No Ordinary Churches

7/28/2019 No Ordinary Churches

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No ordinary churches: pagan symbolism, occultdesigns from ancient Egypt, flesh-eating gods,Masonic cults, Jack the Ripper ... Charlie Furniss

explores the bizarre architectural legacy of NicholasHawksmoor.

By: Furniss, Charlie

Publication: Geographical

Date: Monday, September 1 2003You are viewing page 2

Businesspeople in the City of London may be alarmed to hear that they are working

within an axis of evil. And not just an axis, but an entire web--a devilish network of

ley lines, ancient highways and invisible paths that, according to author Iain Sinclair,

conveys the spirits of darkness between

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www.RoundhayEvangelicalChurch.comsources of occult power scattered across the capital: temples and monuments,plague pits, ancient burial grounds and murder sites. And at its centre, the origin of

its power, are five 18th-century churches.

These are no ordinary churches. In his fictional book Lud Heat, Sinclair suggested

that their positions demarcate that most potent of occult symbols, the pentangle. He

describes pagan symbolism in their architecture and how their designs relate to

ancient Egyptian mortuary temples. Others, following Sinclair's revelations, have

associated the churches with Atlantis, flesh-eating gods, Jack the Ripper and Masonic

cults.

But these are sacred Christian buildings. Surely there is no place for 'pagan' symbols

in their designs. Have they really been tattooed with a hidden code and infused with

the mysterious powers of ancient Egypt?

The churches are the work of Nicholas Hawksmoor. A pupil of Sir Christopher Wren,

he had a hand in some of our most famous monuments, including St Paul's Cathedral

and Blenheim Palace. In 1711, he was appointed chief surveyor for a project to build
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50 new churches around London. In the end only 12 were built, but Hawksmoor was

responsible for half of these, six structures that continue to turn heads today.

Sinclair didn't conjure his occult fantasy from thin air. Built from striking white

Portland limestone, Hawksmoor's churches have an awesome, rather unsettling

presence that owes much to their antiquarian symbolism. In Greenwich, four Roman

sacrificial altars guard the entrance portico of St Alfege, and Doric columns and

pilasters decorate its exterior. The same altars reappear atop the tower of St

George-in-the-East in Wapping. In a similar position at St Anne, Limehouse, there is

a set of pyramids, while another pyramid some three metres high stands

mysteriously within its grounds.

At St Mary, Woolnoth, located in the heart of the City, Corinthian columns embellish

the tower, and twisted columns on the wooden reredos echo the Temple of Solomon.

(Somewhat bizarrely, St Mary was omitted from Sinclair's pentangle --including it

and excluding St Alfege creates a neat pentangle north of the Thames, while the

opposite renders the pentangle undrawable.) Further north, Hawksmoor's

masterpiece, Christ Church, Spitalfields, has an ominous, pyramidal spire above an

arched portico influenced by classical Etruscan architecture.

The most unusual and flamboyant of Hawksmoor's churches is St George,

Bloomsbury. Its entrance portico was inspired by the Temple of Bacchus, built by the

Romans at Baalbeck in Lebanon during the second century. And the incredible

stepped pyramid of the spire is a reconstruction of the Tomb of Mausolus at

Halicarnassus. Above this, a statue of George I stands proudly on another Roman

sacrificial altar.

Several authors have reprised Sinclair's occult motif, most famously Peter Ackroyd in

his chilling (fictional) murder story Hawksmoor. In From Hell, Alan Moore's graphic

novel about the Ripper murders, the character Sir William Gibb suggests that the

writings of the Roman architectural scholar Vitruvius led Hawksmoor to become a

follower of the Dionysiac cult.

The Dionysiacs were the mythical master craftsmen of Atlantis, who founded

Freemasonry and whose descendents built the great monuments of antiquity,


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including Solomon's Temple, the pyramids and the Tomb of Mausolus. Legend has it

that they also worshipped a flesh-eating god, Dionysius (aka Bacchus), who was the

original model for the horned, masked devil at the centre of the Black Mass. Gibb

speculates that through his churches, Hawksmoor sought to perpetuate the occultteachings of the Dionysiacs.

