HOW THE PYRAMID ON THE DOLLAR HAS BEEN FOLLOWING AMERICAN HISTORY

I swear the following story is true.

That night, as I lay in bed, I did some math in my head and came to a realization:

The accident had occurred on September the 16th; I had just turned 49 years old on February the 9th of that year. The difference was 7 months and 7 days. It didn't end there. It had also occurred at 9:54 in the morning and, according to my birth certificate, I was born at 2:47 a.m.; the difference by the clock then was also 7 hours and 7 minutes.

So the accident had occurred 7 months, 7 days, 7 hours, and 7 minutes after I had turned 49 years old. And of course, 49 is equal to 7 times 7.

It still didn't end there. My truck was a '91 Dodge Dakota, meaning the truck was 7 years old. And according to my map, the site of the accident was 7 miles from my driveway.

And if that isn't predestination, I don't know what is.

I'm convinced that things like that happen to all of us; it's just that we're not looking to see how the events that happen to us are related to one another. We assume blindly that events occur randomly. I myself was only able to discover the relationship between the accident and my birthday because I was already predisposed to finding patterns in places you would not expect them. You see, I had already been collecting examples of patterns in history since I discovered years earlier that, as unbelievable as it sounds, the Seal on the back of the dollar, which passes under the noses of millions of people daily, has been following the history of the United States.

Here are a few examples of what I've found over the years:

These are just a few examples of the things you will see on this site.

If you have the stamina to see it through, you will see things here you have never encountered anywhere else before. I know, because they are all of my own discovery, and until now I've only shared them with a few friends.

I am now 73, and after 49 years of research, I'd simply like to let people know what I found before I leave this earth.

On September the 16, 1998, I had an accident in my truck. I was crossing the bridge into downtown Dallas when the 18-wheeler next to me decided to change lanes. He spit the right front headlight out into the road, and bent the frame. Somehow, I managed to hobble over to the far right shoulder of the bridge and get off onto a side road.

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever had something strange happen to you, and found yourself asking, "Why me? Why is this happening to me?"

Chances are, geometry was to blame.

Geometry. It's all around us. It permeates the natural order, manifesting itself in a spider's web, the symmetry of a flower's petals, the shapes that weave in and out of cloud formations, or the magnificent symmetry in an atomic particle or a spiral galaxy. A classic example is the perfect hexagon to be found at the northern pole of the planet Saturn. Scientists say it is caused y six hurricanes (a.k.a. "polar vortices") occurring simultaneously in the atmosphere of that region. Similar hexagons are said to exist in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Neptune.

But often it reveals itself in ways in which we are not even aware.

Here's an example of the author's own discovery:

Why no one has ever noticed it before is beyond me; it is found in the perfect arc followed by the west coast of North America, with a geographical landmark, the Great Divide Basin in southwestern Wyoming, at its geometrical center.

To verify that the arc is real, here are the mathematical formulae, worked out by me, for calculating the exact positions of points on the arc, given the angle theta from the horizontal to any point on the arc. Following these formulae is a table of points on the arc --- which were obtained from these formulae --- and the names of the nearest communities to these points:

Here's another example of my own discovery.

Did you know that the United States covers exactly one-third of the globe longitudinally? Its easternmost edge falls at 67 degrees West Longitude; its westernmost edge is the last island in the Aleutians belonging to Alaska (Attu), at 173 degrees East Longitude, equivalent to 187 degrees West Longitude. The difference is exactly 120 degrees or a third of a circle.

Examples of geometry like this may be right under our very noses, but we fail to see them because we have been brainwashed from birth into believing that everything is the product of random chance --- so brainwashed that we do not even bother to look.

Most instances of geometry on the landscape are explainable, such as the cone of a volcano, the arc of a crater, the shape of a flower or honeycomb, while others, such as the examples above, exist in places where they should not be, or cannot be explained.

So it is with instances of geometry in history. Geometry is not supposed to bind events, but it does.

Imagine taking a fistful of pennies and throwing them out onto a floor. If you tried hard enough, you would find geometric shapes hidden in their midst. Some would be found to have arranged themselves in straight lines. Others would have formed perfect circles, squares, or triangles.

