I contend that this website represents the first original, comprehensive, and Masonic-friendly examination of the subject of Symbolisms Embedded in the District of Columbia Map Layout.

It is original in the sense that what I present here concerning templates that were used for the Washington, D.C. map are My Own Ideas, and comprehensive in that I have made an attempt to cover all the bases so to speak, from history to astronomy and architectural design principles - including dealing with the huge amount of Misinformation about the ongoing DC planning project that is being broadcast without regard to the Truth, mainly across the internet by anti-Masonic individuals , although some book authors are guilty as well.

This presentation depends a lot on visual imagery and setting some facts straight, and we can learn a lot about astronomy, the map, and the design and development of the Capital City in the process of dispelling some myths and 'bad facts'.

You will please note that this is not in any way an anti-Masonic treatise. I am neither a Mason, nor am I anti-Masonic. My degree is in Philosophy, and this is directed to the philosophically minded reader, book publisher and film maker, as well as to the curious and lovers of puzzles in general. My intention here is to approach the subject matter from an architectural and historical, rather than an emotional and superstitous point of view.

Much of what has previously been written on-line about elements of the DC landscape has been done so in the 'tabloid style', meant as an indictment of Masonry, and intended to cause a sensation- you will find none of that here. I intend to look at the symbols in the DC map and US Great Seal as forms of heraldry, and without trying to prove occult intent.

---

* Library of Congress Map Collection search results for "washington, d.c." - These, along with the collected letters of the Founding Fathers, will provide the primary documents for this study. Note that you can toggle between the list and gallery views.
* DC Map Images with commentary.
* A Washington DC Map Chronology - A chronology of Washington DC maps beginning with the first L'Enfant map in 1791.

The timeline that I develop does not support the idea that Ellicott significantly altered L'Enfant's map. This idea is introduced in an alternate timeline developed by Richard M. Stephenson a former employee of the LOC in an 85 page book called A Plan Whol[l]y New: Pierre Charles L'Enfant's Plan of the City of Washington (1973). The Stephenson timeline is used by the Corps of Engineers in writing about the L'Enfant plan, as well as by Nicholas Mann, author of The Sacred Geometry of Washington DC.

* In a critique of Stephenson's book I will defend the idea that it was L'Enfant that introduced the changes into the map that have been attributed to the Ellicott brothers.

. . .

[Since the center of gravity of what I consider to be important in my DC studies is constantly shifting, I update quite often.
The site now contains 120+ Mb of text and images. I have made an attempt to make sure that all the links on the site, except for turning pages, open in a new window, so that you don't lose your place. I ask that you let me know about images or links that don't work, or send comments or ask me questions.

As sections of this page get too lengthy, I make a new page out of them, and put a link and an introduction or summary here.]

. . .

Related DVD's - As seen on the History Channel - Mysteries of the Freemasons: The Beginning / America and
In Search of History: Secret Brotherhood of Freemasons. From David Bay, Riddles in Stone.

Anti-Masonry FAQ - intended to address willful ignorance and malicious misinformation.
For Christians Regarding Freemasonry - a continuing source of new and vital information.

Simply stated, my primary thesis is that the Washington DC planners used more than one image as templates for the design of the city map - one of those images was the cross section view of the Great Pyramid as seen above, while two others were Metatron's Cube and the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. The pyramid represents Egypt, and the cube and tree represent Israel; also matter and spirit because allegorically Egypt is the body and Israel is the soul.

. . .

If you have read David Ovason's book Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital, you may remember that during a discussion of the US Great Seal he states his opinion that the pyramid makes a better symbol of America than the eagle does , and that 'in spite of the insistence on Egyptian themes within Washington, D.C.' the pyramid has been marginalized and obscured there. I suggest that while it may have been obscured in the map, the pyramid has in no way been marginalized there. Let me show you what I mean.

Looking at the red part of the animated image at the top of the page you will see that 1) the White House and four other points in the map are located at the corners of a (shortened) pentagram, and that 2) New Hampshire Avenue, which connects the left hand corners of the pentagram, forms one side of an isoceles triangle with ~52 degree base angles, the same base angles as the cross-section of the GP. That is to say, playing connect the dots with the pentagram in the map produces a triangle that matches the cross-section image of the Great Pyramid - from pentagram to pyramid. But there's more...

Looking at the pyramid image you notice that the Queen's Chamber 1) is offset from the King's Chamber, and 2) is directly under the 'apex' of the pyramid. Below we see that the Washington Monument is likewise offset from the White House, and we wonder if the two facts might be connected? If there is more to the map than the depiction of the pyramid base angle? [Note the shape of the relieving stones above the King's Chamber and how the shape of the top of the Wash Mmt is not unlike the shape of the Queen's Chamber.]

The Washington Monument, offset from the White House.

[Note how the WH centers on 16th St, the Scottish Rites House of the Temple (seen in the distance) fronts on 16th St, and the Washington Monument lies on a line that passes between 15th and 16th Sts, behind the HOT- that is, these three do not lie on one straight line as some suggest, and the angle between the WH, the Wash Mmt and the CB is not 90 degrees but about 97.]

