The occult masonic layout of Washington, D.C. – Bob Hieronimus – 2013

Who drew up the plans for Washington, D.C.? Whose ideas are behind the layout of this complicated city? Certainly the Freemasons were highly influential in the design of our nation’s capital, but to find out how significant their symbolic choices are, we must study three men in particular: George Washington, Pierre Charles L’Enfant, and Andrew Ellicott – and not all of them were Masons.

David Ovason has written a many great books on this and related subjects, and we highly recommend his 2000 publication, The Secret Architecture of Our Nation’s Capitol: The Masons and the Building of Washington, D.C. In it, you will find that this mysterious city was designed and planned in accordance to the constellation Virgo.

In fact, from its very foundations in 1791, Washington, D.C. was linked with the zodiac, with the meaning of certain stars, and with a hidden cosmological symbolism. The planners were obviously hoping to play on the maxim, “As above, so below,” but which of today’s current residents of our capitol city feels the pull of these symbols as they govern our land?

David Ovason thinks he may have a better angle on the hidden symbolism in our capital city, because he is not American-born. “I think you have to be foreign to the city, and to the country,” he told us on 21^st Century Radio. “I’m not sure an American would be prepared to see the city with sufficient freshness. I came across it because one day, I’d been invited to go to the Capitol building to look at the zodiac.”

Ovason is a teacher of astrology, and has spent more than a decade researching the architecture and zodiacs of Washington, D.C. He has also spent 40 years studying the life and prophecies of Nostradamus. He lives in England and Washington, which he says is called the City of the Stars, in part because it has such a multitude of zodiacs in one small place. There are over twenty zodiacs in the center of Washington, D.C.

No other city in the world has so many zodiacs: London has four; Oxford, England has one; Boston has three; and New York has only two. But indeed, as Ovason notes, when we say that the District of Columbia has twenty zodiacs, “We are being very cautious in this estimate, because, actually, you can count 35 or 36.”

For example, one of the zodiacs actually consists of a building in which there are seven floors, and the ceilings of each of these floors have no fewer than three zodiacs in (each), so you already have 21 zodiacs there. This is in one of the annexes to the Capitol building.

“It is quite extraordinary that there are so many in Washington, D.C., and the oldest is actually in the Capitol building. It was put there in 1819 by Carlo Franzoni, who had come over from Italy to sculpt for the Capitol. The most recent is the Albert Einstein zodiac, where there’s a figure of Albert Einstein carved by Robert Berks, and that zodiac is a horoscope cast for the 22^nd of April 1979, the day on which the statue was dedicated.”

Ovason goes on to describe how the zodiac at the Capitol building first inspired him to realize there was astrological significance in the street layout and the architecture all over the city. “After working on the Library of Congress zodiac for maybe a week or so, I discovered a direct orientation; that is, a sighting line from the center of the zodiac in the main hall through one of the doorways where there is a second zodiac, right through past the Capitol building to the west of the building, where there is yet a third zodiac, and these three zodiacs were in a line. That was actually the first thing that tipped me off into realizing that there were, shall we say, secrets in Washington, D.C.”

Cutting right to the chase, Ovason concludes that on the evenings between August 10 and 12^th of each year, we experience a reconfirmation of a connection with the stars that was established at the foundation of the city of Washington. On that evening, after dusk has settled over the sunset (as seen down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol building), the three stars of Regulus, Spica, and Arcturus surround the constellation of Virgo that hangs in the skies above the Federal Triangle.

The Federal Triangle is a smaller version of the L’Enfant Triangle, which includes the White House, the Capitol building, the Washington Monument, and a number of other buildings. This August sunset display is as theatrical as the achievements of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and intimately connects us with secret beliefs regarding the destiny of the United States. It is Ovason’s belief that Washington, D.C. was built as a city of the stars, a spiritual and creative city overlooked by angels.

Ovason says the secret part of his book title is probably a misnomer, however. He doesn’t think the designers necessarily intended their astronomical and astrological correlations to their designs to remain a secret. “I think possibly what they had done was forgotten quite early,” he says, “in the various infightings in the history of Washington, D.C. I don’t have to tell you, the Capitol itself is a center of infighting. I think (the design correlations) have just been lying there, waiting for someone like myself to come along with a sort of specialist’s insight, in order to see what was there. I doubt very much that it was actually hidden.”

As noted, in the planning of Washington, D.C., there are at least three major contributors. There is no doubt whatsoever that the city was George Washington’s brainchild, and as the extremely intelligent and astute man he was, he had the genius to choose the two people who would be best able to serve his purposes. As Ovason explained, the designing of the city was put into the hands of Andrew Ellicott, a surveyor and astronomer, and Pierre Charles L’Enfant, who represented himself as being a designer. While L’Enfant has received much of the credit for designing the city, it was Ellicott who did most of the groundwork.

It was Ellicott who made the adjustments to the various lines in the city, in order to reflect the orientation to the stars. Ellicott is from the family that Ellicott City in Maryland is named after. He was born in that area, in 1754, to a very well-placed family in terms of social graces. He had worked as a surveyor, and had already surveyed the boundaries of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. He was the first to measure the Niagara from lake to lake, so he had tremendous experience when he was invited to start laying out the capital city in 1791.

What is still unproved, however, is whether he was the one responsible for emphasizing the role of Virgo. “Ellicott was a very learned astronomer, who knew a great deal about the stars and the orientation of the stars,” notes Ovason, “and he even built his own instruments in order to perfect the study of orientations. So, if there was anyone around at the time who knew about the stars, it was Andrew Ellicott. But I still cannot prove my point that it was he who had this profound wisdom. which is even now living in Washington, D.C.”

