Editor's note: All notations will be cited when this series of articles have concluded. The information is based on research contained in Tom Horn's upcoming new book:
APOLLYON RISING 2012
The Lost Symbol Found And The Final Mystery Of The Great Seal Revealed
A Terrifying And Prophetic Cipher, Hidden From The World By The U.S. Government For Over 200 Years Is Here
Previously we summarized Hall’s comments about the “mass of occult and Masonic symbols” on the Great Seal, which he believed only students of archaic or esoteric symbolism would be able to accurately decipher. This included the obverse side of the Great Seal, where a bald eagle, which he illustrated was a shrewd mythical phoenix so important to Masonic mysticism, clutches a bundle of arrows in its left talon, while its right claw grips an olive branch. “But,” Hall then went on to say:
If this design on the obverse side of the seal is stamped with the signature of the Order of the Quest, the design on the reverse is even more definitely related to the old Mysteries.… Here is represented the great pyramid of Gizah, composed of thirteen rows of masonry, showing seventy-two stones. The pyramid is without a cap stone, and above its upper platform floats a triangle containing the all-seeing eye surrounded by rays of light.… The combination of the phoenix, the pyramid, and the all-seeing eye is more than chance or coincidence.… There is only one possible origin for these symbols, and that is the secret societies which came to this country 150 years before the Revolutionary War.… There can be no question that the great seal was directly inspired by these orders of the human Quest, and that it set forth the purpose for this nation as that purpose was seen and known to the Founding Fathers.As Manly Hall did, thirty-third vice president of the United States and 32nd-Degree Mason Henry Wallace also viewed the unfinished pyramid with the all-seeing eye hovering above it on the Great Seal as central to the prophecy of a New World Order. Whenever the United States assumed its position as the capital of the world, he believed, the Grand Architect would return and metaphorically the all-seeing eye would be fitted atop the pyramid as the finished “apex stone.”
But Whose All-Seeing Eye Is This, Anyway?
While different versions of the eye of providence or all-seeing eye have appeared throughout time within various cultures, the origin of each can usually be understood within the context of its adjoined symbolism. In the case of the all-seeing eye on the Great Seal of the United States, the connection to the uncapped Egyptian pyramid and to the Osiris-Apollo-related mottoes positively determines the culture to which this specific “eye” refers, and the solar deity represented by it - Osiris/Horus/Apollo/Nimrod.
This is further illustrated by the “numerological values” of the arcane mottoes, which were carefully chosen for the Great Seal due to their connection to the pagan deity. So important was it that the Masonic numbers three (3) and thirteen (13) be reinforced with the multi-named “god” (the numbers three and thirteen are historically connected with the deities Apollo, Osiris, and Nimrod, and this is why, for instance, the American space mission Apollo 13 was named after the deity and had this number), that not only was the original amount of American states intentionally set at thirteen, but Freemason David Ovason, whom Robert Hieronimus (considered one of the the world’s foremost authorities on the Great Seal) calls “exceptionally well referenced,” confirms how a letter was “cut” from the Latin word saeclorum (the usual spelling) in order to create the word seclorum to contribute to three sets of thirteen on the reverse side of the Great Seal.
After acknowledging that the top motto, annuit coeptis, had the obligatory thirteen letters, Ovason pointed out how saeclorum was letter-cut to join the bottom motto, novus ordo seclorum, so that the phrase would end up being seventeen letters, which when added to the nine numerals in the Roman date would equal a total of twenty-six, or two sets of the number thirteen. Combined with the top motto, these three sets of thirteen were very important to establish, Ovason says, in order to reflect the trinity represented in the Great Seal “Eye of Providence, and in the nominal triangle from which the pyramid is constructed.”
Based purely on the Great Seal’s symbolism, the trinity these three sets of the number thirteen denote is authoritatively identified as Osiris, Horus, and Isis, the pagan versions of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, respectively. The use of the number thirteen in this way also connects the Great Seal to the mythological and astrological significance of the legend of Osiris as the dying and rising god. It was evidently so important to maintain this talisman-like value, thirteen, that other phases of the design and layout of Washington DC were coordinated accordingly, says Ovason. This includes the laying of the White House cornerstone on October 13, 1792, by Masons, and the Fourth of July signing of the Declaration of Independence thirteen days after summer solstice, so that the sun would be on Sirius. In Egyptian mythology, the sun represented Osiris while the star Sirius symbolized Isis, and thirteen was the number of pieces of Osiris that Isis was able to find after Seth, his evil brother, murdered and threw fourteen pieces of him into the Nile. Isis searched the riverbank until she recovered every piece, except for his genitals, which had been swallowed by a fish. Isis replaced the missing organ with an obelisk and magically impregnated herself with Horus. Therefore, in Masonic as well as in ancient Egyptian mythology, the number thirteen—used a total of thirteen times on the Great Seal, counting front and back—is the number that represents the return or resurrection of Osiris.