These would occur because we live in a universe governed by something called The Law of Averages. Quantum physics is based on it, and quantum physics drives much of our technology today. Throw a marble on a roulette wheel enough times trying to hit 22 and eventually you will get 22 --- you might have to throw it a thousand times, or ten thousand times, or a million times, but sooner or later you will get 22.

By the same token, the more pennies you throw on the floor, the more patterns you will get.

In other words, the patterns born of the Law of Averages are real but accidental. They do not result from any extraordinary pre-existing structure in Nature, with built-in patterns as part of its architecture. Complicating our observations of patterns in Nature is the fact that we human beings are evolved to see patterns in things, such as when we see faces in cloud formations, or the face of the Virgin Mary in such things as restroom window screens, or in discolorations in diner pancakes (both of which have actually been reported).

Skeptics might say that, for these very reasons, patterns do not really exist in Nature, except in the form of things like flower petals, the cycle of the seasons, or the rotation of the earth.

But suppose, in the above analogy, we had glued down some of the pennies to form patterns before the rest of them were tossed out. These preeminent patterns would have been lost in the sea of pennies thrown down on top of them, and would have remained undetected among the bogus patterns created by the Law of Averages. They would have been there --- we simply would not have seen them. In other words, just because most patterns are bogus, does not mean they all are.

And so it may be with events in everyday life, or even the life of a nation. Buried amongst the patterns created by random chance may be patterns emanating from an underlying structure.

On the night of February the 4th, 1974, at 4 a.m., this writer discovered by accident that an icon of American popular culture which passes under the noses of Americans millions of times daily, the Great Seal of the United States, carries within its imagery a road map of American history. From this discovery came appendant discoveries which ultimately caused imagery in one of the most enigmatic works in the annals of literature, religious or otherwise, the Apocalypse of St. John, also known as the Book of Revelation, to make sense.

How this can be so, without the invocation of a Supreme Being, will be the subject of a later section.

While I am an atheist, and do not claim to have decoded Revelation, I believe the existence of patterns in history makes prophecy possible, and that the tendency of the patterns I have discovered to make sense of its bizarre, in some cases surrealistic, imagery should not be ignored but presented to the reader to review and interpret for himself.

If the designers of the Seal could foresee future history and incorporate it into the Seal, who is to say that the author of Revelation could not have done likewise.

THE CASE FOR PREDESTINATION

In the coming sections, I will attempt to make the case that history is the product of destiny, that this destiny is driven by geometry, and that this geometry is not only a predetermined component of the structure of history but is latently encoded into the minds of every living thing on earth.

Consequently, you will be introduced to patterns you have never seen before, and did not even know existed.

Precious few of the things I will show you have been seen by others outside of a small circle of friends .

So if perchance any of what you see here should turn up anywhere else, perhaps being used by others to promote their own agendas, you will know that it came from here.

PART I

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT SEAL

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On July 4th, 1776, in an eleventh hour decision, framers of the Declaration of Independence selected a committee to create an official seal for the new nation. Chosen for the committee were no less illustrious luminaries than Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. Because none of these men had any background in heraldry, an outside heraldrist, Swiss immigrant Pierre du Simitierre, was brought in to aid in the emblem’s creation. du Simitierre is best known for founding the original Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Most of the work by this committee was performed by du Simitierre, who for the Obverse came up with a giant shield showing the Coats of Arms of the six nations which had had the most to do with the settling of the new nation: England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Perched atop the shield was an All-Seeing Eye of Providence. In a departure from tradition, du Simitierre gave the Seal a second side, making it more like a talisman or lucky charm than a national emblem; for the Reverse, he chose a depiction of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. On May 10th, 1780, his proposals for the two sides were presented to the Continental Congress for consideration and were promptly rejected.

With the Revolutionary War still raging, the committee drifted into other projects and disbanded. Four years later, in 1780, a second committee was convened to try once again. Selected for this committee was John Lovell, John Morin Scott, and William Churchill Houston, all likewise members of the Continental Congress. Once again, an outside heraldrist was brought in to assist them, one Francis Hopkinson, whose credentials included the 50-dollar bill of 1778. For the Obverse, Hopkinson proposed two figures representing war and peace, these flanking a giant shield bearing 13 stripes, above which hovered a glory containing 13 stars. For the Reverse, he proposed a seated representation of the Goddess of Liberty. His design was subsequently presented to the Continental Congress and, like the design of the first committee, was summarily rejected.

