Phase I: The Cradles of Civilization
The ancient Egyptians discover the relationship between Geometry and God. Geometers are priests. Mystery cults founded (Isis, Osiris). People are happy because the live ordered lives surrounded by pure geometrical forms (pyramids, rectilinear layout of cities, etc.)
The predecessor of true Roman concrete, made from mud and straw, is used to build the Pyramids.
Also something about Nimrod, 2nd King of Babylon (2194-2167 BS), etc.
Phase II: The Dionysian Artificers / Dionysian Architects
Mystery cults travel from Egypt to Greece, transmute into Eleusian (from Isis), Orphic, and Dionysian (from Osiris) cults. Dionysus is revered as the founder of Theatre, in addition to being pretty cool for having come back from the dead (like Osiris before him, and Christ after him.)
Around 1000 BC a subsect of his cult, the Dionysian Artificers, is formed to keep the secrets of building temples, theatres, and stage scenery. Thus, set designers are some of the original Geometer-Architect-Priests. The Artificers find particular patronage with Hiram, the King of Tyre.
Phase III: The Temple of Solomon
960 BC or so, the King of Tyre sends one of the Dionysian Architects living in his city, one Hiram Abif, to Jerusalem to take over construction of the Temple. In the course of building the Temple he is able to united pagans, Gentile and Jews under the unified religion of Geometry. He hides the Ark of the Covenant in the deepest roots of the Temple foundation, in a secret chamber known as the Well of Souls..
586 BC Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylonia, breaks the walls of Jerusalem and razes the Temple, taking its gold and silver vases and plates as booty. He doesn't find the Well or the Ark. When the Temple is subsequently rebuilt, the Ark is widely known (or thought to be known) to be absent...
Phase IV: The Roman Collegia
As the Roman Empire grows, the Dionysian Artificers lay highways (the Appian Way) and build temples. The Mystery cult is transformed into a Collegium of architects, and their work continues apace. The Collegia are persecuted by some, included Julius Caesar, but find great friends in Caesar Augustus (27 BC - 19 AD) and Marcus Aurelius (161 AD - 180 AD.)
The Geometer-Architect-Engineers of Rome discover the divine structural power of concrete. There is much rejoicing.
Phase V: The Comacine Masters
In 454 AD the Vandals sack Rome. A long dark teatime of the soul descends upon Western civilization. Some of the Geometer-Architects of the Roman Collegia escape the city and end up in the Lake Como region of Italy, with their sacred knowledge of geometry, architecture, and the engineering of highways intact.
They hide. Barbarians everywhere. People forget about concrete. The roads fall into disrepair.
By the 6th century AD, the Magistri Comacini, or Comacine Masters, have emerged from hiding in the Lombardy region of Northern Italy. They have the old knowledge still with them, and help the former Barbarian races to build new cities and roads. Sadly, the centuries of hiding have had a price: the knowledge of concrete is in a sorry state. Some even abandon the material altogether. It will take over 1000 years for the knowledge to be slowly regained, and will not be surpassed until the 1824 invention of Portland cement.
In 598 when St. Augustine is sent to Britain as a missionary, a group of Comacini are sent with him. As they had previously done with the Jews while building the Temple of Solomon, these descendant of the Dionysian Artificers have united their God of Geometry with the God of the Christians. Masonic monks become common.
Phase VI: The Stonemason Guilds
The Geometer-Masons organized into guilds, a variant on the Roman collegia. Charlemagne, first Imperator of the Holy Roman Empire, chartered the stonemason guilds to build his church at Aix-la-Chapelle (now Aachen). The guilds kept their mystical secrets of engineering, geometry and structural physics, while spreading across the face of Europe. Secret codes, handshakes, and symbols were employed to allow brothers to recognize one another in far-flung lands.
Phase VI: Millenialism
As the year 1000 AD approached, the initiates of the stonemason guilds began preparing for the Second Coming and subsequent Day of Judgment. The stonemason-Geometers start a massive program of cathedral building, in an attempt at rebuilding the Temple to allow for the Second Coming. While certainly much of the knowledge of the ancient had survived thru the various secret cults of Geometry, the secret alchemy of concrete had been lost, and the attempts at rebuilding the Temple were futile. The millenium did not arrive, but the Geometer-Monks had a renewed focus: cement.
