Vincent Bridges

By Vincent Bridges (02/20/03)

Part Four - 23 Skidoo and Kick out the JAMs: The Illuminati Elves at work and play…

I first heard about the illuminati elves in the pages of Dr. John Lilly’s Center of the Cyclone, page 231 in fact. Lilly has the entertaining idea that the various contacts with higher, or just different, intelligences found in religion and occultism can be explained as contact with time travellers from the distant future who work as agents of what Lilly calls Cosmic Coincidence Control Center. These agents, “the elves,” create a network of synchronicity that acts as a thermostatic regulator on human consciousness and its evolution.

Here’s how Lilly puts it on page 231: “Such a network exists and functions‚Ķ throughout this planet. I suspect it extends farther than our earth, but this has yet to be publicly demonstrated unequivocally beyond the private experience of myself and others.” Indeed, coming from the man the New York Times described as “a walking one-man syllabus of Western civilization” we might consider his comments as authoritative.

And the “elves” seem to have been at work on Lilly’s book as well, hence that page 231 synchronicity. This number of course can be turned into a date, January 23rd. Which is another 23, and a pointer toward Columbia’s, both as a faux goddess and as a space shuttle, moment of maximum danger. So what is so special about the number 23?
First off, it seems to be an intuitive trigger of some sort related directly to our DNA. We receive 23 chromosomes from each parent to create the embryo of what we will become, and within our DNA itself, there is an unexplained bonding irregularity, a sort of stutter in the code, every 23rd angstrom in a DNA chain. This is not news to the Kabbalist, who has already figured out that 23 is the numerical value of such Hebrew words as “parting, removal, separation,” “joy,” “a thread,” and “life,” all of which point to sexuality and DNA.

There is also that arcane piece of argot from the turn of the century - 19th to 20th that is - “23 skidoo” the origins of which are shrouded in mystery. Aleister Crowley, a supposed illuminati himself, entitled the 23rd chapter of his classic Book of Lies “23 skidoo” and revealed that the secret was “get out.” This has led some wags to speculate that the final secret of the Illuminati is that you don’t realize you are in until it is too late to GET OUT. 23 skidoo‚Ķ

There are 23 axioms in Euclid’s geometry, and 23 percent of the universe is “dark matter.” In telegrapher’s code, 23 means “break the line,” while in the I Ching hexagram 23 is called Breaking Apart. I could go on and on, once you start looking for 23s you begin to find them everywhere. One of the best books in which to look for 23 synchronicities is Arthur Koestler’s Challenge of Chance. Perhaps the best way to think of it is as a symbol for what some physicists have called QUIP, or the quantum inseparability principle, a theory that holds that every particle affects every other particle in the universe.

And what of January 23rd? The calendar of the Catholic Church informs us that January 23rd is the wedding night of Mary and Joseph, a supposedly uneventful evening according to doctrine. But what if it wasn’t so uneventful? Nine months later would give us a birth date for Jesus of October 23rd coincidentally the date Columbia was unveiled for the public in 1862. This birth date also fits in well with the story of the Magi found in Mathew’s Gospel. It would certainly have taken them several months to travel from the Turkish highlands of central Asia to Palestine in time for the January 6th Epiphany.

To the early Church, the Feast of the Epiphany, which marked the arrival of the Magi, the marriage at Cana and the baptism of Jesus by John, and the appearance of another “dove,” was much more important than Jesus’ nativity. For some sections of the Christian community, such as the Cathars, the Epiphany was the most significant moment in the church calendar. Some obscure secret seemed to hide behind the juxtaposition of these three events, a secret that threatened to change the very concept of Christianity as taught by the official church.

There is no Biblical basis for a nativity feast and what Gospel evidence there is suggests Jesus was born in the late fall, as noted above. The early church had no traditions or celebrations of the nativity until the 3rd century, it didn’t become common until the 4th century and it wasn’t until the 5th century that it officially became December 25th, which was chosen for reasons of religious politics not any sense of spiritual or historical correctness. The act of saying a mass in honour of Jesus’ birth, hence Christ’s mass or Christmas, on the birthday of his most powerful pagan rival, Mithra, is plainly and simply an attempt to absorb and redirect the rival cult’s followers, in effect saying that Christ is more powerful than Mithra because he supersedes him. It also undercuts the importance of the Epiphany, including the Magi as an afterthought to the nativity instead of as the central focus of the story.

The calendar adjustment in the 18th century also helped confuse matters. Adding 11 days meant that Christmas was now January 5th and 12th Night, or the Feast of the Epiphany was now January 17th (and coincidentally, the date the Declaration of Independence was submitted for ratification by the Continental Congress). Most organizations within the church ignored the shift and celebrated the festivals on the same old days, but there were some who found this juxtaposition of the Epiphany and the traditional Feast of St Anthony, the saint already associated with January 17th very appealing. One of those groups was the Catharist neo-Templars of Johann Augustus Starck, Weishaupt’s initiator into the mysteries.

This has led in modern times to another group of Merry Pranksters, the so-called Priory of Sion, seizing upon this and various medieval mysteries such as the treasure of Gisors and Rennes-le-Chateau to make public the very secret connections most prized and carefully hidden by Starck’s Catharist Neo-Templars. A cottage industry has grown up around these matters, without anyone realizing its illuminationist sources. Key events in this mythos that happened on January 17th include the Satanist takeover of the Catholic Church in 1377, King Rene’s birthday in 1408 and Flamel’s successful transmutation in 1387, as well as various events in and around Rennes-le-Chateau.

Note that January 17th, the feast of St. Anthony and the New Style date of the Epiphany, is only five nights away from January 22nd/23rd, the eve of Joseph and Mary’s wedding night. In this one coincidence, we find a cluster of very revealing synchronistic clues. There is a sexual component in both the marriage at Cana and the Holy Couple’s wedding night, as well as John the Baptist’s acknowledgement of Jesus as his son during the Baptism. The visit of the Magi is a symbol of the larger spiritual current and a nod to the original illuminated ones. And tying it all together is the number five, which, as the union of the first masculine number, 2, and the first feminine number, 3, represents growth and sexuality in all its forms. In Tantric practices, 23 is the number of days in the male hormonal cycle, which is of course five less than the feminine cycle of 28 days.

That gives us an illuminated goddess of freedom purposefully tied into a complex of number synchronicities that suggests the true secret of illumination is somehow sexual, and both the secret and the illumination behind it are connected to an alternative view of Christianity. Columbia was first unveiled on 10/23/1862, which as I noted above is 10 + 23 = 33 and 1+8+6+2 = 17. Added together again they are 17 + 33 = 50; also 3 + 3 = 6 and 1 + 7 = 8, 8 + 6 = 14, and 1 + 4 =5. If we take the 23 from the date, then 10 goes into 50 five times. This gives us both our link to the masons, 33, and also 5, 17 and 23, our master numbers of the illuminati elves. The installation date, 12/2/1863 also yields the key numbers, 12 + 2 = 14, 1 + 8 + 6 + 3 = 18 and 1 + 8 = 9. Added together again, 14 + 9 = 23. (Also, 12 + 2 +1863 = 1877, which added together is also 23/5. The same can be done for 10/23/1862; 33 + 1862 = 1895, which adds across to 23/5.) Note that while both dates have prominent 5/23 connections, only the unveiling date has the hidden 17.

