-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital
David Ovason
�1999, 2000
HarperCollins
10 E. 53rd St. New York, NY 10022
ISBN 0-06-019537-1
516 pps - First US Edition -- In-print
-----
Foreword
"As above, so below." These words, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, lie at
the heart of the Western esoteric tradition. In brief, they mean that the
universe and all it contains is reflected in some manner not only on Earth,
but also in man and his works. The chief quest of all ages has been man's
attempt to understand the mystery of existence and to find his place in it.
He keenly observed the movement of the stars, as we read in Genesis 1: 14,
"for signs, and for seasons." Not only have the stars guided the traveler on
the earth and seas, but their constellations are archetypes that have been
viewed as guides for the lives of men and nations.
In this fascinating and well-researched book, David Ovason presents the
remarkable thesis that Washington, D.C., is a city of the stars. He
demonstrates that there are over 30 zodiacs in the city, and that the
majority of them are oriented in a meaningful way. Even more astonishing is
it to learn that these zodiacs were designed to point to the actual
heavens-thus marrying the Capital City with the stars. This discovery
parallels the recent finding in Egypt that the three Great Pyramids
correspond to the three stars in Orion's belt, while the Nile River occupies
the same relative position as the Milky Way. It is still debated whether this
was intentional, yet the correlation is undeniable. Similarly, the
assignment, position and meaning of Washington, D.C.'s zodiacs bespeak a
relationship between heaven and earth.
Recent scholarship, such as Steven C. Bullock's Revolutionary Brotherhood:
Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840
(University of North Carolina Press, 1996), demonstrates the undeniable
influence Freemasonry exerted on the American system of government and
lifestyle. Aware of these influences, David Ovason discovered what may be
Masonic influences in the architecture and layout of the city. He does not
assert that all his correspondences or discovered secrets were laid down by
Masons, but there is some support for his argument in documents preserved in
the Archives and Library of the Supreme Council, 33', Southern jurisdiction.
As in other Scottish Rite Blue Lodge ("Symbolic" or "Craft") rituals, Albert
Pike's Book of the Lodge contains recommendations for decorating the lodge
ceiling with constellations and planets. The star map, which is to be painted
on the ceiling, is replete with Masonic symbolism that was influenced by
French designs in the early 19th century
The astonishing thing is that Pike's ceiling design reflects precisely the
same mysteries observed by David Ovason in this book. These mysteries relate
to the constellation Virgo. Pike's map is entirely schematic-which is to say
that it does not reflect the actual positions of the stars in the heavens
(Leo could in no way be represented as following Ursa Majoris, for example).
Even so, Pike is very clear in allocating his symbolic placing of planets and
stars. For example, he places the full Moon between the constellations
Scorpio and Virgo. This means that the full Moon is in the constellation
Libra, and the star Spica is just above the lunar crescent.
What does this mean to us? The star Spica happens to be the one that David
Ovason has shown to be symbolically linked with both Washington, D.C., and
the United States as a whole. As the reader will learn, Ovason also suggests
that this star may be the origin of the fivepointed star that adorns the
American flag. He also suggests that Spica may have been the origin of the
Blazing (or Flaming) Star of Freemasonry.
Certainly, it would be far-fetched to draw too many conclusions for a
schematic map, but it is evident that Pike visualized his star map as marking
the setting of Virgo, along with the constellation Bootes, to its north. This
is precisely the cosmic setting that David Ovason suggests represents the
secret star plan of Washington, D.C. While Pike engineered a schematic time
for his star map, Ovason shows that it relates to a number of days centering
upon August 10 of each year. The significance of this and other "mysteries"
is fully explored in this work. In view of the meanings that may be traced in
Albert Pike's map, we can only wonder if he observed the same correspondences
of the city, noted by Ovason, yet for reasons of his own never divulged them.
In any case, David Ovason presents us with a fascinating work that will be
sure to captivate and entertain readers interested in architecture,
esotericism, Freemasonry, and our nation's capital. His thesis may be
controversial, but it is well thought out and presented.
-C. Fred Kleinknecht, 33', Sovereign Grand Commander, The Supreme Council,
33' (Mother Council of the World), Southern jurisdiction, U.S.A., Washington,
D.C.
=====
Chapter One
Come let me lead thee o'er this second Rome ...
This embryo capital, where Fancy sees
Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees;
Which second-sighted seers, ev'n now, adorn,
With shrines unbuilt and heroes yet unborn ...