. . .

Looking closer (in the black section of the animated image at the top of the page) you see that other of the pyramid elements appear to be represented by features in the map layout as well. Potomac Avenue is the Descending Passage and Penn Ave is the Ascending Passage and Grand Gallery, while the White House is the King's Chamber and the offset Wash Mmt is the Queen's Chamber. The old canal simulated the 'well' shaft, and even the Great Step at the top of the Grand Gallery is depicted.

The illustration below is generated by overlaying a cross-section image of the pyramid onto the 1818 DC map and can be used to measure the 'fit' between the two. The point of the relieving stones above the King's Chamber is matched with Scott Circle north of the White House and the junction of the Ascending and Descending passages is matched with the junction of Potomac and Pennsylvania Avenues. All in all, the fit is pretty good. The only element that appears to be missing is the subterranean chamber which would be in the middle of the river if it existed.

This does not 'work' well if the Wash Mmt is not offset,
AND would work better if the CB were a bit further south.

[* Note that the Capitol Building appears to be north of where it 'should be' according to the pyramid image, due to a bend in Penn Ave. That is, if the CB had been a little bit further south the map would have been a better match to the pyramid image. Look into why Pennsylvania Avenue has a bend in it?]

I recommend that 1) the open area that was planned for the City Hall south of the CB (Garfield Park today) is intended to represent the grotto in the wellshaft which is located at ground level where the masonry meets the native stone in the actual pyramid, and that 2) G Street, which today helps locate the Jefferson Memorial on the 16th Street axis, is intended to represent Ground Level.

The passage to the Queen's Chamber from the Gallery has a 2 foot step in it, that is, the QC is off set in two planes and the monument is offset 371 feet east of the centerline of the WH and 123 feet south of the center line of the CB; also offset in two planes.

A corollary of the thesis about the pyramid cross-section being depicted in the map is that the real reason that the Washington Monument was moved was to better represent the Queen's Chamber in the map.

The official story about the move is that the land was 'unstable' at the point (marked A below) directly south of the WH and directly west of the CB. Both the L'Enfant planning map (below) and the Ellicot map (1792) show extensive landscaping around the originally proposed site, but by the time that the monument was to be built, none had ever been done- on purpose, I suggest, in order to force the move.

Note the planned (1791) landscaping around point A

As a matter of fact, none of the proposed landscaping around 'point A' was done until after the design and location of the Washington Monument had been changed. The DC map that was used in the pyramid overlay image above is the 1818 Robert King map; if you draw a line due west of the CB and due south of the WH, you will see that they actually meet over water in that map. Since the Potomac River experiences tides like the ocean which is not far away, the shore line is actually constantly shifting. By 1848, when work on the monument began, the Tiber Creek had been converted to a canal, but the mouth of the creek had yet to be filled in. The landscaping indicated in L'Enfant's map was not completed until 1875.

When we hear the story about how the land was tested at 'point A' and determined to be unstable, remember that that location lay on the bank of a river and that the plan was to position a foundation that is 80 feet across there. The problem wasn't so much that the ground was unstable, but that there was very little 'ground' there, and the landscaping that had been in the plan, never was carried out, for some reason. As I said, the real reason that the monument was moved was that the landscaping that was called for in the original plan was not done in time- but on purpose, I suggest.

Since both L'Enfant's and Ellicott's maps emphasize point A as the axial crossing spot, and the Washington Monument is the only element in the map that requires moving in order to better represent the pyramid, the question arises as to when and by whom that move was included in the plan? An alternate plan suggests itself, that being that the pyramid cross section was intended from the beginning, and that all the talk about a statue where the axes cross was just a diversion.

As the story comes down to us, the current placement of the monument was unplanned and an engineering move that trumped L'Enfant's original idea. But could it be that the original location / equestrian statue story was a hoax, and that L'Enfant himself was the one who designed the pyramid cross-section into the map, including the notion of moving the monument location?

The implication here is that since the planners knew that an image of the pyramid cross section probably wouldn't be popular with the general public, nor would the idea of using the phallic monument to represent the Queen's Chamber, they sought to keep their intentions secret. Also since they knew that the offset of the monument from the WH, the CB and the 16th Street axis would cause dissonance, they were forced to 'invent' a reason for the move. Yes the ground was unstable at point A, but the supposed plan was to fill the area in so that it would be stable there- and this was not done until too late.

There are two axes of symmetry in the DC map. One is East Capitol Street running east from the CB; the other is 16th Street running N-S through the White House. Point A in the map above, where these axes cross, represents a balance point between these symbolic presidencial (N-S) and legislative (E-W) axes. The asymmetry caused by moving the monument south and east from this point presented a problem for some people, like the members of the McMillan Comission.

Below you can see the 1901 McMillan Plan which was supposed to 'complete' L'Enfant's plan. Note 1) the attempt to restore symmetry to the center of the map by arbitrarily accenting the line south from the WH (the 16th St axis), 2) that the Washington Monument is not at the center of the cross but to the right of that 371+ feet, and 3) that this is 'just a plan' and not how DC looks today- scroll up to the image of the monument and compare.

