Fallen stone: tub plundering

Fallen Stone(s) sahu. 1. Occult mirror through which the powers of man are distracted.

Extrapolation

---

"The meteorite has always exerted a powerful influence over the imagination. What child, nay, what adult, has not marvelled under those graceful arcs of fire, so transient, so tantalizing, that are shooting stars? Is it any wonder that with our contemporary sense of the marvellous, the ancients took the shooting star for something even greater? A stone from the roof of the sky, perhaps even a piece of heaven itself?"

--Elysius Dubord, The Origins of Mormo Worship in Chaldean Mythology (1932)

Twinkle Twinkle
 
Throughout history mankind has worshipped the unknown and the dwelled in shadow, primitivistic urges little advanced beyond the endless sniffing of faeces so common among dogs and lesser species. The belief system built upon the imaginary will eventually collapse and the society to which it gave stucture will succumb to the forces of Associational entropy, drowning in failed belief, anatelic, crumbling evermore. But what of a God whose Will cracks across the sky in a startling display of atmospheric hullabulloo? What of the shooting star, sparkling like diamonds across the breast of Night, popping the dull cork of religions and landing it, once and for all, in the realm of the real, the Archimedic, beyond eternal Poobanism and like that.

Dubord associates Mormo with a minor Chaldean demigod called Mommo, a great warrior, but human. One day he set out to look for a stone which he had seen fall to earth and blinded by the sun invented the first denumbrator. He recovered the stone, which had fallen from the great vaults of the sky where Sirus soars -- from the very arches that support the heavens and separate the gods from the men of earth. When Mommo found the fallen boundary stone, he aquired great powers. He made of himself a king, so arrogant as to challenge the very gods. As powerful as he had become, however, he was no match for the gods; he was banished by Enlil and forced to roam the planet forever. To protect himself and the other gods, Enlil then hid the fallen stone inside the head of another wandering immortal. In his bitter state of earthbound immortality, Mommo sent his followers in search of the stone; when they found a likely candidate for the living hiding place, they naturally cut the person's head off to look inside for the stone. Dubord claims that Mormo, then, is merely Mommo by another name, and that the sacrifices associated with the former are the result of a misreading by Ankaran worshippers of Mommo's purpose: they knew nothing of a fallen stone but believed their god was demanding sacrifice to augment his power and satiate his thirst for death, as in the Mormo Death Cycle.

Dubord's theory, although far from widely accepted, still inspires provocative questions. An entire sub-genre of occult literature has grown up around his rather modest and rigorously scholarly book which has unfortunately caused many to look upon Dubord as some sort of crank who merits no attention whatsoever. But this is unfair to the mild-mannered professor, who in no way intended to posit what many have sought to ascribe to his writings.

That which was lost
 
One of Dubord's "wild step-children" is self-styled "investigative mythologist" William Henry, whose article "Shock ‘n Awe: We Will Rock You" (21 March 2003) contains quite a bit of clever word play linking the current war in Iraq with ancient Babylonian mythology.

As Elysuis points out, it is widely believed that during the period of Jewish history known as the Babylonian exile, Chaldean mythology had a great influence on the development of the mysticism found in the Kabbala. Starting with "Shock and Awe," the phrase used by the US military to describe the first phase of its Iraq invasion, Henry sees a reference to the Kabbalistic name of the feminine presence of God: "Shakina," who was exiled after the destruction of the Temple of Solomon. In her exile, she has variously been referred to as "the Widow" the "Stone of Exile" and the "Precious Stone." Arguably, her return from exile will precipitate the reconstruction of Solomon's Temple, which--according to the fundamentalist Christians George Bush associates himself with--is necessary before the Christ can make his encore performance.

According to an article in the Christian Science Monitor (6 August 2003), Iraqi folklore credited Saddam Hussein's occult powers to a "magic stone" he wore around his neck. What if the whole point of the Iraq war was to recover that stone? Shakina, the Precious Stone, was associated with the Ark of the Covenant, which makes any army who bears it invincible. Henry also points out that another element of the Shock and Awe campaign were the much-vaunted "decapitation strikes."

In Grail Romances, Percival is almost always, despite all other differences among their various authors, called the "Son of the Widow Lady." In Wolfram Von Eschenbach's version, the Templars are the Grail guardians, which is a stone called "lapsit exillis." This is bastard Latin which can be interpreted as "the stone, exiled." Whether the stone fell from heaven or was forced up by geomantic upheaval matters but little -- for Constantine himself, speaking from beyond Life in the vehicle of decapitation, blessed the Christian forces invading the Holy Land. What more does a sword need than the whetting stone of Christianity's true founder?

An Exemplary Construct
 
Freemasons are also referred to as "Widow's Sons," and a lost stone plays an important part in their mythology. A lost keystone, for example, is the whole point of the highest degree of the Royal Arch. Hiram Ibiff, the Freemason's martyred hero, is finally killed by a wound to the head while in charge of building Solomon's Temple.

Decapitated heads are often associated with the grail legends as well as the Templars. Richard the Lion-Hearted is said to have decapitated thousands of prisoners during the Third Crusade. The Templars were said to worship before heads and to hold something which guaranteed fertility and protection, much as decapitated heads have figured in Celtic and Welsh mythology (one of Shakina's places of exile is rumored to be Ireland). This could be the Grail or the Ark, both of which were said to hold these powers.

Peek-a-Boo
 
The biggest problem with piecing this history together is that after legend placed the stone in the head of an immortal, it was never retrieved. The historical record lacks any explicit connection, but this has not stopped people from searching. Texts this ancient are few, so many scholars have looked to Biblical references, including chapter 4 of Joshua, where God commanded Joshua to place twelve stones with the Ark of the Covenant. While it takes an extreme leap of faith to accept that these stones were somehow related to the fallen stone, several interesting facts fall into place once you make the jump.

The Ark, and it's accompaniment of stones, was later placed in Solomon’s Temple. The inner sanctum of the Temple, which held the Ark, was demarcated by encircled stones that separated the Profane from the Sacred. It seems likely that these were the same stones brought to the Ark by Joshua. As in Chaldean mythology, the stones demarked the separation of gods and men.

The treasures of the Temple were later stolen by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar’s name in Akkadian translates to “Nebo, protector the boundary-stone.”¹  No mention of the Ark or the stones is made when the treasures were returned to the Israelites. Interestingly, the Kaaba, the holiest of Islamic shrines, contains a similar arrangement to the Temple, wherein a Holy area is set off from the world of sinners. Is it possible that the stones left the Chaldeans, entered the hands of the Israelites, only to be wrestled away by the Muslims who keep it hidden away?