(Thomas Moore, "To Thomas Hume, from the City of Washington,"
1804, in The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore, 1853, vol. II, p. 296)[1]
The shrouding mists have gone, and with them the frogs and the mud turtles,
yet their presence still lives on in the name. Foggy Bottom is the area where
the western reaches of Washington, D.C., used to meet with the Potomac River
to the southeast of Rock Creek. In modern times, it includes the
once-infamous Watergate Complex, and its evocative name has survived in a
Metro station, south of Washington Circle.[2]
If you were to walk or drive from this Metro, down to the Watergate Complex
and on to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, even as far as
the western edge of Constitution Avenue, you would be unlikely to discover
the reason for the name Foggy Bottom. The drainage engineers, the landfill
experts and the architects of the late 19th century have done their work
well, turning pestilential mudflats into habitable land.[3]
Foggy Bottom was originally called Hamburg by a Dutch gunmaker named Jacob
Funk, who had settled the area in the mid-18th century with grandiose plans
for its development.[4] However, Nature proved intractable, and the plans he
had drawn up for a township came to nothing of real substance. The place
remained almost uninhabited because of its deafening frog choruses and
cough-inducing mists: settlers Were deterred, and only duck hunters and
fishermen found the mudflats of use.[5] Incredibly, when, almost 100 years
later, in 1859, a gasworks was built in the area, the few householders of
Foggy Bottom were delighted:
they imagined that the gas fumes would disinfect the muddy land, and somehow
make the fogs kinder on their throats.
Although officially Hamburg, it was called Funkstown by the early residents
for a considerable time, yet it was scarcely even a village, and certainly
not a town. Only a few wood-frame buildings and even fewer brick houses are
recorded at Foggy Bottom, as late as 1800. Surprisingly, a pair of red-brick,
two-story houses have survived from this time, to the southwest of George
Washington University. These were built originally by John Lenthall (who was
in charge of the construction of the U.S. Capitol) on 19th Street. At that
time, they must have been near the northern edge of the ancient Foggy Bottom.
In the 1970s they were moved, brick by brick, to their present location on
21st Street, and in spite of this enforced reconstruction are sometimes said
to be among the oldest surviving dwellings in Washington, D.C.
About 1800, a large glassmaking factory � essentially for the windows of the
new city buildings � was constructed on the southern edge of Foggy Bottom
from bricks kilned in Holland. This factory was located on the square sold as
lot 89 in the sales map of 1792 (1 have marked this position in black on the
map below) which had been drawn up at the behest of George Washington to
attract capital and speculators to the
By one of those curious coincidences with which the history of Washington,
D.C., is punctuated, this is exactly the site where, nearly 200 years later,
a bronze statue of the mathematical genius Einstein was erected, outside the
National Academy of Sciences (plate 1). The great man is shown contemplating
a star-spangled marble horoscope for April 22, 1979, which is spread out at
his feet: he is casually resting his right foot on the stars of two cosmic
giants � Bootes and Hercules. As we shall see, this is probably the largest
marble horoscope in the world.
The surprising link forged between Foggy Bottom and the stars does not end
with Einstein. Behind his statue, in the National Academy of Sciences
building, are 12 signs of the zodiac, along with their corresponding symbols,
which have been built into the structure of the metal doors (plate 2). In the
adjacent building to the east � the Federal Reserve Board Building � are two
other zodiacs, cut by the great glass designers Steuben, as decorative
flanges for lightbulbs (plate 3 and figure 12). These zodiacs � the marble
floor of the Einstein statue, the metal doors of the Academy and the glass
light fixtures of the Federal Reserve � are just 4 of the 20 or so zodiacs in
central Washington, D.C.[6]
At a later point, I shall examine each of these zodiacs more closely, but
even at this stage we must stop and ask the obvious question: why do we find
zodiacs in the formerly unhealthy stretches of Foggy Bottom, where frogs
croaked night and day, and where young boys would hunt for mud turtles?
Today, the air around Einstein is fresh and wholesome, and even the River
Potomac has disappeared. The silting of the waters, and the extensive
landfills of the late 19th century, explain why the Potomac wharfage has been
moved, and why, from the windows of the Academy, one looks onto a greensward
extension of the Mall, landscaped with trees and dotted with a variety of war
memorials, including that of the Vietnam Veterans. In many ways, this
extension of Foggy Bottom, born of the waters of the Potomac, has witnessed
greater change than almost any other part of Washington, D.C.
It would be pleasant to think that Einstein would know that behind him there
had once been a site called Observatory Hill. Had perhaps the earlier
inhabitants � first the Algonquins, and later the early settlers from
Elizabethan England � studied the stars from this rise?[7] The reality is
probably more prosaic, for in 1843 the site had been taken over by the U.S.
