The Secrets Of The Great Seal Revealed: There Are None
A new traveling exhibition put together by the State Department will try to dispell the many myths and conspiracy theories that have spawned over the meaning of the Great Seal of the United States . Good luck with that - this are urban myths we're talking about - they have a life all their own. But still, it's some interesting history, even if it doesn't reveal the location of a vast treasure.
WASHINGTON — Conspiracy theorists take note: The myths surrounding one of America's oldest and most enduring national symbols are about to be debunked … if you believe the government, that is.The keepers of the Great Seal of the United States, the familiar emblem on the back of the $1 bill, want you to know what it is not. It is not a sign that Freemasons run the country, it has nothing to do with the occult, and it does not contain clues to a fabulous hidden treasure.
It is rather the nation's stamp of authority, sovereignty and power, gracing our cash and embossing the most important of documents from its home at the State Department, which has held it since the days of Thomas Jefferson, the first secretary of state.
Not that the Seal's symbols — the all-seeing eye, the unfinished pyramid, the Latin phrases, the bald eagle clutching an olive branch and arrows and the number 13 — aren't powerful.
They are, historians say. Yet their meanings have been misidentified, misunderstood and misrepresented almost since the Continental Congress first commissioned the Seal in 1776.
It would be another six years before the original design was approved and another 128 before it evolved into its current form. Along the way, a movement to decipher the Seal's meaning with ancient Egyptian, mystical and otherwise otherworldly explanations has gained currency.
The article lists a long litany of strange theories about what the symbols mean. Alas, the State Department explains things a little more sanely than a lot of people will want to believe. The repeated use of the number 13 is not a reference to a secret cabal of powerful famlies but to - gasp! - the number of original colonies. That sort of thing. A lot of the Masonic symbols people see were (and are) indeed used by the Masons - but never exclusively. They were used by many other groups and in heraldry, which is what a lot of the images are actually derived from.
If, of course, you believe that the State Department is actually telling the truth. Because we here at Blue Crab Boulevard know the real truth: Button Gwinnett was behind the entire thing.
By Sam Wah, Friday, 15 February , 2008 @ 11:31 pm
I blame the Tri-Lateral Commission and the Bones&Skull crowd (buncha pirates if I ever saw one!)
By Uncle Pinky, Saturday, 16 February , 2008 @ 12:30 am
Heh.
Got a first of Under the Deodars in my den which (gasp) has Kipling’s imprimatur flanked by swastikas!!!! It’s proof of something I tells ya!!!
Not Nazi fylflots, mind you. Real swastikas which antecede Hitler by some odd millenia, proving that the ancient inhabitants of Mu, Lemuria, India, China and the southwestern U.S. were part of a vast conspiracy to … to … um … to do something! Wait until they find the Hopi emergence tunnels*, then you’ll all see.
Ok. Now I really have to cash my chips for the evening/morning. Ta.
*A virtual bottle of Irish Mist to whoever finds it without Googling.
By Bleepless, Saturday, 16 February , 2008 @ 8:43 pm
Karl Rove and the Elders of Zion told me that the Grates Eel means that some seafood is part of the dread plot against Ron Paul.