Another possibility has been posited. Nebuchadnezzar also conquered the Phoenician city of Tyre. Curiously, Hiram I, the King of Tyre, had provided vital assistance with the construction of the Solomon’s Temple. Tyre was later conquered by Alexander the Great, and eventually fell under an early Christian influence. Later still, it was absorbed into the Islamic tradition, only to be conquered during the First Crusade. Legend has it the Holy Grail was recovered from Tyre by the Templars. Did they actually take the stone, which as since been misrepresented as the Holy Grail?

Much of the speculation surrounding the stone and Tyre rests on etymology. The Hebrew and Arabic names for the city (Zor and Sour or Sor, respectively) both translate to "rock" or "stone" in an apparent reference to the rocky island where the city is situated. But the word "Tyre" traces back to Indo-European word "Dyeus", which meant “sky”.²

It's not a great leap to see that this was a town alternatively named for the Heavens and the Earth -- perhaps a strong magnet for a stone fallen from the arches separating Heaven and Earth.

Still Crazy After All These Years
 
If we assemble these references together, a pattern emerges; are the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, an exiled widow, a fallen stone and a decapitated head one and the same? It is no wonder that much has been made of Dubord's theory. If Mommo went around cutting off heads in order to "get his groove back," the Gnomic, Mormo-infested US government might do the same. Plastic Tub believes that if true, the US didn't find what they were looking for when they pulled a gaunt Saddam Hussein from his hole in the ground. Decapitations are still in fashion all over Iraq as so-called "insurgents," most likely CIA operatives hunting for the fallen stone, make their gruesome home movies in a rather clumsy revelation of their search.

Agents haven't met with much sucess in regard to Bin Laden either. Days after 9-11, a small CIA hit squad led by Gary Schroen was sent to Afghanistan to "Capture Bin Laden, kill him and bring his head back in a box on dry ice." As for his cohorts? Shroen was told to put their heads on pikes. Four years after the attacks he masterminded on 9-11, Bin Laden remains at large. Perhaps his head holds the fallen stone....

"I heard that Saddam Hussein, in solitary confinement, was spending his time writing poetry, reading the Koran, eating cookies and muffins, and taking care of some bushes and shrubs. I heard that he had placed a circle of white stones around a small plum tree."

Eliot Weinberger, What I Heard about Iraq (2005)

The Beat Goes On
 
The fallen stone has made its way into other mythical traditions as well. At Islam's holiest site, there is a shrine called the Kaaba, or Kaba. One of the cornerstones is a meteorite 50 cm in diameter, surrounded by a silver band that holds it together due to damage sustained while being returned 22 years after it was stolen by Ismaeli raiders in 930 CE. The stone is believed to have fallen during Adamic times and that it was originally a dazzling pure white, having turned black after absorbing the sins of true believers. This stone is called Al-Hajaral Aswad.

(Many have speculated that the Ismaelis were to have some important contact with the Templars. Interesting in this story is that the Templars in their turn are said to have influenced the Freemasons, who place a great deal of importance on symbolic cornerstones. The White House and the Capitol Building, for example, have Freemasonic cornerstones.)

In Matthew 13:45-46, Jesus tells a parable known as the "Pearl of Great Price." In this parable a merchant finds a pearl so alluring he sells all of his belongings to buy it, ending up wealthier than ever. In this parable Jesus is commonly believed to be illustrating that the pearl, or the Kingdon of Heaven, is worth sacrificing everything for; it is the ultimate treasure.

In the Acts of Thomas, a Gnostic text from ca. 200 CE, one also finds the "Hymn of the Pearl" (aka "Hymn of the Robe of Glory") as a metaphor for the exile and redemption of the soul. In the Hymn, a noble youth is sent to Egypt to recover a precious pearl guarded by a serpent. Once there, he loses his identity, forgetting not only his family and where he comes from, but who he is as well. After a series of encounters he comes back to himself, lulls the serpent to sleep and snatches the pearl, recovering the splendid, glittering robe which had ben made for him by his parents and which during his "exile" he had removed and forgotten. In a bit of Jungian synchronicity, ancient Chinese lore relates that pearls were formed in the brains of dragons, and guarded between their teeth. The dragon had to be slain before the pearl could be retrieved. Pearls were said to fall from the clouds when dragons fought. The black pearl, in particular, was a symbol of wisdom.

Some of these themes are repeated in the Pearl, a 14th century poem believed to be by the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a Grail Romance. In this poem, a young man falls asleep and dreams that he has lost his precious pearl. Perceiving a maiden, he asks if she is his lost pearl. She says that his pearl is not lost, but a rose which has withered. The youth wonders if the maiden has replaced Mary as the Queen of Heaven. Later, wearing the pearl, she instructs him on sin and redemption and exhorts him to forsake all he has to buy the pearl. He asks of the New Jerusalem, and she says he may not enter but can see it. He is led up a river to a spot where he sees the Blessed entering the Kingom of God and plunges into the river to join them; he awakes from his dream at this point, resolved to fulfill the wishes of God. Is this maiden--associated with the lost stone-- Shakinah, guide to the reconstructed Temple?

In Polynesia, the black pearl was called "the pearl of queens" or the "queen of pearls." Many legends surround the pearl. According to one, Oro, the god of peace and fertility, came down to earth on a rainbow, offering the pearl oyster to man. In another, the spirits of coral and sand adorned one "Te Ufi" with a cloak of the colors of all the fish that swim in Polynesia. The glory of the heavens came to rest on the ocean bed in the iridescent mother-of-pearl, which was considered a gift from the sky to the sea.

The Greeks and Romans thought pearls were born in oysters when rain or dew penetrated between the layers. The Persians thought the same, but they believed that if a pearl was imperfect it was due to thunder in the sky. Another says pearls are born from the meeting of a rainbow with the earth.

The Pearl of Great Price is also the name of the second holiest Book of Mormonism, which of course is a well-known front for a powerful Mormo Cult. Although not a meteorite, the pearl is a stone of great power. In fundamentalist belief systems, the fallen stone represents a literal thing, an object to be retrieved from within someone's head. More mystically-oriented believers feel that the pearl is symbolic of some sort of knowledge, a key to heaven, if you will, represented by a stone hidden in the head of an "immortal," or person of lasting import and influence.

A man, a plan, a canal: Apocalypse!

A kind of circumpunct.  Google Earth

Back when I was knee-deep in researching "les Saintes Puelles", I managed to visit the village which bears their name (Mas-Saintes-Puelles) in the Lauragais.  Not wanting to take the motorway home, I decided to meander my way back along the smaller highways and byways in order to get a better peep at the villages along the route.