It's no secret that Hawksmoor was a Freemason and there's no doubt that he

admired

It's no secret that Hawksmoor was a Freemason and there's no doubt that he

admired Vitruvius's work, but not because he practised the black arts. Far from it. In

the late 1600s, many architects and theologians were involved in a new form of

scientific enquiry. "Thumbing through Roman scholars' writings and the backwaters

of the Old and New Testaments," writes Pierre Du Prey in Hawksmoor's London

Churches, "Wren and Hawksmoor ... performed detective work to try and reconstruct

the temples and monuments of the ancients." It was in this climate that Hawskmoor

developed a taste for the exotic flavours that were to permeate his work.

But the antiquarian characteristics of Hawksmoor's churches tell another tale, the

roots of which lie in the social and political upheavals of the times. In 1642, the civil

war had presented a challenge to the establishment--not only the monarchy, but the

Anglican Church, which at the time were essentially one and the same. Building

churches was seen as the best way to re-establish the authority of the Crown,

because there was a church in every parish. The Great Fire of 1666 presented the

first opportunity and the government was quick to commission Wren to rebuild 50

churches in the City. But during the reign of the Calvinists William and Mary (1689-

1702), the necessary funds were held back.

Then, as now, London was a global centre of commerce and people flocked to the

capital looking for work. With this influx of labour, new suburbs began to emerge,

particularly in the east, around the docks. In such areas as Deptford and Stepney, a

rising number of dissenting chapels spelled trouble for the Anglicans.

When Anne--a staunch high-church Protestant--took the throne in 1702, she sought

to address these problems. Wren's construction project was immediately restarted,


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and in 1711 the Tory government commissioned the building of the new churches in

and around the City, concentrating particularly on the new suburbs.

Strange as it may seem, Hawksmoor's 'pagan' symbolism is linked to the political

motives behind these acts. In order to distance themselves from Baptists and

Presbyterians on the one hand, and from Roman Catholicism on the other, 17th-

century English Protestant leaders had invented a piece of propaganda that

precipitated a movement known today as primitivism, says Dr Judi Loach, an

architectural historian from the Welsh School of Architecture. "This proposed that the

Anglican Church was as venerable as the church of Rome," Loach says. "It was

decided that if the Catholic Church was founded by St Peter in Rome, then it should

be said that the Anglican Church was founded by St Paul in London. That's why we

have St Paul's Cathedral."

The Anglican clergy attempted to reintroduce the liturgy of the first Christians and to

reconstruct their architecture. But there was little evidence of such buildings, so they

deferred to the Constantinian, or Byzantine, tradition because they had textual

sources to hand. With this in mind, a committee prepared guidelines according to

which the new churches should be built. Fonts, for example, were to be "so large as

to be capable to have Baptism be administered by dipping" and the buildings

themselves were to be oriented east-west.

According to Du Prey, the apparent mish-mash of 'pagan' symbolism recalls the early

Christians' practice of salvaging materials from ancient monuments to build their new

structures. But Dr Loach sees it another way. The names of the churches (with the

exception of St Alphege, which was a replacement, and Christ Church) suggest that

they were as much memorials to monarchs of the period as they were parish

churches. "The evidence is in the design," she says. "The interiors reveal two sets of

planning superimposed on each other: a rectangular form, which early Christians

would have called a 'basilica', and a centralised design corresponding to a

'martyrium'--a shrine."

The pyramids and altars are funerary symbols dedicated to the memories of the

monarchs, she says. The most elaborate of these is the stepped structure in the


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tower at Bloomsbury, which supports the statue of George I. "If you're working

within the classical tradition and you want to find a model for a kind of shrine to a

royal dynasty," she says, "the ultimate example must be the first mausoleum ever:

the Tomb of Mausolus. It's a very powerful political statement."