The founding of the city of Washington, D.C. took place at 3:30 p.m. on April 15, 1791. What does the founding of the capital city have to do with Virgo? “Everything!” says Ovason. “At the moment of the foundation, the planet Jupiter, which is the most beneficial planet in the skies, began to rise over the Eastern horizon, within 23 degrees of Virgo. Then, when the White House was founded in October, 1792, the foundation stone was laid at the time when the moon and the dragon’s head were in exactly the same degree of Virgo: 23 degrees.”

When the Capitol was founded on the 18^th of September, 1793, the sun was in 23 degrees of Virgo. As the day grew on, it went into 24 degrees, but there was a reason the people who were arranging these spiritual influences to influence Washington, D.C. allowed the day to, shall we say, drag on. It was because the newly discovered planet Uranus (which in those days was called “Georgium Sidus” – the Georgian star, named after the detestable George III) was exactly on a fixed star called Regulus, which is one of the stars which we now regard as being important in Washington, D.C.

According to Ovason, “The ceremony was enacted in such a way that Georgium Sidus began to set, and was therefore going west. The King was being sent west, in order to allow the American nation to be free of his influence. So the magical thing about the founding of the city, the White House, and the Capitol is that they’re all tied together by this 23 degrees of Virgo.”

The arcane secrets of D.C. are also deeply connected with the simple geometric form of a triangle. A quick glance at any map of the city will reveal triangles abounding, and master Mason Pierre L’Enfant had great input into this. The triangle is used to show a power of three.

As Ovason said, “The triangle is the tri-part man: the thinking, feeling, and willing within the human being. But in the outer cosmos, it’s also the three hidden natures: the secret natures of sulfur, mercury, and salt. And the interactions of these three, whether they be within man or outside man in the elemental nature, are the root of all created matter, vivified by the Trinity which, of course, is the Godhead.”

The triangle is so obviously imprinted upon the map of the city that it is identified by name. D.C. Metro riders might think Federal Triangle is just the name of one of their popular stops and be completely unaware that they are traveling along the hypotenuse of a triangle placed there, by a Mason, to echo a celestial triangle in Virgo.

As Ovason says in his book, “It is almost as though L’Enfant laid upon his virgin parchment the Masonic square as symbol of the spirit of George Washington, and dedicated its three points to the founder of the nation.” The principal triangle visualized by L’Enfant was the one that may still be traced between the three most important architectural structures on his plan: the Capitol, the White House, and the Washington Monument.

In the early map of the city, these three points formed a right-angled triangle with the 90-degree angle on the monument, and the hypotenuse running down Pennsylvania Avenue, joining the White House with the Capitol. The longest edge of the triangle runs down the center of the Mall.

The three architectural structures that constituted the genius of L’Enfant’s plan have been erected in more or less the same position he suggested in 1791. So fundamental is the idea of a triangle to the map of Washington, D.C. that in this present century, L’Enfant’s original triangular block has been condensed. It retains the hypotenuse of Pennsylvania Avenue, but has pulled in the right-angled triangle formed by the Mall with 15^th Street, to make a smaller triangle appropriately named the “Federal Triangle.”

The connection to Virgo comes about when you realize that the L’Enfant triangle is almost the same as a right-angle triangle that may be traced in the skies around the constellation Virgo. The constellation of Virgo is encased in a stellar triangle traced between the three first magnitude stars, Regulus, Spica, and Arcturus (popularly known as the summer triangle).

The stars of the Virgoan Triangle correspond with the L’Enfant triad, as follows: Arcturus falls on the White House, Regulus falls on the Capitol, and Spica falls on the Washington Monument. The White House star is Arcturus, a golden yellow star that the Greeks called the “Bear Watcher,” and the Arabs “Al Simak,” the “one raised on high.” It is a guardian star.

It is also a beneficial star that confers high renown and prosperity. Just as the White House was the first of the three to be founded, so Arcturus is said to be among the first stars to be named. The Capitol star is Regulus. As the Latin name (“Little King,” or “ruler of a small kingdom”) suggests, it is ambitious of power and command. It has lofty ideals and a developed sense of independence.

The Washington Memorial star is Spica. This is the most powerful star in the constellation Virgo. It gives renown and advancement. In the star maps, it represents the wheat ear held by Virgo; it also represents the largesse of nature, and its germinal power. Spica promises future growth, nourishment and wealth – the very things that George Washington bestowed upon the people of America.

In terms of the stellar mythology, then, we can see that the symbolic relationship between the three is that Arcturus keeps its watchful eye on autocratic Regulus, while, in turn, the largesse of Spica will vivify and nourish both. Although there is a limit to the application of such stellar mythologies to city planning, it is clear that the three stars typify, almost archetypally, the function of the three material equivalents found in the earth of Washington D.C.

If you want to see for yourself this stunning alignment in action, plan your next visit to D.C. on August 10^th. Then follow these directions from David Ovason: Stand on the western steps, the topmost platform of the Capitol building, and look towards the sunset between the 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th of August. You will see the sun set directly down the line of Pennsylvania Avenue, which of course lies directly in front of you, virtually as a vertical, and at the top is the White House.

As Ovason explains: “So you have this single line, and the sun appears to set over the edge of this line in the west. After the sun has set, the stars eventually come out, and the first thing you will see when the stars have come out are three very bright stars. The one nearest to the White House is Regulus, the one above is Spica, which is in Virgo, and the one above that is Arcturus. This triangle is a right-angle triangle, and it is hovering precisely over the right-angle triangle that we call the Federal Triangle. So at this moment, the earth and the skies reflect each other.”

“As above, so below,” indeed.

Published with the permission of New Saucerian Publishing via Andrew Colvin