Both the motorway and smaller roads follow the course of the Canal du Midi.   This canal is an engineering marvel, extending 150 miles from Bordeaux on the Atlantic to Sète on the Mediterranean Sea.  As many as 91 locks, some of them multi-tiered, and a total of 328 structures form part of its course:  bridges carry the canal over rivers and highways; there is a dam and at one point it goes through a tunnel.  Approved in 1666 and begun the next year, it only took a surprising 14 years to be completed, in 1681.  The canal was the brainchild of Pierre-Paul Riquet, engineer and tax farmer, a man of great wealth and vision.  The project consumed him and he died the year before it was completed.

Today, Riquet is honored across France.  Innumerable streets bear his name and several monuments are dedicated to him.  It is one of these monuments which concerns us here.

The Obelisk. LoS photo.

The summit of the canal du Midi is located at the

Seuil de Naurouze, aka Col de Naurouze...a mountain pass in southern France. It is the watershed point identified by Pierre-Paul Riquet when he designed and built the Canal du Midi. Water falling on the western side of this point flows to the Atlantic Ocean and on the eastern side to the Mediterranean Sea.

When I came across this place I was attracted by an enormous obelisk which thrust upward from a tree-covered hill by the side of the road.  Parking, I walked towards this and found at the summit of the hill a high and perfectly circular wall with a locked gate.  In the center of this was a series of large boulders and upon these, the obelisk.

LoS has long been interested in several themes.  Perhaps one of our first obsessions was the idea of sacred waters.  As we wrote, it also became apparent that we were interested in sacred stones.  Obelisks, too, form a large part of our repertoire.  (Follow these links and see for yourself).  This monument explicitly brings all these elements together.

At the gate one finds a pair of explanatory panels of much more recent origin.  One of the texts says the obelisk is

....a monument constructed in 1827 upon the stones of Narouze in homage to P.P. RIQUET, creator of the Canal du Midi (1680).
...
The troubadours sung of these [stones] during the Middle Ages and according to the legend, when these stones touch, the end of the world will be at hand. (my abridgement and translation)

The second text tells us the obelisk is 20 meters (almost 66 feet) in height and at its base, allegorical figures are carved in bas-relief.  The north face features Minerva, symbolizing wisdom, and Mercury, symbolizing commerce.  (Both of these gods have featured in LoS posts in the past, Minerva as patroness of the Bohemian Grove and Mercury as seen on the "macaron" of the BIPM).

The panels specify the symbolism of the gods portrayed and although their attributes are much more varied, I think we can assume the official explanation is accurate.  France places a high value on its engineers and scientific achievements and indeed, the Revolution stressed the values of reason and rational thinking.  "Wisdom" is a national virtue.  Mercury, representing commerce, is a logical choice.  The canal was not built for pleasure boating.  Indeed, it was a way to facilitate the transport of merchandise, one motivation being that the route around the Iberian Peninsula was long and rampant with pirates.

On the south, a nymph symbolizing the Montagne Noire (Black Mountain) pours water from an urn into the "rigole de la plaine" a complicated structure of basins and locks which helps to assure the perennial supply of water for the canal.

This flow of water then divides into two parts to symbolize the division of water, i.e. the watershed point.  Neptune pours this water to the Atlantic and Venus, to the Mediterranean.

Now, while Neptune is also quite an evident choice as god of the seas and oceans, I was at first puzzled by the inclusion of Venus.  But I myself have already written on Venus' extensive association with the sea:  she was after all, born from its foam and carried to land upon a shell.  She comes from the sea and here returns water to it.  Full circle.  Perhaps both symbolic and very concrete; the engineering genius of the canal is the way it combines natural sources with a complex series of lock and basins and artificial lakes to guarantee that the water is constantly re-supplied.

Venus is also a precursor of the Virgin as Stella Maris, Star of the Sea, the significance of which I will return to in a moment.

It would seem as if so many of the themes we've explored on LoS are encapsulated here in this monument.  When I decided to finally get to this post after 8 or so months, I hadn't done much by way of research; but when I began to dig a bit, I came across a doozy of a page which further explains the legend behind these stones, associated somehow with the end of the world.

It seems fitting for the Riquet heirs to have built a monument to their illustrious ancestor at the watershed of his creation, but that it coincides with such a rich legendary history is pure gold.  I don't know if the Riquet family was aware of these legends, but whoever put up these panels was.  They didn't do the legends justice.  It took me but little time to find out more at the website of the Societé Perillos.

I will here quote rather liberally from a page entitled The stones at the end of the world but you should really go there and read the entirety in order to get a wider picture:

....the top of [the memorial] is a series of rocks that forms the subjects of our interest. For Nostradamus, deemed to be one of the most famed prophets, these stones were highly symbolic, as he claimed that when these seven rocks, each separated by various fissures, would rejoin, the end of the world would arrive.

....legend has it that they were transported by a giant, Naurouzo, and that they were to be used to build Toulouse. However, it appeared that the giant learned that the city had been completed without him, and in his fury, he threw these stones down where they have remained ever since.  

I would add that this idea of giants throwing down stones to explain rock formation is a common folkloric element in France.  Likewise micturation to explain the origins of rivers.

Furthermore:

They [the stones] featured, under the name of “Peiras d’Alzona” in songs of the 13th century troubadour Ramon de Mireval. One should underline that there is another Alzonne, not too distant yet not immediately in the vicinity either, a bit further in the direction of Carcassonne.

In the 15th century, the bishop of St Papoul, Pierre Soybert, also wrote about the stones. He refers to them as the “Rocha de Nau Rosa”....He also relates about a prophecy that seems disquieting for the mental health of humanity, rather than for the world as such. He states that “when the stones of Naurouze touch, the world will become shameless.”

In origin, the name Alzona comes from “Al” and “Ona”. Al relates to water, and Ona is linked with a place. Its link with the separation of the waters is hence to be expected, but there is also the famous miraculous fountain known as “Font Alzona”, as well as the “Elusio”, the spas, both of which are close to this site.

As to Naurouze, let us note that it was apparently derived from “Nau Rosa”, which can be translated as “the new flower” or “the new rosa”, or even “the lady of the rose”, or “the rose lady”. 

Okay.  I don't know about the reliability of the etymology of the name Alzona.  It seems to be quite widespread in the Philippines, leading me to suspect a Spanish origin, but there are also Alzonas in Italy as well.  Generally speaking, words beginning with "al" are Arabic in origin (algebra, alcohol) and effect seen more clearly in Spanish than English.  Alzona could have worked its way from Iberia into the Occitan language which is still spoken today in a tiny corner of Catalonia and Italy and is the traditional (but dying) language of the Midi.  This may or may not be important, but as the Societé Perillos page continues:

....this hill is not unique in its prophetic alliance....Islam has the tradition of a place known as Rhama, where the stones were said to be able to lock together if pilgrims passed between them. Not just any pilgrims, but women that cried according to an established sacred ritual.

