Spinal Fire Scientia Est Potentia

By Jeremiah Haynes

Few Americans realize that their country has an official seal. Fewer yet realize that that seal has a backside. Adopted by congress on June 20th, 1782 the Great seal of the United States of America represents complex codex of occult symbolism. The obverse of the Seal features a heraldic eagle (actually a phoenix) covered by a shield gripping a bundle of arrows in its left talon and a bundle of olive branches in its right. In the eagles beak is a ribbon which reads E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one). This is the symbol which most Americans identify as their official seal, as is ubiquitous when it comes to matters of state, adorning all manner of official documents, buildings and decorations.

The reverse side of the official seal however, is another manner. True to occult (literally hidden) symbolism the backside of the seal has always been shrouded in the mists of obscurity. This may be due in part to the potent archetypal imagery it evokes. The reverse of the seal features an unfinished pyramid capped by a floating eye in a triangle. Many new to the world of symbolism may find themselves wondering, what is a pyramid doing on the back of the United States seal? The answer is complex and raises many salient questions every time a solution is posited.

There has apparently been a conscious effort to keep the Reverse side of the seal from the public. In his book The Secret Architecture of Our Nation’s Capitol David Ovason ponders this “conspiracy of silence mounted against the design”;

It is clear that the histories of the obverse and the reverse of the seal are very different. The obverse was cut in brass as a die, in 1780, and was almost immediately put to use to authenticate an agreement governing an exchange of prisoners of war with the British. In contrast, the reverse was never cut at all, even though there has existed, for over a century, an authority of Congress ordering the cutting of its die (Ovason 1999, p.225).

It is most likely due to the overt paganism of the pyramid side of the seal that this design was kept in the dark. However there are symbolic reasons why the design should be hidden as bastard child of the eagle/phoenix in forgotten annals of Americana. Eventually it was dusted off in 1933 by FDR and placed next to its Janus twin on the back of the One Dollar Bill in the 1935 series A.

Perhaps the most exoteric aspect of the reverse of the seal is the Egyptian pyramid which dominates it. It is no secret that the mysteries of Egypt are held dearly by all walks of human life. There is perhaps an atavistic draw to these massive monuments of mankind created by a civilization which is to this day still a conundrum. There is no other structure on Earth which has drawn so much speculation as the pyramids. From the official explanation which claims it is the world’s greatest sarcophagus to “New Age” beliefs that the pyramids were power plants, observatories or star gates it is readily apparent that every researcher who claims he or she has finally unlocked the riddle is no closer then the next who is likewise convinced. However it is the mystery schools and secret societies which truly relish in the achievements of the Egyptians and see their crowning achievement as a giant initiation chamber. It is rare indeed to find a western occult organization which claims no ties to the Egyptians. This connection between the mysteries of Egypt and secret societies is so firmly ensconced on the reverse of the Great Seal that it is claimed by many that the land in which the pyramid sits is in fact Egypt and not America. It seems quite odd indeed that a national symbol should so brazenly represent another country’s land.

Like the great pyramid of Khufu in Giza, the Pyramid on the seal is also truncated. There are many different explanations to this anomaly. Many researchers claim that the Great pyramid was at one time capped with a Ben Ben stone, or pyramidion which was stolen or scrapped in antiquity due to the preciousness of its material. Another explanation for the unfinished appearance of the Seal’s pyramid could be homage to the Mayans/Aztecs, whose pyramids were capped with temples. In either case the meaning of the truncated pyramid is symbolically similar.

Archive of Original IAO Website

The dark side of this interpretation would read that the pyramid structure represents the mass of humanity capped off with a big brother control structure or sleepless watcher who ominously catalogues his slave’s transgressions. This is the view of the “New World Order” researchers, which has gained some clout after DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) draconian Information Awareness adopted a stylized from of the all-seeing eye as its official seal. DARPA’s information awareness offices first mission was to; “imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness." Total information awareness is essentially an Orwellian euphemism for a Big Brother Society. This symbol has become even more disturbing considering our presidents blatant disregard of the law through illegal NSA wiretaps on U.S. citizens.

The eye in the triangle which hovers over the pyramid is again Egyptian in origin. The eye is representative of the eye of Horus, the national god of ancient egypt. In Egyptian mythology Horus had his eye tore out by his brother Set over the love of their mother Isis and control of the kingdom. It is interesting to note that the eye on the seal is the left eye. In heraldry left is called sinistra or sinister and correspondingly in symbolism, left orientation denotes evil or what is today termed the left hand path, or black magic. Inversely right handedness is etymologically linked to correct action and just behavior thus the right hand path is symbolic of white magic. The choice of a left eye was certainly not a spurious decision and lends credence to an ominous reading of the backside of the great seal. It is not a jump in logic to assume that the left eye of Horus depicted in the Great Seal is in fact a rendering of the Evil Eye familiar to humanity from primitive times. “In ancient times man had not only to fear the gaze of his mortal enemies but also the watchfulness of the gods who might be envious. To primitive man, nature is a capricious vengeful and above all jealous god, perpetually seeking to regain the riches so hardly won from the earth” (Cavendish et al. 1970, p.888).

