Reframing the Revolution
Most of us learned the story in a high school history class. The colonists revolted against the English crown, and the Revolutionary War followed: no taxation without representation, tea dumped in Boston Harbor, the Boston Massacre, Bunker Hill, Yorktown, and the birth of a new nation.
But the founding of what became today’s economic and military powerhouse may have more to do with mysticism than you think.
Freemasons, students of esotericism, and conspiracy theorists alike are aware of the fact that many of the Founding Fathers of America were members of the Ancient and Honorable Fraternity of Freemasons, namely: George Washington, Ben Franklin, Paul Revere, John Hancock, James Monroe, James Clinton, and Richard Stockton, among others. Freemasonry is a product of Enlightenment-era thought and is steeped in symbolism, mystery traditions, and ritual architecture.
Freemasonry wasn’t the only channel. Some founders were connected, directly or indirectly, with other European esoteric currents: the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross (Fraternitas Rosae Crucis), Hermetic philosophy, the Invisible College, and the Royal Society, which led the development of natural philosophy in England and often worked the border between science and metaphysics. Benjamin Franklin, for one, was a member of the Royal Society and is documented to have corresponded with European alchemists, mystics, and natural philosophers.
Hermetic Thought and the Balance of Energies
Hermetic philosophy teaches what’s called the Principle of Gender: everything in existence has a masculine and a feminine quality, or energy. The Kybalion, the most recent major text to claim Hermetic origins for the laws of reality and consciousness, says spiritual mastery means bringing the masculine and feminine energies within yourself into harmony.
In this system the Deity is androgynous, a reconciliation of opposites that holds both activity and passivity, masculine intellect (logic) and feminine intuition (emotion). That pairing runs through much of the Western esoteric tradition, including forms of alchemy, Kabbalah, and Christian mysticism such as Gnosticism.
Its best-known picture is the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and its three pillars. The left column, crowned by the Sephirah Binah, is the feminine Pillar of Severity. The right, crowned by Chokmah, is the masculine Pillar of Mercy. Between them runs the pillar of Wisdom, Equilibrium, or Synthesis, known as the Middle Path.
Masonic symbolism echoes this in the two pillars said to guard the entrance to King Solomon’s Temple: Boaz, the feminine and passive pillar, and Jachin, the masculine and active one. The Temple between them becomes a symbol of the perfected human being, or of an ideal society, one that lives in harmony with divine principles and reflects universal truths.
I deposit my theory for your speculation: this dual symbolism lives on in the iconography, geography, and Federal architecture of America.
Just as the Founding Fathers would’ve wanted it.
Columbia Rising: Goddess of the Republic
Columbia entered the American imagination in the 18th century. Her name first appeared in London’s Gentleman’s Magazine in 1738, coined by Samuel Johnson in his thinly disguised reports of Parliament’s debates as a name for the American colonies. By the time of the American Revolution, she had grown into a personification of liberty and resistance, standing for the virtue, dignity, and struggle of colonies fighting for independence.
It may be coincidence, but I believe it was intentional that later generations took Columbia, the name of the District that held the nation’s capital, and turned her from a poetic figure into a full goddess.
Through that apotheosis, she was dubbed the patron goddess of America, and she now stands atop the U.S. Capitol, where Congress makes the laws Americans live by.
Then look at where the District sits: in a geographic cradle formed by Virginia and Maryland.
Virgin-ia and Mary-land….. VIRGIN MARY.
Sure, Virginia was named in honor of Queen Elizabeth I of England, the “Virgin Queen”, and Maryland for Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of King Charles I of England. Still, the way these feminine archetypes line up is hard to ignore.
The triad of Columbia, Virgin, and Mary mirrors the triple goddess prominent in the Wiccan tradition: Maiden, Mother, and Crone. The Virgin is the Maiden, untouched potential. Mary is the Mother, for reasons obvious to anyone familiar with Christian symbolism. Columbia is the Crone: past the Maiden’s potential and the Mother’s nurture, she is a fully realized queen full of Wisdom (Sophia, another feminine presence), carrying the torch of liberty, the sword of justice, and the scales of balance.
I believe these figures of the Divine Feminine were placed deliberately, to counter the masculine presence that dominated the founding and to keep alive the tradition of personifying ideal human qualities as women.
The Lost Goddess Tradition
Some archaeologists believe that in prehistory, before written records began about 5,000 years ago, belief systems centered on goddesses honored for the life-giving power of childbirth. Since then, many of the major gods and chief deities of pantheons have been made in the male image: Zeus/Jupiter, Anu, Marduk, Amun-Ra, Atum, Ptah, Baal, Yahweh, and others. I believe the effort to raise the feminine back up took shape in the Enlightenment, and the American colonial era came at its tail end.
The feminine persists in Freemasonry, too. The Four Cardinal Virtues (pictured, left to right: Temperance, Prudence or Wisdom, Fortitude or Courage, and Justice) are all shown as women. So are the Three Graces (pictured below, bottom to top of the ladder: Faith, Hope, and Charity), drawn as angels climbing Jacob’s Ladder, coming from and returning to the Blazing Star, the symbol of Deity.
So are the Three Graces (image below, from bottom to top of ladder: Faith, Hope, Charity), which are all pictured as feminine angelic beings traveling along Jacob’s Ladder, emanating from and returning to the Blazing Star, the symbol of Deity.
I believe that these allegorical feminine figures are more than just artistic expressions of abstract moral concepts. They stand for ideals that every Mason, and really every human being, should feel compelled to cultivate. Together they point toward moral and spiritual perfection through a harmony of masculine action and feminine wisdom.
At this point, you may be asking yourself: what use is any of this to me, even if I believe it at all?
Here’s one answer. If you accept that the founding of America may have been shaped, at least in part, by symbolic and esoteric ideas, that view makes room for a deeper relationship with your national identity. It raises a question worth sitting with: What kind of society were the Founders trying to build, beyond its legal or economic framework?
At the national level, the same view could inspire civic participation grounded in idealism rather than political partisanship, aimed at preserving balance, justice, and wisdom in governance at every level. And the question doesn’t just stay in the past. It turns into one about us in the modern day: what kind of society were WE meant to build?
If esoteric ideas and the ancient mystery traditions did reach some of the Founders, perhaps a government without a king was only the start. Perhaps they were planting the seeds of what they hoped would become a Utopian society, one that balanced logic, intuition, strength and compassion, flesh and spirit.
Picture Columbia, nestled between Virgin-ia and Mary-land. The image is poetic, and it also carries a reminder that feminine wisdom, so often overlooked in modern governance, was symbolically present from America’s beginning. Once you look at the monuments, statues, and buildings of Washington, D.C. with new eyes, it’s hard to miss that this country was founded on ideals that go beyond laws and borders.
What this asks of us today is balance in our own lives: inwardly, through introspection, whether through prayer, meditation, or another practice, and outwardly, in how we talk with one another. It asks us to revisit our values, and to remember that liberty, justice, and wisdom are ours to live out daily, just as much as they are the courts’ and the government’s to uphold.
In the end, the esoteric layer of America’s story sits alongside the historical one, and I believe it enriches it. It reminds us that symbols matter, that introspection and spiritual development still have value in this modern age, and that maybe, just maybe, the architecture of our nation was designed to awaken something within us.
So mote it be.
Sincerely & Fraternally,
The Kabbalistic Craftsman
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