A closer look

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Take a closer look
"If it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck."

On the right hand of the Father sits Minerva, holding the emblem of Roman totalitarianism, the fasces. Minerva, we recall, was the virgin goddess of the Sacred Heart–it was she who rescued the heart of the Son of God, and placed it with Jupiter in heaven. She was called “Minerva”(Lucifer Sun Worship) when praised for her justice and wisdom. When praised for her beauty and love, Minerva was known as Venus, the Queen of Heaven. She and Venus were often identified with each other, just as statues of both were reconsecrated “Mary” through Roman Catholic missionary adaptation. Minerva’s most persistent role in ancient Sun Worship was Dea Benigna, “The Mediatrix.” She heard the prayers of sinful mortals and passed them on to Jupiter, in the same way the Roman Mary is believed to pass Catholic prayers on to Christ.

Completing the circular composition around the solarized Augustus are thirteen nubile goddesses. These are the original States. They dance weightlessly in space, supporting a white banner inscribed with the soul of the Bacchic Gospel, “E PLURIBUS UNUM.” Above the head of each State-goddess floats a magical white pentagram.

And here, the Goddess Immaculately Conceived, the Dreadnaught Mary. Wearing the pentagrams and eagle headdress of Thomas Crawford’s statue atop the dome’s exterior, she mobilizes her sword and shield against a pack of fleeing sinners labeled “Tyranny” and “Kingly Power.” Jupiter’s mascot, the Roman eagle, glides just behind her clutching a bunch of thunderbolts in his talons. Innocent in her flowing scarlet cape, the Goddess is situated exactly beneath the deified George Washington, coming between him and the embattled viewing public gazing up from ground level. It is the graphic realization of Pio Nono’s Ubi primum, which decreed the Virgin Mary was “set up between Christ and his Church, always delivering the Christian people from their greatest calamities and from the snares and assaults of all their enemies.”

The eagle gliding behind Mary explains the otherwise inscrutable seal of the United States Justice Department, which contains a wingspread eagle surrounded by the motto “QUI PRO DOMINA JUSTITIA SEQUITUR” (“He who follows the Goddess Justice”). Persephone, or Minerva the Mediatrix, when judging the sinfully dead in Hades was called Justitia, or Justice. The “HE” of the Justice Department’s motto identifies the eagle, symbol of Rome. Rome follows the Goddess Justice – that is, the Immaculately Conceived Mother of God in her judicial capacity.

A rainbow sweeps across the lower quadrant of the Dome of the Sky from Benjamin Franklin to a young boy wearing a Smurf-cap and a toga. The boy attends a goddess who reclines on a large horse-drawn reaper. She is Persephone’s mother Ceres, who was reconsecrated by early missionary adaptation as Anna, mother of the Virgin Mary. The golden boy is officially designated “Young America.” Although Brumidi has hidden the boy’s face from us, he deserves our careful scrutiny for one very important reason. Bearing the name “America,” he is the only element in the sacred national iconography that defines the character of the American person as perceived by government.

Young America’s Smurf-cap is a style of headgear known as the “Phrygian cap.” Phrygia was a district in the Kingdom of Per gamum. We remember Pergamum. It was the middle point in the transfer of Babylonian religion westward to Rome. Phrygia is a Greek word meaning “freemen” (our English word “free” comes from the first syllable, “phry-”). Phrygian caps were given to freed Roman slaves to indicate their new liberated status. Roman law regards liberty as a conditional status. Once granted by a patron, it could be revoked at any time for cause. Phrygian-cap freedom, then, means liberty (freed Roman slaves, by the way, were called “liberti”) to please Caesar. We remember from Chapter 8 how Ignatius described such freedom in Section 353.1 of his Exercises: “We must put aside all judgment of our own, and keep the mind ever ready and prompt to obey in all things the hierarchical Church.” Of course, those liberti bold enough to protest what their superiors commanded lost their freedom, no matter how lucid and reasonable their own judgment might have been. They were reverted to slavery. Since the advent of the Febronian State Church, the reversion of protestant liberti, or Protestants, to slavery has been so methodically insidious that it’s hardly noticeable. The shackles are psychological, humanely fitted by increasing varieties of spiritual exercise. Like Aeneas, Anchises, Julius Ascanius and their Trojan followers, most Americans are indeed Phrygiancap freemen, free to sacrifice their individuality to the greater glory of Rome.

So goes a historian’s version of how Robert Morris saved America. The official version is revealed in Constantino Brumidi’s “Apotheosis of Washington.” Here we see Superintendent Morris gazing up from his accounts ledger at yet another Roman deity. We recognize the deity from the familiar caduceus in his right hand, from the winged sandal he’s thrust to within kissing distance of Morris’ lips, and from the shadowy bag of gold he tantalizingly dangles in Morris’ face. The deity is Mercury, the Psychopomp, the Trickster, the patron deity of commerce, deceivers, and thieves. Mercury, the brilliant, lovable Pied-Piper deity who deceives the souls of sinful humanity into following him exuberantly down into the oblivion of Hades. Just as Sebastiano Ricci’s painting subtly established Mercury as the guiding spirit of modern Roman Catholicism, Brumidi’s painting acknowledges the same deity’s ascendancy over the fulfillment of the American Revolution.

Minerva, goddess of wisdom and the arts of civilization, with helmet and spear, points to an electric generator creating power stored in batteries, next to a printing press, while inventors Benjamin Franklin, Samuel F. B. Morse, and Robert Fulton watch. At the left, a teacher demonstrates the use of dividers.