Again, I cannot verify the etymology of the word Narouze, although it is an Arabic surname.  The idea that it originally meant "new rose" seems a bit suspect, but nonetheless the 15th-century belief that it did is itself significant.  Interestingly, the use of the name here is associated with a woman.  As we have seen time and again on LoS, roses are often associated with saintly women, the Virgin Mary at the top of the list.  St. Thérèse and St. Germaine, the saint of the Midi, are likewise associated with miracles of roses.  Didn't Elton John refer to Lady Di as England's rose?  Aren't "England's roses" metaphorically the beautiful young women of England?  Is this why we see Venus at the base of the obelisk?  (Wouldn't we all like to have Venus at the base of our obelisks?)

Recall that legend mentioned above.  It is women pilgrims who can bring forth the miracle (not-so-clearly) therein described.  This may not be an ancient preoccupation, but the association of women with the canal certainly figures in modern histories.  Wikipedia states baldly "The women labourers were surprisingly important to the canal's engineering." and dedicates a paragraph of a roughly 20-paragraph article to explain why.  It also mentions that the "staircase of eight locks at Fonsérannes....was built by a workforce composed mainly of women."

All that said, I don't know if there should be any emphasis placed on the sacred feminine, even though it does fit in with the higher status accorded women in the historical Midi.  I'm also unsure of what this Arabic link may mean, apart from the lingering cross-cultural influences which appeared during the Muslim occupation of Spain and the Reconquista.  Sacred stones/springs appear in various legends which involve Christians and Moorish opponents, from the legend of St. Fris to that of Pelayo, the Visigoth who kicked off the Reconquista.

According to the Perillos site the stones at Narouze are part of an ancient meme:

[Another] such sacred pagan location was Belle-Île, where it was said that two megaliths, at night-time and secretly, came closer to each. Jean and Jeanne, the name of the two standing stones, at the time of an astronomical conjunction (the exact nature of which is unknown) would be reunited and would exact their revenge on Mankind, under the form of a tidal wave that would wipe us out. The same legend is known on the île de Sein, as well as near Tredion where the rocks are known as Babouin and Babouine [masculine and feminine forms of "baboon"]. Here, local tradition links them with the time of Christmas, and especially the moment when the genealogy of Jesus is read out. They also become displaced during the twelve strokes of midnight....and when the rocks move, it is said that an incredible treasure is unveiled.


Again, see the "legend of the seven cows of gold" in the post about St. Fris, which bears some similarity to this last legend (treasure, water, stones, stroke of midnight, the number seven, a kind of music).


On page 158 of [the] re-edition [of “Livre du passé Mystérieux”, 1973 by Robert Laffont...this surname is French and refers to someone who lived near a spring or well!], we find a subtitle “Pierres à oracles. Fin de Marseille!” – “Oracle stones. The end of Marseilles!”

Charroux [the first man to write about Rennes-le-Chateau, which is about 80 kilometers distant] writes about prophecies and notes that “near Rennes-le-Château” there is a rock formation. A local legend states that they were thrown from the sky by a giant who, after his temper had settled down, prophesised that “when the rocks would rejoin, the end of the world would come”.

Of course, Charroux does not speculate further, instead opting to tackle the “Seuil de Naurouze”, finishing with a prediction made by a certain de Novage who, in 1905, saw Marseilles being swept away by a wave, which heralded radical changes for the geology of the entire globe.

So, how bout them noon blue apples?  Since very early on LoS, we have noted several instances where sacred stones and sacred waters are to found at the same locations, such as at the Garden of Eden and the Kaaba, among others. From the discovery of St. Fris to the death of Santiago de Compostela, to the legends surrounding Virgin Martyrs.  Interesting that in this case, the movement or joining together of great stones heralds the arrival of destruction by water.

Flood myths figure in a number of religious traditions, but the Biblical precedent probably explains the recurrence here.  Remember that at Narouze there are seven stones and that God, commanding Noah to build the Ark, specified that he bring seven pairs of each type of animal to be saved.  Also recall that the Ark, after the rains abated, came to rest upon a high place such as hill upon which the obelisk is erected.  In Jewish and Christian tradition, this is Mt. Ararat, although early Christian, Islamic and Yazidi tradition has it as Mt. Judi. (It also just struck me that the US agency responsible for monitoring weather and the oceans is NOAA; I just visited and the lead story says "Be safe about floods".  I can't make this stuff up.)

So this high place with its seven stones and the apocalyptic associations links it squarely within the Abrahamic tradition. In addition to this are Celtic precedents in which groves, high places, waterways and springs, as well as standing stones, were accorded sacred status.

I found myself wondering why this movement of stones would signal the apocalypse but we would do well to the legends around Atlantis and the speculation about the fate of the Cretan civilization, as well as the recent examples of the great tsunami in 2004 and that of Japan in 2011.  In all these cases we speak of vast destruction and oblivion by great waves of water, set into motion by earthquakes--great stones crashing together. Whatever mystical explanations we can find are also supported by the more concrete reality of geological instability.

So, I'll stop here, but knowing how things like this go, I'll soon see another piece of the puzzle to set me off again....

¡Hooper!

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Ah, the obelisk rises again, aherm.  The dying and resurrected god, perhaps.  Cock and balls.  We've done some extensive writing about obelisks and columns, especially those surmounted by a ball finial.  The most extensive post on this symbolism was Pillars of the Community from back in December '09.

So I was delighted but a bit befuddled to see the following article (A Bypassed Small Town Makes a Visual Statement) in the NYT today, written yesterday but on today's page one.  Befuddled due to its being one page one, btw.

Apparently, the town of Hooper, Nebraska, not wanting to be forgotten, decided to make a monument to distinguish themselves.  Their choice:  a truncated obelisk with the name of the town arranged vertically upon two sides; the obelisk rises above the flat surrounding planes and is illuminated on the sides with the name, recalling perhaps that the obelisks were originally held to be petrified rays of light.  Mighn't the socle recall as well the sacred Benben stone upon which the first rays of light were said to fall in the sacred solar city of Heliopolis and which is said to be the prototype of all obelisks, their capstones and thus the pyramids?

Is there also a hope that like the Phoenix, worshipped at the Benben stone, the town might rise again from the ashes?  Which brings us back full circle to the rising and setting sun, the resurrected god and of course, the resilient penis.

Hey, if you're gonna erect a phallus to distinguish your town, yer gonna have to get use to this kind of commentary.

Rock on, Hooperites!

"God is stronger than the NWO"

Just happened upon this article today, about the Georgia Guidestones. In light of recent posts on sacred stones, the apocalypse and even the cultural/political conflicts of our times, it is especially relevant to our discussion. Sample quote:

"The four vertical slabs that dominate the Guidestones are inscribed back and front with Christian's 10 principles, each side in a different modern language. The capstone is inscribed in the alphabets of early human civilizations -- Egyptian hieroglyphics, Babylonian cuneiform, Sanskrit and classical Greek.