This mythology was so meaningful to the founding of the United States and the construction of its capital—including having the missing Osiris genitalia represented by the 6,666-inches-high Egyptian obelisk known as the Washington Monument—that nearly all of David Ovason’s five hundred-plus-page Secret Architecture of Our Nation’s Capital is dedicated to establishing the singular correlation between Washington DC and Virgo, the constellation of Isis, or what Ovason calls, “Isis, who was the chief of the feminine mystery deities and the prototype of the steller Virgo.”
This affiliation existed from the very day Freemasons gathered on April 15, 1791, beginning appropriately at 3:30 PM (reflecting the mystical value, thirty-three) because of the astrological position of Jupiter and Virgo, and what this would mean for the secret destiny of America:
At exactly 3:30 PM, Jupiter…began to rise over the horizon. It was in 23 degrees of Virgo.… By this means, the zodiacal power of Virgo, which was called in later Masonic circles “the Beautiful Virgin,” was able to stamp her benign influence on the building of the federal city.… A few of the many Freemasons present at this ceremony would have been only to well aware of the profound implications of what they were doing.… It is quite clear that the ceremonial placing of the stone related to more than merely the founding of the federal district: it was somehow linked to the future destiny of America itself.By dedicating the United States through its astrological alignment to the constellation of Isis, the founders had dedicated the “destiny” of America to fulfilling the secret doctrine of Freemasonry, as also reflected in the Osiris/Apollo symbolism of the Great Seal, concerning subservience—now and upon his return as Antichrist—to Osiris/Apollo/Nimrod.
Interestingly, the same dedication to Osiris/Isis/Apollo exists in New York where the events of September 11, 2001, initiated the push toward the novus ordo seclorum. The Statue of Liberty in New York’s Harbor, which holds the Masonic “Torch of Enlightenment,” was presented in 1884 as a gift to American Masons by the French Grand Orient Temple Masons.
Designed by French Freemason and sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and built by another French Freemason, Gustave Eiffel, the statue was originally identified as “the goddess Isis” with the statue’s head formed to represent “the Greek Sun-god Apollo…as preserved on an ancient marble tablet (today in the Archaeological Museum of Corinth, Corinth, Greece)—Apollo was represented as a solar deity, dressed in a similar robe and having on its head a ‘radiate crown’ with the seven spiked rays of the Helios-Apollo’s sun rays.”
The legend of Osiris and Isis, the connection with Apollo, the magical number thirteen, and the history surrounding their mythos is often openly discussed in Masonic and brotherhood-friendly literature. For instance in Morals and Dogma, Albert Pike enumerated the esoteric significance of the Osiris epic at length, adding that lower-level Masons (Blue Masonry) are ignorant of its true meaning, which is only known to those who are “initiated into the Mysteries.” Pike also spoke of the star Sirius—connected to Isis and at length to Lucifer/Satan—as “still glittering” in the Masonic lodges as “the Blazing Star.” Elsewhere in Morals and Dogma, Pike reiterated that the “All-Seeing Eye…was the emblem of Osiris” and that the “Sun was termed by the Greeks the Eye of Jupiter, and the Eye of the World; and his is the All-Seeing Eye in our Lodges.”
Once people understand this illuminated Masonic connection to the “trinity” on America’s Great Seal, and what the prophetic symbolism, mottoes, and numerology imply, it becomes apparent why so much effort was put forward for so long by those who felt it was necessary to hide this extraordinary destiny. Ovason acknowledges this conspiracy of silence as well:
The motto at the top of the seal, Annuit Coeptis, is from Virgil…from the Aeneid.… This is a prayer to the god Jupiter.… We should observe that while the subject matter of the reverse of the seal is undoubtedly pagan—if symbolic of hermetic Egypt—the superior motto is itself a prayer to a pagan god. Could this be the reason why there has been so much reluctance to bring the reverse of the seal into the light of day? Whatever the nature of the god, the prayer directed in this way is a petition that the daring undertaking [the secret destiny of America as symbolized in “finishing” the pyramid] may be completed, and that the new age will find fulfillment.Ovason, a Mason whose research earned praise from Fred Kleinknecht, Sovereign Grand Commander of the 33rd-Degree Supreme Council of Freemasons in Washington DC, is to be thanked for inadvertently revealing what the Illuminatus has secretly known for ages—that the Great Seal of the United States is a pagan prophecy and petition to a pagan god (the same entity the Bible identifies by name as the end-times Antichrist) to assist in the conclusion of the great work by his return. “When we have grasped the importance of these New Age expectations,” Ovason concludes, “we shall be in a better position to understand why the design for this reverse [side of the Great Seal] has remained so consistently hidden.”