Before we get to that hidden 17, the starting point of this labyrinth of synchronicity, I must, in the interest of full disclosure, admit that since my birthday is 5/23/1952, I am sort of the Illuminati poster child in terms of the key numbers. I was informed of this at a pagan gathering several decades ago by a beautiful red-headed witch who took one look at the numerology of my birth date and wanted to know: Who I was kidding? First I say my name is Vincent Bridges, an obvious put-on, and then I give her a birthday that reeks of the illuminati; what am I, some kind of wise guy?

I explained that it was indeed both my real name and my real birthday, and she explained to me about the secret of 23, the five ages of Illuminated history and how everyone born in 1952 (1 + 9 + 5 + 2 = 17) had the hidden 17 that was the mark of the Discordians, a bunch of jokers who were apparently in a kind of time war with the forces of the Illuminati. If I wasn’t kidding her, then anytime anyone who was in the know heard my name and my birthday they would know that I was the one who would conquer the bridges between all the different factions of the Illuminati. Later, back at her tent, she asked if I was the reincarnation of Adam Weishaupt. To really mess with her mind, I replied: No, I’m the reincarnation of Aleister Crowley‚Ķ 23 skidoo‚Ķ

But to return to the hidden 17‚Ķ Remember that Nostradamus spaced his two comet quatrains, II/46 and II/62, 17 quatrains apart, inclusive. And the one moment in the flight of the Columbia that could be completely planned, assuming the launch went off on time, was the moment of orbital insertion, just after midnight GMT on January 17th, 2003. The astrology of this moment matches, with eerie exactness and prophetic consequences, the moment of Columbia’s ceremonial installation on the Capitol Dome in 1863. Coincidence? Perhaps not‚Ķ

When we take 1/17/2003 apart in the same manner as the other dates we find something truly curious. Not only is the year directly a 23, less the 0s in 2003, but 2 + 3 = 5, and 1 + 17 = 18, 5 + 18 = 23, or 2 + 3 = 5. Only years that add to five can change, or bridge, the 17 into a 23, such as 1904, 1 + 9 + 4 = 14 = 5. Also 1913, 1922, 1931, and 1940 add to five, as do 1967 and 1976, 1958 and 1985, and 1949 and 1994 as 23s, which then also reduces to a five. On each of these eleven years, January 17th transforms into a 23/5. Other years that add up to 17 are 1907, 1916, 1925, 1934, 1943, 1952, 1961, 1970, and on these eight years January 17th transforms into 17, or an eight as the sum of 1 + 7, the next number in the Fibbonacci series of 2, 3, 5, 8 which generates approximations of phi, the golden ratio.

In the Tarot, Trump number 17 is The Star, traditionally attributed to the Hebrew Letter Tsadi and the zodical symbol Aquarius, which makes it very appropriate for a goddess like Columbia, who after all has such a significant ascendant in Aquarius, and the space shuttle Columbia, dying as a flaming star in the month of Aquarius. Therefore, it is easy to see Nostradamus’ hidden 17 as a clear indicator of the Star, the comet of the shuttle Columbia, the star in the morning sky that heralds the coming Final Crusade with the Islamic world.

However, to understand that most closely guarded secret of the Justified Ancients of Mammu, the JAMs behind the Illuminati, we must turn to that quintessentially Victorian bad boy, Aleister Crowley. Get ready to kick out the JAMs before we all 23 skidoo…

By Vincent Bridges (02/20/03)

Part Two

The unique creation, strange life and sudden death of the goddess Columbia

Almost from the moment the New World was discovered, it was seen in mythological terms as an exotic goddess, an Indian Queen dressed in feathers and furs ridding an exotic beast like an armadillo and armed with a tomahawk. She summed up the desires of the 16th and 17th century European conquerors for adventure and strangeness, and of course, freedom and eroticism unavailable at home. The wealth and power created by the conquest of this New World Goddess would first enrich the Old World and then turn it upside down, generating a series of world conflicts, beginning in the mid 18th century, that continues in the confrontations of today.

The Catholic south adapted the idea of the Goddess of the New World into the ever-expanding hagiology of the Catholic Church. The Virgin of Guadalupe allowed the archetype to become personal, a connection to the land and its ancestors, while joining a larger universalist vision inside the Church. In the largely Protestant north, things went quite differently.

The 17th century’s Indian Goddess became a tamer Indian Princess, modelled on the archetypal story of Pocahontas. This version, while remaining exotic, was accessible and nubile, open to the embraces of the conqueror. As the 18th century passed, and America grew more developed and its people more educated, the Indian princess gained a touch of Greek elegance. “By the late 1790s,” folk-art historian Nancy Jo Fox comments, “it was not clear whether a feathered Indian Princess had changed into a Greek goddess or whether a Greek goddess had placed feathers or plumes in her hair.”

This transformation coincided with the revolution in America. As a new kind of society in the New World struggled for its life against the power of the Old World, a new archetypal goddess figure emerged in the American collective unconscious. This transformation was guided and shaped by the esoteric awareness shared by the core group of the Founding Fathers. The occult history of the American Revolution has yet to be written, but there was indeed a preponderance of “Masons” involved on both sides of the conflict. Washington, Lafayette and Cornwallis for instance all belonged to the same regimental Masonic lodge.

These esoterically minded Founding Fathers saw “America” as a kind of magical future for the human race, when the archetypes that had in the past been mediated by King and Church would be democratically available to all citizens. This would in fact create, if successful, a kind of psychic protection against “tyranny.” No king or demagogue could grab the symbolic current of a freely archetypal democracy and make it subservient to his will. Or so they thought‚Ķ

The archetype of a new goddess of liberty first emerged in relation to George Washington. In 1775, Phyllis Wheatley, a slave in New England, wrote a poem praising George Washington as a true son of the goddess of Freedom. In the early years of the revolution, this Lady Liberty meshed with the Indian Princess and the Greek goddess Athena, patron of the classical models of democracy such as the city-state of Athens to become, in the poetry of Phillip Freneau, the synthomorphic goddess Columbia.

Even the name suggests a shape shifting, gender morphing, blend of classical erudition and Green Language pun play. We start with a feminisation of Christopher Columbus, the “Christ bearing dove” in Latin, which emphasises the “dove” aspect of the name of the so-called discoverer of the New World. Doves in the ancient world had complex symbolic associations conveying layers of meaning lost in the common Christian symbols of the white dove of peace or innocence, or as a symbol of the Holy Spirit. All the great goddesses of antiquity, Aphrodite, Astarte, Ishtar, Cybele, Isis, Esther, Mari, and, in Christian times, Mary, had doves associated with them. In Mary’s case, her encounter with the dove had all the sexual implications associated with the former “dove” goddess, Aphrodite. Therefore, the “Christ bearing dove” is actually Mary herself, and hence, esoterically, Columbia.