Phase VII: The Knights Templar
In 1118 the Knights Templar, an order of monk-warriors, are founded and sent to the Holy Land to protect and escort pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. They wear on their chests the Templar Cross, an equal armed cross symbolizing both the Geometric purity of the right angle and of the square or circle circumscribed about it; and the death and resurrection of Osiris/Dionysus/Christ.
They make a token stab at fulfilling this duty, but are chiefly occupied with digging beneath the ruins of Solomon's Temple. They discover something under the foundation of the Temple, and that something allows them to become fabulously rich and powerful, fabulously quickly. They remain so for almost 200 years, until on Friday the 13th of October, 1307, the King of France stole their lands, and had the Pope send the Inquisition after them, not only in France but all of Europe. Many successfully fled to Scotland, but 18 Templar ships which left France, and which carried with them much of the wealth of the French Templars, completely vanished. It would be centuries before their ultimate fate was discovered.
Forever afterwards, Friday the 13th would be considered an unlucky day.
Phase VIII: The Freemasons
In Scotland, the exiled Knights go into semi-hiding, pooling wealth and knowledge with the remains of the Stonemason Guilds in exchange for disappearing from the Papal authorities by joining their ranks. What would later become known as Scottish Rite Freemasony is created by this merger of Templars and Stonemasons. In 1446 Rosslyn Chapel is founded as a focal point for the studies into the formula for Roman concrete, and as a future place of safekeeping, should the relic found by the original Knights Templar ever be restored to the Order.
The Scottish Rite is spread throughout the world with missionary zeal, in the hopes of finding the lost Templars and learning the fate of the relic. The efforts are hampered, however, by internal rifts and disputes, causing the Brotherhood of Freemasons to fracture into many different groups and Rites, with different beliefs and purposes. Some try to hold true to the teachings of pure Geometry and work towards the salvation of mankind through architecture. Many forget the old ways, and become mere society clubs.
But more disturbing are the first glimmerings of a dark force taking shape, an Adversary who has infiltrated the Order of Freemasons and caused their splintering through the dark powers of Chaos. Attempts are made to flush out the Judases, including the punishment of murder or mutilation for anyone revealing Masonic secrets to "profanes" -- non-members. These methods fail, however, and the most learned of the Templar-Masons in the Scottish rite decide to form new, more select, more secret societies, groups which will be harder for the Adversaries to infiltrate and betray from within. So while Freemasonry as a social organization grows at a cancerous rate over the upcoming centuries, the most valuable truths of the ancient Geometers are transferred out of the organization, into other, more select societies of learned men.
The opening moves of a new battle in the ancient war between Order and Chaos have been made, and the Freemasons were the first casualty.
Phase IX: The Rosicrucians
1614: The Order of the Rose and Cross emerges, bringing together the scattered Alchemists and Geometers of Europe with their ancient mystical knowledge of pure geometrical forms, and contacting the Knights Templar in Scottish exile, seeking the secret knowledge the Order of the Knights of the Temple had gained from whatever it was they exhumed in Jerusalem 500 years earlier. Sadly, while the Scottish Knights are able to provide some clues about what was uncovered, the relic itself was on one of the 18 Templar ships which had disappeared as the Knights fled Catholic persecution.
The Order aimed to advance the study and application of ancient science, numerology, and cosmic law. It also encouraged the ideals of the Egyptian Therapeutate by promoting international medical aid for the poor. During the revival of ancient knowledge spawned by the Order of the Rose and Cross, Gnosticism finds new expression in the promotion of a religious interpretation of alchemy supported by the study of numbers, a science that dates from the construction of the Temple, and the use of Geometry to define the quantity of perfection.
The alchemical search for a method of transforming lead into gold is joined with the ancient and holy quest for the Grail, and the Rosicrucian precept of the Chymical Marriage is formed. This is an elaborate double metaphor: firstly of the spiritual journey of self-transformation from the base metal of chaos and ignorance to the gold of Geometrical wisdom and harmony; and secondly of the scientific search for the ancient knowledge, lost during the years of hiding in the Comacine region, of pure Roman cement -- a quest which, if fulfilled would allow for the reconstruction of Solomon's Temple and usher in the Second Coming.
Phase X: The Invisible College in England and France
By the time of Charles I of England (1625-1649) The Rosicrucians were well depolyed in England, Germany, France and Holland. But now the Puritans persecute the Order of the Rose and Cross, just as the Catholic Church did 300 years earlier with the Templars. The Order goes underground, forming the Invisible College as a means of maintaing the lines of Geometrical knowledge and continuing their pursuit of the Grail of Concrete. After the Restoration of the Stuart line the members of the college reemerge as the Royal Society, admitting new members, but the Invisible College remains in existence, a secret parallel organization to the Royal Society, in case of future persecution.