Naval Observatory (next page), and an enormous viewing-dome was constructed
with a movable frame that swung easily on bearings of huge cannonballs,
mounted on greased cast-iron grooves.
Fifty years later this same site, which had been earmarked by George
Washington not for an observatory but for a university, would be proposed for
an extraordinary museum by a scarce-remembered architect named Franklin W.
Smith, whose highly original architectural ideas would help revolutionize the
appearance of the city.[8]
If one of the night-shift workers in the glass factory had chosen to step out
to look into the clear night skies in wintertime, he would have seen much the
same stellar pattern in the skies as Einstein now contemplates on the marble
at his feet � in the skies on Christmas Eve, 1800, at about 7:30 in the
evening, he would have seen the gibbous Moon almost overhead, with bright
Venus setting over the Potomac, in the west.
The constellation of Canis Major, the Greater Dog, would have risen over
Jenkins Heights, where the north wing of the Capitol was almost completed.
Dominating this part of the skies would be the scorching dog star, Sirius, a
brilliant white and yellow star. In 1800, this was the only star known to
have been represented in the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Some modern scholars
trace the name of the star in the hieroglyphic of a dog, evoking the god
Anubis; however, the ancient Egyptians tended to call Sirius Spdt, and
represented it with hieroglyphics that resembled an obelisk and a
five-pointed star [9] The ancient Greeks, who took over so much of the
Egyptian Wisdom, called Spdt by the name Sothis, yet it remained the dog star
in their calendars, and it was used by both Greeks and Egyptians in the
orientation of important temples.[10] I pay attention to the five-pointed
hieroglyphic here because, as we shall see, it seems to have been the source
of the five-pointed star adopted for the American flag.
Sirius is 23 times as luminous as our own Sun, and even though its distance
from the Earth of eight and a half light-years dims this luminosity, it is
still the brightest star in the sky. The ancient Egyptians may have known
that it was a double � a two-star system � yet this was forgotten for
centuries, until the invention of powerful telescopes. Its companion, known
as Sirius B, seems to have a density more than 90,000 times greater than our
own Sun, and has become one of the great mysteries of modern occult
literature.[11]
To the northwest the cross-stars of the constellation of the Swan, the Cygnus
[12] of the ancients, would be visible, seeming to mark Masons Island (which
is now called Theodore Roosevelt Island) with the sign of the cross.[13] The
two great stars Castor and Pollux, distinguishing the constellation Gemini,
would have been rising over Jenkins Heights, where the new Capitol building
was still being erected. A little higher, the mighty constellation of giant
Orion would be hovering in the southeastern skies � marked by that tight
triple belt of stars to which the ancient Egyptians are supposed to have
oriented their pyramids. Its orange star Betelgeuse, which marks the armpit
of the giant, has a diameter about 400 times larger than our own Sun, yet
because it is 470 light-years from our Earth, it seems to be no larger than a
red pinprick in the skies. It is moving away from Earth at the rate of over
10 miles per second, yet so illusory is the cosmos that the ancients wisely
called it "fixed," and the star seems scarcely to have moved since Babylonian
astrologers named it Gula, about 4,000 years ago.
Two hundred years separate the marble chart of Einstein from the night sky of
the glassworker, yet it would seem as though nothing had changed in the
heavens in a period which man must measure in less than a dozen
generations.[14] It was this promise of stellar immutability which had first
led the ancient Egyptian priests, and their pupils the Greek architects, to
orientate their temples to the stars. It was this same promise which led the
designers of Washington, D.C., to ensure that their own new city was also
laid out in accordance with a geometry which reflected the wisdom of the
stellar lore.
Had you stood on this water-edge of Foggy Bottom on April 3, 1791, before the
glass factory was built, you would have witnessed a most remarkable event �
one which seems to have been involved in the magic of the building of
Washington, D.C. On the morning of that day, an "Afric-American" astronomer
named Benjamin Banneker was making observations not very far from this spot.
Wherever he stood, he would have been looking directly to the east, watching
the sunrise, knowing full well that within a few minutes there would be an
eclipse, when the Sun, newly risen over the hill which was then called
Jenkins Heights, would be blacked out by the body of the Moon.[15]
This is not poetic fantasy: Banneker was a historic personage (in modern
Washingon, D.C., he has a city park named after him) and did record that
eclipse in his own notebooks.[16] He was working on this land with the
surveyor Andrew Ellicott, making the preliminary observations so essential to
laying out the boundaries for the new federal district. Ellicott was
following the instructions of George Washington himself, and Banneker was his
temporary assistant: the two were taking the first giant steps towards
designing the city which would be named after the most famous man in America.