McMillan Plan of 1901

This McMillan plan image is one of the single greatest sources of misinformation surrounding the D.C. map. Without ever looking at the current map many people presume that it resembles this plan somehow, but it does not.

The McMillan plan designs the Mall around the line connecting the CB and the relocated Washington Monument which is south of due west by about one degree. The Lincoln Memorial is placed on this same misaligned axis. That is the Mall and East Capitol Street are a degree different in bearing from one another. Only E Cap St is square to 16th Street. What appears to be the central point in the 1901 plan is actually over as 100 feet south of the 'point A' in L'Enfant's map.

Please see this interactive map of downtown DC and notice that it does not look anything like this plan. The basic similarity is that the plan contains the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials that are in the current map, though not much of the rest is. (A large road map that you can get at your local book store gives you the current configuration of the city.)

Fat Man Atomic Bomb 1945

Note the asymmetry in the 1901 plan itself. As was pointed out, the map is symmetrical around 16th Street running through the White House, but the plan is not. Instead of locating the Lincoln Memorial the same distance west of 16th that the CB is east of it, they halfened the distance, so that it looks like an atom bomb instead of a rhombus. (The McMillan Plan depicts the cross section of the atomic bomb in 1901.) Note also that what is a circle below the WH in the 1901 plan is an ellipse today.

If you look closely at the plan and the red lines that I have added, you will see the reason that they didn't extend the figure. The Mall is running down hill and it forms an odd shaped axis for the rhombus that is supposed to be in the map.

Christopher Hodap, in Solomon's Builders, uses this cuttingedge.org website as a refrence (p 176). At the top of that page they show you the McMillan plan (with west at the top) and further down the page they number the points on the McMillan plan as Sepheroth on the Tree of Life. The problem is that you can look at page 177 of Hodap's book and see that the elements spelled out in the McMillan plan do not exist in today's layout. Neither of these sources appear to understand this.

In the section on the McMillan Commission in his book, The Sacred Geometry of Washington DC, Nicholas Mann writes that "the problem of the mislocation of the Washington Monument was sucessfully resolved by realigning the entire Mall to a new east west axis... The two axes made a great cross through the Washington Monument and this new focal point was enhanced by formal construction and planting schemes". This comes from page 146 and is right under an image of the 1901 plan. As I said, the Washington Monument is the object to the right of the center of the cross in the 1901 plan that he is describing, and the current configuration does not look like this; there are no formal construction and planting schemes there. Mann is describing the McMillan plan as if it existed today, which it does not.

An American Cross?

Robert Hieronimus in the newly released United Symbols of America displays a copy of the McMillan plan, west up, (p 245) and describes the cross that Mann alludes to as Christian, as America's cross. He uses the McMillan plan to show how the 'five prominent monuments' on the Mall can be connected in the shape of a cross; these are , of course, the WH, the Wash Mmt, the Jeff Mml, the CB and the Lincoln Mml., and I have connected them by red lines above. The Washington Monument is not in line between the WH and Jeff Mml so it's a pretty rugged cross.

The fact is that the five monuments don't form a 'regular cross', because the WH, Wash Mmt and Jeff Mml don't line up. What does line up is the element in the 1901 plan that was placed on the 16th St axis where it crossed the line between the CB and the Wash Mmt. Both Mann and Hieronimus appear to believe that the monument lies there? Both of these deny the pentagram in the map but bless the 'cross' in the McMillan plan.

Above we see the version of the Tree of Life suggested by Charles Westbrook. As you can see he features only nine spheres and his top sphere does not line up with the others. If that point had been chosen in line, it would be in the position that I suggested above that is the same distance west of the WH (16th St) as the CB is east of it. Note that he does the same thing that the McMillan planners do, inspite of the fact that a straight line won't connect the WH, Wash Mmt and Jeff Mml, he draws one from the WH striaight to the JM. This is the line that forms the cross, but misses the Washington Monument.

If we can accept the notion that the elements in the Washington, D.C. map may correlate with features in the cross-section image of the Great Pyramid , then two questions present themselves, 1) what is there under the river that correlates to the subterranean chamber, and 2) what might elements in the map tell us about features of the pyramid that we don't know about yet?

In 1646, John Greaves published a book entitled Pyramidographia that included information that he had gathered when he personally surveyed the Gizah Plateau, beginning in the 1636. You can see a copy of Greaves' illustration of the outside of the Great Pyramid on page 24 of Peter Tompkins' book Secrets of the Great Pyramid. The Greaves' exterior image of the GP has been cited as being the model for the reverse side of the US Great Seal, and I have, until recently, pointed to the interior image from Greaves' book (seen below) as one of the templates for the DC map layout.