Christopher Wren, Grandmaster of the Order of Rosicrucians and a member of both the Society and the College, orders the destruction of disorderly, chaotic London, so it can be rebuilt along the harmonic, orderly principles of Geometry. In 1666 London burns, and Geometer-Architect Wren leads the reconstruction, introducing the idea of the townhouse block, with its harmonious facade of repetitive elements and consistent cornice lines. He preparing the way for London to be the New Jerusalem.
Not to be outdone by rival England and her radical, Louis XIV, the Sun King of France (1661-1715), orders College members in France to construct a City of Pure Geometry at Versailles. The palace and grounds, completed in 1682, are in the short term an autocratic method of centralising Louis's power over his court by removing them from the political rabbit warren of Paris; but in the long term Versailles is intended to be a foundation for the future New Jerusalem, sanctifying the ground and holding a place in France for its construction once the lost Arts have been rediscovered.
Phase XI: The Invisible College in America
Meanwhile, the Rosicrucians and the Invisible College cross the Atlantic to colonial America. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Charles Thompson, Rosicrucians and Freemasons all, inspire the constitution of the United States. Thompson, the designer of the Great Seal of the United States, was a member of Franklin’s American Philosophical Society, the equivalent of the English Invisible College. The members of Franklin's Society had sensed for decades the presence of another, even more secret, society in the New World, and suspect that they are the descendants of the 18 lost Templar ships.
In 1782 Thompson creates the Seal as a coded message to this group; the Seal is inspired by the alchemical tradition which both the Templars and the Invisible College / A.P.S. have inherited. The eagle, the olive branch, the arrows and the pentagrams are all occult symbols of the opposite: good and evil, male and female, war and peace, darkness and light. On the reverse is the truncated pyramid, indicating the loss of the Old Wisdom, severed, and forced underground by the Church. The rays of ever-hopeful light incorporate the "all-seeing-eye" of the Great Architect-Geometer God "who favors our undertakings" ("Annuit Coeptis") as they attempt to establish "A New Order for the Ages" ("Novus Ordo Seclorum").
Whether or not the message embedded in the Great Seal was ever received or properly interpreted is unknown; either way the Founders of the fledgling nation of America never received an answer.
Phase XII: The 19th Century
1824, Portland cement is invented in Leeds, England. 1830: A publication called "The Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm and Village Architecture" appears, and advances the theory that steel lattice can be used to reinforce concrete. 1855, Paris Exposition: a French lawyer displays a boat made from a latticework of steel covered in a fine layer of Portland cement. All three of these "discoveries" are in fact the work of the lost Templars, releasing knowledge into the world from the Relic still in their possession, hoping to accelerate the Second Coming as the Adversaries seem to be growing in power.
The concret-and-steel boat floats. The Geometers of the world finally pay attention. Steel-reinforced concrete is born. The last secret of the Romans has been again set loose, and the building of a New Jerusalem can commence. The Adversaries decide that they must play a more aggressive hand.
Napoleon III, seeing that despite the efforts made by the Sun King at Versailles, London has become the most promising site for the New Jerusalem (after the destruction and reconstruction of the city at the hands of Wren and the English Invisible College) instructs Baron Haussmann to redesign Paris along Geometrical lines. In the 1860s Haussmann drives swaths of destruction thru the chaotic heart of this medieval city, leaving long, straight boulevards in his wake.
1863: the Rosicrucians re-emerge out of the War of Italian Unification as the International Red Cross, still utilizing their ancient symbol (the red, equal-armed cross, similar to the Templar Cross.) Their neutrality and charitable mission allow them freedom of movement during the wars (started by the Adversarial forces in the attempt at slowing down the construction of the City of God) that would ravage Europe for the next 80 years.
Phase XIII: Le Corbusier and Robert Moses
Le Corbusier, who had always had poor eyesight, receives an anonymous gift in the mail one day in 1918: a pair geometrically-perfect eyeglasses, perfect circles. Wearing these glasses Corbuis able to sense patterns and forms in the world with a preternatural clarity. Wandering through European cities young Corbusier senses the divine rules and geometries of the architecture and urban landscape. His revelations via the glasses prompt him to create a Design for a Contemporary City of Three Million for the Salon d'Automme of 1922. In plan view, the great office towers of Corbu's City form the Rosicrucians/Templar Cross.
