christopher Knight, when investigating this very matter of the strange similarity between the US Pentagon and 32nd degree Scottish Rite rituals and symbolism, wrote, … We could hardly believe our eyes. The 32nd degree is known as the degree of ‘The Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret’. It comprises of three separate parts. These are the Opening Ceremony, the Ceremonial Section and the Allegory. This particular ceremony is very elaborate, as befits someone who has climbed as high on the Freemasonic ladder as it is possible to go under one's own effort. A great deal of play-acting takes place and the various characters all have fictional names. It suggests that the 32nd degree relates to the fight for Jerusalem … The ceremony takes place in what appears to be a fictitious military camp … [which] is a five sided figure or pentagon …156
We know, of course, of the many harebrained conspiracy theories that followed the 11 September 2001 attacks, and we don't want to add more fuel to the fire. But it is also obvious that the foreign policies of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman greatly contributed to the creation of the state of Israel in the second half of the 1940s, and this made us wonder about their common affiliation to the Scottish Rite.
There is also the bizarre fact that President Roosevelt was both a 32nd degree Scottish Rite Mason as well as the 32nd president of the United States, while President Truman – who had been Roosevelt's vice-president – was both a 33rd degree Scottish Rite Mason and the 33rd president of the United States. In Scottish Rite Freemasonry, the four final degrees, from the 30th to the 33rd are the stage of initiation at which the candidate is thought to achieve the sublime objective of the Masonic enlightenment (or, some would say, ‘experiment’), which – allegorically – is the ‘rebuilding of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem’.
We've seen that the ‘tracing board’ provided in the rituals of the Scottish Rite's 30th degree makes use of the Sephirothic Tree of Life – which can be taken as the ‘spiritual’ representation of Solomon's Temple. As noted above, all such rituals are supposed to be purely allegorical, and we are assured by Masons that their meaning is simply that the candidate has achieved a level of spiritual perfection within himself as the human ‘temple’, and is thus compared, in a sense, to the perfection of the ‘Temple of Solomon’.
Nonetheless we can hardly avoid posing the obvious question: is it possible that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations took the ‘Masonic experiment’ all the way and actually ‘rebuilt’ the Jewish Solomonic state in Palestine? As farfetched and incredible as it seems, there is something else in the background that justifies such an outrageous question – and this is the actual ‘degrees’ that both these presidents were linked to.
From the 30th to the 33rd degree
Several years ago while visiting a friend in Egypt, Robert Bauval was shown a Scottish Rite Masonic certificate issued at a lodge in Cairo
in 1918 by the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree. The certificate had belonged to the friend's maternal grandfather. Freemasonry is practically unknown in Egypt today, having been declared illegal by President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1964. But in the early part of the 20th century it was extremely popular and many high-ranking government officials and even members of the Egyptian royal family were Freemasons.157
The certificate was printed in French and Arabic. Bauval, who is fluent in both languages, could not help noting not only that the location of the Supreme Council was specified as ‘Cairo’, but also that the precise latitude was given as ‘under the celestial vault at the zenith by 30° 2’ 4” …’ which would pinpoint the location to somewhere in central Cairo near Abdeen Palace.
Here is a curious fact. The modern state of Israel extends from latitude 30° north to 33° north. When carried west into Egypt, the former latitude passes almost through the Great Pyramid of Giza.
We are reminded of the historical statement sent by President Truman to the provisional government of Israel on 14 May 1948. It reads simply: This Government has been informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine, and recognition has been requested by the provisional government thereof. The United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the State of Israel.158
Two decades later, in June 1967, Israeli forces stormed Jerusalem and recaptured the city from the Arabs after eight centuries of Muslim occupation. The Star of David had finally risen again. The ‘cornerstone’ of the New Jerusalem and, by extension the New Temple, had been laid.
The Master Game Page 72
