Before continuing with this installment, I would like to demonstrate the point I made at the conclusion of the last. By plugging in the coordinates of the furthest two obelisks to Google Earth, Cleopatras Needle and Thomas Addis Emmetts Obelisk, I generated a line in between the two. And the Worth Obelisk falls exactly within it.
A level of meticulous precision that cannot be accidental. And as we shall see in our next installment, the last of the obelisks (and yet the oldest) Cleopatras Needle, was placed in its spot mysteriously and meticulously by a group of Freemasons. In fact, the entire endeavor to bring it there was a masonic enterprise. But I am getting ahead of myself. Go to Google Earth and plug it all in yourself if you do not believe me. (In fact, I encourage you too).
We have a tremendous amount of ground to cover, so I apologize in advance if I do not present it in the most logical or organized way.
So, we have our possible ley line established, so let us begin our investigation with this experimental schizo hermeneutic and see what the line intersects before we get to the significance of Cleopatra’s Needle and the Emmetts obelisk. Full transparency: the order in which I am presenting these things is not the order in which I discovered them.
The first intersection of the phantom thread is in Washington Square Park.
In my rough sketches of this line I knew that Washington Square Park would fall within it. The area itself is considered one of the most haunted in all of NYC, for reasons we shall soon discover. An area vibrating with occult potentialities. First, a background on the park.
Throughout the period of the United States Revolution, most of the land that was made for farming was acquired by the Common Council of New York. Specifically, the land located east of the Minetta Creek was targeted for a potter’s field or public cemetery. Their intent was to bury citizens that were known as indigent or unidentified by the public at the time of their deaths. This land would be put to good use when the City of New York suffered a yellow fever epidemic that killed dozens of people. Since the land was located away from what was considered New York City at the time, the burial grounds were used since they were located far from the city and at a safe distance away from people as a precaution.
One of the stories that had been told about the burial ground was the planting of an oak tree located in the central area. It had been said that a public execution was said to have occurred here at some point in the 18th or 19th century. Although there have been no known records of this execution, it might still be considered an urban legend to this day. However, some historians claim that the tree may have been located where the Washington Square Park fountain sits today.
The cemetery was closed in 1825. At the time, more than 20,000 bodies were buried beneath the surface of the ground. This set the stage for what might be one of the Big Apple’s most haunted places as of today. The stories of human remains and the discovery of tombstones dating back to the 1790s might just be a small sample of what stories of the kind of paranormal and spiritual activity that could very well be happening in Washington Square Park.
It was from this charnel ground that the park became what it is today. The Park was dedicated to George Washington and statues in his likeness and an arc were erected on the grounds. But what surprised me, was to find that the line did not cut through the arc itself.
Why did I expect it too? It literally opens up 5th Avenue, the avenue in which much of our occult topography is located.
The arc itself was dedicated to Washington, who was of course a Mason, but whats more it was modeled off of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which was a project steeped in Masonic fingerprints (which is obvious, as it was commisioned during the time of Napoleon).
On February 18, 1806, two months after the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon I decided to build a triumphal arch, a project that involved several Freemasons. Brother Jean Chalgrin ("The Simple Hearts of the North Star" Lodge, Paris), an architect, drew up the plans, based upon an initial draft prepared by Brother Charles Louis Balzac ("The Great Sphinx" Lodge, Paris). Under the July Monarchy (constitutional monarchy in France under King Louis-Philippe, starting with the July Revolution of 1830), two Brothers were to be in charge of the sculpture in bas-relief of the North Face - Francois Rude (The Marseillaise) and Jean-Pierre Cortot (The Peace of Vienna).
But this is all tertiary.
It was then it dawned upon me, that the line is extremely precise, cutting through a monument in the park far more relevant and significant to this all.
It cuts through the statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi.
You may be wondering, what is a statue of the Father of the Italian Risorgimento doing in NYC?
For our purposes, this is one of the most significant discoveries to be made upon this ley line, as his personage directly relates to a specific kind of masonry, and our good friend Mr Crowley. It is time for a little history lesson.
Let us spend this installment understanding the History of the Rite of Memphis-Misraim, "also known as ‘Egyptian Freemasonry’ due to the invocation of hermetic-derived esoteric symbolism referencing Ancient Egypt in its system of degrees.”
The Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis and Misraim was founded in 1881, as a merger between two earlier rites, the Rite of Memphis and the Rite of Misraim. The older of the two is the Rite of Misraim, and so we will begin our examination with that.
The Rite of Misraim is said to have been created by one of the most infamous alchemists and occultists of the 18th century, Cagliostro, the alias of Joseph Balsamo (at least this is the consensus of Cagliostro’s true identity). To do justice to the weirdness and eccentric life of Balsamo is beyond the scope of the article. But it is important to note, and something that we will touch on in a later article, that Crowley had a vision on an island in the Hudson River in which he believed it was revealed to him that Cagliostro was a past incarnation of his. Cagliostro founded the Rite of High Egyptian Masonry with an initiation structure of 90 degrees, which would evolve into the Rite of Misraim. Cagliostro was very close Manual Pinto de Fonseca, the Grandmaster of the Knights of Malta, who inducted him into high Hermetic degrees.