The center column has a slot through which the transit of the sun throughout the seasons can be observed, while a hole higher up focuses on Polaris, the north star. Another hole in the capstone focuses a beam of sunlight onto the central pillar at noon. Those features would allow the survivors of Christian's feared apocalypse to reproduce three of the basic tools of civilization: the calendar, clock and compass."

Can't believe this is the first we've heard of it! Actually, though, this article from Wired is much more intriguing. A mysterious stranger obsessed with secrecy turns up and says he and his group had wanted to do this for 20 years; a local minister predicts it will become a magnet for occult groups--and is right; the sandblaster who made the inscriptions reported hearing "strange music and disjointed voices"; Freemasons are intimately involved etc. etc.

Fun stuff....

Journey to the Center of the Earth

According to our Google analytics, among the most highly-viewed pages on LoS is a post about the "DC pentagram" titled Weird scenes from above, and thus it has been since we started using analytics. Since The Lost Symbol hit the shelves it has consistently been number one or two in our list. In the post we took a brief look at the pentagram, which doesn't require squinting one's eyes or leaps of faith; in other words, it is clearly there, albeit incomplete. We focused on the Masonic elements contained within the form; there are actually quite a few.

In response to popular demand (one person anyway), we've decided to take another look at the subject (full disclosure: this could lead to a gift of beer--fingers crossed--and thus our purpose does not lie entirely outside of the mercenary!)

A Bit of Background

(The next few paragraphs originally appeared on the Plastic Tub--a site not dead, but sleeping.)

The center of D.C. was originally designed by Pierre Charles L'Enfante, a Frenchman who had attained the rank of Major in the Continental Army. L'Enfante was fired by George Washington before the completion of his plan, which was significantly modified by surveyor Andrew Ellicott and his assistant Benjamin Bannaker when they began their work in 1791. Contrary to some popular internet "theorists", none of the three men were Freemasons. [So I said, sneering.  Actually, turns out L'Enfant was a Mason, revealed here in 2011.  My only defense is that at the time of writing this, most scholars believed L'Enfant wasn't a Mason--Duarade, 11/13/11] Over time, Washington evolved naturally and the street plan strayed from L'Enfante's vision. At one point, for example, what is now the National Mall was a muddy field used for grazing cattle and marred by an ugly railway station.

In 1901, a Commission chaired by Senator James McMillan of Michigan was formed to restore the Mall to L'Enfante's original vision. Among the experts he engaged was Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., a landscape architect who was, like McMillan, not a Freemason.

Tracing the Pentagram

Dupont Circle (1) and Logan Circle (2) form the two leg-points of a pentagram. The legs trace down 15th St. and Connecticut Avenue where, if continued, would form the bottom tip of the star at the center of the White House (4). They are, however, broken at K Street by Farragut Square (6) and McPherson Square (7). The lines pick back up after the Squares, but they are broken again at LaFayette Park (9).

K Street forms the bar of the pentagram and culminates at Mount Vernon Square (3) and Washington Circle (5).

The star is incomplete. From Logan Circle, Rhode Island Avenue seeks to complete the pentagram, but it stops, leaving the left arm incomplete from where RI meets Connecticut (connect it cut?) until Washington Circle. [One is reminded of the unfinished pyramid on the dollar bill.]

Pennsylvania Avenue, New Hampshire Avenue, New York Avenue, and P Street form a near perfect pentagon around the star, but from Logan Circle to Mount Vernon Square (the opposite of the broken arm), it is unfinished.

Please see the original post for a list of the Masonic elements of the pentagram; you will find that the squares and parks are all (but one?) named after Freemasons, and the HQ of the Southern District of the Scottish Right is smack dab in the middle of the pentagram's "crotch."

Of further interest is the flattened appearance of the pentagram. Usually pentagrams are more symmetrical, designed so that they fit perfectly into a circle; the D.C. pentagram, however, most nimbly fits into an ellipse. Just south of the White House, this is mirrored in that part of the National Mall known as "The Ellipse," an elliptical road 1 km in length in President's Park which is centered upon the point of the pentagram. The Ellipse was part of L'Enfante's original design. In 1919 a marker known as the Zero Milestone was dedicated there. The Zero Milestone, inspired by the Imperial Roman "Golden Milestone," was intended to be the point from which all distances to D.C. are calculated. It has engravings on five faces; the north features a winged helmet of the type associated with Mercury, or Hermes. "As Above, So Below," anyone? L'Enfante, incidentally, intended this point to be one mile east of the Capitol.

This will do little to assuage the fears of those who fret the US is the New Rome and heading in the same direcion, but there it is. The exact location of the Golden Milestone, or Milliarium Aureum, is unknown, but surviving fragments marked as such "are now believed by some to be identical with the Umbilicus Urbis Romae (or Navel of the city of Rome), a structure in the same area of the Forum which served a similar but not identical purpose."

The exact nature of both of these structures notwithstanding, it would seem that if one or the other served as the center of the Rome and thus the Empire, it would also by extension be considered the center of the world.

The idea of a "world navel", or axis mundi, is one of those archetypes that would seem to be found in a variety of disparate cultures worldwide. For our purposes, let's take a look at some Western examples.

Sacred Stones

In Greek, the word for "navel" is omphalos. According to myth, Zeus sent two eagles across the world and the point at which they met was thereafter to be considered its center. Not surprisingly, several places set up stone markers, also called an omphalos, to commemorate the spot; the most widely recognized was at Delphi, regarded as a holy site all across the Hellenic world.

There is even an omphalos at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. This refers to the medieval cosmology which places Jerusalem as the center of the world and thus, the universe itself.

This in turn is probably based upon the Jewish tradition which saw Jerusalem as the world navel. In this tradition, the Ark of the Covenenant rested on a rock in the Temple called the Foundation Stone. The tradition, which began in Hellenic times, may in fact have been inspired by or a competition with the oracle at Delphi.

Whatever the case, it remains the holiest site in Judaism and Jews worldwide pray towards it. According to the Talmud, the world was created from this rock and it was from nearby dirt that God first formed Adam. Several important events in the spiritual evolution of Judaism were said to have occurred here.

Muslims also hold a special reverence for this stone, for it was from this point that Muhammad once ascended into heaven (called the Journey of Al-Israa and Al-Mi'ara) for a private discourse with Allah. It is one of the holiest sites in Islam.

The holiest site, however, is in Mecca, which, like the Jews towards Jerusalem, is the direction towards which all Muslims pray. Within a shrine called the Kaaba is the Black Stone, al-Hajar-ul-Aswad. This stone, whose fragments are held together by a distincly vaginal-looking silver frame, is said to be black after absorbing all the sins of the faithful who make the pilgrimage here for the express purpose of kissing it.