I say 'until recently' because something startling occured to me that changed my way of thinking about that. I looked at Greaves image of the inside of the pyramid closely and noticed that the relieving stones and chambers above the King's Chamber weren't being depicted. These weren't discovered until 1837. The subterranean chamber is also not depicted since it was full of debris when Greaves was there; yet when you look at the map, the relieving stones, the decsending passage, and the 'well shaft' all appear to be depicted.

The map/pyramid appears to include features in the real pyramid that weren't in the 1646 Greaves image, and that were unknown to Greaves, but apparently not the DC planners! This seems to point to an older source than the Greaves images. The big question is, what that source might be? Who might possibly have been in possession of 'prints' that showed features in the pyramid that were covered up in the construction process?

Below we see an illustration from a book by Colonel Richard William Howard-Vyse who 'proved' the existence of the upper chambers using gun powder. This is the first 'modern' depiction of the relieving stones and chambers, other than the map that is :-)

The state of the map makers knowledge of the pyramid structure appears to have surpassed that of academics in this case. And as I said, the other question is, if the map represents the pyramid and it included features that were unknown in 1791, might it indicate somehow features that we still don't know about?

---

* The Tree of Life and Metatron's Cube *

Metatron's Cube composed of thirteen circles (12 around 1), and

The Kabbalistic Tree of Life composed of ten spheres (eleven with Daath),

were also used as templates for the map. Since the triangles in the map have ~52 degree base angles, both the tree and the cube were shortened for use in the map. All figures contained within these glyphs are also shortened- like the hexagram, the pentagram and the circle, which becomes an ellipse.

Scott Circle was a point in a circle in a hexagram before it was shortened. The fact that the McMillan plan was drawn with a circle south of the WH indicates that they were not 'in' on the symbolism.

* Remember that even though the Washington Monument wasn't finished until late in the 19th century and the last element in both the map/tree and the map/cube, the Jefferson Memorial completed in 1943, was built on land that didn't exist in 1792, there are streets in the planning map pointing to each of these structures. (see animation below) 16th St, G St and Maryland Avenue point to the future location of the Jefferson Memorial and Virginia Avenue points to the location of the Washington Monument, before and after it was moved. Many of the features of current day DC are hinted at in the 1792 planning map.

The Tree of Life and the Legend of the Soul's Journey
An Introduction to Kabbalistic Themes in the Bible

Masonic and Kabbalistic images and symbolisms in the movies - This is a look at Masonic and Templar images used in several movies as well as the Kabbalistic themes that are found in the Mad Max "Thunderdome" movie.

---

---

* Allegories Addressed to a Few *

Like it or not, the US Founding Fathers chose as symbols to represent this nation, emblems that appear to conceal meanings other than those that are officially (exoterically) attributed to them, both with dualistic themes. Loosely interpreted we can say that the eye in the triangle above a pyramid symbolize God and the Creation. The eye part is the vesica and the ad trianglum in architecture, while the pyramid is the square and the quadratum, also the compass and square. The square can be expanded to a cube, the triangle to a tetrahedron.

Who says that the designers weren't thinking about geometry when they laid out the Great Seal?

The eagle is seen as the messenger of the sky gods and is said to have carried and returned Jupiter's thunderbolts when he launched them. In this role the eagle is seen as the mediator between heaven and earth like Mercury. "Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself." In the movie Moses says something like "bore us out of the desert as on the wings of an eagle".

Instead of a staff and serpents that are on the cadeusus of Mercury, the Great Seal substitutes arrows and olive branches to symbolize duality and opposition, and a shield in the center for balance and compromise. Both of these emblems remind us of the Tree of Life made of three pillars that mediates between the One and the Many (the unum and pluribus), above and below. Could you expect less when it came to designing a map for the capital of the country? Continue

I like to compare the DC map design process to the Glass Bead Game from Herman Hesse's book "Magister Ludi" -

The Bead Game begins with a player presenting a starting point, that might be an image or symbol, a piece of music or text, on which he elaborates; then others are given a chance to contribute, after which there is a meditation on the subject of the Game before more presentations. In the context of the book, this is a finite process, with a definite beginning, middle and end, but in real life, this is the same process as the development of science, religion and philosophy.

In the case of the map, the opening play consisted of 'staking out' the 40 mile boundary of the oblique (diagonal) square that constituted the District of Columbia by Andrew Ellicott, followed by establishing north-south and east-west lines (the basis of the orthogonal street grid) by Ellicott and Benjamin Banneker. L'Enfant adjusts the square street grid and overlays it with a system of diagonal streets that result in the templates that I have spoken of above. Continue

I love exposing sloppy research and scholarship (what I call critique) and I intend, this year, to walk the reader through a step by step repudiation of the multi-layered thesis presented by David Ovason in his 1999 book The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capitol (and recently re-presented by Robert Hieronimus in his book United Symbolisms of America), which is that the segment of Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol Building and the White House was purposefully oriented to a so-called solar-stellar alignment on August 10th.

