What's to say about Washington DC? What have I written before - surely I've scribbled some words about the capital over almost 10 years of blogging?
There's this snippet from a mixed bag blog post, but the link therein is no longer live.
On the same broad topic, there's a book on sale at Amazon, The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital: The Masons and the Building of Washington, D.C, by by David OvasonA fascinating piece and super photographs by Michael Simpson, describes how Freemasonry and astrology were involved in the building of Washington DC. Their input can be traced, easily. : Esoteric & Masonic Symbolism In Washington D.C.
In the publicity blurb for the book:
Today, there are more than twenty complete zodiacs in Washington, D.C., each one pointing to an extraordinary mystery. David Ovason, who has studied these astrological devices for ten years, now reveals why they have been placed in such abundance in the center of our nation's capital and explains their interconnections. His richly illustrated text tells the story of how Washington, from its foundation in 1791, was linked with the zodiac, with the meaning of certain stars, and with a hidden cosmological symbolism that he uncovers here for the first time.
Fascinating and thoroughly researched, The Secret Architecture of Our Nation 's Capital is an engrossing book that raises provocative questions and otters complex insights into the meanings behind the mysterious symbols in Washington.
The same mixed-bag blog post mentioned above has this too, on ever mysterious Freemasonry:
From Thomas Paine's essay on The Origins of Free-Masonry published in New York, 1818:
Masonry (as I shall show from the customs, ceremonies, hieroglyphics, and chronology of Masonry) is derived and is the remains of the religion of the ancient Druids; who, like the Magi of Persia and the Priests of Heliopolis in Egypt, were Priests of the Sun. They paid worship to this great luminary, as the great visible agent of a great invisible first cause whom they styled " Time without limits."
.........In Masonry many of the ceremonies of the Druids are preserved in their original state, at least without any parody. With them the Sun is still the Sun; and his image, in the form of the sun is the great emblematical ornament of Masonic Lodges and Masonic dresses..............Free Masons Hall, in Great Queen-street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, is a magnificent building, and cost upwards of 12,000 pounds sterling. Smith, in speaking of this building, says (page 152,) "The roof of this magnificent Hall is in all probability the highest piece of finished architecture in Europe. In the center of this roof, a most resplendent Sun is represented in burnished gold, surrounded with the twelve signs of the Zodiac, with their respective characters........................ The Masons, in order to protect themselves from the persecution of the Christian church, have always spoken in a mystical manner of the figure of the Sun in their Lodges, or, like the astronomer Lalande, who is a Mason, been silent upon the subject.
None of which relates to today's voting in DC. I hope Bernie comes away from the season's last primary with some additional delegates to add to his haul, to add weight to his declared intention of trying to effect changes in the Democrats' platform and general agenda at the Convention in July.
There's this, rather more relevant to today's voting, it's from a 2013 post:
Washington DC has been described as a city of dichotomies:
Washington was a city of dichotomies, contrasts, and striking inequalities. It was the capital of a major democracy that lacked local democracy. It was a citadel of power whose residents lacked power. It was a city with an excess of multimillion dollar office buildings and a shortage of housing. It was a city that was wealthier than most in which a sizable minority lives in great poverty. It had a 70 percent black population but the major decisions were still made by whites. It was a city in which the American dream and the American tragedy passed each other on the street and did not speak. It was, finally, a city that had suffered a form of deprivation known primarily to the poor and the imprisoned, a psychological deprivation born of the constant suppression and denial of one's identity, worth, or purpose by those in control. Washington to those in power was not a place but a hall to rent. The people of Washington were the custodian staff. And the renters were as likely to visit the world in which this staff lived as a parishioner is to inspect the boiler room of the church. The purpose of Washington's community was to serve not to be.
POCKET PARADIGMS
FROM THE WRITINGS OF SAM SMITH.
