THE SECRET ARCHITECTURE OF OUR NATION’S CAPITAL

A painstaking and often specious study of the astrological implications of Washington, DC, architecture.

Astrologer and Nostradamus expert Ovason mixes scholarship and stargazing in a bizarre paean to Masonic influence on the federal city. Most of the capital’s planners—Andrew Ellicott, George Washington, James McMillan—were Freemasons, and it is Ovason’s contention that their plans reflect a sweeping consideration of the constellations, particularly Virgo. Rambling from a detailed reading of the zodiacs that decorate numerous federal buildings to the ancient Egyptians who inspired those zodiacs and then to a discussion of the unfinished pyramid on the dollar bill, the author fascinates with his erudition but ultimately leaves one cold as he delves too deeply into hocus-pocus. We are told, for example, that the Freemason sculptor of a famous statue of Admiral Farragut was not only one of the last people to see Lincoln before his assassination, but that another one of her sculptures included a triangle (a Masonic symbol)—and that the very same sculptor’s house was later demolished for the construction of the Federal Triangle. A later chapter adds to the pile: the Federal Triangle also mirrors the constellation Virgo, which is fixed between the three stars (Arcturus, Spica, and Regulus) that mirror the White House, Washington Monument, and Capitol building. The upshot is that Virgo rules over the city and, by extension, the whole of the US. Virgo—a figure representing the Egyptian Isis, Greek Ceres, and Christian Virgin Mary—therefore blesses the country with her bounty and protection. Ovason seems to struggle with his material, not because he’s a stranger to it, but because of the sheer mass of information he’s compiled. He never knows quite when to stop, giving the reading an obsessed, claustrophobic tone.

Essential for experts or, shall we say, believers. For casual readers, a curiosity.