This new image of the goddess Liberty struck a responsive chord in the collective unconsciousness, both in America and in Europe. France would eventually reply with her own version of the new goddess, monumentally mounted in New York Harbour as the Statue of Liberty, with smaller versions in Manhattan and Paris. This Liberty has a torch, a stone tablet and a halo of sun spikes echoing the Apollonian Colossus of Rhodes that inspired it. It is a very classical Liberty, with few attributes specific to the New World.

But the American view of Lady Freedom, the new goddess Columbia, retained a more deliberate kind of synthetic form. The ideas that animated Columbia can be seen in her attributes, that is the objects or symbols that are displayed with her. She is most often shown with an eagle, broken chains and pottery, a cornucopia, images of George Washington, a laurel wreath, a liberty pole and cap, a liberty tree, an olive branch, a rattlesnake, a shield and a stone tablet. The statue of Columbia that used to stand behind the speaker’s chair in the House of Representatives is a fine example. In this one we see the Eagle, and on the other side a snake coiled around a Greek column.

By the 1850s, the archetype of Lady Freedom, the synthetic goddess Columbia, had come to represent America itself. As the designs were finalized for the new dome of the Capitol Building, the new temple of democracy, the architect, Thomas U. Walker, included a monumental statue of the goddess Columbia to cap the dome. Thomas Crawford, a classically trained American sculptor living in Italy, submitted a design for “Freedom triumphant in War and Peace” which, after modification by then Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, was accepted. Crawford’s original design included a Phyrgian cap worn by freed Roman slaves, and the very idea of freed slaves was hard for Davis to swallow. Crawford changed it to a Roman helmet, crested with eagle feathers, thereby retaining some of the original native flavour of the Indian Goddess.

A full size plaster model was finished just before Crawford died in 1857. The model’s subsequent adventures before arriving in Washington are nothing short of miraculous, surviving shipwrecks and other disasters. Work on the casting of the statue began as the United States lurched unevenly toward civil war. Halted in 1861 as war erupted, the casting was completed by late 1862. Work on the Capitol Dome was finished enough to allow its erection on top of the dome to be symbolically completed at precisely 12 noon on December 2nd, 1863.

A quick glance at the astrology of that moment in time explains why it was so carefully chosen and orchestrated. At that moment, a grand square is formed of the Moon, the North and South Moon nodes and the ascendant, all falling on the proper kerubic signs to form the cube of space of the galactic alignment, the cusps of Aquarius/Pisces, Leo/Virgo, Sagittarius/ Scorpio, and Gemini/Taurus, and highlighting, with the head and tail of the dragon, the Moon nodes, the dragon axis of the galaxy. Overlaid on this is a grand trine of Venus, Uranus and the ascendant.

This strange arrow shaped telelscoping of seven points into six is echoed in the odd shape of the neo-Roman headdress on the statue, and at noon on December 2nd 1862, as the head was being bolted in place facing east toward the ascendant horizon, this shape was mirrored in the stars. To the east lay the rising cusp of Aquarius/Pisces, symbol of the new age, the new aeon. Above, at its zenith, was the Sun, conjunct with Mercury, combining power with wisdom. Behind to the west was the waning Moon, just on the horizon at the cusp of Leo/Virgo. And just in case we didn’t completely understand the metaphor, the rising horizon of the new age, the ascendant, is tied in to the trine of Venus and Uranus, saying that this moment is the dawn of the goddess, Venus, of the new age, Uranus, discovered in 1782 just as the Revolution in America was won.

This synchronicity could hardly have been an accident, yet who could have planned it, and who chose the exact time, is lost in the bureaucratic mists of time. Keep it in mind though, because it is a strangely synchronous symbolic code for the moment in time when Columbia would begin to awaken… and perhaps a clue to the moment of her sacrificial destruction.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Columbia became more of an icon than an archetype; her form graced everything from political cartoons to flatware. As late as the 1940s, Columbia was still a viable symbol of America, used on coins and in official art. In the post-war world however, it was Columbia’s eagle that faced down the Communist bear and won both the space race (”The Eagle has landed‚Ķ”) and the Cold War, while Columbia herself became ever more remote and removed from the world.

This was symbolized in 1981 when the first of the new fleet of reusable space shuttles was christened “Columbia.” The goddess of Freedom, “triumphant in peace and war,” became the new symbol of our military and commercial exploitation of space. The Newer World was out there, in space, just waiting for a new generation of conquistadors to discover it. Columbia, as a symbol, had come full circle.

The space shuttle Columbia performed flawlessly, flying the first five missions and alternating thereafter with the newer craft as they came on line. She was on her 28th flight when she exploded, completing as it were a moon cycle of missions, remaining a goddess to the very end.

But, a few months before her fiery end over Texas, the goddess had begun to awaken, at least on an astral level…

Over the fall equinox of 2002, Fulcanelli’s mid point of the season of the catastrophe and Nostradamus’ turning of the great motor of the centuries, a mystic by the name of Steve Prellwitz had an encounter with the newly awakened goddess Columbia. Mr. Prellwitz, whose work can only be found in the most obscure lacunae of the Internet, is completely sincere and apparently honest in his reporting of his experiences.

Here’s his encounter with the goddess:

“Who is She?” I spoke out loud to my other self.

COLUMBIA, came the reply.

This suddenly made complete sense to me, as I remembered that the city of Washington DC was in fact constructed as an energy grid designed to give birth to the sleeping Goddess, Columbia, who was to be the new consciousness of the Earth itself.

“So that was the whole point of the Djed Ceremony?” I asked. “To awaken Columbia?” [The Djed Ceremony was the Equinox Event, see http://vincentbridges.com/RaisingtheDjed.htm)

YES. IT IS OUR DESTINY TO DO SO.

I came to the bottom of the steps and found myself in a large circular chamber. The floor was a huge map of the stars, laid out to express the galactic center alignment now occurring. The light within the torch was now blazing like a star, and the third frequency of my perceptions was filling almost all of my mind’s eye.

THE VIRGO CLUSTER, my voice within the light said. STAND OVER IT.
Even though I was not exactly clear on where that would be, the torch seemed to be pulling me to the right spot.

INVOKE THE GODDESS.

Again I was fed the strange words of an unknown tongue. As I spoke them the figure of a beautiful naked woman appeared on the floor next to me. She had long blonde hair, which seemed to glow of if it were really made of light.
CALL HER NAME.

“Columbia!” I said forcefully. As I spoke, that weird third level of my awareness ceased, faded away, and she opened her magnificent blue eyes.

The Goddess rose and stretched, Her bare breasts a sight of perfect beauty too wonderful to describe. Light glowed from Her head, Her pubic region and under Her arms, casting Her form in a soothing aura. As I stood there in awe, She smiled.

“America,” She said in soft, musical voice. Then She came to me and grasped the torch. Her hands closed over my own and we shared a moment of silent communion. Inside the light, my second self seemed more real to me. I was more looking at Steve than looking AS Steve.