Shortly after the Salon, Corbu is contacted by the descendants of the Lost Templars; they were the ones to send him the Geometer's Spectacles, as a test. He passed the test and now the Lost Order of Knights of the Temple are ready to reveal themselves to an outsider. The tell him that they have been hiding in America since their ships disappeared from European waters, and reveal to him an even greater secret: The Ark of the Covenant is in their possession! This was the relic discovered by the original Templars in the Well of Souls beneath the ruins of the First Temple.
Corbu is now in possession of the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments. The true Ten Commandments, not the "Covet not your brother's wife" bullshit in the Bible, but the genuine instructions from the Geometer-Architect-God, instructions for the construction of His City on Earth which the first Moses carried with him out of Egypt. Many of the Commandments had successfully been handed down thru the ages; some others which had been lost for a time had already been rediscovered. The American Knights Templar had themselves restored to human knowledge the full secrets of Concrete manufacture, first revealed to mankind on Mount Sinai. But one of the Commandments, a key instruction (the very first commandment in fact) had been lost since the sacking of Rome; it was now revealed at last to Le Corbusier: "Build high-density public housing."
The American Templars urge Le Corbusier to come back with them to America, and with the knowledge of the Ark and the 1st Commandment in particular, help them secure New York City as the New Jerusalem. But Corbu and his glasses sense a dark power rising in America, in New York City in truth. He fears that if the Secret of the 1st Commandment is left in the hands of a small group of Geometer-Architects, it will be too easy for the Adversary to crush that knowledge out of existence. "All of this infighting amongst Geometers is shameful and inefficient. The knowledge should be free to all, so it will never be lost again!"
1924: Le Corbusier publishes Urbanisme (translated into English as The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning). It is a trumpet-call to the Geometer-Architects, synthesizing in one book 4000 years of Geometry, Engineering, and Pure Forms, and containing within it the truth of the Commandments contained within the Ark. The world of Geometers and Adversaries pauses and gasps.
The College, Masons and Templars are aghast at what Corbu has done; by exposing all of their secrets to the world, they fear he has given the Adversaries an arsenal of weapons to be used against the Geometers. The only possible response is to step up efforts at bringing about the New Jerusalem, before the dark forces have a chance to act fully upon this foolishly disclosed knowledge. The American Templars, feeling particularly betrayed, return to the New World with the Ark and cut off communication with Corbu. They let him keep the glasses, though.
1925: The French motorcar company Voisin, under Masonic control, commissions Corbu to redesign the heart of Paris as a New Jerusalem. The Voisin Plan is born, but the Adversaries create massive public outrage against it by whinning about Paris's "architectural heritage" and "sublime beauty." The Plan is never acted upon, but Corbusier forges an alliance with the European Masons.
[N.B. there should probably be some event connecting Corbu and Moses in here, and/or indicating that Moses is the Second Coming. Is Corbusier playing the role of John the Baptist to RM's Christ? Also, is there a subsequent rift? This bit is sketchy.]
Meanwhile, a young Robert Moses, newly in charge of the Long Island Parks Commission, confident that the Knights' descendants are present in the USA and had a hand in the Corbusier Debacle, scours the country and gathers them together under his command. He redesigns the Templar Cross as the Sycamore Flag of the NYC Parks Department, and the Templars, known to the world now as "Moses Men," re-emerge around 1927. They bring with them the Ark and the tablets of the Ten Commandments, and Moses helps them hide it in a vault beneath his house in Babylon (Long Island, that is.)
Throughtout the 1920s the French have been waging a cultural War of Attrition against the rising power of the American Geometers. By promoting the carefree, indulgent French lifestyle of Gay Par-ee amongst the unwashed, uninitiated masses of America, they push the economy of the United States to the point of collapse. The economic wasteland of a great economic depression will, the French believe, bring the American attempts at building God's City to a grinding halt.
The French didn't count on the combined efforts of FDR and Robert Moses, however. With the New Deal, FDR and RM make the Depression into an advantage for the Geometers by turning the American workforce into one giant Public Works Machine -- the New Jerusalem being the greatest Public Work in history. Moses and his army of Moses Men-Templars create the plan and use the workers and the federal funds to launch the largest program of highway, bridge, and housing construction to be seen since the Roman Empire.