The Latin over the pyramid has been altered in order to fit the overarching numerology of the symbol. It reads Annuit Coeptis, Novus Ordo Seclorum. Roughly translated it means God has blessed our undertakings, New World Order. Readers may recognize the former term as it was uttered by George Hebert Walker Bush, the current presidents father, many times during his presidency.

Hidden in the backside of the Great seal is an inverted triangle which forms a hexagram or Mogen David. When one draws a line from the A in Annuit to the S in Coeptis to the O in Ordo and back up to the A in Annuit, we find an invisible inverted triangle. The two triangle placed together from a 6 pointed star which is an ancient esoteric symbol.

Without driving off into a tangent in to the symbolism of this arcane codice it will suffice to say that it is symbolic of a union of opposites, light and dark, fire and water, man and God. The salient point of this hidden triangle is the fact that the downward facing triangle is symbolic of God’s influence into the material world. While the visible pyramid with the eye is symbolic of man ascending into God’s realm, the “Great Work” of every magician. Thus by making the eye of Horus visible from the human perspective is thereby symbolizing illumination or ascension and thus they eye is human (quite possibly signifying the opening of the third eye). Ultimately the All Seeing Eye is an emblem of a secret college of “adepts” or high level initiates which control the destiny of our nation. Placing this symbol on the base unit of our currency signifies that they also control the economic destiny.

Yet another cipher awaits our unveiling. If you take the letters which are at the edges of the hexagram ASNOM and decode them as an anagram you get two very interesting discoveries. 1) they spell MASON, which many claim refers to the Freemasonic order, and 2) they spell AONMS which is an acronym for the ancient Arabic Order of Nobles Mystics and Seers, better known to Americans as Shriners. This is taken by many as proof of a Masonic conspiracy; however I believe that many use the Masonic bugbear as a catchall to lazily encompass this cabal of adepts. There are many masons in America, and many do not appreciate the hand there own fraternity had in the founding of our country. As a whole Masons are charitable upstanding citizens who just so happen to be occultists. That does not necessarily mean they follow the left hand path and are out to rule the world. In fact this symbol, while Masonic in character is arguably not Masonic at all. That said, it is quite an interesting “coincidence” that the hexagram holds these two anagrams.

[Artwork on a star bucks shaped like a Greek temple, London England]

As Big brother is slowly eroding the freedoms we fought so hard to gain over 200 years ago the symbol of the all Seeing Eye is slowly creeping into our consciousness. Whether it is corporations or governments fascism is coming out of the closet. That the official seal adorning the basic unit of economic trade is replete with arcane symbolism will not come as a surprise to most people. The disconcerting thing is understanding what this means and to see variations on the theme repeated as innocuous reminders of Big Brother’s surveillance. In The United Kingdom, the surveillance society is much further along then ours as it is a smaller country and has made use of “traffic cameras” for years. This poster greets mass transit commuters who are already on edge due to the recent Tube bombings.

(London poster the caption reads “CCTV and metropolitan police on buses are just two ways we’re making your journey more secure”)

Benjamin Franklin is famous for having said; “they that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”. If one wants to know who we are giving our liberty and safety to all one has to do is look to the Great Seal of the United States and wonder who these people are. As Manly P. Hall concludes;

The combination of the phoenix, the pyramids, and the all-seeing eye is more than chance or coincidence. There is nothing about the early struggles of the colonists to suggest such a selection to farmers, shopkeepers, and country gentlemen. 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. Most of the patriots who achieved American independence belonged to these societies, and derived their inspiration, courage, and high purpose from the ancient learning (Manly P. Hall, 1944 pp. 180-181).

These secret societies are transmogrifying themselves into big brother right under your nose. And they think that we are too stupid to figure it out. They use their symbols to adorn the very institutions that are enslaving us while scaring us into accepting our shackles. A prime example is the Information Awareness Office (IAO)

“The IAO has the stated mission to gather as much information as possible about everyone, in a centralized location, for easy perusal by the United States government, including (though not limited to) Internet activity, credit card purchase histories, airline ticket purchases, car rentals, medical records, educational transcripts, driver's licenses, utility bills, tax returns, and any other available data. In essence, the IAO’s goal is to develop the capacity to recreate a life history of thoughts and movements for any individual on the planet on demand, which some deem necessary to counter the threat of terrorism” (Wikipedia). The sheepish response to this information is that “if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about”. This of course is not the point. Freedom doesn’t mean having your every move watched to create a psychological profile on every single human on the earth who will ultimately be implanted with computer chips to make sure they don’t stray to far from the herd. This is in fact the opposite of freedom, it is slavery. If you are already too far in the doublethink to realize this then it is time to dust of your secret collection of Nazi paraphernalia.

So make sure to keep your nose clean and keep an eye out for terrorists, they are in every family and come in every color, they don’t trust the government as they should and they are unpatriotic traitors. Walk the straight line because