Banneker worked on the project for only a few months: it seems that his age
told against him in such a strenuous and demanding enterprise.
Besides knowing a little about surveying, Banneker was a self-taught
mathematician and astronomer, with some knowledge of astrology: indeed, in
the following year he published an almanac, containing planetary positions,
and observations on lunar and solar eclipses for the year to come.
In one of his ephemerides, Banneker published a crude woodcut of a zodiacal
man (see opposite) � an image depicting the cosmic human being marked with
the 12 signs of the zodiac that rule parts of the body. This woodcut (from
the almanac for 1795) was borrowed by Banneker's printers from a design used
by the almanac maker Benjamin Franklin.[17] The image displays one item which
relates it to a symbolism that still proliferates in Washington, D.C. The
flower in the hand of Virgo (on the right of the image) has five petals, or
leaves. This may not sound very important at this stage, but as our
investigation of Washington, D.C., proceeds, the implications will become
very clear. It is entirely fitting that, at the end of the 18th century, an
American image of the ancient zodiacal sign of the Virgin should hold a
five-petaled flower.
As Banneker witnessed the predicted eclipse, he would have known full well
that the ancients had always insisted that such a cosmic event would have a
profound influence upon earthly events. He would have known, too, that the
nature of that influence would depend upon the planetary patterns in the
skies at the time when the eclipse took place.[18] The eclipse of 1791 was in
Aries � a certain portent that the destiny of Washington, D.C., would be
filled with pioneering endeavor and excessive (not to say belligerent)
enthusiasms. Aries had been the golden Ram of the ancient mythologies � the
Argonauts of myth and poetry were the ancient Greeks who chose to face the
savagery of the guardian dragon, in an attempt to steal the magical golden
fleece of this celestial Ram. The Latin word Aries means Ram � yet, for
astrologers, it is the courage of the Argonauts which is signified by the
word.[19]
In fact, the augury on that morning of April 3, 1791, was remarkable. The Sun
and Moon were not the only pair in Aries at that time: no fewer than five of
the known planets were in that zodiacal Ram � the sign which favors brave
undertakings.[20]
Such cosmic curiosities are a sign that the city had begun in a kind of dream
� as a vision. Some historians will tell you that it began as a dream in the
mind of George Washington.
When George Washington first rode over the woody site he had visualized as
the future federal capital, the highest hill was owned by Daniel Carroll. In
his youth, Washington had trained as a surveyor, and he would have perceived
immediately the importance of these heights as the federal heart for the new
nation. He may even have learned, from local gossip in Georgetown, that at
the foot of this hill had been held the tribal grand councils of the
Algonquins. Perhaps he had even heard rumors of the most curious thing about
Jenkins Heights � that in earlier times the hill had been called Rome.
Other historians will tell you that the beginnings of this second Rome may be
traced to a much earlier dream, in the imaginative "second-sight" faculty of
a man who lived on this land long before George Washington was born. In 1663,
the owner of this tract of land had been one Francis Pope. It has been
suggested that Pope was slyly joking with his own name when he called the
hill Rome � and the inlet marking the western boundary of his land the Tiber,
after the famous river of the ancient city. That may have been the case, but
local tradition twisted the story into something altogether more marvelous.