FDR, a 32nd degree Mason as well as President of the United States, is not what he seems, however. He is an agent of the Adversary, a mole within the American Masonic organization. Being a double agent is a delicate game, and FDR is one of the Adversary's most powerful pieces -- thus he is used with only the utmost discretion.
In 1935 FDR, under orders from the Society of Freemasons, has the Great Seal of the United States placed on the back of the $1 bill, announcing to all of the Initiates of the world that the USA is again making its own bid for the location of the New Jerusalem. It also serves as a subtle "fuck you" to the French (after their attempt at sowing economic ruin in the USA): the eye in the pyramid was a symbol used frequently in the French Revolution -- and the Revolution caused France to lose much of the ground it had gained under Louis XVI towards building the City of God on Earth.
The Italians and Germans, recognizing that America is gaining the upper hand in the Cold War of Geometry with its interconnected system of highways, begin their own programs. Mussolini orders the construction of the autostrade. Hitler builds the autobahn and commissions the creation of a motorcar which would be available to all Germans, the Volkswagen.
Hitler also sends his private army of Geometers out into the world in a quest for the Ark of the Covenant. They are unsuccessful, but realize that there are only two places it could be: in England / Scotland amongst the Scottish Rite Masons, or in America, with the descendants of the lost 18 ships.
On July 11, 1936, FDR and RM stand together at the opening ceremonies of the Triborough Bridge. While the triple bridge was itself a wonderous feat of engineering, the Geometers of the world realized with stunned shock that Moses and his Templars had secretly done something much grander: they had rebuilt the Temple of Solomon! Sitting in the East River, disguised as the headquarters of the Triborough Bridge Authority, the Temple sits proudly beneath the spans of the Bridge -- and, for the first time since the destruction of the original Temple, the Ark of the Covenant is restored to its rightful place, in a newly-dug Well of Souls on Randall's Island. This, however, is a secret known only to Moses and his Men.
Hitler secretly meets with Henri-Phillipe Pétain, vice-premier of France, and the Grandmaster Geometers of Germany and France. All agree that the Ark Threat must be stopped, lest England or America succeed in building the New Jerusalem. They agree to start a war, a second World War in fact, and also agree that England is the more likely possessor of the Ark (and besides, America was so damn far away.) In 1939 Hitler invades Poland as a catalyst for a so-called "Phony War," wherein all the nations of Europe declared war, but there was no military action. This tactic failed to slow down England's advancement of London as a site for the City of God, so Hitler and Pétain agreed that Hitler would invade France, take Paris, and install Pétain as head of a new, collaborationist government in the hopes of then drawing England out and forcing her to shift her manufacturing economy over to munitions.
It works like a charm, and Hitler is even able to deal a second blow to England's efforts -- not only does he bring her efforts at building the City of Geometry to a halt, but with the Blitz of London he is able to destroy so much of the city that it will take decades for England to again be a genuine player on the Geometer-Architect stage. America, however, is not duped. Using the excuses of "Isolationism" and "The Monroe Doctrine," America keeps itself out of the war. The German-Vichy Geometers are at a loss about what to do.
Meanwhile, Moses works to bring about the high-density public housing foretold in the 1st Commandment. Drawing inspiration from the tablet he names the new piece of legislation "Title I" and railroads it through Congress. [N.B. Fast and loose with history here, I'll check facts. Could maybe also/instead use RM's fiurst attempt to take over NYC housing, foiled by La Guardia -- and agent of the Italian Geometers? Or ignorant or it all?] FDR and the Adversary realize that something must be done to stop Title I, and realize that their best best is the massive War raging across the Atlantic.
FDR convinces the Japanese that "The USA doesn;t really want Hawaii in the union, be glad to get rid of it, actually. Why don't you invade? We promise not to retaliate." They do so, and then FDR takes the Senate floor, asking Congress to declare war. Both the Adversary and the German-Vichy Geometers are well pleased by the subsequent cessation of public works projects, including the nascent Title I, as all American steel production is designated for military use only.
[N.B. This is as far as I've gotten, and as I said, I've really not done a lot with interpolating this plot into the outline Alex wrote, or more specific ideas we've discussed. It's just some thoughts.
For what it's worth, I was thinking that Jane Jacobs is, of course, the Adversary, who is in fact Lilith, the original Eve. This makes a little more sense if you know that Masonic legends trace their Craft back to the Garden of Eden, with Adam as the First Mason. It's just a thought, I'll try to articulate it better at our meeting.]