Finally, in 1782, a third committee was created, this one consisting of John Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, and Arthur Lee, with outside assistance from one William Barton. For the front, Barton simply reworked the design of the first committee, retaining the Eye of Providence but introducing for the first time an accompanying eagle. For the Reverse, Barton proposed an unfinished pyramid, reusing the Eye of Providence from the Obverse at its apex. Barton borrowed the pyramid from Francis Hopkinson’s design of the 50‑dollar bill. Like the preceding two proposals, Barton’s creation was rejected.

As the Revolutionary War came to a close, the new nation still did not have an official seal. Disgusted that three consecutive committees could not come up with something as simple as a seal for the new nation, Secretary of the Continental Congress Charles Thomson took matters into his own hands and, reviewing the designs of the three preceding committees, picked and chose elements in them that he liked and assembled them into a whole — combining components based less on a knowledge of heraldry than on esthetic appeal. In other words, he may not have known art, but he knew what he liked. On June 20th, 1782, Thomson submitted his design to the Continental Congress and they were accepted. Subsequent modifications would be made on future renderings of the Seal, but the basic components of Thomson’s two sides have remained unchanged to this day.

An important observation to make at this point is that none of the contributors to the Seal’s designs seems to have had any ulterior motive or agenda in selecting the imagery for the Seal, as evinced by the lack of consensus among the committees in its development.

Ultimately, the Obverse or eagle side would be committed to metal for use on official documents several times, but the Reverse or pyramid side would be used only twice, once on a commemorative medallion in 1882 and again when the dollar was reduced to its present form in 1935. Both instances represented the only times in which both the Obverse and Reverse sides of the Seal appeared together. Today, both sides are considered iconic symbols.

A look at the two sides on the dollar reveals an odd fact about their placement. The sides are reversed, with the back side appearing on the left over the words “The Great Seal,” as if it were supposed to be first, and the front side of the Seal appearing on the right, with the remainder of the phrase, “of the United States,” underneath. Actually, the eagle side of the Seal is supposed to be first. It was Frankin D. Roosevelt who insisted upon the switch. As a 32nd degree Mason, Roosevelt recognized the Masonic imagery on the pyramid side and gave the order that the sides be reversed. This represented the only instance in American history in which a Mason is known to have interfered with the Seal’s design. Actually, if Masonic imagery does appear on the Seal it is only because symbols used by the Seal’s contributing heraldrists were based on symbols from antiquity that were also of significance to the Masons. Otherwise, there is no evidence that the Freemasons had anything to do with Seal’s actual design.

THE TWO SIDES

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The front side of the Seal shows a soaring eagle. In its right talons (from the viewer’s perspective) is a cluster of arrows; in its left, an olive branch of peace. Above its head is a “glory” containing a constellation of stars.

The back shows an unfinished pyramid containing 13 tiers, these supposedly symbolizing the 13 colonies upon which the nation was founded. Beyond the gap is an All-Seeing Eye with rays of glory radiating outward. The triangle housing the eye completes the pyramid. Above the pyramid are the 13 letters of the Latin phrase Annuit Coeptis, which means “He favors our undertaking.” Below the pyramid are the 17 letters of Novus Ordo Seclorum, or “A New Order of the Ages.”

Though the eagle officially represents the Obverse side of the Seal and the pyramid its Reverse, the pyramid appears first on the back of the dollar bill and the eagle second.

Each side is based on a hexagonal or six-pointed star, or so‑called Star of David. The geometric center of the star around which the Reverse is constructed falls directly on the 7th tier from the bottom of the pyramid, which also happens to be the 7th tier from the top.

THE PYRAMID

The pyramid on the Seal consists of 13 tiers, followed by a gap and an All-Seeing Eye of Providence. It sets on a desert, and scattered all around its base are grass clusters.

Right away, the structure of the pyramid can be seen to have been following American history, at least in a superficial way.

First, there are grass clusters with which to represent the first 13 years after 1776 in which the new nation had no President.