Returning to Christianity, there is a metaphorical reference to a sacred stone; the Catholic Church, for example, bases its authority on the following quote by Jesus: "On this rock (also cephas in Aramaic, petra in Greek) I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it."

Indeed, the center of the Catholic world and for centuries a good chunk of Christendom, was St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, where the apostle is said to be buried. The keyhole-shaped piazza in front is decorated with an obelisk, perhaps the intermediary between all these later sacred stones and the more unfinished megaliths of prehistory.

Jerusalem and Rome were two of three places where medieval pilgrims could go in order to be absolved of all their sins. The third was Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia, Spain. This was a sacred place before the Christian Era, but its Christian significance came after

"a series of miraculous happenings: decapitated in Jerusalem with a sword by Herod Agrippa himself, his [Saint James the Great's] body was taken up by angels, and sailed in a rudderless, unattended boat to Iria Flavia in Iberia, where a massive rock closed around his relics, which were later removed to Compostela."

Is it surprising that the focal point of another sin-eating cult should prominently feature a sacred stone?

As we have previously noted in another post, boundary stones have been used to demarcate territory since the Sumerian city-states. It would also appear to mark the limits of sacred space as well: the obelisks at Egyptian temples come to mind, as do the stone circles of the Druids. A random thought is that perhaps these pagan cultures used several stones whereas in montheistic cultures, a single stone became the focal point. The theory has some merits. That stones were both centers and boundaries of these cultures gives the religious significance "nationalistic" overtones, at least in the sense of a "special" or "chosen" people, or ethnicity. Which is not so far-fetched when we consider that in many ancient cultures the king was literally a god, up until the Romans, for whome the state itself was a kind of cult.

American Freemasons use the slogan: "Making Good Men Better." This is symbolized by the rough ashlar, or stone, and the smooth ashlar, and represents central Masonic doctrine. Perhaps this is at the origin of its conflict with the Catholic church. Instead of a doctrine of original sin, which must be expiated, there is a doctrine of inherent goodness, which must be revealed, progressively. The doctrine of perfectibility, or at least an improvement upon nature, is implicit. One is reminded of the Renaissance Neoplatonism which inspired Michelangelo's sculpture: the latent, perfect form was revealed by gradually chipping away the extraneous. Or, to use another metaphor, the wild woods must be pruned in order to reveal the order inherent in creation, as in a park. Men can thus be improved, in part, by transforming nature itself.

City Planning

Which brings us back to DC, whose plan may be Masonic only insamuch as it represented an opportunity to design from scratch a rational, orderly city reflecting the idea of the clockwork universe. Unfortunately for those who'd jump all over that, none of these designers were Freemasons. But there is a city whose plan is in fact based upon Masonic symbolism and designed by a Freemason: Sandusky, Ohio Karl W. Kurtz:


As far as I have been able to check in the past several years, Sandusky is the only city in the world originally laid out on Masonic symbols.

Hector Kilbourne, the first Master of Science Lodge No. 50, Sandusky in 1818, was the surveyor who made the original plan of the city. He proceeded with well-defined ideas and painstaking care in making the original survey as well as giving names to the streets in honor of the statesmen, warriors and others prominent in the early history of the country. Brother Kilbourne in laying out the city ran the lines or streets in order to form a true representation of the Square and Compasses. This has been clearly shown in the accompanying illustration.

The original plan of the city, as here represented, may be said to represent an open Bible, Square and Compasses in correct position to proceed with labor upon opening the Lodge.


Others have claimed for Brussels what many claim for D.C. The claims seem equally unfounded. The only Masonic symbol we have been able to find in Brussels is in the layout of the Parc de Bruxelles. English Wikipedia has a paltry entry which flat out asserts it is based upon Masonic symbolism, a claim which is repeated ad nauseum on the net by guidebooks, many of them fully respectable one, such as Frommers.

French Wikipedia has this to say:

Les symboles maçonniques que d’aucuns ont voulu voir dans ce tracé — le compas notamment — ne sont attestés par aucun document. C’est, du reste, un dessin couramment utilisé dans le tracé des jardins paysagers depuis le XVIIe siècle.

In other words:

"The symbols some have wanted to see in the plan - notably the compasses - are not attested to in any document. It is, however, a design commonly used in the layout of landscaped gardens from the seventeenth century."

Neither statement of course negates the possibility it was Masonically inspired; but short of documentary evidence it seems a bit brash to declare so bald-faced and sure, that is was. That is was a common design may only serve to bolster the conspiracy theorist's idea that them Masons are tessellating the plane all over the place. Perfecting nature, however, is a Masonic doctrine, and this is not the first time we have associated the idea of parks with a Masonic and Enlightenment ideals. Indeed, this park dates from 1775, smack dab in the middle of the Enlightenment.

The park is also, for all practical purposes, the center of the city, as it is flanked by both the National Palace and the Belgian parliament.

Interesting to note, when for political reasons the Baron de Stassart retired as Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Belgium on 16 June 1841, "6,000 people gathered in the Parc de Bruxelles to show their solidarity with him, a considerable number for this era."


Consider this photo of the principle entrance to the Parc de Bruxelles. This type of pillar topped by a fir-cone is so ubiquitous that it has become banal. But we propose that its very ubiquity is pudding proof of its resonance.

For a more detailed look at the significance of the two pillars, we suggest at least skimming the following previous posts: Pillars of the Community and I ♥ Phoenicia. Both discuss at great length the origin of dual pillars, as well as their relation to Freemasonic symbolism. In the former, we can find a brief discussions of the perrons of this part of Europe, especially that of Liège, which seems to be the mother of all perrons.

The perron was both a symbol of judicial authority and financial independence and was the place where official proclamations were read. It could literally be considered as the center of the city. Some have speculated that the fir-cone on the perron at Liège is a Gallo-Roman import, where others see it as a local, perhaps Druidic, symbol. For our discussion, it doesn't really matter, and we have already noted that the idea of a world navel marked by a worked or unworked stone is a concept spanning different cultures.

An obvious question presents itself: Why is this so?

But that's a whole 'nother bag of bananas....

I ♥ Phoenicia

Cruising Google Earth the other day, I came across the picture you see above, taken by one Mihaly Barosi, a Hungarian amateur photographer. These columns are just before the France/Spain border crossing at Le Perthus. Now, I've passed this border several times and of course remarked upon them; in fact, back in April I posted about the pyramid you can see in the background. But I never really went gog-eyed over the pillars.

