Where the numerology and astrological signs related to the all-seeing eye add to why certain symbolism on the Great Seal was important to Freemasons, it is the unfinished pyramid upon the seal’s reverse side that Manly Hall called the “trestleboard” that set forth symbolically the “task to the accomplishment of which the United States Government was dedicated from the day of its inception.”
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This language, drawn directly from how trestleboards are used and what they represent in both operative and speculative Masonry, is revealing, as the trestleboard is the board upon which the Master Mason draws out the diagrams and geometric figures that are to be used as a blueprint for directing the workers in the construction of the task. In speculative Masonry, the trestleboard also takes on spiritual meaning, which reflects lessons from the Books of Nature and the will of the Great Architect of the Universe.
In Masonic rituals, this means a spiritual plan has been put in place and that it is to be carried out on an individual, family, social, national, and international level. The plan includes the timing as to when the project should officially start, as well as generally when it is to be concluded. Thus, if the pyramid on the Great Seal is the trestleboard laying out the “task of which the United States Government was dedicated from the day of its inception,” it is the drawing board for the destiny of America and is branded by 1) the identity of the Great Architect to whom the work is dedicated; and 2) the date on which the work was started and is to be completed.
Concerning the first subject matter—the identity of the Great Architect—we illustrate numerous times in the upcoming book Zenith 2016 how the symbols and mottoes speak for themselves in communicating who this deity is. In the prologue of his book, The Lost Keys of Freemasonry, Manly Hall joins in this revelation by recounting the familiar story of Hiram Abiff, the Tyrian “First Grand Master” of the order of Masons and the chief builder who sets out to construct the temple of the Great Architect of the Universe, but is killed by three spectres. This story, impersonated every time an initiate reaches the level of Master Mason, is by admission of Freemasons a retelling of the death-epic of the god Osiris. In Lost Keys, Hall narrates how the Great Architect gives Hiram (Osiris) the trestleboard for the construction of the great temple, and when he is killed by three ruffians, the Great Architect bathes him in “a glory celestial,” as in the glory surrounding the all-seeing eye of Osisis above the pyramid on the Great Seal. The Great Architect follows this by charging those who would finish the building with the task of finding the body of Hiram (Osiris) and raising him from the dead. When this has been accomplished, the great work will conclude and the god will inhabit the temple:
Seek ye where the broken twig lies and the dead stick molds away, where the clouds float together and the stones rest by the hillside, for all these mark the grave of Hiram [Osiris] who has carried my Will with him to the tomb. This eternal quest is yours until ye have found your Builder, until the cup giveth up its secret, until the grave giveth up its ghosts. No more shall I speak until ye have found and raised my beloeved Son [Osiris], and have listened to the words of my Messenger and with Him as your guide have finished the temple which I shall then inhabit. Amen.[i]
“So once again we are brought back to the Great Pyramid of Giza,” writes Peter Goodgame, “the first built and last remaining of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, which is the reputed resting place of Osiris. The Great Pyramid itself is but one structure within a major Necropolis that was designed according to the layout of the constellation Orion, the Great Hunter in the sky [Osiris/Gilgamesh/Nimrod]. As we have endeavored to show, Osiris is none other than the Biblical Nimrod, the ‘mighty hunter before the Lord.’”[ii]
The Encyclopedia of Freemasonry identifies the character Nimrod with this legend of the Brotherhood as well, in the Old Constitutions, where it distinguishes him as a founder of Masonry. “Thus in the York MS., No. 1, we read: ‘At ye making of ye toure of Babell there was a Masonrie first much esteemed of, and the King of Babilon yt called Nimrod was a Mason himself and loved well Masons.’”[iii]
Other authorities not only connect the Masonic founder Hiram Abiff with Osiris and Nimrod, but explain that Nimrod plus the building of the Tower of Babel—not the temple of Solomon—was the true origin of Masonic cosmology.
In Symbols of Freemasonry, translated from the FrenchLes Symboles des Francs-Macons, Daniel Beresniak notes:
The date of the construction of King Solomon’s temple has not always been the key date in the Freemasons’ cosmology. This central role was once given to the Tower of Babel. The Regius manuscript, which predates Cooke [1410] by twenty years, cites King Nemrod, the builder of that famous tower, as “the first and most excellent master.” He it was, and not King Solomon, who gave the Masons their first “charge,” their rules of conduct and professional code.…
A Masonic text known as the Thistle manuscript, of 1756, says that Nemrod “created the Masons” and “gave them their signs and terms so that they could distinguish themselves from other people…it was the first time that the Masons were organised as a craft.”[iv]
Thus the appearance of the uncapped pyramid of Giza on the Great Seal of the United States echoes the ancient pagan as well as Masonic beliefs concerning the old mysteries, and the prophecy of the return of Osiris/Apollo/Nimrod.