Columbia took the torch from me. I made no effort to resist. In the light, the other me knew that it was the right thing to do.

She held it in Her right hand, raising it above Her head. As She did this, a book appeared in her other hand. It was silver and had the year 2002 written on its cover in gold.

“Liberty and light to all,” She said.

Then I heard a tortured, frantic scream from above. Adam Weishaupt fell from the darkness and landed in a confused heap next to us. He writhed on the floor, hissing and spitting, as he metamorphosed into his evil reptilian form, which resembled a velociraptor.

Columbia looked down, as the light from Her torch flowed out and then engulfed him. As She continued to smile the light increased, causing the raptor-thing to squirm even more, fighting for his life against the powers of the awakened Goddess. Then there was a startling explosion as the reptilian creature split from its human host. The soul of President Weishaupt, looking again like his normal form, was separated from the raptor, which melted into a heap of goo.

“Free at last!” he screamed with joy, and turned to Columbia, kneeling at her feet.

“Liberty and light to all,” She repeated.

As the goddess noted to Steve, the fall equinox of 2002, with its galactic cube alignments, acted as the trigger to release the sleeping or imprisoned goddess. Remember, the moment of her binding to the US Capitol dome marked a lunar arrangement of the cube of space, over laid by a Venus/Uranus trine with the ascendant. The fall equinox marked a solar alignment of the cube, thus signalling a transition from passive binding to active engagement. The key feature, astrologically, of the fall equinox was the double grand trine in Air and Fire forming a near perfect hexagram. Between two points of the hexagram, Venus formed a square aspect with Neptune and Jupiter, key planets in the double trine. This reproduces the arrangement at Columbia’s installation, except instead of the ascendant as the central point, signifying a focus on the future, the focus here is on Venus, the goddess herself, signalling an awakening or animation of the archetype.

The ascendant on the fall equinox of 2002 was also important to the Columbia arrangement. The alignment of Moon nodes, head and tail of the dragon, on the ascendant also falls along the galactic axis, but on the fall equinox, the alignments are reversed in both orientation and alignment ‚Äì that is upside down and backwards as if viewed through a refracting globe - from the moment of Columbia’s installation. We can think of this as turning a key in a lock, or reversing the polarity of the flow. The astrology, even in this simplistic way, clearly shows that the moment of the archetype’s activation, its release from bondage, was keyed to a reversal of the energetic pattern of its binding.

But there was a disquieting note. On the fall equinox, Pluto was conjunct the south Moon node in almost the same position the Sun/Mercury conjunction occupied in the installation chart. This sounds a cautionary note; the next Venus/Pluto conjunction on the natal Sun could be very bad for the newly emerging goddess… Such a conjunction occurred on January 23, 2003, one week after the shuttle was launched.
The astrology of the moment the space shuttle Columbia reached orbit, calculated as midnight, January 17th, GMT, also eerily echoed the moment of the monument’s installation. A grand trine of the ascendant, Uranus and Saturn formed, overlaid by the grand square of Sun, Moon, the asteroid Lillith and the ascendant. The major shift from the moment of installation falls in the grand trine. Uranus and Venus trine symbolized the goddess in service to the new age, “novus ordo seclorum,” but Uranus and Saturn trine can be seen as a warning that the karma of the New World Order is about to come due.

And so it does. The astrology for the moment of the space shuttle Columbia’s fiery end shows the signs of disaster when related to the moment of Columbia’s installation. First Mars in fiery Sagittarius falls on the installation’s natal conjunction of Sun, Mid-Heaven and Mercury, directly pointing to a disaster for the symbolic reality of Columbia. From the original grand trine, Venus and Saturn have traded places with Uranus, indicating a sacrificial quickening of karma involving the goddess. And most unsettling of all, Venus had almost passed the conjunction with Pluto, which occurred on the 23rd of January and was linked to Pluto only by their mutual conjunction to the Mid-Heaven. We can perhaps think of this last connection as putting a stop or an end to the transit itself; and also bringing the end of the shuttle Columbia, and perhaps, the archetype from which it was drawn.

Since the instant of the disaster also sported a conjunction of Sun, Moon and Neptune, we can see how it had such a deep and universal impact. Our conscious and unconscious minds are both engaged, and joined at that instant to the mass consciousness of the planet. The destruction of the space shuttle Columbia could not fail to have vast and long reaching consequences on the psyche of humanity. It was foreshadowed in its stars.

Awakening the Goddess Columbia Finale

9/23/02

After taking a breather back in the physical world, I returned to the astral plane. Again I was holding the glowing cosmic torch, while I was simultaneously present AS the light OF the torch.

I made my way to the gates of the Ghost White House. President Adam Weishaupt was waiting for me there. The light within the torch increased its glow, and inside that light, my consciousness continued to expand. I was seeing into dimensions of spacetime that I never knew existed. My awareness was split into three separate sections: Steve holding the torch; the being of light inside the torch; and a third level, now looking into crazy hyperspatial realms consisting of perceptions impossible for me to put into words.

“Come,” the President invited, “the darkness awaits your illumination.”

We walked across the ellipse and into the White House itself. Weishaupt led as I followed, passing through the maze of rooms within until we reached a glowing door made of silver and gold, bearing the same symbols that were inscribed on the torch’s base.

My self within the light told the me holding the torch what to do. Out of my mouth poured words similar to those Joseph Smith had spoken inside the Great Pyramid. I did not consciously know what they meant, but the effect was immediate: the door swung back, revealing the darkness within.

“I cannot enter,” Weishaupt said. “You must go alone.”

I passed through the doorway and found myself at the top of a set of stairs. I descended carefully, proceeding slowly, my mind still being distracted by the increasingly escalating perceptions of that third hyperspatial level. Was I communicating with something on that third frequency?

NO, came a voice that was me-of-the-light. YOU SEE HER DREAMS.

“Who is She?” I spoke out loud to my other self.

COLUMBIA, came the reply.

This suddenly made complete sense to me, as I remembered that the city of Washington DC was in fact constructed as an energy grid designed to give birth to the sleeping Goddess, Columbia, who was to be the new consciousness of the Earth itself.

“So that was the whole point of the Djed Ceremony?” I asked. “To awaken
Columbia?”

YES. IT IS OUR DESTINY TO DO SO.

I came to the bottom of the steps and found myself in a large circular chamber. The floor was a huge map of the stars, laid out to express the galactic center alignment now occuring. The light within the torch was no blazing like a star, and the third frequency of my perceptions was filling almost all of my mind’s eye.

THE VIRGO CLUSTER, my voice within the light said. STAND OVER IT.

Even though I was not exactly clear on where that would be, the torch seemed
to be pulling me to the right spot.

INVOKE THE GODDESS.

Again I was fed the strange words of an unknown tongue. As I spoke them the figure of a beautiful naked woman appeared on the floor next to me. She had long blonde hair, which seemed to glow of if it were really made of light.

CALL HER NAME.

