The Lost Symbol in the Kabalyon Key Meet Charles Westbrook

Charles Westbrook is the author of The Talisman of the United States – The Mysterious Street Lines of Washington, DC, the first book ever published on the religious and esoteric symbolism designed in the city plan of Washington, DC. The Kabalyon Key is a novel based on the culmination of eighteen years of extensive research following the publication of TheTalisman of the United States, (1990).

Charles lives in North Carolina. He has graduate degrees in Industrial Technology, with minors in History, Art History, and Comparative Religion. A former professor at East Carolina University, he now heads Westcom Communications. He is the creator of numerous patents and copyrights and is an avid collector of rare books, maps, and documents, including one of the original ledgers used in the construction of the Washington Monument - (seen in the photo - visit Media).

Charles has traveled to all of the locations presented in the novel, with an archived library of photos and videos which can be viewed on this web site - (visit Media). He is well-acquainted with many European and American libraries and art research laboratories such as the Louvre, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, the British Museum, the Smithsonian Institute, the National Archives, and the Bibliotheque Nationale of France.

You have seen the documentaries on the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, ABC News, the various conspiracy web sites, and the tell-all-books related to the secret Masonic influence in the creation of Washington, DC.

But there is one secret they did not tell you.

Charles Westbrook started it all in 1990 with his underground bestseller The Talisman of the United States.

Excerpt on the research of Charles Westbrook from

THE UNITED SYMBOLISM OF AMERICA

by Dr. Robert Hieronimus

Available from Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, or your local bookstore.

(permission granted by Dr. Robert Hieronimus)

Charles Westbrook deserves the largest share of credit for the explosion of theories using geometric shapes in Washington, DC to prove intentionality of its designers for some kind of secret plan. Baigent and Leigh in their 1989 The Temple and the Lodge pre-date his claims, but they merely suggested an octagon templar cross around the White House and the Capitol.²³ There was also previously published material on the square and compass design around the Capitol in Masonic literature, but Westbrook’s book, The Talisman of the United States, published in 1990, was the first to claim the city streets were an intricate web of intentionally placed geometric designs. Though not driven as much by an anti-Masonic agenda as many of those who have copied his research and diagrams, Westbrook does believe that the street designs of Washington, DC prove a conspiracy to deliberately embed occult symbols and astronomical calendrical sight-lines on the ground.

Charles L. Westbrook, Jr. is a former professor of East Carolina University, a software programmer, and a mechanical and electrical engineer who has made a study of comparative religion, art, design, and American history. He proudly disclaims that he is not a Freemason, nor a member of any political group or religion. I was intrigued by the long subtitle of his 1990 self-published book, America ’s Oldest Secret, The Mysterious Street Lines of Washington, DC, Signature of the Invisible Brotherhood, and was the first radio show host in the country to invite him on the air to talk about it. Westbrook has since expanded his theories published in newsletters and on the Internet and is currently finishing a fictionalized retelling of his work entitled The Kabalyon Key, to be released in 2008. His novel promises to further connect his research into the mystic intentionality of the design of Washington, DC to the city plans of Rome, Edinburgh, Jerusalem, and more.24 Westbrook claims to own “unique family documents on the creation of the Washington Monument and other papers related to the history of Virginia and North Carolina,” adding that he “grew up in a house where this stuff was discussed around the kitchen table.”25