Then, an inscription of the year 1776 in Roman numerals appears across the first tier, hovering above the base. Because the year 1776 as a number is exactly divisible by four, each side of the base can be made to equal 444 years, so that the sum of the four sides ends up expressing geometrically the year of the nation’s founding.

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This would allow the nation's founding year to be represented by the base three-dimensionally:

Parenthetically, I find it fascinating that the year 1776 can be turned into a four-sided base at all. It is as if the pyramid on the Seal had been under construction in history long before the framers chose to put it to paper.

Finally, as seen in the Seal above, 13 tiers rise from the inscription to meet an All‑Seeing Eye of Providence, with its rays of glory shining forth — exactly the same way American history has “risen” from 1776 to meet the age of technological wonders in which we now live.

The latter, the Eye, consists of a triangle with an eye at its geometric center and rays of glory radiating forth from it.

1801

The relationship of the Seal pyramid with history, however, does not end with a superficial parallel.

The key to realizing the full extent of the pyramid’s representation of the past lies in recognizing that 1801, not 1800, was the true Turn of the 19th Century.

We begin with the United States’ founding exactly 13 centuries to the year after the fall of the western Roman Empire. Rome fell in 476, the United States was founded in 1776.

Beyond this milestone, for the next 13 years (1776 to 1789), the United States had no Constitutional government, and hence no Executive Branch and no President. The nation was governed by the Continental Congress and the temporary Articles of Confederation.

Subsequent to the establishment of the official government in 1789, the next major turning point in American history was the Turn of the 19th Century, which would serve to mark the beginning of the nation’s first full century of existence.

Contrary to popular belief, however, the Turn of the 19th Century was not 1800. In fact, no year ending in double-0 marks the beginning of any century, but rather the last year of the old one. This is because our chronological system for counting years did not begin from the year “0” but from the year “1.” Dionysus Exigius, who created our chronological system in the 6th Century, was forced to use Roman numerals, and as there is no “0” in Roman counting, he had no choice but to assign the starting point of his system to be the year “I,” or year “1” in Arabic numerals. If you go forward 18 centuries from year “1,” you do not get 1800, but 1801. The Greenwich Observatory tried to tell that to partiers who shot off millions of dollars’ worth of fireworks in Cairo on the night of December the 31st, 1999, to usher in the 21st Century, when in fact the new millennium would not actually begin until the following year.

Thus, 1801 was the year that would usher in the nation’s first full century of existence, not 1800.

Acknowledging this sets the stage for a remarkable revelation about the pyramid’s portrayal of history.

THE FIRST 12 YEARS

Recognizing 1801 as the Turn of the 19th Century has the side effect of creating a 12‑year interval in the nation’s infancy between the first two turning points in American history, 1789 and 1801.

If one uses this prefatory 12-year interval as a guide, and continues to generate 12-year intervals forward in the Presidency beyond 1801, magic happens.

Generating these intervals, and aligning them with the tiers in the pyramid, results in the 13th tier corresponding exactly to the whole of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration — our nation’s only 12-year Presidency!

This occurs because the 13th interval of 12 years in the history of the Presidency just happens to have corresponded entirely to Roosevelt. In other words, as strange as it sounds, from 1789 to 1945, the pyramid on the dollar was following American history as it happened. 13 12-year intervals give you the 13th tier.

Even the first 13 years after 1776, during which the nation had no President, find portrayal by the grass clusters around the pyramid’s base.

Altogether, the intervals portrayed by the pyramid to the end of the 13th tier, including the first 13 years after 1776, are as follows:

With these intervals juxtaposed over the Seal, the tiers in the pyramid take on a whole new meaning:

THE GAP

This leaves the gap following the 13th tier to correspond to the year 1945 — the year the first Atomic Bomb was exploded.

A monument stands at the “Trinity” site in Alamagordo, New Mexico, where the Bomb was first detonated on July the 16th, 1945, to commemorate the event. Ironically, it is in the shape of a pyramid.

(Side note: The year 1945 represented the 169th year since the nation's founding in 1776. 169 is, of course, equal to 13 times 13.)