The Unfinished Pyramid Beneath the All-Seeing Eye
Where the numerology and astrological signs related to the all-seeing eye add to why certain symbolism on the Great Seal was important to Freemasons, it is the unfinished pyramid upon the seal’s reverse side that Manly Hall called the “trestleboard” that set forth symbolically the “task to the accomplishment of which the United States Government was dedicated from the day of its inception.” This language, drawn directly from how trestleboards are used and what they represent in both operative and speculative Masonry, is revealing, as the trestleboard is the board upon which the Master Mason draws out the diagrams and geometric figures that are to be used as a blueprint for directing the workers in the construction of the task. In speculative Masonry, the trestleboard also takes on spiritual meaning, which reflects lessons from the Books of Nature and the will of the Great Architect of the Universe. In Masonic rituals, this means a spiritual plan has been put in place and that it is to be carried out on an individual, family, social, national, and international level. The plan includes the timing as to when the project should officially start, as well as generally when it is to be concluded. Thus, if the pyramid on the Great Seal is the trestleboard laying out the “task of which the United States Government was dedicated from the day of its inception,” it is the drawing board for the destiny of America and is branded by 1) the identity of the Great Architect to whom the work is dedicated; and 2) the date on which the work was started and is to be completed.
Concerning the first subject matter—the identity of the Great Architect—we have illustrated numerous times how the symbols and mottoes speak for themselves in communicating who this deity is. In the prologue of his book, The Lost Keys of Freemasonry, Manly Hall joins in this revelation by recounting the familiar story of Hiram Abiff, the Tyrian “First Grand Master” of the order of Masons and the chief builder who sets out to construct the temple of the Great Architect of the Universe, but is killed by three spectres. This story, impersonated every time an initiate reaches the level of Master Mason, is by admission of Freemasons a retelling of the death-epic of the god Osiris. In Lost Keys, Hall narrates how the Great Architect gives Hiram (Osiris) the trestleboard for the construction of the great temple, and when he is killed by three ruffians, the Great Architect bathes him in “a glory celestial,” as in the glory surrounding the all-seeing eye of Osisis above the pyramid on the Great Seal. The Great Architect follows this by charging those who would finish the building with the task of finding the body of Hiram (Osiris) and raising him from the dead. When this has been accomplished, the great work will conclude and the god will inhabit the temple:
Seek ye where the broken twig lies and the dead stick molds away, where the clouds float together and the stones rest by the hillside, for all these mark the grave of Hiram [Osiris] who has carried my Will with him to the tomb. This eternal quest is yours until ye have found your Builder, until the cup giveth up its secret, until the grave giveth up its ghosts. No more shall I speak until ye have found and raised my beloeved Son [Osiris], and have listened to the words of my Messenger and with Him as your guide have finished the temple which I shall then inhabit. Amen.“So once again we are brought back to the Great Pyramid of Giza,” writes Peter Goodgame, “the first built and last remaining of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, which is the reputed resting place of Osiris. The Great Pyramid itself is but one structure within a major Necropolis that was designed according to the layout of the constellation Orion, the Great Hunter in the sky [Osiris/Gilgamesh/Nimrod]. As we have endeavored to show, Osiris is none other than the Biblical Nimrod, the ‘mighty hunter before the Lord.’”
The Encyclopedia of Freemasonry identifies the character Nimrod with this legend of the Brotherhood as well, in the Old Constitutions, where it distinguishes him as a founder of Masonry. “Thus in the York MS., No. 1, we read: ‘At ye making of ye toure of Babell there was a Masonrie first much esteemed of, and the King of Babilon yt called Nimrod was a Mason himself and loved well Masons.’”
Other authorities not only connect the Masonic founder Hiram Abiff with Osiris and Nimrod, but explain that Nimrod plus the building of the Tower of Babel—not the temple of Solomon—was the true origin of Masonic cosmology.