“Columbia!” I said forcefully. As I spoke, that weird third level of my awareness ceased, faded away, and she opened her magnificent blue eyes.

The Goddess rose and stretched, Her bare breasts a sight of perfect beauty too wonderful to describe. Light glowed from Her head, Her pubic region and under Her arms, casting Her form in a soothing aura. As I stood there in awe, She smiled.

“America,” She said in soft, musical voice. Then She came to me and grasped the torch. Her hands closed over my own and we shared a moment of silent communion. Inside the light, my second self seemed more real to me. I was more looking at Steve than looking AS Steve.

Columbia took the torch from me. I made no effort to resist. In the light, the other me knew that it was the right thing to do.

She held it in Her right hand, raising it above Her head. As She did this, a book appeared in her other hand. It was silver and had the year 2002 written on its cover in gold.
“Liberty and light to all,” She said.

Then I heard a tortured, frantic scream from above. Adam Weishaupt fell from the darkness and landed in a confused heap next to us. He writhed on the floor, hissing and spitting, as he metamorphosed into his evil reptilian form, which resembled a velociraptor.

Columbia looked down, as the light from Her torch flowed out and then engulfed him. As She continued to smile the light increased, causing the raptor-thing to squirm even more, fighting for his life against the powers of the awakened Goddess. Then there was a startling explosion as the reptilian creature split from its human host. The soul of President Weishaupt, looking again like his normal form, was separated from the raptor, which melted into a heap of goo.

“Free at last!” he screamed with joy, and turned to Columbia, kneeling at her feet.
“Liberty and light to all,” She repeated.

Within the light of the torch, my other self continued to commune with Her in a way I cannot describe. That other me sent this “Steve” me the following message:

NOW THAT I AM HERE WITH HER I WILL NEVER LEAVE. YOU MUST RETURN TO THE BODY
BUT YOUR SOUL HAS NOW CHANGED. YOU AND I ARE ONE WITH HER AND SO IT SHALL
ALWAYS BE. ALL HAIL ABRAXAS!

The Ghost Capitol’s Illuminating Djed Ceremony

9/23/02

All the spirits of the Ghost Capitol were gathered together around the Washington Monument. Cleopatra and I arrived just as the crowd was coalescing into a large, fifty-person-deep ring around the towering monolith.

“I must move towards the center,” She said to me, “and ready myself for the role I have to play in the ceremony. You can everything easily from out here.”

“Alright, I’ll hang back,” I said, not really wanted to push my way through the crowd anyway. Cleopatra winked at me, then disappeared into the crush of astral forms. Everyone was moving around the monument in a counter-clockwise motion, so I joined in, keeping quiet since I didn’t know any of the spirits closest to me.

“Hello my friend,” came a voice from behind me. I turned around and saw the smiling face of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet. He quickened his step and walked beside me as we continued circling the monument.

“So what exactly is this ceremony all about?” I asked. “I take it that our solar system is coming into a special alignment with the center of the galaxy?” I was trying to remember the details of the event, as I had read about it recently (thank you Vincent!).

“I believe the correct term is the Cube of Space,” Smith replied. “It is an alignment formed once every 13,000 years, in which the Earth, the other bodies in our system, and the edge of the Milky Way, all align with galactic center. This forms the Djed, the seven-stepped ascension ladder of Osiris.”

“So what?” I asked. “Why does that matter?”

“The galaxy is a living organism, and cosmic energies flow through its parts like blood courses through the veins of your body. A major influx of celestial blood is coursing towards us right now, in fact, it has just about arrived. When it does it will change the very substance of reality itself. New information and a new metamorphosis will begin to manifest. This is the beginning of the Apocalypse!”

“I’ve heard that before,” I said dismissively. “What does it really mean to me as an individual? Is Jesus riding in on a white horse? Or perhaps it is Kolob who is on his way…?”

“Hah!” Smith said, slapping me on the back. “You are thinking too literally. Besides, you know should know by now that Kolob is not a person, but a state of being.”

“What state is that?”

“As God was, man is. As God is, man will become,” the Prophet said.

“Thanks,” I shot back sarcastically. “That makes things SOOOOOO much clearer!”

His face lost its humor and became dead serious. He pulled me out of the crowd and over to a small grove, near the fountains I have visited often.

“You need to change your attitude,” the Prophet admonished me. “Look over there.”

He pointed to a large space on the lawn in front of the Washington Monument. The astral air there began to shimmer, and as it did, I could hear female voices singing from within the inner circle of the crowd.

“The Daughters of Isis have begun the Djed invocation,” Smith said ominously. “Behold!”
There was no mistaking the shape appearing there on the lawn: The Great Pyramid of Giza. It quickly finished manifesting as the singing grew louder. The very top of the Pyramid, unfinished here as in real life, was occupied by the glowing All-Seeing Eye of Providence.

“The moment is upon us!” Joseph declared. “In Egypt, upon the ancient Giza plateau, the Sacred Djed has returned!”

The light from the All-Seeing Eye burst forth, one large stream hitting the Washington Monument like a lightning rod. It flowed down the sides of the monolith and then dispersed throughout the crowd.

“Here we go!” Smith shouted as the wave of light came at us.

The energies hit me and I was instantly dissolved within it. My mind spread out like a flower unfolding at an incredible speed. I lost all sense of personal boundaries, my perception exploded, and I joined with everyone else in a kind of communal consciousness. This great unimind reached up towards the stars, carrying me with it as it ascended the path of the Djed alignment. We were one superorganism travelling along at the speed of light- no, faster than that, at the speed of thought itself.

Then time fell apart. As our unimind raced up into the stars, passing out of the solar system along the galactic edge, towards the core of the Milky Way, it seemed like moments along that astral line broke off and came into focus simultaneously. I saw the Earth from orbit, then the rings of Saturn, then the solar system as whole, its disk falling away from us. Several other points out in the midst of the cosmos also lined up in my multiple vision, all of them clear and perceptible at the same time. I felt like an insect, with many eyes looking at many different things at once.

My mind was melting. It was too much. I screamed.

And then it all stopped, and I was IN the galactic core. The sight of it was so mindbending, so beautiful, and so terrifying, that my mind instantly began to dump the information I was perceiving as it came towards me. I could not possibly describe the celestial wonders that I beheld. The sight reduced me to a blubbering idiot and all I could do was stare. The others within the unimind had varying degees of similar shock, though being dead they seemed to be able to handle it much better than I.

After an eternity of this (or so it seemed) the effect was reversed and our collective souls were pulled backwards along the Djed path, falling back to Earth’s little corner of the galaxy.
I was now back on the lawn before the Washington Monument in the Ghost Capitol. But it was not the same. I was alone.

This is when things got REALLY wild. The buildings and monuments began to pulse, coming alive right before me. I could sense a strange set of communications passing between them. This frequency of messages all flowed in one direction: Towards the Great Pyramid. The All-seeing Eye above was collecting them.