THE EYE

Beyond the gap, the pyramid exhibits an All-Seeing Eye of Providence with which to represent history beyond 1945, and history after the splitting of the atom was identified by an Age of Superscience, which continues to this day. With it came a breathtaking escalation in technological wonders, including jets, the television age, the discovery of DNA, the invention of the laser, the development of the microchip, tabletop computers, laptops, the Space Race, cloning, genetic engineering, Martian rovers, high-resolution orbiting telescopes — the list goes on. And any one of these wonders would have been considered black magic by any generation prior to 1945.

On the Seal, this era is well represented by the Eye of Providence, with its rays of glory bursting forth.

This makes the components of the pyramid to this point as follows:

THE FOUR COMPONENTS OF THE EYE

This same feature of the pyramid, the Eye, consists of only four components with which to represent additional 12-year intervals after 1945 — the three corners of the triangle and the eye at its geometric center. So if we continue generating intervals after 1945, we have only four components with which to represent them.

Adding these four intervals to the 13 already represented by the tiers brings the end of all of American history represented on the pyramid side of the Seal to a specific year — 1993.

Ironically, 1993 was the year in which the space telescope Hubble went on line sending back the first high resolution images from the end of the universe. Though it had been placed in orbit two years earlier, a flaw in its mirror was not repaired until December ‘93, with the first detailed images being sent back on the 18th.

Thus, just as the four intervals of the Eye began with an event which is commemorated in New Mexico by a pyramid-shaped monument, they concluded with images from the world’s first “eye on the universe.”

How fitting an end to the four intervals of the Eye can you get?

Something very strange is going on here. At least, something that traditional science cannot explain.

Talk about life imitating art.

Something is speaking to us through the Seal, both on the printed page and off of it. And its language of choice is symbolism.

THE CYCLE OF MILESTONES

As evidence that we are on the right track, each of the 12-year intervals represented by the Eye ended with a milestone in the history of space exploration:

These were not random events, but bona fide turning points. Together, they formed lines of demarcation between the four intervals of the Eye.

In ascending order:

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THE FOUR "ELEMENTS"

The four intervals from 1945 to 1993, from the first Atomic Bomb to the Hubble, were special, according to the Seal, in that they are portrayed by a special feature, an All-Seeing Eye of Providence.

The specialness of these intervals is supported by the foregoing Cycle of Milestones, in that it was unique to these intervals — it did not continue beyond 1993. No milestone in the history of space exploration occurred in 2005 or 2017.

Another way in which their specialness is supported is in the fact that the trends of history in these intervals parallel the four “elements” or building-blocks-of-Nature of the ancient Greeks.

In the Greek world of two thousand years ago, all substances were believed to consist of four “elements”: fire, air, water, and earth. Though we know today that this is untrue, this tetrad of ingredients does parallel the four known states of matter — even to anticipating plasma, or matter in which electrons and atomic nuclei flow freely together in the presence of extreme heat, which was not recognized until the 1950’s. With its addition to the first three, the four states of matter become plasma, vapor, liquid, and solid. These perfectly parallel the four Greek elements.

The relevance of these elements to the Seal is that they also in turn express the trends of history in the four intervals:

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With the “elements” aligned with the intervals, and the Cycle of Milestones kicking off these intervals, the intervals of the Eye, in ascending order, become:

SHOEMAKER-LEVY

Almost as a postscript to the Cycle of Milestones, exactly 49 years (7 x 7) to the day after the first Atomic Bomb, on July 16th the 21 fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy Comet slammed into the surface of Jupiter, witnessed by the world thanks to the Galileo spacecraft, which was already on its way to Jupiter to take photographs and readings of the planetary giant and, despite a bent antenna, just happened to be in the right position to capture the event with its camera. For the first time in history, the world bore witness to a cosmic collision on another planet in real time, as it was happening.

The entire world stopped during the hours of this event to watch it unfold on their TV screens. Nothing like it had captured the world's attention in this way since the first Lunar landing, and nothing has captured its attention in quite this way since.

Anyone born during the hours of this event would have belonged to a unique class of people --- having come into this world on the very day the world was standing still, looking up at the heavens.

