The Great Seal Decoded. Finally.

Oh, you thought you lived in a rational world ruled by people who didn't hold weird, occultic beliefs about outer space and all the rest of it?

That's sweet.

Original sketches for Great Seal, 1782. Weird and ugly, ain't they? 

And who drew this crap, Helen Keller? Not a lot of decent art schools around back then, I suppose. But there were a lot of weirdo secret societies and seriously-bent occult nutcases, however. 

And contrary to what you might have been led to believe, there was a lot of fucking going on back in the day. Plus, smoking weed was legal. But I digress.

OK, so here's the initial sketch for the Great Seal, incorporating the "Eye of Providence" without pyramid. As you'd expect, it sucks. Not a lot of time for learning how to draw when you're busy fucking, smoking pot, and worshipping weird idols, I reckon. 

And here's your old pal the constellation Lyra, usually depicted as an eagle or vulture carrying the Lyre or Harp of Orpheus. 

Yeah, that's right; the old Vega bit. 

/

The eagle of the Great Seal is Lyra, with the lyre redrawn as a heraldic shield.

What's that? No, it's not "debatable." No, not even remotely.

Because Lyra was actually depicted on government documents, such as the United States passport, which was a big ugly mess of paper back in the day of your great-great-great moms and pops. OK?

Got it? Good. If you have any other questions we can discuss it after class.

"Debatable," he says. I'll give you debatable.

And of course, we also the notorious All-Seeing Eye and unfinished pyramid. Submit or die!

Again, the original design did not include any of that zesty occulty goodness. 

So what happened in between 1776 and 1782?

Hey; glad you asked. Well, the Ring Nebula was discovered in the constellation of Lyra. So what then is the All-Seeing Eye and the unfinished pyramid?

Lyra, including Vega (the Falling Eagle) and the Ring Nebula

Theta Lyra and Vega are connected. Sulafat and Sheilak are connected. 

A plane is drawn connecting Sheliak and Zeta Lyra, terminating at the plane connecting Theta Lyra and Vega.

See it now?

If not, let's just rotate the "unfinished pyramid," 
so the plane between Vega and Theta Lyra is at 0º.

Voila! The Ring Nebula then sits atop the pyramid. You know those Mason types; they love doing this kind of thing. Geometry and all that shit.  

Hey, zero degrees! Get it? Aren't we clever? Aren't we "on the square?" 23 skidoo! 

Jesus, shoot me already.

The angles formed by the connected stars align perfectly with the perspective of the pyramid of the Great Seal, with Sheliak marking the top of the pyramid and Sulafat marking the position of the All-Seeing Eye. 

Well, more or less. It was a long time ago and I think all that had were, like, Commodore 64s or something. With those big-ass old floppies that stored like half a .txt doc? 

Yeah, tech kinda sucked back then.

Anyway, even in the crudely observed form of 1782, the Ring Nebula was considered important enough by Masonic occultists to be included on the Great Seal.

Both front and back. Yeah, you heard me. That's right.

'Cause I'm going to go right out there on the branch and say this here is a stylized depiction of Lyra and the Ring Nebula as well, because that's how I do.

The "Glory" is itself a ring containing stars, just as astronomers like William Herschel had observed at the time. Just try not to think of the word "hole" while you study it.

An early version of the "Glory" (do not think of holes) was incorporated into the Continental Congress Presidential Seal. 

It just looked a bit more gynecological, ironically.

Nebulae were still hot stuff at the time (their observation began in earnest in the 17th Century) and the discovery of one in so crucial a constellation as Lyra must have been seen as a literal sign from the Masonic god (who they called the GAOTU, or Jah Bul On or whatever the fuck) to the Founders.

Hence the phrase Annuit Coeptis, replacing earlier sparklers like Perennis and Deo Favente in earlier versions of the Reverse. I'm using "sparklers" ironically.

Annuit Coeptis specifically refers to Jupiter (via Ovid), or perhaps Jupiter Amon. Or maybe the Jupiter 2, I'll have to look it up. 

For now I'm going with the Phoenix being Lyra as well. 

Because I am a mad dog.

I'm kinda thinking that the flames could be an early, anomalous observation of the Ring Nebula. Maybe an observation that passed into myth rather than be recorded as science, dig?

Like so.

Do note that the Ring Nebula M57 is a the base of Lyra, hence the eagle "rises from it." Or phoenix. Whatever works.

OK, class dismissed. I'm not going to have time to meet with anyone this afternoon. I have to make some calls and see if I can't get someone to explain to me why Lyra is such a big deal to these secret society wackos. Driving me nuts already.

Seriously, Jan.

And of course there's a Braintree connection here.

POSTSCRIPT: "On July 17, 1850 — 167 years ago — Vega became the first star (other than the sun) to be photographed, when it was imaged by William Bond and John Adams Whipple at the Harvard College Observatory. Using the daguerreotype photograph-producing process of the day, it took an exposure of 100 seconds to capture an image of Vega."  -- Space.com