The idea that is being presented is that DC was laid out in such a way as to connect the earth with the spiritual influences of the Virgo constellation in the sky. The argument that is used in the book is that one segment of Pennsylvania Avenue was aligned to a particular sunset because the brightest star in the Leo constellation is close by on that night - meaning that while it is not aligned to the Virgo constellation, it does align closely with Regulus which forms one corner of a triangle in the sky that looks just like the Federal Traingle on the ground and which connects to the Virgo.

There are several steps to the argument in the book, and I will begin with his notion that Penn Ave is aligned to one sunset on one day. If you are in D.C. the first of May you will be able to watch the sun set over Penn Ave. as seen from the CB, then again in August. The fact is that the sun passes each point in the solar arc (except the solstice points, the extremes) twice a year, but Ovason uses the phrase one sunset many times and never mentions the May sunset. [The book deals with the solar arc on pages 82 and 335.]

It is simply not true that Penn Ave aligns to one sunset only, and if the avenue was designed so as to reveal the Virgo in August, then it was seemingly designed to reveal Taurus in May. You will note that he fails to mention the fact that Maryland Ave radiates from the CB at the same angle south of due west that the mid section of PA is north of it.

Ovason recommends that the survey of the city of Washington began with the selection of the site for the Capitol, then proceeded with the establishment of a line sighted to a sunset from there that was used to place the White House. I will show that Pennsylvania Avenue was designed to be straight from Georgetown to the East Branch, but that the location that was planned for the Capitol Building fell on the side of Jenkins Heights, so it was moved slightly to the north (about 600 feet) creating the bend in Penn Ave that we see today.

I will also show that the lines that make up the pentagram in the map form the basis for a grid of 23.5 degree diagonal lines that are the regulating lines for the map design; also that the 23 degree grid aligns closely with the cross-quarter sunrises and settings, the points half way between the solstices and equinoxes. The 19.5 degree angle of the central section of Penn Ave is a result of the CB having been moved from one of these lines. (FYI - the sine of 19.47 degrees is .333.) If the CB had been positioned a little bit to the south Penn and Maryland Aves would be straight.

Displacing the CB bends both Penn and Maryland Aves

Locate the Triangle. Rectangle. Pentagon. Hexagon. Rhombus. Cube.

Above we see that the pentagram not only defines the regulating lines, but it also sets the scale for the map plan. The wide points of the pentagram are the same distance east-west from each other as the WH and CB are. The point where Penn Ave meets the East Branch is the same distance east of the CB. Penn Ave and N St intersect in Georgetown that distance west of the WH. If the Capitol had been 600 feet south, the development of the 23 degree rhombus grid containing the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and Metatron's Cube in the map would have looked like this.

Ovason never mentions the pentagram but instead focuses his attention on the triangle formed by the WH, CB and the Washington Monument; the one with Penn Ave as the hypotenuse and the 20 degree angle in one corner. Once again I will point out that Ovason believes that the central segment of PA was aligned specifically to an azimuth of 289.5 degrees, while I recommend that the CB was moved for topographic reasons from the 23 degree grid.

His thesis is that this earthly triangle reflects a stellar triangle that surrounds the Virgo constellation, which has been interpreted to mean that a large right-angled triangle of stars is reflected exactly in the shape of the Federal Triangle thereby linking the design of D.C. to the ancient mysteries which taught that every building and city should reflect the hidden activities of the spiritual world (what ever that means). The implication of this thesis is that we will find a right triangle of stars in the sky surrounding the Virgo constellation with a 20 degree angle in one corner.

One big problem with reading Secret Architecture is that the triangles, both in the sky and on the ground, are variously described. The stellar triangle is described as either encompassing the Virgo, or as enclosing most of the Virgo constellation. The book uses two different illustrations of the triangle- one on page 256 appears to show the constellation encased in the triangle, while the image on page 347 shows the triangle slicing through the constellation. The triangle does not really surround the Virgo constellation as is implied by the text and certain of Ovason's images.

On page 255 he writes, "The L'Enfant triangle, with it's three primal buildings at it's corners, is almost the same as a right-angle triangle which can be traced in the skies around the constellation Virgo". This, of course, refers to the positions of the three structures as seen in L'Enfant's plan; but the fact is that the Washington Monument was located in a different place than in his plan. It was moved 371 feet east and 123 feet south (1:3 ratio), so that what was a square angle is now about 97 degrees. Note that he says specifically "a right-angle triangle which can be traced in the skies".

If you read closely, you will see on page 262 that "the truth is that the three stars that I have used to symbolize this triangle are not themselves arranged in a perfect right-angled triangle". On page 263 he suggests that the position of the Washington Monument was moved "to establish a closer correspondence between the earthly triangle and the stellar triangle around Virgo. When the sky triangle is measured against the earth triangle, the correspondence between the two is almost exact". Is it? I guess what I mean to ask is, what do you consider to be exact?

Just as the book leaves one with the impression that the triangle both encases the Virgo and part of the Virgo constellation, attempts are made to try to associate the sky triangle with both a square and non-square version of the triangle on the ground. But above we see Ovason himself suggesting that the monument was moved to better correspond to a triangle in the sky that is not square, and this argument does not support the notion of a right triangle.