Central to Westbrook’s thesis are the angles of certain streets which he says are purposely designed to act as astronomical calendars. Like Ovason, Westbrook diminishes the input of L’Enfant on the design, but unlike Ovason, Westbrook looks further back behind L’Enfant for the mysterious designers who must have preceded him. The most remarkable angles in Westbrook’s theory are ones that enable an astronomer to predict eclipses, solstices and equinoxes by watching the stars rise and set over certain natural landforms. Accurately predicting the equinoxes and solstices was a key to advancing civilization since it enabled early man to better plan and improve his agricultural skills. But with the long periods of time required to create such accurate landscape clocks, Westbrook figures someone in this vicinity must have been mapping out potential site lines as early as 1735 - 19 years before L’Enfant was born. “There is a good possibility that there is another and older Founding Father involved with the development of the city plan for Washington, D.C. ,” said Westbrook in one of his newsletters. Because the 56-57 year cycle of eclipses would have to be observed at least twice to determine its accuracy, he concludes that, “someone may have been working on the city plan for Washington, DC as early as 1679.”²⁶ To support this idea, Westbrook points to some early plans of the towns that were later incorporated into the District of Columbia (Carrollsburg, Hamburg, Alexandria, and Georgetown surveyed between 1712 and 1755) and notes that “all include aspects of the basic angular street pattern for the future plan for Washington. ”²⁷

Westbrook also fingers Thomas Jefferson as the one who knew about these earlier attempts at sacred landscaping and who pushed them into the design for the nation’s capital. He considers L’Enfant as “more or less a draftsman for Jefferson.”²⁸ Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were interested in the mystical origins and beliefs of the First Peoples. The entryway to Monticello was known as “Indian Hall” for all the artifacts Jefferson had collected on display there. Being from the area, and active in surveying, it is quite likely that Washington had heard the legends that the Algonquin Indians used to hold tribal councils at the foot of Jenkins Heights, that grand hill which L’Enfant had described as awaiting a superstructure. Other local legends about this district surround the Englishman Francis Pope who owned Jenkins Heights in the 1660s. Perhaps as a play on his own last name, Pope called the area “Rome,” and the creek that ran nearby, the “Tiber.” Later retellings of Pope’s ownership were embellished to include a vision Pope allegedly had for this hill, where in the future, a city more grand than ancient Rome would develop, bringing peaceful governance to all the nation.

Most important to Westbrook is the idea that the city map is a “type of planisphere,” allowing for “solar and moon alignments of streets set as if measured from the center of the Earth, not from the ground level at Washington, DC. As he told me in a private correspondence, “This sun/moon alignment is not a theory - as with the other ‘Rorschach symbolism’ – it is a measurable fact.”²⁹

More than any other symbol, the one most often pointed to with fear by the fundamentalist-conspiratorialists is the incomplete, inverted, irregular pentagram in the streets above the White House. Because of superficial research conclusions they believe the inverted pentagram is a Satanic symbol, or a Masonic symbol, neither of which is true. Westbrook, on the other hand, believes the pentagram above the White House has more to do with “the sigil for Jerusalem and the old pilgrimage routes for Rome , than any sort of devil worship.”³⁰ As we note when we review this symbol again a little further on, people working with geometric symbols because of their magical connotations are careful to keep the angle measurements and the line connections complete and exact. Otherwise the magic is useless. This is one reason I tend to believe the incomplete and irregular pentagram over the White House is probably coincidental rather than intentional." ...

"Summary of claims that originated with Charles Westbrook:

1. The “L’Enfant Plan” is Jefferson ’s original design concept. Jefferson worked for George Washington in the supervision of the city plan before, during, and after L’Enfant was fired. Jefferson chose the site for the city, not Washington. Jefferson also supervised the design elements for the White House, the Capitol, and the Washington Monument . This supervision of the architecture in Washington extended into his presidency and even afterwards through architects, his friends like Benjamin Latrobe and Robert Mills.

2. The Talisman of the US was the first book to point out the following symbols: the Star of David east of the Capitol; the pentagram north of the White House; the pentagram east of the Capitol; and the grand pentagram encompassing the Capitol and the Mall.

3. First to relate the square and compass design to the compass and level design of the Vatican Complex. It was not the first book to point out the square and compass layout west of the Capitol. This design was published in some Masonic literature possibly as early as the 1960s and served as a catalyst for Westbrook’s study of the Washington map.

