Pentagram and Evil Bunny Man — all the proof we need?

There’s a kitschy article in the Washington Post today about how DC is born of the Devil. The evidence? A couple of quotes from John McCain jokingly referring to the District as "Satan’s City," and an inverted pentagram from Dupont and Logan Circles to the foot of the White House. Oh, and they filmed The Exorcist in Georgetown.

But wait, there’s more:

The most persistent rumblings about Washington as the devil’s workshop seem bound up in history about the city’s design and the role of Freemasons in building it. It’s a connection explored in the three-hour DVD "Riddles in Stone: The Secret Architecture of Washington, D.C.," which notched a respectable 90th out of 1,363 titles recently in Amazon’s general history documentary category.

A DVD, eh? How about this book by David Ovason, which takes a credibly exhaustive, historically accurate look at the architecture of our nation’s capital and how it fits with a greater esoteric understanding. Our Founders were hip to the importance of constructing the Federal City to align with astrological sources of power. Ye Olde Architect Pierre Charles L’Enfant and others were supposedly following the Egyptian and Roman model of urban design, in which key structures were built to correspond with heavenly bodies of supposed metaphysical significance. Here in DC, you can see the evidence of such design not only in architectural placement, but also in symbolic "code" found on sundry statuary and ornamentals. Ovason’s book features a foreword by  C. Fred Kleinknecht, former Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry for the Southern Jurisdiction of the U.S. So you know it’s legit!

The Post article doesn’t really get into any of this, of course. It’s far too easy to wring whatever pop-cultural juice is left from the "Satanic Panic" exploitation of the ’80s and early ’90s. But I did learn that esoteric-conspiracy hack Dan Brown is hard at work on a "novel" about the Freemasons and the Dark Secrets of the District. Which means us occult history nerds should have something new to ridicule soon.

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About the author

Casey Rae-Hunter
Casey Rae-Hunter is a musician, public policy wonk and the editor/publisher of The Contrarian Media. An in-demand speaker, he gives frequent talks at conferences and campuses on issues at the intersection of creativity, technology, policy and law, and is a go-to source for major media outlets from NPR to the New York Times. Casey works alongside leaders in the music, arts and performance sectors to bolster understanding of and engagement in key policy and technology issues, and has written dozens of articles on the impact of technology on the creative community. Casey is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and the Deputy Director for Future of Music Coalition. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Media & Democracy Coalition and the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture. The Contrarian does not necessarily represent the views of the organizations to which he belongs.

3 Comments for Satan’s City.

V^5

following the Egyptian model, today happens to be the second day XCIII=418 delivered The Book of the Law.

casey

Amazing. I knew I felt something extra in today’s meditation.