I walked over to the Pyramid and was caught in some kind of magnetic pull. My astral form floated along the sides of the structure, until I reached a small hole in its upper part. Then I was sucked into it, down the shaft that led to the King’s Chamber deep inside.

When I arrived in the chamber I was immediately hit with the vision of the galactic core, its awesome celestial weirdness again baffling my mind and sending me into a near-catatonic state.
“Hold the vision in your mind,” I heard a voice- Joseph Smith’s voice- say to me. “Do not flee from it. Embrace the clarity it brings.”

I struggled to do this. As I resisted the urge to run from the sights before me, lines of energy took shape and seemed to enclose the vision. I managed to hold on, though I could feel parts of my psyche melting with the heat of this mindbending spectacle. The strange lines formed a cube, which contained the vision, and then suddenly the cube was sitting before me in the King’s Chamber, and Smith was standing next to it.

“Now, the ceremony is almost complete,” he said, as produced a long torch base, very intricately inlaid with gold and silver symbols. The bottom of the base came to a point, so that the whole piece resembled a horn of some kind. Smith slammed the unlit torch down onto the top of the celestial cube, the point penetrating deep into the top of it.

Next, he spoke a long series of words that I could not even begin to recall, so alien and otherwordly were they. But as he said them, light began to collect in the top of the torch, until there was a glowing ball of illuminating energies.

“Now, take it!” he ordered.

I grasped the torch of light and pulled it free from the cube.

“Your Mistress lit this torch once before,” the Prophet said, “in a life She lived at the climax of the Atlantis-Lemuria War. Illuminati agents have been searching for it ever since. But She was clever, and hid it where they could not look. When I first became Kolob, Cleopatra revealed it to me. I held it in trust for you, safe within the Secret Treasury, until this moment.”

I gazed into the ball of light and died. Yes, I died. My life came to an end and my soul separated from everything it has known in this corporeal form.

My consciousness became one with the light.

“Now you have a task to perform,” said a voice from behind us. It was none other than President Adam Weishaupt. “Meet me in the Ghost White House. As Providence has decreed, the time is now for illumination.”

Then light explode then, and suddenly we were once again before the Washington Monument. The crowd was there, dispersing.

I sat down on the grass, holding the torch before me. Or was I in the light, watching Steve sit there holding my vessel? I could not decide, so I closed my eyes and split off some of my consciousness, returning to the world of flesh for a brief respite from the perceptual intensity and metamorphic wonder of the moment.

D.C. Rev 4: Washington, De Molay, & Columbia

- 10/08/01 - First Encounter

AND SO - continuing with the Revelations I received in my recent trip to DC, this piece will chronicle our visit to Alexandria, Virginia, which took place on Monday.

Now in my visits to the Ghost Capitol I had seen the large towering structure that I assumed to be the Grand Orient Lodge of Egyptian Freemasonry. It resembled the Lighthouse of Alexandria, Egypt, which is something I thought was part of the original design. Once Lyn and I actually arrived there, however, I discovered the old Grand Lodge 22 was rebuilt in the 20th century as the George Washington Masonic National Memorial.

This was the tower I had witnessed the spirits of Cleopatra and Aaron Burr enter. The Memorial does indeed look exactly as I saw, and rests on a hill (chosen because it slopes at a precise 33.33 degree), which features a 33 foot-wide Masonic “G” within the compass and square.

After getting a few photos of me in front of the G and on the front steps, Lyn and I went inside to find ourselves confronted by a huge bronze statue of George Washington flanked by wall-sized murals of the designing and building of the Federal District of Columbia. As soon as we entered an old man appeared, looking barely alive himself, and offered us a free tour. I will describe the rooms of the tour briefly, as more detail will follow when I tell of my return to the place’s astral counterpart later that evening…

The first stop was the Royal Arch Room of Capitular Masonry. It has three walls decorated with murals. On the west wall is a picture of a craftsman presenting his work for inspection. On the end wall is the scene of Moses at the Burning Bush. On the opposite side are pilgrims from Babylon getting their first view of Jerusalem. In between these is a circular panel portraying “the Vault of Discovery”, which shows the Temple of Solomon in ruins (with his buried treasure supposedly beneath the rubble). The east wall shows angels teaching Solomon the Craft. The final wall is not a mural, but a recreation of the Holy of Holies from Solomon’s Temple, wherein a replica of the Ark of the Covenant and the seven-branched menorah are on display. Also in this room are four grottoes that contain coin emblems of all the Masonic lodges throughout North America.

The next stop on the tour, a few floors above, is the Chapel of the Knights Templar, which contains various artefacts from the crusades and features four beautiful stained glass windows, depicting “The Crucifixion”, “The Ascension”, “The Sermon on the Mount”, and “The Healing of the Blind”. Before the Crucifixion window lay a Templar altar, complete with the Red Cross and suit of medieval armour.

Then we emerged from the elevator to find ourselves on the top floor of the tower, in the Tall Cedars of Lebanon Throne Room. This room was as advertised made completely from Lebanese cedar, as Solomon’s original throne room was, and featured a recreation of his throne with seven candlesticks surrounding it and a large pentagram on the floor. Then we were let outside to wander the outer viewing terrace, from which one could see not only all of Alexandria but also Mount Vernon and Washington DC in the distance.

Then we descended in the elevator and found ourselves in the rooms below the main entrance, which contain the gift shop and the George Washington museum, a display depicting his life in a series of cool interactive exhibits. Also on this floor are the original rooms of the Grand Orient Lodge of Egyptian Freemasonry, one of which held a special museum of GW’s personal effects, including his chair, family Bible, and a clock that was stopped at the time of his death. On our way out I bought several items, among them post cards of the various rooms in the tower. One place that was shown but which we hadn’t been allowed to see was enigmatically named “The Cryptic Room”. It had a series of standard murals on its walls, showing scenes from the bible relevant to the masonry mythos. Also there was a strange series of arches, which regressed into the wall up to a weird half-moon-shaped window. About this, the postcard said:

“The nine arches in the Cryptic Room lead to a mural so painted that it can only be seen with black light. It is the only mural in the world of this type and is one of the many marvels in this unique room built by the Royal and Select Masters.”

After this glaring cosmic clue was dropped on me, we decided it was time to leave, and we wandered the streets of Alexandria for the rest of the afternoon, getting lunch in the Old Historic part of the city. It was during the meal that I began to feel the Dead breathing down my neck. In the corner of my eye, occupying my peripheral vision, I saw a gathering of spirits, all men dressed in 18th century Masonic garb, watching me. The crowd faded after we left, but my inner vision was now turned on and I began to experience a weird sort of time slipping. As we walked the avenue that terminates before the huge “G” hill upon which the tower rests, I was simultaneously perceiving the Alexandria of 2001 and the city as it was in the late 1700s: A car racing by suddenly became a horse and carriage; the smell of exhaust changed into that of manure; the concrete sidewalk became a muddy roadside path; and so on.