This amends the table of Eye intervals to include this event:

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THE PYRAMID SIDE

With the addition of the four intervals of the Eye, the intervals portrayed on the pyramid side of the Seal become:

One feature of this table that lets us know we are on the right track lies in the fact that these intervals began and ended with Presidents named George, who came into office exactly 200 years apart. They were George Washington (1789-1797) and George H. Walker Bush (1989-1993). There were no other George’s in between.

THE SEAL SO FAR

It could be argued — and there will be some, no doubt, who will do so — that the pyramid’s parallels with history are merely coincidental.

This argument would be valid if we were citing only one or two odd correlations.

Take, as an example, the parallel of the tiers to 12-year intervals in the Presidency, which results in the 13th and final tier corresponding to an iconic interval in American history — the entirety of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration; this by itself could be viewed as a remarkable coincidence, but not entirely impossible. So too could the parallel of the gap to the year 1945, which just happened to mark a turning point between the age of the tinkerer-slash-lone inventor and the atomic and digital age that succeeded it. So too could be the convenient availability of the grass clusters around the base of the pyramid with which to represent the first 13 years after 1776, during which the new nation had no President and no Constitutional government. Any of these parallels could be seen as an accident falling well within the range of possibilities allowed by the Law of Averages. But finding them all together in one place is tantamount to rolling marbles on several different roulette wheels and having them all end up falling on consecutive numbers — 1 on the first one, 2 on the second, 3 on the third, and so on. That would be stretching chance to the limit. For a truly random parallel, the correlations between components of the pyramid and history should have broken down immediately.

Suppose, for instance, after beautifully paralleling the 13 12-year intervals, the tiers had been succeeded by a bunny rabbit instead of the All‑Seeing Eye. It would have been difficult to see a bunny rabbit as the appropriate symbol for the age of technology that followed the splitting of the atom.

Or suppose a fleur de lis had been on display at the pyramid’s base instead of grass clusters. How a fleur de lis could represent the original 13 Constitution‑less years after 1776 would not have been obvious.

But that is not what you get. What you get instead is a collection of implausible yet workable correlations between history and components of the pyramid, all gathered neatly together on the same emblem.

All of which leads to the inescapable yet understated conclusion that something very strange is going on with the Seal.

And as we shall see in coming sections, the strangeness only grows.

THE ROMAN CONNECTION

The United States was founded exactly 1300 years to the year after the fall of the western Roman Empire. Rome fell in 476, the United States came into being in 1776. In a sense, this connection is commemorated on the pyramid by the Roman inscription of 1776 across the 1st tier.

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The United States and the Roman Empire have exhibited a number of commonalities, from their mutual passion for arena sports, health spas, gymnasiums, and theatrical events, to their election of officials by democratic vote; the sophistication of their water and road systems; and their perpetual insistence upon imposing their respective ways of life on other cultures, mostly through conquest. Like the Romans, the United States was built upon the conquest of native peoples. The capital of the Romans was named after their first king, Romulus; the capital of the United States was named after its first President, George Washington. Like Rome, Washington was located on seven hills. The official color of the Romans was purple; purple is achieved by combining the traditional colors of the Republican and Democratic Parties, red and blue. And like the Romans, the United States has had the eagle as its official symbol.

In a sense, the United States can be seen as the reincarnation of the Roman Empire, with progressive Democrats taking the place of the scientific and philosophical Greeks (who invented democracy, or at least some form of it) and conservative, hawkish Republicans taking the place of the conquest‑driven and tradition-minded Romans. It is as if Rome fell in 476; disappeared for 13 centuries; and then came back in a more sophisticated form.

Amazingly, if you take the 1300 years separating the fall of Rome from the founding of the United States and divide it by 6, you get 6 intervals of 216.67 years (2600 months) each. If you then project a 7th such interval beyond 1776, you get the exact number of years portrayed by the pyramid and the Eye — 1776 to 1993.

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THE EAGLE SIDE

Beyond the Eye, there are no more components on the pyramid side with which to represent additional 12-year intervals. Yet American history did not end in 1993.

Turning to the other side of the Seal, however, the eagle side, we find four additional components with which to represent intervals in the (1) arrows of war; the (2) olive branch of peace; the (3) glory above the eagle’s head; and the (4) soaring eagle itself.