4. First to point out the Kabbalistic Sephiroth Tree and Tarot card arrangement of the plan extending across the National Mall to Arlington Cemetery.

5. First to offer a measurable astronomical explanation for the design of the city. It is the only book to address the solstice and major moonrise information. It is the first book to point out the 23.5 degree relationship in the design to the tilt of the earth, an axis mundi, and the procession of the zodiac. The solstice and major and minor moon alignment of streets east of the Capitol lay out the city plan as a type of planisphere. These solar and moon alignments of streets are set as if measured from the center of the Earth, not from the ground level at Washington, DC. But there are key locations in the city that make use of this alignment for invoking a shamanic spiritual awakening which are described in The Kabalyon Key.™

6. First to associate the symbolism in the plan with Edward Savage’s “Washington Family Portrait” and the armillary sphere, compass, and map found in the portrait.

7. First to point to the sun and moon arrangement of the street east of the Capitol and how this arrangement mirrors the astronomical alignment of the street plan for Rome.

8. First to point out the pentagram arrangement of Rome suggesting a relationship between Rome and Washington . The Senate Park Commission of 1901 had as one of their redesign proposals for Washington a design that followed the city plan for Rome. They were aware of this relationship between the two cities.

9. First to associate the plan of Washington to the Shield of the Trinity, a type of Kabbalistic sigil for the Christian god used during the Middle Ages in Europe.

10. First to suggest a Society of Cincinnati connection to the design of Washington.

11. First to relate the plan to the fabled Priory of Sion and the coded map of the Rennes region in France, as told in Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

12. First to suggest the design of Washington, DC was connected to the astronomical alignments of the Temple Mount and the physical plan for Jerusalem. The Kabalyon Key™ expands on this relationship.

The Talisman of the United States was also the first to indicate that the “legs of the compass” were aligned with the 1791 setting of the star Sirius. This conclusion is repeated by numerous fundamentalist-conspiratorialists who find something especially ominous about Sirius, perhaps due to its importance to the ancient Egyptians. Westbrook told us in a letter dated October 13, 2007 that he no longer sees Sirius as part of the alignment in the planning of the city. “It’s not the reason the streets are laid out as they are in my opinion,” he said. “It’s not something I continued to investigate, although I saw a possible relationship in the alignment of the streets at one time.”

Though their methods are dismissed out of hand by mainstream academics who decry any undocumented speculation, I believe that Charles Westbrook and the other speculators in this section have pointed out enough “coincidences” to indicate intentionality on the part of some city planner along the way. Before we can accept any of the conclusions extrapolated from their premises, however, it is important to open the discussion to other trained specialists to verify their facts and figures. Unfortunately, that is not the kind of approach that the fundamentalist-conspiratorialists generally take, and when they see diagrams like those created by Westbrook showing symbols they interpret as evil all over Washington, DC, they seize on the opportunity to label as “Satanic” yet another beloved American symbol, our capital, the macrocosm of American symbolism.

END OF QUOTE

Books based on research first presented in

The Talisman of the United States

Mass market novels:

The Atlantis Prophecy (2008) by Thomas Greanias. (The clues found in the 'Washington Family Portrait' were first explained on page 63 in The Talisman of the United States.)

The best seller, The Book of Fate (2006) by Brad Meltzer. (The pentagrams and square and compass in the streets of Washington were first presented in The Talisman of the United States (1990). The Book of Fate has a character named Westbrook.)

Books and videos using principal elements also found in The Talisman of the United States:

Secrets of the Widow's Son by David A. Shugarts

Video series and Youtube lectures by David Icke http://www.davidicke.com/index.php/

http://www.towardthelight.org/davidicke.html

The following website deals with the Kaballic layout of Washington. Charles Westbrook was the first researcher to explain and illustrate the Kaballic aspect of the design in The Talisman of the United States (1990).

http://www.geocities.com/jussaymoe/dc_symbolism/