In Rosicrucian and Masonic Origins, Manly Hall, who had said in The Secret Teachings of All Ages that the Great Pyramid was “the tomb of Osiris,”[v]explains that Preston, Gould, Mackey, Oliver, Pike, and nearly every other great historian of Freemasonry were aware of this connection between Freemasonry and the ancient mysteries and primitive ceremonials based on Osiris. “These eminent Masonic scholars have all recognized in the legend of Hiram Abiff an adaptation of the Osiris myth; nor do they deny that the major part of the symbolism of the craft is derived from the pagan institutions of antiquity when the gods were venerated in secret places with strange figures and appropriate rituals.”[vi]
But whereas Freemasons like Manly Hall considered the symbolism and myth related to the pyramid on the Great Seal and the history of Apollo/Osiris/Nimrod to be the working “trestleboard” laying out the secret destiny of America, New Age esotericists like Robert Hieronimus—one of the world’s foremost authorities on the reverse of the seal’s symbolism—view the circular design and symbolism on the Great Seal to be an “initiatory mandala.”
Mandalas, from the Hindu term for “circle,” are concentric diagrams, such as is familiar in Tantrism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, having ritual and spiritual use for “focusing” or trance-inducing aspirants and adepts who seek mystical oneness with the cosmos or deeper levels of the unconscious mind. Related to the design of the Great Seal, Hieronimus, as an occultist, views the geometric patterns as representing a type of mandala or microcosm embodying the cosmic or metaphysical divine powers at work in the secret destiny of America, including the god or universal forces represented in the diagram that herald a coming new age of gods and demigods.
Occultists often use mandalas based on the concept of a “protective circle” or variation, which they believe allow certain doorways into the supernatural to be opened or closed, and entities compelled accordingly, as in the magical five-pointed pentagram circle. This is similar to an initiatory mandala used in Hindu and Buddhist Tantrism, in which deities are represented by specific locations in the diagram. InYoga: Immortality and Freedom, scholar Mircea Eliade explains the importance of this part of the mandala design:
At the periphery of the construction there are four cardinal doors, defended by terrifying images called “guardians of the doors.” Their role is twofold. On the one hand, the guardians defend consciousness from the disintegrating forces of the unconscious; on the other, they have an offensive mission—in order to lay hold upon the fluid and mysterious world of the unconscious, consciousness must carry the struggle into the enemy’s camp and hence assume the violent and terrible aspect appropriate to the forces to be combated. Indeed, even the divinities inside the mandalasometimes have a terrifying appearance; they are the gods whom man will encounter after death, in the state of bardo. The guardians of the doors and the terrible divinities emphasize the initiatory character of entrance into amandala.… The typical initiatory ordeal is the “struggle with a monster”…both spiritual (against evil spirits and demons, forces of chaos) and material (against enemies)…who [attempt] to return “forms” to the amorphous state from which they originated.[vii]
What makes this interesting is that the arcane symbols and mottoes of the Great Seal represent—as admitted by Masonry’s greatest historians, mystics, and philosophers—gods that were known in ancient times alternatively as saviors or demons, creators, and destroyers; spirits that seek entry into the conscious and unconscious world. That such concepts would be related to the uncapped pyramid on the seal is fitting in that the Great Pyramid of Giza is not only thought of as the actual tomb-site of the deity, but as a symbol of Christ by some and of the Antichrist by others. These paradoxical conclusions arrive because of certain mysterious attributes related to the Great Pyramid.
In his wonderful book, The Great Pyramid: Prophecy in Stone, Dr. Noah Hutchings is able to show that the Great Pyramid, unlike the other inferior ones on the Giza Plateau whose walls are covered with Egyptian symbols, is devoid of such idolatrous symbolism and defies to this day what methods were employed to manufacture its unparalleled creation. Just how matchless is the Great Pyramid? Hutchings starts out by showing that it is:
· A building so large that all the locomotives in the world today could not pull its weight.
· A building so large that it could hold the cathedrals of Rome, Florence, and Milan and still have room for the Empire State Building, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and both houses of the British Parliament.
· A building made up of two and one-half million blocks of stone ranging from three to sixty tons each.