With the addition of these four intervals, which represent the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st intervals portrayed in the Presidency respectively, the Obverse side of the Seal looks like this:

So how should these four intervals be represented on the eagle side? Which of the four should be portrayed by the arrows, which by the olive branch, and which by the glory above the eagle's head and by the eagle itself?

THE TREASURE OF TREASURES

By an odd “coincidence,” the eagle side of the Seal bears a striking resemblance to a 16th Century alchemists’ emblem, the Treasure of Treasures, the creation of one Philippus Aureolis Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenberg (1493-1541), who called himself Paracelsus or “Greater Than Celsus” for his arrogant belief that he was greater than the Roman-era physician Celsus. In fact, it is from his name that we get our modern word “bombastic.” Paracelsus is considered the father of modern medicine for his defiance of the Catholic Church, which he provoked through his use of cadavers to teach medical students.

Like all physicians of his day, Paracelsus was also an alchemist, one who pursued the secret of turning lead and mercury into gold, and as such disguised his chemical formulae in the form of pictographs to conceal his work from the Inquisition. The Treasure of Treasures was one of them:

As shown above, Paracelsus' emblem shows a Phoenix rising from a "nigredo" of burning sulfur, and is flanked on its left (your right) by the moon and on its right by the sun. Above its head hovers a glory, from which emanate 13 rays. Scattered throughout are the symbols for the planets, and elements used in alchemy. Beneath it is a locked treasure chest suggesting secret knowledge.

The Phoenix, or "bennu-bird," was one of the most important symbols in the religion of ancient Egypt, for it was as a Phoenix that the sun (as the sun-god Atum) was believed to have first made its appearance on earth on the "benben-stone" at Annu, which was also known to the Greeks as Heliopolis.

Ironically, the "benben-stone" was in the shape of a small pyramid, suggesting another possible inspiration for the eagle and pyramid on the Seal.

The resemblance of Paracelsus' emblem to the Obverse side of the Seal is uncanny:

On the Seal, the eagle takes the place of the Phoenix; arrows of war take the place of the moon; an olive branch replaces the sun; and the glory above the eagle's head translates more or less intact from the Treasure. Since the Phoenix was supposed to symbolize rebirth, one can only assume that the eagle on the Seal was meant to symbolize some sort of renewal as well.

As for the treasure chest, both sides of the Seal appear on the one‑dollar bill, which is also known as a “Treasury note.”

The eagle side of the Seal did not begin to take on this appearance until Secretary of the Continental Congress Charles Thomson took matters into his own hands in 1782 and combined elements of three separate committees’ designs to achieve a composite. If anything like a conscious effort had been made to copy the Treasure of Treasures, it would have to have been Thomson who made it. Thomson could have found the emblem in Elementa Chemicae, a collection of alchemical symbols by Johann Conrad Barchusen (1718), but there is no evidence that Thomson possessed a copy. Thomas Jefferson owned an extensive library, but Jefferson is not known to have been into the occult — in fact, Jefferson once rewrote the gospels, even to the point of leaving out all the miracle stories. Benjamin Franklin belonged to the American Philosophical Society, which dabbled in such matters, but Franklin’s association with the Seal, along with Jefferson’s, had ended with their participation in the first committee.

Was the eagle side of the Seal based on Paracelsus' design, or was Paracelsus' emblem a portent of the coming of the eagle side of the Seal?

Whichever it was, the parallel between the eagle and Paracelsus’ emblem will prove crucial to the next phase of the Seal’s portrayal of history.

THE TREASURE AS A GUIDE

Because the Treasure bears such a striking resemblance to the eagle side of the Seal, it can be used to show how the intervals represented by the eagle side should be depicted by its components.

This will be demonstrated in PART II.

THE 22 INTERVALS

If we now add the four intervals of the eagle side of the Seal to all of American history portrayed by the pyramid and the Eye, the total number of intervals portrayed by the Seal, front and back, comes to 22, and the total number of years to 265. The range of history covered by the Seal then ends as shown, with the year 2041:

PART II

THE MAJOR ACANA

Think this is all? Think again.

For PART II of the journey, go to PART II at the top.

TO MARY HARPOLD & PEARL WISE: WE SURVIVED WAL-MART