How is it that Robert Hieronimus, who claims to be friends with David Ovason, can say that one of the central points of Ovason's book was that the right triangle that L'Enfant devised was deliberately situated to mirror the stellar triangle, which is reflected exactly in the Federal Triangle when we have already established that the square angle is now about 97 degrees (because of the monument being moved) and the acute angle at the CB is about 20 degrees.

On page 201 of United Symbolisms of America he proclaims that Ovason now (meaning 2008) refers the stellar triangle to the Federal Triangle rather than the three public buildings, when Ovason himself tells us that the stars do not form an exact square angle as we see in the Federal Triangle? Rememeber that on page 262 of Secret Architecture Ovason claims that the move of the monument is what resulted in an almost exact correspondence.

You will note that inspite of saying that the triangle is not a right triangle and that the monument was moved to establish a closer correspondence, Ovason never shows anything but square angles in his images for the book. See page 256, 260, 346 and 347, and use a note card to show that all his illustrations feature square corners.

No matter what, we are dealing with one or the other triangle. The first is a right triangle with a 19.5 degree acute angle at the CB. The second, formed by the move of the Wash Mmt, has 97 and 20 degree angles; that is the large angle is 90 degrees or greater. Below we see a screen capture from astronomical software illustrating the sunset on August 10th. Compare the triangle there to the one in the map above. The large angle is less than, not greater than 90 degrees. It is not true that the stellar triangle mimics the earthly one.

The Triangle as it Appears in the Sky August 10th at Sunset.

Hieronimus reports that by setting the exact angle of Pennsylvania Avenue, a triangle was worked into the map that reflected the stellar triangle. The suggestion is that the CB was moved from a 23 degree diagonal line in order to better represent a triangle in the sky. My question is, if the triangle in the map is nowhere near to being a match to the triangle in the sky, what was exact about the angle on the ground? If you look at pages 226 and 240 of Secret Architecture you will see Ovason attempt to tie this triangle to both the equilateral triangle (with 60 degree angles) and the Great Pyramid (an isoceles triangle with 52 degree base angles) as well.

On August 10th the setting sun is followed closely by Regulus, the alpha star in Leo, which is in turn followed by the Virgo. That is, shortly after sunset, Regulus and Leo set on top of the WH location at the end of PA as seen from the CB. Regulus even has a nick name like 'little ruler', but instead of associating this sunset with Leo, Ovason ties it to the Virgo constellation?

In his book, he explains how the purpose of the ritualistic alignments of buildings, temples and cities was to establish a connection with the stars etc. The event that he points to is a sunset that occurs just before Regulus sets; we call this the heliacal setting of that star. The heliacal rising is when you can first see it before the sun rises. The heliacal rising of Sirius occurs the first week in August very near the azimuth of the 23 degree grid lines. The helical setting of Regulus occurs close to the azimuth of the central segment of PA at the same time of year.

Secret Architecture ties the heliacal setting of Regulus to the constellation Virgo by virtue of a triangle that can be formed in the sky. We go from alignments to sunrises and settings, to risings and settings of stars to a solar-stellar alignment that connects the CB to the WH to the stars via Penn Ave., by way of the sun and Regulus and a triangle that connects to a star in Virgo. I don't get it. That is, it doesn't work for me :-( This is the theatrical display that is supposed to 'rival the stellar achievements of Rome, Greece and Egypt'?

Hieronimus tries to help by telling us that "Builders of cities, churches and cathedrals would strive to establish orientation with a particular fixed star in the belief that the cosmic power invested in that star would empower and spiritually charge the building" (what ever that means), which is an idea that we can sort of grasp. We can imagine orienting a building or street to the rising or setting of the sun, the moon, or a star, but to a whole constellation? One that is 30 degrees away from the star?

If you go to a spot where you can see the sunset on the horizon on May the first, you can mark your local equivalent of the Penn Ave alignment, then you can go back in August and view with the rest of us what Ovason is so excited about. Don't forget that the Virgo is the second largest constellation (after the Hydra, the multi-headed serpent that stands in front of the Virgo in Revelation 12) and that you will be able to see it for 5 months at a time. It is not true that it will be 'revealed' in the sunset for just one evening.

I bet that if you watched the sunset from a 23 degree grid line earlier in the first week in August you couldn't tell the difference. So the sun doesn't set on Penn Ave just one day a year, and the triangle on the ground doesn't look anything like the one in the sky. Do you really believe that the avenue was designed with a crook in it in order to align with a sunset, or can you entertain the notion that the Capitol Building has been displaced from it's planned location on one of these grid lines? Note how a line connecting the right corners of the pentagram does not point at the current position of the CB.

Another Hieronimus/Ovason collaboration comes from page 257 of United Symbolisms and features Robert asking David if he had ever claimed that D.C. was either oriented or dedicated to Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Ovason is quoted as saying that he never claimed that, and that the claim would be foolish because it is not true.