The pyramid was designed by Catalan architect Ricardo Bofill and was an attempt to mitigate the damage done to the mountains by the construction of the autoroute, in 1976. According to Bofill's website:

"The garden that surmounts it creates a false perspective that highlights the temple on the top, a monument in homage to Catalonia. Its red brick columns symbolise the four stripes on the catalan flag, the origin of which goes back to the IX century when count Guifré el Pilós, wounded in a battle against the moors, was rewarded with a new banner by the king of France: soaking his fingers in his own blood, the count drew four red lines on his golden shield. With the imminent disappearance of the frontier post at its base, the pyramid became the symbol of a united Europe."

Given the fact I'd already posted about the pyramid, it's much to my discredit that I neglected to remember these two columns because I've recently posted about pairs of columns at the entrance to cemeteries and civic offices.

We've already noted that the Egyptians used pairs of obelisks at the entrance to their temples. Ditto the Phoenicians. Phoenician architect Hiram of Tyre reproduced these two pillars in his design for the Temple of Solomon. From this precedent it entered Masonic iconography.

We would argue that among other meanings, the pillars marked the transition between states; in this case from the profane world to the sacred world. The pillars represent boundaries. Thus, finding them at this border is no surprise. It represent both the transition from France to Spain, but also, paradoxically, the disappearance of boundaries altogether: a divided Europe evolving into a united one. A redistribution of space is evoked.

It's interesting that the "temple" at the top is evocative of Mesoamerican pyramids; the Pyramid of the Sun, for example, once had a temple at its summit and there are many reconstructions available which Bofill is clearly referring to.

We have already mentioned the benben stone in connection with the Voortrekker monument. This stone was a sacred stone in the solar temple at Heliopolis. It was designed so that the first rays of the rising sun would fall upon it; in this it served as the inspiration for the Voortrekker's cenotaph, or empty tomb. More germane to our purpose it that the benben is thought to have inspired not only the design of the obelisks--seen by the Egyptians as petrified rays of lights, but also the capstones of the pyramids.

The phoenix, or "benu bird" was also venerated at Heliopolis; apparently the connection between the benben, the phoenix and the sun might have been based on alliteration in the original Egyptian: benben, benu, and weben, or "the rising sun". It's not difficult to see that the Phoenix, which dies and rises from its own ashes, would be associated with the setting and rising sun. We can also see this metaphor extended in the Voortrekker monument as the continual regeneration of a people, the Afrikaaners. That a cenotaph, or "empty tomb" is involved, it's also hard to ignore a link to Jesus and the resurrection.

And why not, we've recently here at LoS had a fruitful exchange with Phoenixmasonry.com. Somehow it all ties together.

Incidentally, our friend Dave Lettelier wrote us:

"The old mythological legend of the Phoenix is a familiar one. The bird was described as of the size of an eagle, with a head finely crested, a body covered with beautiful plumage, and eyes sparkling like stars. She was said to live six hundred years in the wilderness, when she built for herself a funeral pile of aromatic woods, which she ignited with the fanning of her wings, and emerged from the flames with a new life. Hence the phoenix has been adopted universally as a symbol of immortality. Higgins (Anacalypsis, ii., 441) says that the phoenix is the symbol of an ever-revolving solar cycle of six hundred and eight years, and refers to the Phoenician word phen, which signifies a cycle. Aumont, the first Grand Master of the Templars after the martyrdom of DeMolay, and called the "Restorer of the Order," took, it is said, for his seal, a phoenix brooding on the flames, with the motto, "Ardet ut vivat" - She burns that she may live. The phoenix was adopted at a very early period as a Christian symbol, and several representations of it have been found in the catacombs. Its ancient legend, doubtless, caused it to be accepted as a symbol of Jesus Christ's resurrection and immortality."

The idea that two pillars represent the liminal or transition between states may also be found in the Pillars of Hercules. Literally these are the rocky promontories that flank the Strait of Gibraltar. They are so named because:

"Legend tells that Heracles (Roman Hercules), after traversing various countries during his twelve labors, raised two mountains in Spain and Africa as monuments of his progress. According to another account, Hercules had little time to climb a high mountain, so he split it into two halves, forming the straights of Gibraltar and opening the Mediterranean Seas to the Atlantic Ocean."

There were dissenting views; Greek historian Diodorus Siculus "held that instead of smashing through an isthmus to create the Straits of Gibraltar, Hercules instead narrowed an already existing strait to keep monsters in the Atlantic Ocean from entering the Mediterranean Sea."

The northern pillar is usually accepted to be the Rock of Gibraltar and the southern is either Monte Hacho in Ceuta or Jebel Musa in Morocco.

Interestingly, these pillars appear on the Spanish coat of arms along with the motto "Plus ultra" or "further beyond." This may indicate the desire to see the pillars not merely as a gate to the Med, but rather the opposite: a gate to the wider world. It may also indicate Spain's New World possessions and by implication, its power. A power made possible by its naval superiority.

The Pillars of Hercules also appear on the title page of Sir Francis Bacon's Instauratio Magna or "Great Renewal" (shades of the Phoenix, the Sun, Jesus....) which appeared in 1620. This text was the forward to his Novum Organum or "New Instrument." The book develops a new system of logic based upon inductive reasoning and is considered a critical text in the development of the scientific method. The Latin motto at the base--Multi pertransibunt et augebitur scientia comes from the Book of Daniel 12:4 and means "Many will pass through and knowledge will be the greater". Although far from widely accepted by mainstream historians, many authors have theorized that Bacon may have been involved in Rosicrucian and early Freemasonry.

As John Mongiovi states in his essay "The Two Pillars" (already quoted above):

"The two pillars are often depicted in esoteric symbolism [Tarot, for example] as an entry to hidden knowledge that permits the balance between opposite forces."

Bacon also wrote a novel called The New Atlantis (1624 as Nova Atlantis; 1627 in English). The novel is a mythical island "somewhere west of Peru" stumbled upon by a lost European ship. This island was called Bensalem (remember the benben and the benu?) Plot details aside, the focus becomes the workings of a state-sponsored scientific institution called, evocatively in our context, Solomon's House, where "scientific experiments are conducted in Baconian method in order to understand and conquer nature, and to apply the collected knowledge to the betterment of society." Bacon weren't just pissing in the wind; admirers of his idea created the Royal Society (the UK's national academy of science) in 1660.

The Pillars of Hercules probably have a Phoenician provenance. The Phoenician merchant navy established several bases near the Strait of Gibraltar. One of these, near modern Cádiz, housed a temple to the Phoenician deity Melqart, who the Greeks called the Tyrian (as in Hiram of Tyre) Heracles. Two bronze pillars inside the temple were said to be the true Pillars or Hercules, but ancient commentators (Strabo) disputed this. There were, however, columns in the temple of Melqart at Tyre with religious significance and we have already noted this Phoenician custom in a previous post; indeed the Pillars are said by some to have originally been the Pillars of Melqart. Given the identification of Melqart with Heracles, we might as ourselves just what difference it makes anyways.

