interested in attempting to define what we can reasonably say about life’s spiritual dimension.
As we are about to see, many famous Freemasons of the eighteenth century who are usually thought of as sceptical, if not downright atheistic, were practising alchemists — and some even participated in ceremonial magic. Moreover, some great Freemasons from this period were reincarnations of great personages from the distant past. They were returning to fight in the greatest battle with the forces of evil since the first War in Heaven.
IF SCOTTISH AND ENGLISH FREEMASONS supported a constitutional monarchy working with a democratic parliament, the situation was very different for the American colonies.
George Washington was initiated in 1752.
On 16 December 1773 a group of men, apparently native Indians, played a large part in inspiring the American Revolution. After they had dumped British tea into Boston harbour they hurried back inside St Andrews Masonic Lodge…
In 1774 Benjamin Franklin met Thomas Paine in a Lodge in London and urged him to emigrate to America. Fond of quoting the words of Isaiah, Paine became the great prophet of Revolution, proposing a federation of states, coining the phrase, ‘The United States of America’. He argued for the abolition of slavery and state funding for the education of the poor.
In 1775 members of the Colonial Congress were staying as guests in a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their aim was to design the American flag. George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were present and so was an old professor, who seemed to be staying there by coincidence. Somewhat to the surprise of the others, Washington and Franklin deferred to the professor. They seemed to recognize him as their superior, immediately and unreservedly, and all of his suggestions for the design of the flag were promptly adopted. Then he vanished and was never seen or heard of again. Was this stranger one of the Hidden Masters who direct the history of the world?
In their individual shape and in the pattern of their arrangement, the five pointed stars on the flag echo the symbols on the ceiling of a chamber in the Egyptian pyramid of Unas. In Egypt they were a symbol of the spirit powers raying down their sustaining and guiding influence on human history.
If we insist, against all the evidence, on seeing Freemasonry as an atheistic organization, spiritual only in an empty, modern sense, we will fail to understand how its leaders felt themselves both prompted by mysterious powers, some incarnated like the old professor, others the disembodied spirits of the stars.
The architecture of Freemasonry grows out of an occult, magical tradition of invoking disembodied spirits that goes back to ancient Egypt. ‘When the materials are all prepared and ready,’ it is said, ‘the architect shall appear.’
On the doors of the Capitol building in Washington, DC, there is a depiction of a Masonic ceremony that took place in 1793, when George Washington laid its cornerstone. If we contemplate Washington’s designs for the capital that would bear his name, with this building at its heart, we can begin to understand Freemasonry’s secret plans for the age. The key to this understanding — perhaps shockingly for those who would like to see Washington as a model of Christian piety — is astrology.
Freemasonry’s interest in astrology had good strong roots in the Royal Society. When Newton was challenged on the subject, he said, ‘Sir, I have studied the subject. You have not.’ Elias Ashmole had cast a horoscope for the founding of the Royal Exchange in London, soon to become the centre of world finance, as well as for St Paul’s Cathedral. When George Washington had a horoscope cast for the founding of the Capitol building he was acting in accordance with a solemn Freemasonic tradition which charted the history of humankind according to the movements of the stars and planets.
For esoteric Freemasons like Wren and Washington, the act of consecrating a cornerstone at an astrologically propitious moment meant inviting the hierarchies of heavenly beings to participate in the ceremony.
It is significant that at the very moment George Washington laid the foundation stone of the Capitol building, Jupiter was rising in the East. The phrase ‘Annuit Coeptis’ which hovers above the pyramid on the dollar bill is adapted from a line in Virgil’s
The phrase ‘Novus Ordo Seclorum’, also to be found on the dollar bill and which worries conspiracy theorists so much, is also adapted from Virgil. In the
After years of research and having been granted access to the Masonic archives, my old friend David Ovason wrote a magisterial book revealing in all but completely plain terms the esoteric plans that have motivated America’s leaders.
David Ovason has shown how the astrological orientation of Washington, DC, marks a complex pattern involving Jupiter, the sun, the moon, Sirius and the constellation of Virgo. He shows that a great triangle of streets with Pennsylvania Avenue as the hypotenuse was intended by Washington and Latrobe to mirror the constellation of Virgo. He shows, further, that in a spectacular light display to rival the greatest achievements of the Egyptians, Washington, DC, is laid out so that on 3 August every year the sun streams down Pennsylvania Avenue and strikes the pyramidion on the top of the Post Office tower.
It requires a whole book — David’s book — to give a full account. What is important to this history, and helps us to begin to pull its main themes together, is that Washington, DC was laid out to welcome Isis, the goddess associated with Virgo.
Washington, then, built his city under the sign of Virgo, inviting the Mother Goddess to participate in the destiny of the United States.
We’ve seen that secret techniques for achieving altered states are taught inside secret societies. Different grades of initiation that lead to different levels of altered state. Higher levels may grant the gift of prophecy. Great initiates have such an all-embracing knowledge of the higher spirits and their plans for humanity that they are able to work consciously towards helping the fulfilment of those plans.
Initiates from different esoteric traditions and different parts of the world had been predicting the dawn of a new age. Joachim, Dee and Paracelsus prophesied the return of Elijah, working behind the scenes of history to help humankind become strong enough to face the trials that it would have to face. By inviting the Mother Goddess to participate in the destiny of the United States, Washington was also looking forward to a new age, a new dispensation. The United States would dominate the world — if Washington’s great prayers in stone were answered and the ancient prophecies came true.
Abbot Trithemius, influenced by Joachim and influencing in his turn both Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus, had predicted that the epoch of Gabriel, the Archangel of the Moon, would be succeeded by the epoch of Michael, Archangel of the Sun. He predicted that this great event would take place in 1881.
We saw in Chapter 3 how St Michael had fought the good fight against the forces of evil, leading the hosts of the good angels. The Freemasons of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries foresaw that St Michael, Archangel of the Sun, would come again.
Michael was coming to fight the forces of corrupted angels and demons that were predicted to assault the earth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Michael’s defeat of these forces — with human help — was to lead to the end of the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age of the Hindus, which had begun in 3102 BC with the murder of Krishna. The Yugas are astronomically determined, there being eight divisions of the Great Year.
In fact the initiate astrologers of the Freemasons realized that Trithemius had made a small mistake in his astronomical/astrological calculations and that the Michaelic age was due to begin in 1878. All around the world, as this year approached, Freemasons were planning to erect monuments. Above all they planned to erect obelisks.
The Egyptians saw the obelisk as a sacred structure on which the Phoenix would alight to mark the end of one civilization and the beginning of another. An obelisk is a symbol of the birth of a new age. Like a gigantic lightning conductor, it draws down the spiritual influence of the sun.
Constantine the Great had converted a temple in Alexandria into a church, reconsecrating the obelisks sacred