Authors Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval are the ones that suggest an alignment along Pennsylvania Avenue to the site of the Capitol building looking southeast with the rising of the brightest star in the sky Sirius... that any observer looking along Pennsylvania Avenue at dawn in 1793 would have seen Sirius 'hovering' over the proposed site of the Capitol. Note that they do not make it clear where the viewing point for this is, but we can presume that they mean as seen from the WH unless otherwise stated.

Sirius rises at 22.5 degrees south of due east in the first week of August in DC. The section of Penn Ave between the WH and CB is oriented to 19.5 degrees, but the segment between Georgetown and the WH (and the rest of the rhombus grid) is oriented to 23.5 degrees. So we can say truthfully that the city is aligned closely to the infamous helical rising of Sirius. As far as being dedicated to the star, I'm not sure that I would go that far, but I will say that it definitely received recognition. The July 4 date for the Declaration of Independence coincided closely with the conjunction of the sun and Sirius.

While it is true that the 23+ degree grid supplied by the pentagram in the map causes the northwest segment of Penn Ave to be aligned closely with both the cross-quarter day sunrises and sunsets and the heliacal rising of Sirius, I suggest that this is not how the angle was derived. The image below shows how the diagonal (in red) of the angle that bisects the opposite side of an equilateral triangle also bisects that angle (into two 30 degree sections). If we reduce the height of the image so that the triangle has 52 degree base angles like the Great Pyramid and the map, these diagonal angles are lessened to 23+ degrees.

A hexagram inscribed in a circle touches the circle at 30 degrees from the equator, so to speak. The Great Pyramid is located just below 30 degrees north. Reducing the height of the triangle to 52 degrees produces 23 degree diagonals, just like the tropics. The map is essentially this shortened diagonal grid overlaid with a 52 degree triangle as we see below. Circles become ellipses when shortened, and south of the WH we see the Ellipse.

By now you should have recognized the hexagram within a hexagram as Metatron's Cube which was used as the template for the map; but first the image was shortened to 75% of it's original height so that the triangle matched the base angle of the Great Pyramid and producing shortened circles, triangles, hexagons and pentagons etc.

You will note that the pentagon is formed by extending the top sides of the hexagon to the sides of triangle. In the map the White House is at the center, and Scott Circle is the top of the hexagon. In the center of SC (below) we see a shortened point in a circle in a hexagram with crossing 23 degree diagonals.

The overlapping hexagon and pentagon produce the Tree of Life. These are shortened in the map. On the right below, the same shortened hexagram from the map is overlaid on to the Station Stones at the Stonehenge. Note the elliptical figure in the middle of that image.

Note also the direction of alignment of the axis of the Stonehenge, which is toward the summer solstice sunrise at 40 degrees north of due east. Rotating the image below 51 degrees so that north is at the top shows the diagonal between two of the station stones to be analogous to the northwest segement of Pennsylvania Avenue in that they both mark cross-quarter days.

In 1521, an architect named Cesariano published a translation of the Roman Architect Vitruvius' work with which he included a woodcut image of the regulating geometry for the Milan Cathedral. Looking at the center of the image we see the same hexagon in a circle in a triangle that we saw above. The map, the cathedral plan and the Tree of Life all derive from the same geometric image, indicating what I call an operative continuity of content. Note the red square in the cathedral plan which corresponds to the shape of the distict boundaries.

---

The new book The United Symbolism of America by Robert Hieronimus dedicates five pages to this website and my ideas, and includes two of my images. The book also mentions Ovason, Mann and others who speculate concerning the D.C. map. I am preparing a review of this book now.

A critique of The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital by David Ovason and of The Sacred Geometry of Washington, DC by Nicholas Mann. You will note that Hieronimus read these before publishing his book.

Symbologists, like myself, assert that the DC street map contains images with symbolic significance, as noted above, while David Ovason (author of The Secret Architecture of our Nation's Capital) and others, claim that the streets (mainly Pennsylvania Avenue) are aligned to celestial events such as the setting of the sun or rising of a star. The suggestion is made that Pennsylvania Avenue was designed with a bend in it in order to align the street with a star or the sun on the horizon (that is rising or setting). I recommend that the CB was displaced for topographic reasons.

One important thing to remember about celestial events is that the apparent position of the earth's orbit precesses 1 degree every 72 years. This means that the heliacal rising of Sirius was on August 6th in 1800 but on August 8th in 2000. So, if someone were to claim that a street was aligned to the heliacal rising of Sirius on a given day, then we would need to know what era they are speaking of.

Likewise with the notion that Masons used the fourth of July as a ceremonial date because that is when the sun conjoins Sirius. The truth is that the sun did conjoin Sirius on the fourth at some point, but not now or for a long time again. It's a tricky symbolism to deal with. Now we get to say, they celebrate the fourth because... the sun used to conjoin Sirius then. Temples were rebuilt or realigned for just this reason.

In simple terms, in relationship to street bearings, the sun is still setting in 2008 in the same place at the same times that it did in 1791 but the stars have shifted 3 degrees.