· A building that has not settled, has not shifted, has not budged even one-tenth of an inch in thousands of years—a feat that even modern engineering could not equal.[viii]
I’ve had the privilege of being a personal friend of Dr. Hutchings and on the Southwest Radio Ministries broadcast several times I've repeated how the first edition of his book,Prophecy in Stone (in the 1970s), was an eye-opener for me. I was not aware back then of the intriguing tidbits of information concerning the Great Pyramid that seemed to parallel biblical prophecy—for instance, how some ancient writers referred to the Great Pyramid as “the Pillar of Enoch.” This was engaging to me because the so-called “King’s Chamber” in the Great Pyramid was found to have never been occupied, and Enoch “was not, for God took him” (Genesis 5:24). When the empty coffer in the King’s Chamber was measured, it was discovered that the interior dimensions are the same as the biblical Ark of the Covenant. Besides this, 144,000 polished limestone blocks originally covered the exterior of the Great Pyramid, which were sealed with an adhesive so strong that they would break anywhere but at the seal. This is the same number of the saints who, in the book of Revelation 7:3–8, are sealed with the seal of God.
Yet of all such fascinating findings Dr. Hutchings describes in The Great Pyramid: Prophecy In Stone, the sections in his book I found most interesting focus on the missing head cornerstone (apex stone, capstone) of the Great Pyramid, and the curious verses in Psalms 118:22 and Acts 4:11 pertaining to Jesus as the “stone” the builders rejected and that has become the “head cornerstone.” As Hutchings points out, the only kind of building in all the world that requires a head cornerstone is a pyramid. Because of this, Hutchings believes the “pillar” that Isaiah (Isaiah 19:19–20) said would stand as a “sign and for a witness unto the Lord” in the end times may be the Great Pyramid on the old border that separated lower and upper Egypt.
Conversely, a few years ago, another friend named Patrick (Paddy) Heron wrote a book entitled Pyramid of the Apocalypse, in which he postulated that the Great Pyramid at Giza had been built by the nephilim, the offspring of Watchers. Besides associated legends, part of his reasoning had to do with the scale of the massive undertaking and the same biblical parallels—the one hundred forty-four thousand, the missing capstone, etc.—which Heron viewed as the Watchers trying to copy, plagiarize, mimic, or borrow from the fame of something known only to the angels, namely, the design of the New Jerusalem in heaven, whose height and width are the same, as in a pyramidal structure (as opposed to those who believe the New Jerusalem will be cube-shaped). Heron and researchers like him further warn that an antichrist who is somehow related to the Great Pyramid—as a resurrected Osiris/Apollo/Nimrod would be, though we could only offer at this point fantastic speculation how this deity, returned to flesh, would be outrightly connected to the Great Pyramid—could use these mysterious attributes of the Great Pyramid, which seem related to biblical prophecy, as a great deception to guide people away from the true Messiah. This theological premise is interesting, as everything about the coming of the False Christ will be an antithetical mirror of Jesus. For example, Jesus has seven stars in His right hand (Revelation 1:20), while the Antichrist Osiris/Apollo/Nimrod is represented by the seven-star Pleiades system. The Great Pyramid capstone is missing, representing temporary vacancy by Apollo according to the mottoes, whose coming will “cap” the pyramid, and yet as we have seen, Jesus is also called the head cornerstone.
Whoever turns out to be correct in the debate above, the design of the Great Seal of the United States makes it clear which side of the discussion America’s national cipher points to. There are no biblical verses on the Great Seal heralding the second coming of Jesus Christ. And, unlike the actual Great Pyramid in Giza, whose walls are devoid of idolatrous symbols, the Great Seal is made up entirely of mottoes and prayers to the pagan father of the deity Apollo, to fulfill the Cumaean Sibyl’s prophecy and to return to earthly rule the disembodied spirit of the deceased god Apollo/Osiris/Nimrod. Is this what is meant in Psalms 118 and Acts chapter 4 where Jesus is the capstone the builders refused? Was He rejected as the Messiah by “the builders”—a literal reference to “Masons”—because another is coming that will cap their pyramid? A second messiah?
Trestleboard Dates: The Start and Finish of the Great Work
In Zenith 2016 we thoroughly demonstrate that the Great Seal’s symbolism removes all doubts as to the identity of the deity behind the all-seeing eye, or to the prophecy from the mottoes regarding the return of the deity known at various times in history as Apollo, Osiris, and Nimrod. This leaves the second issue that needs to be resolved from the Great Seal’s “trestleboard” as to the timing of the work: when it was started and when it is scheduled to be completed.
