Ever since the time of the pharaohs, powerful rulers have often used architecture as a way to express their worldview, and sometimes to influence their people.
Secrets frozen in stone
Many generations of researchers have tried to trace the esoteric tradition of the past centuries in architecture. And it turned out that the Egyptian beliefs, modified by the Templars and Masons, froze in stone, formed the very basis of the structure of many cities, in particular, Paris, London and Washington.
For example, Paris - this gem of architecture - was planned in such a way that the authorities could easily suppress riots. Architectural theorists refer to this approach as urbicide.
Paris. Pyramids and boulevards
The most famous modern urban object in terms of hidden symbolism is the glass pyramid in the Parisian Louvre.
Promotional video:
According to the conspiracy theorists, it served various purposes: it is a kind of monument to former French President Francois Mitterrand, who approved the Louvre's reconstruction program, and the secret grave of Mary Magdalene. And the 666 glass panels that make up the pyramid are considered by many to be a symbol of the devil's beginning on Earth. True, few people know that in reality the number of panels is 673.
The pyramid at the Louvre, however, is just one of the finishing touches to a carefully planned city within the city, designed primarily to celebrate the greatness of the French state. The Louvre's “major axis” stretches from the remains of the ancient royal palace of France to the Champs Elysees, under Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe and beyond, to the modern Grand Arch of La Defense.
This layout is very similar to the structure of the Karnak temple complex in Egypt.
The urban landscape of Paris has one rather sinister touch. These straight, like an arrow, streets were paved in the second half of the 19th century by Baron George-Eugene Hausmann, the chief architect of the times of the dictator Napoleon III.
The official justification for such a project was the need to ensure free air circulation and the convenience of traffic. Among other things, it was implied that such spaces would form the image of the capital of an empire, worthy of its sovereign. However, in his memoirs, Hausmann points out the existence of other, hidden reasons.
The destruction of entire neighborhoods allowed tens of thousands of workers to be relocated from urban slums to the outskirts of the city, where they did not plague the eyes of the powerful. New straight and wide avenues were laid primarily to enable troops to move freely around the city, and not break through with a battle from one barricade to another, as was the case during the 1848 revolution.
Freemasons in Washington …
It is a well known fact that George Washington was a Freemason. Masonic symbolism extends to the geography of the city of Washington. The first chief architect of the city, Pierre-Charles Lanfant, was a like-minded person of the Marquis de Lafayette, a French revolutionary and a staunch Freemason. The Washington plan he created was apparently prompted by some esoteric ideas of free masons.
Even former neoconservative historian Francis Fukuyama admits that Freemasonry has had an impact on the capital. And it's not limited to the Egyptian Obelisk (George Washington Memorial). The perfectly parallel streets of the city, crossed by diagonal avenues, form Masonic symbols: the square and the compasses.
Many internet sites today show satellite images of Washington DC showing the pentagram formed by the intersections of the streets. One of the rays of the pentagram directly points to the Egyptian obelisk.
There are many interpretations of this fact - from pseudo-Egyptian occultism in the Masonic style to Satanism. The erection of the five-sided building with the eloquent name "Pentagon" during the Second World War is still considered by many to be unheard of insolence on the part of the Freemasons.
One of the main adherents of the theory that Washington was built on the Masonic model is the astrologer and writer David Ovason. He is impressed by the use of zodiac signs, in particular Virgo, on public city buildings.
David is convinced that Washington is being prepared by the Freemasons who built this city and continue to rule it for the future, when the very understanding of the essence of the stars changes. In The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital, Onason suggested that government buildings “were secretly dedicated to the Egyptian fertility goddess Isis.”
… and in London
After the great fire of 1666 that destroyed most of London, architect Christopher Wren, who was a Freemason, creates a plan for a radical redevelopment of the city, approved by King Charles II.
The entire grandiose plan was not realized, but despite this, a large number of impressive new temples were built.
The most notable among them is St. Paul's Cathedral, reconstructed according to the project of Christopher Wren. Curiously, it is tilted eight degrees from the generally accepted east-west axis. This strange error causes the cathedral to face directly at Temple Church, the former spiritual home of the Knights Templar.
Architect Nicholas Hawksmoor was equally straightforward. The bell tower of his Church of St. George in Bloomsbury Square looks like a ziggurat - a stepped pyramid. To the poet and occultist Ian Sinclair, this was proof of Hawksmoor's Satanism.
This idea can be found today in the works of English mystic writers. In Peter Ackroyd's action-packed novel Hawksmoor, the architect's London churches become the site of satanic assassinations, and in the comics of Eddie Campbell and Alan Moore's "Out of Hell", Victorian-era assassin Jack the Ripper is mingled with it. As always, one conspiracy theory easily spills over into another.