Ovason recommends that the section of Penn Ave between the CB and WH (marked 2 below) is the control or regulating line in the map. I recommend that the regualting line runs from Georgetown to the East Branch (A B Below) and it matches Penn Ave from G'town to the WH.

This line runs at 23.5 degrees to an east west line across the city as do the other lines that make up the pentagram. The CB has been displaced from this line for topographic reasons. The planned location fell on the steep side of the hill and they move it north 600 feet creating the alignment we see now. The 23.5 degree grid just happens to align with the cross-quarter sunrises and settings. The sine of the new bearing of that section of Penn Ave, 19.5 degrees, is .333, meaning that two of the sides are in a 1:3 relationship. (19.47)

The diagonal grid is only regular north of the White House and west of the Capitol Building, due to the bend in both Pennsylvania and Mass Aves., but the rest of the map can be brought in line with the pentagram grid with very few changes. Take another look at a big map which shows how the Pentagon helps locate the ideal position of the Capitol.

Notice how that line parallels the line from Arlington through the Lincoln Memorial to the Ellipse, and how both of these parallel New York and Rhode Island Avenues running to the north east. If the CB were located in that position, that line would perfectly reflect Pennsylvania Ave which parallels Mass Ave. This would move the Jefferson Memorial south as well.

Projecting the Lines of the Pentagram

The map above straightens Penn Ave by moving the CB south, and straightens Mass Ave by moving Lincoln Square east. Note how moving the Square east adjusts the scale east of the CB so that it is the same as in the west of it. That is, the bend in Mass. Ave. results from reducing the east side of the map while keeping the avenue sighted on Lincoln Square.

I recommend that the image on the right below is the ideal template used by the map planners, with a few changes, like the large triangle was reduced so that the base angles were ~ 52 degrees like the Great Pyramid; this is why the figures in the map (pentagram and hexagram and triangles) are short and wide. This figure uses three overlapping circles to produce a circle centered on the central circle but twice it's size. The upper and lower circles with the outer circle figure to us the yin/yang emblem.

The Tree of Life on the Dodecahedron on Metatron's Cube

We can also see the tetractys, the vesica, the rhombus, the cube, the Star of David, the Tree of Life (10 spheres) and Metatron's Cube (13 points), which is itself related to the platonic solids. Note that the tree shape that works here is the A-shaped Tree of Life and not the H-shaped Kircher version of the tree. The image on the left shows the relationship between this form of the tree and the dodecahedron and Metatron's Cube. Note how the pentagonal faces triangulate and form the illusion of the hexagon and cube.

The Tree of Life represents the relationship of the One to the Many (Essence to Existence) and is composed of a pentagon overlapping a hexagon. The hexagon, which can be seen as a cube, represents the macrocosm and the pentagram, associated with the dodecahedron, represents the microcosm. Here we see the same idea developed by M.C. Escher.

3, 4, 5, 6 and 7

Below we see this template on the western half of the DC map, shortened so that the triangle simulates the pyramid cross-section. We also know that the Washington Monument is east and south of it's ideal location, in order to better represent the Queen's Chamber in the map/pyramid. The Capitol Building is also about 600 feet north of it's ideal location, for topographic reasons. The only major point that appears to be missing is the one opposite to the Capitol on the west bank of the Potomac.

Note the pentagonal fractals that double in height.

Lines that bisect the base angles in equilateral triangles also bisect the opposite side, and produce two 30 degree angles. If we reduce an equilateral triangle until it has 52 degree base angles, these bisecting lines form 23.5 degree angles as we see in the map. The lines that form the pentagram in the map parallel these bisecting lines. Had the CB been a little bit south, two more sections of Penn and Maryland Aves, and one section of NY Ave would match this angle.

The section of NYA that would be straightened would be the segment running SW from the WH to the corner of the triangle opposite to the CB. Since the map is symmetrical around 16th St., NYA mirrors the bend that we see in PA between the WH and CB. The 'modern' image below shows a different figure. Instead of reflecting back to the WH via NYA, New Hampshire is extended to Arlington Cemetary and reflected back to the Ellipse via the Lincoln Memorial, but at that angle.

Above, in purple we see the section of PA between the CB and WH and the segment of Maryland between the CB and Jeff Mml to be some of the only diagonal lines not at 23 degrees. (Two others radiate from the WH in the pentagram. Another pair originates at the Wash Mmt; one running to Georgtown and the other to the East Branch.) Three lines point to the location for the Capitol Building that would have resulted in a straight Pennsylvania Avenue. One is the extension of the segment of PA from Georgetown to the WH.

Another connects the points on the right side of the pentagram. The riverside face of the Pentagon is also aligned with this point, not the current location of the CB, with a line at that angle. Had the Capitol not been moved north, the Jefferson Memorial would have fallen on that line, the same distance from the White House as the peak of the triangle. The Pentagon was built in 1943 and aligned to the 23 degree grid set up by L'Enfant in 1791.

---

---

Desperately Seeking R.BruceC.
Who Drew This 1970 Image

---

Site designed and maintained by
Big Bytes