One key to the starting date of this mystical work is magnificently ciphered in the number 888, the sum of the letters in Greek for the name of Jesus (each Greek letter represents a number). This cipher also confirms the prophecies of Psalms 118 and Acts 4 concerning Jesus as the rejected capstone: This same number—888—is also found in “the riddle” of the Sibylline Oracles, ascribed to the Cumaean Sibyl, which J. L. Lightfoot says was hoped by some early Christians to represent Jesus, but was clearly understood by pagans to be a prophecy of the return of Apollo[ix] because 888 was Olen’s number, the founder of Apollo’s oracle and his first prophet, and signified the “spiritual sun” represented in the glory surrounding the all-seeing eye of Apollo/Horus on the Great Seal, and the novus ordo seclorum or “new age” that his coming would herald. Gnostics and mystics among the occult hierarchy maintain this interpretation as the true meaning of the Apollonian Sibyl’s prophecy. The text in question comes from the Sibylline Oracles:
Then will come to men the Son of the Great God, coated flesh, similar to mortals on earth.… But I want to tell you the whole [of his] number: eight units [8], so much tens in addition [80], and eight hundreds [800, or 8+80+800=888], here are what to the friends of incredulity, to men, the Name will reveal; but you, in the spirit, thinks well of the immortal and very high Son of God, to the Christ.[x]
So here we have two “messiahs” represented by the number 888—Jesus, the Christ of the Bible, and Apollo, the Sibyl’s messiah of the novus ordo seclorum. What is astonishing about this is that adding the number of these two messiahs together (888+888) equals the year 1776—the date chosen for the founding of the United States and reflected in the Roman numerals at the base of the uncapped pyramid on the Great Seal.
Adepts of the mystical order actually go to great lengths to show how this addition of 888+888=1776 is the “cardinal number” of the “great work” also known as the “eagle of eagles” reflected in the well-known Masonic symbol of the two-headed eagle or phoenix, which Masonic dictionaries define as historically representing the “merger” of two gods (in this instance, Jesus with Apollo).[xi]
Given everything else we have learned from the works of Freemasons like David Ovason and Manly P. Hall, this date, 1776, representing two messiahs—the rejection of one in favor of the other—is not likely a mistake. Thus, the trestleboard’s 1776 “beginning” date for the great work of the Craft truly marked the start in history of the secret doctrine of Freemasonic Illuminatus toward establishing a New Atlantis in anticipation of the return of their founder and deity, Apollo/Osiris/Nimrod.
To further verify this part of the cipher pointing to an “alternative capstone” or second messiah, the year 1776 at the base of the pyramid is understood by Masons worldwide to be the year 5776 Anno Lucis (“in the year of light”). This is because Masons of the ancient Craft add four thousand years to the common date, the number of years that conventional theology assumes creation began before Christ: thus, 4,000+1,776=5,776.
Why is this important? Because 5,776 is exactly how many inches high the Great Pyramid in Giza would be when completed with its capstone, a sacred fact to occultists. Completing the pyramid symbolically in this way is central to the rituals and mysticism of Freemasons and numerous Illuminated fraternities. This has been true throughout the ages, and is why this symbolism was encoded on the Great Seal and remains at the core of esoteric ambition today. The year 1776 thus represents 1) the trestleboard date on which the great work and secret destiny began; and 2) is a prophetic marker toward the descent of the eye of Apollo/Osiris/Nimrod upon the uncapped pyramid in accomplishment of the Great Work.
Yet if the year 1776 represents the starting date on the trestleboard toward the accomplishment “of which the United States Government was dedicated from the day of its inception,” as Manly P. Hall said, what date did the Master Masons envision that the work would be finished in order that Hiram Abiff (Osiris/Apollo/Nimrod) could return to inhabit his temple? This is found in the Scottish Rite side of Freemasonry (as well as the modern Jewish calendar), who, unlike their other brethren, prefer adding 3,760 years to the common date. In order for this superior side of Masonry to arrive at the appropriate number for their finished pyramid and the completed work (the height of the pyramid with its capstone reaching upward of 5,776 inches), they have to add the future date, 2016, to the common era, or 3,760+2,016=5,776.
This is important for several reasons, not the least of which is that, if the culmination of the Illuminati enterprise reaches an apex in 2016, it is prophetically related to the infamous year 2012——the rollover of the Mayan and many other ancient pagan calendars that foresaw the conclusion of a dispensation and the beginning of a final Golden Age, which heralds the return of their gods. Disturbingly, some will say the year 2012 could therefore represent in Christian eschatology the beginning of Great Tribulation, with 2016 representing the “midst of the week” when Apollo (Antichrist) presents himself as God and enters the temple in Jerusalem. Others will claim 2016 as the start of the final age.
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