In Symbols of Freemasonry, translated from the French Les Symboles des Francs-Macons, Daniel Beresniak notes:
The date of the construction of King Solomon’s temple has not always been the key date in the Freemasons’ cosmology. This central role was once given to the Tower of Babel. The Regius manuscript, which predates Cooke  by twenty years, cites King Nemrod, the builder of that famous tower, as “the first and most excellent master.” He it was, and not King Solomon, who gave the Masons their first “charge,” their rules of conduct and professional code.…Thus the appearance of the uncapped pyramid of Giza on the Great Seal of the United States echoes the ancient pagan as well as Masonic beliefs concerning the old mysteries, and the prophecy of the return of Osiris/Apollo/Nimrod. In Rosicrucian and Masonic Origins, Manly Hall, who had said in The Secret Teachings of All Ages that the Great Pyramid was “the tomb of Osiris,” explains that Preston, Gould, Mackey, Oliver, Pike, and nearly every other great historian of Freemasonry were aware of this connection between Freemasonry and the ancient mysteries and primitive ceremonials based on Osiris. “These eminent Masonic scholars have all recognized in the legend of Hiram Abiff an adaptation of the Osiris myth; nor do they deny that the major part of the symbolism of the craft is derived from the pagan institutions of antiquity when the gods were venerated in secret places with strange figures and appropriate rituals.”
A Masonic text known as the Thistle manuscript, of 1756, says that Nemrod “created the Masons” and “gave them their signs and terms so that they could distinguish themselves from other people…it was the first time that the Masons were organised as a craft.”
But whereas Freemasons like Manly Hall considered the symbolism and myth related to the pyramid on the Great Seal and the history of Apollo/Osiris/Nimrod to be the working “trestleboard” laying out the secret destiny of America, New Age esotericists like Robert Hieronimus—one of the world’s foremost authorities on the reverse of the seal’s symbolism—view the circular design and symbolism on the Great Seal to be an “initiatory mandala.”
Mandalas, from the Hindu term for “circle,” are concentric diagrams, such as is familiar in Tantrism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, having ritual and spiritual use for “focusing” or trance- inducing aspirants and adepts who seek mystical oneness with the cosmos or deeper levels of the unconscious mind. Related to the design of the Great Seal, Hieronimus, as an occultist, views the geometric patterns as representing a type of mandala or microcosm embodying the cosmic or metaphysical divine powers at work in the secret destiny of America, including the god or universal forces represented in the diagram that herald a coming new age of gods and demigods.
Occultists often use mandalas based on the concept of a “protective circle” or variation, which they believe allow certain doorways into the supernatural to be opened or closed, and entities compelled accordingly, as in the magical five-pointed pentagram circle. This is similar to an initiatory mandala used in Hindu and Buddhist Tantrism, in which deities are represented by specific locations in the diagram. In Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, scholar Mircea Eliade explains the importance of this part of the mandala design:
At the periphery of the construction there are four cardinal doors, defended by terrifying images called “guardians of the doors.” Their role is twofold. On the one hand, the guardians defend consciousness from the disintegrating forces of the unconscious; on the other, they have an offensive mission—in order to lay hold upon the fluid and mysterious world of the unconscious, consciousness must carry the struggle into the enemy’s camp and hence assume the violent and terrible aspect appropriate to the forces to be combated. Indeed, even the divinities inside the mandala sometimes have a terrifying appearance; they are the gods whom man will encounter after death, in the state of bardo. The guardians of the doors and the terrible divinities emphasize the initiatory character of entrance into a mandala.… The typical initiatory ordeal is the “struggle with a monster”…both spiritual (against evil spirits and demons, forces of chaos) and material (against enemies)…who [attempt] to return “forms” to the amorphous state from which they originated.What makes this interesting is that the arcane symbols and mottoes of the Great Seal represent—as admitted by Masonry’s greatest historians, mystics, and philosophers—gods that were known in ancient times alternatively as saviors or demons, creators, and destroyers; spirits that seek entry into the conscious and unconscious world. That such concepts would be related to the uncapped pyramid on the seal is fitting in that the Great Pyramid of Giza is not only thought of as the actual tomb-site of the deity, but as a symbol of Christ by some and of the Antichrist by others. These paradoxical conclusions arrive because of certain mysterious attributes related to the Great Pyramid.