Finally, the last vision of this kind hit me when I looked at a modern day streetlight. It faded away to be replaced by a man in a rumpled brown overcoat, wig, and white leggings, standing on the corner reading a thin newspaper. I studied the paper carefully, a bit put off by the odd typeface, but caught the date just as the vision faded: August 10th, 1790. This was intriguing because it is the date which Washington and his architects designed the Federal Triangle’s celestial alignments around. Then I was returned fully to the present and we left, riding through DC on our way back to Lyn’s pad.

Then later, in the middle of the night, I got up to use the bathroom, but never made it. As I stepped through the bathroom doorway I was hit with “that old cosmic flash” and suddenly, I was back inside the Alexandria temple, standing before the huge bronze statue of GW. As I contemplated the statue I felt the cold hand of death on my shoulder, and spun around to face the spirit of Washington himself. He did not appear as I expected. I had seen him in the Ghost Capitol, but only from behind; now as I looked up at his face I noticed that it was hard and unmoving, as if cut from stone. He wore a large Napoleonic-style hat, and in the huge hat’s exact center was the Illuminati Eye-within-triangle. Out of this Eye poured an aura of intelligence, and I knew that the consciousness of GW’s spirit was in fact contained within that Eye, as if he had become one with Divine Providence itself.

A beam of white light shot forth from the Eye, flowing to the left of the statue towards the stairs which led down into the rooms that contained the old Egyptian Lodge 22. His huge hand pushed me forward along the beam, silently guiding me through the corridors and into the large main gathering hall of the lodge. Within awaited the crowd of spirits I had seen earlier, all of them gazing intently at me as they parted and let us pass to the center of the room. In the exact center lay a cubical glass case. I looked within it and saw the familiar Masonic artefacts of Bible, compass, and square.

Then the voice of Washington’s ghost echoed throughout the place. His lips did not move as he spoke; rather, the Eye itself seemed to be the source of the voice.

“The Eye of Providence is always watching you,” the voice said, “and the Dead stand ready to guide and guard you in your quest.”

Then the white light poured forth again, hitting the glass case and illuminating it with a flash. Inside I saw the compass and square float up as a miniature version of ME appeared beneath them. The Bible changed at this moment, the words on its cover morphing into my name. Then a series of hands appeared in the air around my miniature form. I knew these hands belonged to the seven members of the founding fathers Congressional Council. Each of them in turn took the compass and touched it to a different part of my doll-like form, adding a colour corresponding to their position in the ABRAXAS spectrum: John Adams turned my feet black; James Madison made my legs go green; Alexander Hamilton’s touch turned my crotch yellow; next, Ben Franklin’s made my stomach area orange; Washington turned my arms and chest red; then Thomas Jefferson made my shoulders and neck purple; and finally, the hands of Aaron Burr changed my replica’s head blue. As they performed this alchemical procedure, the book of my life flew open, stopping at a series of pages corresponding to the cosmic content that each officer represented.

Then, from behind me Washington pushed my astral form INTO the case; I experienced a moment of disorientation as I was thrust into the odd rainbow body, coming out of the daze to find myself now in the Royal Arch Room. I was in fact standing behind the curtains of the Holy of Holies; the Ark was on my left, the seven-branched candlestick on my right. I stepped out from behind the curtain and saw that GW’s ghost was waiting for me, standing before the “Vault of Discovery” mural.

“The individual and collective can no longer be separate,” the voice said, “for the spiritus mundi measures your stone.”

I was surprised by his use of the Latin term spirtus mundi- “soul of the earth”- which was one of CG Jung’s favourite code-phrases for the ABRAXAS intelligence. The huge hands of GW then grabbed my shoulders and thrust me into the last of the four grottos cut into the walls of the room. I looked at the display of coin emblems, noting that one of them was glowing. It was under the heading of Rhode Island lodges, and as I looked closer I saw on it the image of the double-headed bird and my name written underneath. The coin then shot off of the wall and hit me square on the forehead, knocking me back. There was a flash and suddenly I was in the Knights Templar Chapel.

The first thing I noticed was that the stained glass windows were different. Instead of scenes from Christ’s life, they now depicted scenes from my own life in chronological order. The first one, behind the altar, showed the initial meeting I had with my mentor, Ross. He and I sat on a park bench looking up at the sky; above us hovered the Eye of Providence. The next window showed my cosmic collaborator, Greg, and I on either sides of a cauldron; out of the cauldron we were conjuring the demon Zarathos, who rose up above us and had the Eye upon his flaming forehead. The third window was from the next stage in our cosmic adventures, a quaternally divided depiction of Greg, myself, and our two other cosmic partners Warren and Mike; the Eye was at the cross point in the middle of the four panels. The last window showed me kneeling before My Divine Mistress Cleopatra, who was wearing an Isis headress with the Eye staring out of its sun-disk crown.

Then I heard a voice from behind me, someone speaking with a thick French accent, who asked: “Are you a man of honor?”

I turned around and there was Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar and current Chief Justice of the Ghost Capitol’s Cosmic Supreme Court. He was dressed in full crusader regalia, bright red cross on his chest, a large sword as big as him strapped across his back. I did not answer him, so surprised was I to see him instead of GW. I was even more surprised when De Molay then slapped me across the face — hard!

“Your destiny is upon you!” he shouted as I rubbed my astral jaw. “It is pride that shall determine whether you succeed or fail. Will you be great or terrible?” He was grabbing me and shaking me at this point. “You are close enough to success that each step is crucial. The closer you are, the easier it is to fail! I KNOW!”

He let me go and stepped back, whipping out his sword. On the blade was written in large red letters: THE PRECIPICE OF BECOMING. Then he reached into his robes with the other hand and produced the elegant Islamic scroll that I had seen Peter the Great hand off to Colonel Burr (see Ghost Capitol recap pt 2).

“Awaken from your ego!” De Molay shouted in my face. “Do you think a selfish man could understand what is written here?” He shook the scroll before me. “Do you understand? ARE YOU A MAN OF HONOR?”

“YES!” I finally shouted back at him. With that, he hit me over the head with the flat of his blade, and I was thrust into another place. Now I found myself in what I quickly recognized as The Cryptic Room. Washington’s ghost was there, standing before the nine-arched steps leading up to the weird half-moon mural.

“What is this place?” I asked him as I gazed into the archway. The mural was in fact a kind of holographic window, in which I could see various scenes from history playing out.

“When we captured the course of history during the Revolution,” the booming voice of the Eye explained, “we imprisoned it here, within the Matrix,” I was astonished at the use of the term Matrix, knowing what modern mythos implications it has. In a silent confirming response, Washington nodded as the voice continued. “From here we have directed history, waiting for the Sleeper to awaken.”

“Who is the Sleeper?” I asked as the scenes of history played out within the Matrix window.”
Columbia,” the Eye responded. “Spirit of the New Republic.