Incidentally, Herodotus describes the pillars of the temple to Heracles/Melqart in Tyre, with one being of gold and the other of emerald, the latter "shining with great brilliancy at night." Boyd Rice speculates that this shining may indicate that the emerald column was hollow and that a flame was lit inside. In his observations about the pillars of Melqart and the pillars of Solomon's Temple, Rice posits that "El" or "Yahweh" was not originally alone in a monotheistic masculinity. He had a consort which was either a partner or emanation from himself, or both. He concludes:

"we can see that even as the patriarchal Jehovah was gaining a stranglehold on the hearts and minds of his emerging cult, Hiram and Solomon remained true to the more ancient tradition of the divine couple. Rather than being heretics on eccentrics, they were purists maintaining a tradition in its original form."

"At any rate, it is clear that Hiram and Solomon were followers of the same basic doctrine. They employed the pillars of Jachin and Boaz for the same reason they refused to abandon the principle of the divine couple: both represented the dual nature of God. "

Rice may be on to something here; these pillars might be considered phallic and at the origin they probably were; but a pair of them might indicate a recognition of the dual nature of the life-force. It takes two to make a thing go right, as the song says.

Jachin and Boaz, were presumed to be made of copper, although some versions of the Bible say brass or bronze. The Jewish Virtual Library offers a different explanation:

"Even those scholars who agreed that these pillars played no structural role in the Temple were divided in their opinions regarding their function. One suggestion was that they had a mythological significance, as "trees of life," or cosmic pillars; or perhaps they fulfilled a ritual function as cressets or incense lamps, like those found in a drawing of a tomb in Mareshah (Smith, Albright). Another possibility is that they had only symbolic significance, symbolizing the dwelling place of God in the Temple, like the monuments found in the temple in Shechem and the temple of Mekal in Beth-Shean (Yeivin); or perhaps they were imitations of Egyptian obelisks (Hollis)."

The idea that they imitated obelisks or represented the dwelling place of God is not so unlikely. Remember, the Egyptians felt that obelisks contained part of the essence of Ra. In Egyptian temples, statues representing the gods were also believed to contain part of that God's essence and were treated as living beings. Priests placed offerings of food and drink before the statues and in some cases temple dancers performed in order to "entertain" the god.

Melqart was associated by the Greeks with their own Hercules, but he was originally the patron and protector of Tyre. According to Wikipedia, the annual observation of the revival of Melqart's "awakening" may identify Melqart as a life-death-rebirth deity (ergo Adonis, Dionysus, Osiris, Jesus, etc.) Melqart may also be in certain contexts, the Ba'al of the Bible. Melqart appears in many forms in the ever-changing syncretism of the ancient Mediterranean world, but seems consistently to be associated with fecundity, including solar attributes, notwithstanding his importance as a sea-god. That he could be both a solar and sea god is not at all incongruous in the ancient Mediterranean context. Ra, for example, sun god par excellence, travelled the sky accompanying the sun in a boat. Not surprising as the Egyptian sky goddess, Nut--bent over the earth--had a star-spangled belly which was a great ocean. Before GPS, before the sextant and compass, sailors navigated by the stars; no weirdness need ensue for their equation of the sea and the heavens.

Melqart's cult was still active during the RomanEmpire.

Let's get back to our pillars. This article at phoenicia.org speculates that the concept of pillars "would be recognised by all sailors as a religious prohibition, a warning that only the approved might pass between them."

This religious prohibition might also have served a decidedly more secular purpose:

"....I propose [the need to control access through the Straits of Gibraltar was], in order to keep secret the bearings and directions to the tin mines of the Celts on the Atlantic European coasts. The Phoenicians had competitors in the Mediterranean, the Greeks in the Eastern Mediterranean and later the Etruscans in the Western Mediterranean, and customers, the Egyptians, it was important to keep them away from the secret of bronze, the source of their naval power. What better way to warn seamen that arrival at the straits was arrival at a restricted place, that passage through here had to be approved by a higher authority."

On a literal level, this may not be so far-fetched; as early as the 4th millennium BC, the city states of "Sumeria" defined their limits with canals and upright boundary stones.

Interesting in that in Bacon's Instauratio Magna and in this possible Phoenician concept, the pillars represent a gate between "common" and "hidden" knowledge. In the Spanish coat of arms it may be indicative of sea-power; remember that our friends at phoenicia.org propose they represented a warning in order to preserve the hidden knowledge that was the source of their naval power. In The New Atlantis, it is a ship which "discovers" Bensalem, a utopian island where the pursuit of scientific discover and perpetual improvement is the predominant activity. In all cases we are not dealing with knowledge for its own sake; there are definite realpolitik concerns involved, but concerns not entirely divorced from a spiritual or intellectual ideal.

It is also noteworthy that the pillars have again and again led back to solar deities and the sun's regenerative power. (Remember Bacon's Great Renewal). The sun, as we know, makes a westward journey, like the ship which "discovered" Bensalem, and west of the pillars is where we find the closely guarded secret of the Phoenician's naval power. To the west, we find that hidden knowledge and the source perhaps of renewal. It's not difficult to imagine the Bacon envisioned the New World as the way to regenerate the Old.

Interestingly, this led me to think of Buckminster Fuller's notion that in history (which I know about thanks to Robert Anton Wilson in Cosmic Trigger II p. 56), there is a movement "westward and mildy northward" of civilization, technology and power. Googling a few phrases I came across excerpts from his Fuller's Critical Path, which discusses at great length....the Phoenicians.

Wilson points out that the civilizations which originated in the Bronze Age were all similar in that they had a pyramidal structure--alpha-male son of the Sun God at top, women and slaves at the bottom. These "sun-kingdoms" eventually conquered the better part of the world; even in the 18th century Louis XIV was called the "Sun King" and the Mikado of Japan remained a literal sun-god until the end of the Second World War.

[Here a portion of the manuscript is missing]

If a pillar falls in the woods and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

That's just a cute koan to highlight the idea that there is no inherent meaning in objects. What we see in an object is a matrix of our personal knowledge, cultural interpretations and lastly and perhaps least, the author's intentions. What we see isn't reality, but a reality. Our interpretation of what we see isn't The Meaning, but a meaning. Any one of Wilson's Cosmic Trigger books can explain this better than I can.

The above is an attempt to expand upon the possible interpretations of two very evocative public monuments; to enrich the experience of seeing them. I would wager that the architect of the Le Perthus columns could not fail to be aware of the complex and varied symbolism of the two pillars; what he or she intended them to mean, absent any documents or explanation, I cannot say.

And that's just an easy way out for an essay that was leading me in too many directions. Soon, I'm gonna go all James Frazer and implicate the three major Abrahamic religions in stone fancy.

Trust me, it's not too difficult.