pop traditional knowledge suggests that the street layout of Washington , D.C. , was design so that the streets emanating from the White House would cross with landmarks in the area to form a pentangle . The designers of the dominion were Freemasons , and the pentangle is one of a overplus of symbols important to the sodality . Is there any truth to this strange tarradiddle of Washingtonomancy , or is it mere co-occurrence ? allow ’s take a spirit .
Is it a Masonic plot of ground ?
hearsay surrounding this conspiracy say Freemasons were involved in DC ’s urban provision , and that one of the organizations connect with Freemasonry , the Order of the Eastern Star , expend a pentagram as their logotype . Their interlingual rendition of the symbolization is constructed from five lines of equal duration , make five isosceles triangles with a pentagon in its center . In the Masonic view , a pentagram is represents theGolden Ratio , a numerical thought found in architecture , finance , and in nature .
Two central designers of the district , Pierre L’Enfant and Andrew Ellicott , were supposedly Freemasons . However , if you do enough digging , almost every major individual in the 18th and 19th Century is likely affiliate with Freemasons . Some records propose that L’Enfant only run low through thefirst stepto becoming a Freemason .
If L’Enfant and Ellicott were part of a Freemason cabal , they did n’t get much out of it . NeitherL’Enfantor Ellicott had much success after their intention work on Washington , D.C. , and both claim they were neverpaid in fullfor their piece of work designing the district . L’Enfant go in poverty and fell out of party favor due his constant battle to be compensate for his design work , dying witha smattering of picket and compassesto his name . Ellicott perish on to academia and taughtmathat West Point .
A look at the D.C. Pentagram
There are over thirty commutation roundabout within the Washington , D.C. surface area ( granted , not all were in place in the initial invention ) , with three of them being points in the say pentagram . Lines shape the pentagram are demo in the adjacent image . In the pentangle , the White House makes one spot , while the last point is Mount Vernon Square . No edifice was on this website until 1902 , when a building that would afterward become a public library was constructed . These five points do form a pentagram when four lines are pull between them . But was this a deliberate conception choice ?
It seems unpaired that one of the full point , at Mount Vernon Square , would go unused for so long . If the designers were unfeignedly assay to make a pentangle , why not go all the path and place a rope or something more in line with the quietus of the figure rather of an empty piece of music of locoweed ?
Also , one of the master features of the pentangle that makes it important to Freemasonry is that all four line of credit construct the symbol be of equal distance , typify theGolden Ratio . In the allege White House pentagram , the tie in air running along what is now K Street ( and intersecting Mount Vernon Square ) is substantially longer than the other three , failing to be a right representation of the Golden Ratio .
What ’s so defective about a pentagram ?
The pentagram was n’t considered an significant occult symbolisation until the nineteenth century , when Éliphas Lévi suggested in his bookTranscendental magic , its doctrine and ritual :
In this sign are enchained the devil of the air , the spirits of the fervency , the phantoms of the water , and the spook of the land .
Lévi ’s verbal description led to further adoption of the symbol over the next century . By the 1980s , pentagrams had been used to market everything from skateboards to music , with the pentagram becoming a general sign of the zodiac of rising and “ Satanism . ”
Prior to Éliphas Lévi ’s designation , almost every spiritual mathematical group had used the pentangle at some power point as a convinced symbolisation . Christians used it to play thefive stigma of Christand as a symbolisation toward off demonsin the medieval geological era . Wiccans use it to lay out thefive elementsof the Earth , and parts of Judaism habituate it to represent the wisdom of Solomon . Outside of religious circle , the pentangle was used as a general sign ofgood fortuneduring medieval time and was also imprinted on someRoman coinsand other coinage off and on more or less 2,500 years ago .
A pentangle also resides on thenational sword lily of Ethiopia .
Verdict : A Case of Current Symbolism cast on a Previous Era
It ’s an interesting approximation , but there just is not enough evidence to intimate that Washington , D.C. ’s urban couturier deliberately chose to create a pentacle rule with the city ’s streets . Neither L’Enfant or Ellicot truly had the power to make such a change or the motif – nor did they have anything to win . Plus , the lack of a distinct power point at Mount Vernon Square , and the differing lengths of the lines in the pentagram , advise that this pentangle was n’t plan in advance . Instead , it was enforce on a distinctive urban landscape by mod conspiracy theoretician . After all , no ego - respect Freemason would make a “ prosperous ratio ” that was so awry .
The tale , however , makes for a bang-up confederacy theory regardless of the political political party in office , especially after the Satanization of the pentacle in the later twentieth Century .
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