American Exceptionalism--A Different Take

While fundamentalist Christian David Barton and Justice Tony Scalia lecture the new teabaggers on the "real meaning" of the Constitution,it's worth remembering that rising above Alexandria's King Street Metro station is an architectural relic called the Washington Masonic Monument ,which celebrates George Washington's freemasonry and the role the freemasons played in the creation of our country. This is not part of American history you'll hear Barton and Scalia talk about but it does have significance.

Freemasons today believe we are in the age of Lucifer, when religious fundamentalisms of all stripes will try and vanquish reason, science and the eternal wisdoms. Because of freemasons' interest in the wisdom of ancient cultures,one of the countries' where they are prevalent but underground is Iran. Freemasons in the United States have maintained constant contact with their brothers in Iran since the beginning of the Islamic Revolution. Since their creation in the 17th century, they have been directly involved in creating Republican forms of government. Outside of the United States, one of the most famous mason was the great Italian nationalist, Garibaldi.

Freemasonry is generally thought to be atheistic by their enemies but in fact a Freemason swears an oath to "study the hidden secrets of Nature and Science in Order the better to know his Maker." Our own rights are said to be derived from Nature's creator, not the known God of the Judeo-Christian tradition. There was a reson for this. Our Founding Fathers wanted our founding to have universal applicability and not be limited to one or another religious tradition. Key Founding Fathers were freemasons as well as Deists, which sometimes overlapped.

Having learned from the failures of other groups in taking direct, overt action, the freemasons worked behind the scenes politically. The political agenda was to create a tolerant and prosperous society with a degree of social and economic freedom that would give people the chance to explore both the inner and outer cosmos.

It's not hard to understand the long-term, traumatic effects of the Holocaust both on the Jewish consciousness and on Western Europe. The Thirty Years War laid waste to Central Europe and claimed a number of religious victims rivalling the Holocaust. So it's not hard to understand that these religious wars spurred the growth of people trying to escape religion's strangehold on political entities. And people who retained the memories of religious conflicts and wanted to create a country with the separation of Church and State. No, our Founding Fathers really did not want to create a Christian nation. The European past was still burned in their memories.

The Scottish and English Freemasons worked in England to support a constitutional monarchy working with a democratic parliament. In America, they did something completely different.

For fans of the Teaparty, on 16 December 1773 a group of men dressed as Indians dumped British tea into the Boston harbor and inspired the American Revolution. After they dumped the tea, they hurried back inside St. Andrews Masonic Lodge. Fellow mason Ben Franklin thought the whole idea ridiculous.

The following year Benjamin Franklin met Thomas Paine in a masonic lodge in London and urged him to emigrate to America. Paine, one of Glenn beck's favorites,actually coined the phrase,"the United States of America". While advocating the creation of a federation of states, he also urged the abolition of slavery and state funding for the education of the poor. Considered as atheist as a Deist, Paine wrote the Age of Reason, where he lampooned Christianity and religion. It would be hard to imagine him writing the book today--in the American embassy in Paris. But for Glenn Beck, Paine really did like to quote Isaiah.

According to masonic lore, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington consulted one of the "Hidden Masters" who directs history on the design of the American flag. The use of the five-pointed star on the flag was meant to echo the symbols on the ceiling of a chamber in the Egyptian pyramid of Unas.

For reasons of full disclosure,my grandfather McColm was a 32nd Degree Mason and his den was filled with Egyptian texts and artifacts. I still have his prized copy of the Book of the Dead. This obsession with ancient Egypt is not unusual or strange among masons because they are searching for the secrets of ancient science. This science also includes astrology.

You don't have to be Dan Brown to get into all the Masonic elements in the layout of Washington,D.C.

On the doors of the Capitol Building there is a depiction of a Masonic ceremony that took place in 1793, when George Washington laid the cornerstone. Washington had a horoscope made for the founding of the Capital Building. According to freemasons, the history of humankind is charted by the movement of stars and planets. What Washington was doingwith his Masonic ceremony was inviting the hierachies of heavenly beings to participate in the ceremony. The foundation of the stone occurred when Jupiter was rising in the East. The phrase "Annuit Coeptis", which hovers over the pyramid on the dollar bill is adapted from the line in Virgil's Aeneid--"Jupiter, favor us in our undertaking."

Tony Scalia will like this. The phrase "Novus Ordo Seclorum" on the dollar bill also is adapted from Virgil's Eclogues where he looks forward to a new age, when people will be reunited with the gods so there will be no need for religion. The dollar bill, according to masons,looks forward to the end of the Catholic Church's world domination and the beginning of the new spiritual era.

Washington built his city under the sign of Virgo and as the architectural layout of the city indicates it was meant to welcome Isis, the goddess associated with Virgo. So, according to this formulation, George Washington deliberately built his city to invite the Mother Goddess to participate in the destony of the United States.

So we really are a funky City on the Hill. But you won't hear any of this from our born-again constitutionalists.