Ergo, We're Virgo

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 16, 2000 | by Julia Duin

Washington's stellar design was no coincidence, argues the author of a new book on the Capital's astrological foundations. Masonic founders oriented the District of Columbia around Virgo.

Every Aug. 10, an astrological event takes place in the sky over Washington that some say ties the city to a pagan goddess. At dusk, as golden light turns brick facades a dusty rose, the shimmering sun floats a few degrees just to the left of Pennsylvania Avenue, gradually inching to the right until it sets directly over the famous street. If the horizon remains cloudless, three stars are visible in a straight line from the Capitol to the White House to the skies in the west. Known as Regulus, Arcturus and Spica, the stars form a right-angled triangle framing the constellation of Virgo.

Washington's founders deliberately aligned the city with the stars, consecrating it to Virgo -- also known as the Egyptian goddess Isis -- claims British author David Ovason in his new book, The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital. "You rarely found a sunset leading to a rising of the stars" Ovason says. "Washington is unique and it's magical when it happens. The stars emerge from the dusk. In Greece and Egypt, temples and sacred sites were oriented toward the stars, but I know of nowhere else in the Earth where a city is oriented toward a specific sunset"

In a detailed 356-page book --combined with another 150 pages of appendices, notes and an index -- Ovason makes Nancy Reagan's astrological interests look tame. His case for Virgo as an arcane leitmotif dating back to this country's 18th-century origins has its skeptics, of course. But Ovason earned plaudits from Fred Kleinknecht, sovereign grand commander of the 33rd-degree Supreme Council of Freemasons, based in the District of Columbia. That's an important endorsement -- almost all the men who surveyed Washington were Masons, including Pierre L'Enfant, the original designer of the District of Columbia, and George Washington, a soldier and surveyor who knew how to lay out land according to stellar and solar positions.

"In 1790, someone conceived of linking this city with the stars and that tradition continued for 200 years" Ovason says. "It died out about 1950. I could never find out who did this, but someone, somewhere, maintained this incredible esoteric view of the zodiac."

Freemasonry, still perhaps the largest secret society in the world, was established at the Grand Lodge of England in 1717, although scholars trace the organization's roots to the stone-masons of the Middle Ages and even earlier, to ancient Egypt, Babylon and Palestine. Members of the fraternal order traditionally believe in religious tolerance, local government, brotherhood and equality -- in general, liberal and democratic thought and practice. The society is secret because secrecy protects its fellows from persecution "for having opinions different from accepted doctrine," writes Masonic historian Norman Williams Crabbe. "Most Freemasons, however, do not understand the allegorical, mystic significance in the ritual work. For them it is a fraternal club with a secret ritualistic initiation which meets once or twice a month for fellowship and to sponsor charity."

Ovason, a specialist in Masonic esotericism and symbolism, has turned up 23 important zodiacs in the city, many on official buildings, and at least 1,000 zodiacal and planetary symbols in paint, marble, plaster, concrete, glass and stone facades. Zodiacal symbolism was incorporated into the U.S. Capitol in 1819, when a sculpture, The Car of History, was carved for Statuary Hall. Twelve zodiac signs appear on the glass rim of a large light fitting in the Federal Reserve Building. The Library of Congress has several, including one in the marble floor of the Great Hall.

Ovason also finds great import in dates and times. At 3:30 p.m. on April 15, 1791, the approximate time when workers laid Washington's first marker stone, the planet Jupiter was rising over the horizon in the constellation Virgo. The marker was sealed with a Masonic ceremony depositing corn, wine and oil on the stone itself. Eighteen months later, on Oct. 13,1792, a second marker stone was laid at the foundation of the White House by the Georgetown branch of the Masons. On that day, the moon was rising in Virgo.

"The chances of the correspondence being mere coincidence are so remote that we must assume that whoever was directing the planning of Washington, not only had a considerable knowledge of astrology, but had a vested interest in emphasizing the role of the sign Virgo," writes Ovason.

At the founding of the Capitol on Sept. 18, 1793, the sun and Mercury were in the constellation of Virgo. This ceremony is enshrined on the Senate bronze doors. One door shows a plate of George Washington, wearing a white satin Masonic apron, using a trowel to lay the cornerstone. (The apron can be viewed at the George Washington Masonic Memorial in Alexandria, Va.)

Lastly, the cornerstone of the Washington Monument was laid on July 4, 1848, while the moon was in Virgo. Construction was stalled for more than 30 years, then officially begun again on Aug. 7, 1880, at 10:59 a.m. At that moment, the star Spica, the most important star in the constellation of Virgo, was rising over the eastern horizon. The dedication ceremony for the finished monument was not on Feb. 22, 1885, Washington's actual birthday, but a day earlier, when Jupiter was in the constellation of Virgo.