In his wonderful book, The Great Pyramid: Prophecy in Stone, Dr. Noah Hutchings is able to show that the Great Pyramid, unlike the other inferior ones on the Giza Plateau whose walls are covered with Egyptian symbols, is devoid of such idolatrous symbolism and defies to this day what methods were employed to manufacture its unparalleled creation. Just how matchless is the Great Pyramid? Hutchings starts out by showing that it is:
I’ve had the privilege of being on the Southwest Radio Ministries broadcast with Dr. Hutchings, and have told him on the air how the first edition of his book, Prophecy in Stone (in the 1970s), was an eye-opener for me. I was not aware back then of the intriguing tidbits of information concerning the Great Pyramid that seemed to parallel biblical prophecy—for instance, how some ancient writers referred to the Great Pyramid as “the Pillar of Enoch.” This was engaging to me because the so-called “King’s Chamber” in the Great Pyramid was found to have never been occupied, and Enoch “was not, for God took him” (Genesis 5:24). When the empty coffer in the King’s Chamber was measured, it was discovered that the interior dimensions are the same as the biblical Ark of the Covenant. Besides this, 144,000 polished limestone blocks originally covered the exterior of the Great Pyramid, which were sealed with an adhesive so strong that they would break anywhere but at the seal. This is the same number of the saints who, in the book of Revelation 7:3–8, are sealed with the seal of God.
- A building so large that all the locomotives in the world today could not pull its weight.
- A building so large that it could hold the cathedrals of Rome, Florence, and Milan and still have room for the Empire State Building, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and both houses of the British Parliament.
- A building made up of two and one-half million blocks of stone ranging from three to sixty tons each.
- A building that has not settled, has not shifted, has not budged even one-tenth of an inch in thousands of years—a feat that even modern engineering could not equal.
Yet of all such fascinating findings Dr. Hutchings describes in The Great Pyramid: Prophecy In Stone, the sections in his book I found most interesting focus on the missing head cornerstone (apex stone, capstone) of the Great Pyramid, and the curious verses in Psalms 118:22 and Acts 4:11 pertaining to Jesus as the “stone” the builders rejected and that has become the “head cornerstone.” As Hutchings points out, the only kind of building in all the world that requires a head cornerstone is a pyramid. Because of this, Hutchings believes the “pillar” that Isaiah (Isaiah 19:19–20) said would stand as a “sign and for a witness unto the Lord” in the end times may be the Great Pyramid on the old border that separated lower and upper Egypt.
Conversely, a few years ago, another friend of mine named Patrick (Paddy) Heron wrote a book entitled Pyramid of the Apocalypse, in which he postulated that the Great Pyramid at Giza had been built by the nephilim, the offspring of Watchers. Besides associated legends, part of his reasoning had to do with the scale of the massive undertaking and the same biblical parallels—the one hundred forty-four thousand, the missing capstone, etc.—which Heron viewed as the Watchers trying to copy, plagiarize, mimic, or borrow from the fame of something known only to the angels, namely, the design of the New Jerusalem in heaven, whose height and width are the same, as in a pyramidal structure (as opposed to those who believe the New Jerusalem will be cube-shaped). Heron and researchers like him further warn that an antichrist who is somehow related to the Great Pyramid—as a resurrected Osiris/Apollo/Nimrod would be, though we could only offer at this point fantastic speculation how this deity, returned to flesh, would be outrightly connected to the Great Pyramid—could use these mysterious attributes of the Great Pyramid, which seem related to biblical prophecy, as a great deception to guide people away from the true Messiah. This theological premise is interesting, as everything about the coming of the False Christ will be an antithetical mirror of Jesus. For example, Jesus has seven stars in His right hand (Revelation 1:20), while the Antichrist Osiris/Apollo/Nimrod is represented by the seven-star Pleiades system. The Great Pyramid capstone is missing, representing temporary vacancy by Apollo according to the mottoes, whose coming will “cap” the pyramid, and yet as we have seen, Jesus is also called the head cornerstone.
Whoever turns out to be correct in the debate above, the design of the Great Seal of the United States makes it clear which side of the discussion America’s national cipher points to. There are no biblical verses on the Great Seal heralding the second coming of Jesus Christ. And, unlike the actual Great Pyramid in Giza, whose walls are devoid of idolatrous symbols, the Great Seal is made up entirely of mottoes and prayers to the pagan father of the deity Apollo, to fulfill the Cumaean Sibyl’s prophecy and to return to earthly rule the disembodied spirit of the deceased god Apollo/Osiris/Nimrod. Is this what is meant in Psalms 118 and Acts chapter 4 where Jesus is the capstone the builders refused? Was He rejected as the Messiah by “the builders”—a literal reference to “Masons”—because another is coming that will cap their pyramid? A second messiah?