“I watched and saw the scenes within the window slow, until they stopped at one in particular. It showed the top of the Memorial’s tower, and on that slim outer walkway I saw two figures- Washington’s Ghost and my own astral from! As I realized this, the viewpoint of the window swooped in towards my double, and suddenly I was in the scene, with GW on the outer balcony overlooking the Potomac River. The scene was real, that is we were not looking out at the Ghost Capitol- rather, it was night time view of the actual Washington DC area. In the skies above DC I saw the three constellations of Bootes, Virgo, and Leo hanging in the sky. GW’s ghost clapped his huge hands togethr, and the three stars of Arcturus, Spica, and Regulus were joined by a triangle of white light. At the same time, on the ground below, the Federal triangle lit up, as lines of fire connected the White House, Washington Monument, and Capitol Building.

Then the voice Divine Providence shouted out, louder than before, like a trumpet from the heavens: “THE SLEEPER MUST AWAKEN!”

The triangle of starlight met the triangle of fire at the point above the White House, just as the yearly August 10th effect illustrates. There was a huge eruption of colored energies from within the space marked by the two triangles meeting. Out of that explosion there arose a gigantic goddess figure, the child of Nature’s God, none other than Columbia, spirit of America. The goddess yawned as She came to life, and below Her I saw the White House tremble and shake.

She reached out across the skies, Her magnificent hand coming for me. Just before it reached our position, I was suddenly back, standing in the doorway of Lyn’s bathroom.

Steve’s Initiatory Experience with the Djed:

a brief introduction by Vincent Bridges

I have always found Steve’s astral adventures to be quite fascinating even when I may question the historicity of his encounters. Archetypes are not historical figures but their remnants or residue lingering in the collective unconscious. Steve has peopled his inner life with spiritual forces that have direct validity for his psyche and how it connects to the myth of our country and our time. This is quite admirable, on the whole…

The occult history of the American Revolution has yet to be written, and when it is one may hope that the point is made that “Mason” is as loose a term in relation to spiritual connection and initiation as “Sufi” is the Islamic world. There was indeed a preponderance of “Masons” involved on both sides of the conflict (Washington, Lafayette and Cornwallis all belonged to the same regimental lodge), but the current that informed the deeper matters, such as the alignments in Washington City, the District of Columbia, was only superficially “Masonic.”

The three intellects most involved with the spiritual meaning of America were Washington, Jefferson and Franklin, an example of the wide range of “Masons” at the time. Washington was the Master Mason of the Alexandria 22 lodge, chartered as a Scottish Rite, Royal Arch Temple in the tradition of the French lodges founded by the Chevalier Ramsey. This branch can only be called illuminationist, and its practices and initiations, spiritually, would be more along the lines of what today would be called ceremonial magick. Washington would have felt right at home in a Golden Dawn Temple circa 1900.

Jefferson never officially became a “Mason,” but was involved with some very “Illuminationist” groups in France in the 1780s. We may think of him as the very bright but un-initiated enlightenment era intellect. As such he went his own way, absorbing the various spiritual influences that came his way and creating his “religion” as he went along. Jefferson was most influenced, at this level, by Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin is the complete enlightenment era scientist/philosopher, the man who harnessed lightning, as he was known in London in the 1770s. His connections cover almost all the basics of the occult underground of his era, from Dashwood and the Hellfire Club to the radical Jacobins of pre-revolutionary France. Franklin, much like Dee two hundred years earlier, stood at the juncture of science and philosophy.

All three saw “America” as a kind of magickal future for the human race, when the archetypes that had been mediated by King and Church would be democratically available to all citizens. This would in fact create, if successful, a kind of psychic protection against “tyranny.” No king or demagogue could grab the symbolic current of a freely archetypal democracy and make it subservient to his will.

To that end, the goddess Columbia was created. The creation of a divine archetype is a very high-level magickal affair that is not undertaken lightly. Yet, that’s just what these three magicians, with help from a few others, actually did.

In the late 18th and early 19th century, a stream of images crystallized the goddess form into “Columbia.” The ideas that animated her can best be seen by her attributes, that is the objects or symbols that are displayed with her. She is most often shown with an eagle, broken chains and pottery, a cornucopia, images of George Washington, a laurel wreath, a liberty pole and cap, a liberty tree, an olive branch, a rattlesnake, a shield and a stone tablet. The statue of Columbia behind the speaker’s chair in the house of representatives is a fine example. In this one we see the Eagle, and on the other side a snake coiled around a Greek column.

Columbia is not a Greek or Roman goddess, although she borrowed a few attributes when she needed them, but a consciously created god-form archetype inserted into the mass consciousness of the country at its founding. She now stands, 19 feet tall, atop the Capital dome gazing to the west toward the Djed/obelisk of the Washington Monument. Perhaps, as Steve’s vision suggests, she was designed to be activated at just this moment in time. Ovason’s book on Washington has some very suggestive evidence thatpoints toward that conclusion and Steve’s astral experience helps us see that the Washington Djed/obelisk is a connection point to the larger issue of cosmic timing.

Steve’s experience, his astral journey to the center of the galaxy, is an advanced initiatory experience along the lines of what the western mystery schools call The Adam Kadmon, or the experience of the cosmic man. Most of us would go through the Trapizeum pyramid of stars in Orion rather than make the leap with the reincarnating dead all the way to galactic center, but Steve is the adventurous type.

The torch metaphor represents the ancient wisdom connection of that initiatory experience, lit by Steve‚Ä¢s anima and hidden in a concept where the dark forces are forbidden to look. Once the treasure is discovered, then it can be used. Awakening Columbia is bringing the sleeping goddess to life, Sleeping Beauty in mythic politics. Once the torch is passed to her, she utters the magick phrase, “Lux et Libertas ad Omnium,” coded into her by the magicians of the Illuminist lodges 200+ years ago.

Curiously enough, we know, from the corner stone ceremony of the University of North Carolina in 1793, that the group of Freemasons with which Washington worked used this as a password and the keynote of their philosophy. This phrase goes to the heart of my earlier comments on a magickal democracy where the archetypes are available to all. A nation of enlightened citizens would in fact be proof against all forms of tyranny and manipulation.

Light and Liberty to All should be our new mantra, and it should infuse all our realities. If it does, then the goddess Columbia, Lady Liberty herself, will truly have awakened.

THE
PYRAMID
OF THE
FIFTEEN AMERICAN STATES.NO more let barbarous MEMPHIS boast
Huge structures rear’d by servile hands ‚Äî
A nation on the Atlantic coast
Fetter’d no more in foreign bands,
A nobler PYRAMID displays
Than Egypt’s marble e’er could raise.
COLUMBIA’s sons, to extend the fame
Of their bold deeds to future years
No marble from the quarry claim,
But, soaring to the starry spheres,
Materials seek in Jove’s blue sky
To endure when brass and marble die!

Arriv’d among the shining host,
Fearless, the proud invaders spoil
From countless gems, in ?¶ther lost,
THESE STARS, to crown their mighty toil:
To heaven a PYRAMID they rear
And point the summit with a star.

Old wasteful TIME! though still you gain
Dominion o’er the brazen tower,
On THIS your teeth shall gnaw in vain,
Finding its strength beyond their power:
While kindred stars in ?¶ther glow,
THIS PYRAMID WILL SHINE BELOW!

Philip Freneau