>From such tradition, we learn that Francis Pope had the power of prophecy: he
predicted a more mighty capital than Rome would occupy the hill, and foresaw
that later generations would command a great and flourishing country in the
new world. He related that he had had a dream, a vision, in which he had seen
a splendid parliament house on the hill ... which he purchased and called
Rome, in prophetic honor of the great city to be.[21]
It would be reasonable to take this as a quaint yet entertaining story �
sufficiently charming, perhaps, to excite the imagination of the Irish poet,
Thomas Moore, who probably heard a version of the tale when he visited
Washington, D.C., in 1804.[22] Indeed, the story might easily be taken for
the stuff of myth were it not supported by a long manuscript in the Maryland
State Archives, at Annapolis. The deed, dated June 5, 1663, is in the name of
Francis Pope, and sets out the basis for a survey and granting of a strip of
land called Rome, bounded by the inlet called Tiber.[23]
This tenuous link between Pope and Rome was to resurface in Washington, D.C.,
during 1851, but in a more humorous form. The United States Legation in Rome
had been approached by the representatives of the pope, who was prepared to
share with other nations in contributing a block of marble (taken from the
Temple of Concord in Rome) to help in the building of the Washington
Monument. The official in charge of the operation, George Watterson, accepted
the proposal, but a little later this was opposed by a Mr. J. T. Weishampel
of Baltimore, who interpreted the inscription on the marble (which read,
"Rome to America") as pointing to the aim of the papacy to move lock, stock
and barrel to the United States .[24] Weishampel was not the only one to
object to this supposed profanation of religious freedom in America, and a
"deed of barbarism" was enacted when a group of men (who were never
identified) broke into the storage shed near the Monument and carried off the
stone: they broke it up, eventually dropping its remains over the side of a
boat in the manner of a latter-day Boston Tea Party. [25]
Records in England show that an Englishman called John Pope had settled at
Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1630.[ 26 ] It would be pleasant to think that
this John Pope was related in some way to our own visionary Francis Pope,
because the family name would then tie together two noteworthy strands of
history in Washington, D.C. As a matter of fact, this John Pope of Dorchester
was a distant forebear of the architect John Russell Pope, who, besides
designing the Jefferson Memorial which stands on land liberated from the
marshland of the Potomac across from Foggy Bottom, also built the most
esoteric structure in Washington, D.C., once known to Masons as the House of
the Temple, or the Supreme Council, Southern jurisdiction (figure 1). This
has rightly been called by an American historian of architecture "one of the
most vital buildings erected in modern times here or in Europe."[27]
What is most remarkable about this merging of history with mythology is that
ancient Roman astrologers had linked the foundation of their own city with a
fixed star in Leo. This was Regulus, whose name means "little ruler" �
perhaps a reasonable association for a city that was to rule the world for so
many centuries. The star Regulus is said to have entered the zodiacal sign
Leo in 293 B.C., and has been taken ever since by astrologers as the guiding
star of the Eternal City.[28] Perhaps Francis Pope, or whoever named the
parcel of land Rome and the river Tiber, was interested in stellar things,
and perhaps he even knew about this ancient connection between the star and
the city whose name he adopted for the hill. However, what Francis Pope
certainly did not know � and what no one has realized until modern times � is
that this same star, Regulus, was also adopted by the early founders of
Washington, D.C., as one of their prime marking stars. As we shall see,
Regulus is one of three stars which link the federal city indissolubly with
the stellar realms.
It seems, then, that history making and stellar mythologizing meet in the
beginnings of Washington, D.C. One consequence of this meeting of dreams is
very concrete, very tangible. It is a matter of historical fact, as I have
said, that there are more than 20 zodiacs in the center of the city: I know
of no other city in the world with such a multitude of public zodiacs
displayed in so small a space. In London, for example, there are presently
four public zodiacs of which the Bracken House zodiac, in Cannon Street, is
probably the most beautiful. In Oxford (England) there is only one � that on
the Fitzjames Arch in Merton College which, by its very placing, should not
really be called public. In Boston, Massachusetts, I know of three zodiacs �
the two most impressive being the atrium zodiac in the floor of the Public
Library, and the Egypto-Babylonian zodiac in the ceiling painting by John
Singer Sargent, on the second floor. In New York, the most beautiful public
zodiac is that encircling the statue of Prometheus by Paul Manship, in the
Rockefeller Plaza. Even Florence � that ancient city which gave birth to the
Renaissance in the 15th century � has only three public zodiacs.[29]
As we shall see, the mythology of the stellar lights plays an essential part
in the foundation and history of the federal city. The deeper meaning of the
zodiacal symbolism which radiates through Washington, D.C., is so subtle that
it has remained hidden until even today � secretly enshrined in zodiacs set
in marble, plaster, concrete, glass and paint within the fabric of the city.
This raises a number of vital questions. Is there some secret behind the
efforts of the builders of this city to ensure that so many stars should fall
to Earth? Why should astronomers and astrologers make so much effort to weave
their magic art in this city?
Furthermore, what is it about Washington, D.C., that, in 200 years of
colorful history, has made it the focus of zodiac builders, and, so far as
arcane lapidary symbols are concerned, the richest city in the world? Could
the zodiacs have been set in place to remind those who run the United States
that the Spiritual World, which the light of the stars symbolizes, is all
around, and may never be ignored with impunity? Or is it possible that the
city is still embryonic � still secretly being prepared for some future time
when the stars will be seen as the living mysteries they really are?
pps. vii-11
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
All My Relations.
Omnia Bona Bonis,
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
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