Political motives aside, there is no doubt that Hawksmoor would have relished the

opportunity to realise the world of the ancients. Although he never set foot outside

Britain, he liked nothing better than to indulge his penchant for drafting

reconstructions of famous structures, particularly the Tomb of Porsenna, of which he

made 28 drawings. Following his death in 1736, his obituary read: "He was perfectly

skilled in the history of architecture, and could give an exact account of all the

famous buildings, both ancient and modern, in every part of the world, to which his

excellent memory, which never failed him to the very last, greatly contributed."

So no Egyptian cults, no Masonic dynasties and no flesh-eating gods--just some

political intrigue and a passion for the architecture of the ancients. But even when

stripped of their supernatural connotations, Hawksmoor's churches remain a

fascinating part of London's architectural heritage.

RELATED ARTICLE: Restoring Hawksmoor's masterpiece.

Incredibly, Christ Church, Spitalfields, said to be Hawksmoor's masterpiece, fell into

disrepair last century, despite being a Grade I listed building. By the 1950s, the

church was virtually derelict. Situated in one of London's poorer areas, there was no

interest or money available to fund badly-needed renovations.

Christ Church was saved from demolition by the Hawksmoor Committee, which was

formed in the 1960s to raise awareness of the building. Its fate improved further in

1976 when the Friends of Christ Church Spitalfields (FCCS) was formed to oversee

its renovation. With grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund and English Heritage,cracks in the tower were eventually repaired and the exterior cleaned in 2001. The

FCCS is looking to raise a further 500,000 [pounds sterling] to complete the work

and match Heritage Lottery Funds.

Work is currently underway to restore the interior, at an estimated cost of 6.5million

[pounds sterling]. Plaster work is being cleaned and repaired and the floor is being


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replaced with newly-cut Purbeck stone from Portland. In addition, there is more than

1 million [pounds sterling] worth of oak joinery.

sources of occult power scattered across the capital: temples and monuments,plague pits, ancient burial grounds and murder sites. And at its centre, the origin of

its power, are five 18th-century churches.

These are no ordinary churches. In his fictional book Lud Heat, Sinclair suggested

that their positions demarcate that most potent of occult symbols, the pentangle. He

describes pagan symbolism in their architecture and how their designs relate to

ancient Egyptian mortuary temples. Others, following Sinclair's revelations, have

associated the churches with Atlantis, flesh-eating gods, Jack the Ripper and Masonic

cults.

But these are sacred Christian buildings. Surely there is no place for 'pagan' symbols

in their designs. Have they really been tattooed with a hidden code and infused with

the mysterious powers of ancient Egypt?

The churches are the work of Nicholas Hawksmoor. A pupil of Sir Christopher Wren,

he had a hand in some of our most famous monuments, including St Paul's Cathedral

and Blenheim Palace. In 1711, he was appointed chief surveyor for a project to build

50 new churches around London. In the end only 12 were built, but Hawksmoor was

responsible for half of these, six structures that continue to turn heads today.

HOWTO Make a steampunk MP3 playerPOSTED BY CORY DOCTOROW, DECEMBER 23, 2007 11:16 PM |PERMALINK

Porkshanks has posted a detailed HOWTO on Instructables explaining how to build his sweetlittle "Ambience Enhancer" steampunk MP3 player (featured here last month).
http://dynamic.boingboing.net/profile/Cory%20Doctorowhttp://dynamic.boingboing.net/profile/Cory%20Doctorowhttp://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/23/howto-make-a-steampu-1.htmlhttp://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/23/howto-make-a-steampu-1.htmlhttp://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/23/howto-make-a-steampu-1.htmlhttp://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/23/steampunk-mp3-player.htmlhttp://dynamic.boingboing.net/profile/Cory%20Doctorowhttp://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/23/howto-make-a-steampu-1.htmlhttp://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/23/steampunk-mp3-player.html


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This handy little device can take the most boring and dull locale and turn it into whatever sort ofemotive resonance you prefer! You simply load it with "Wave Files" or their less complicatedcousins the "Musical Programme Type Threes (or "MP3" for those who enjoy abbreviations) andthen activate the device to change the ambience around you! Astounding!

The Ambience Enhancer project that I am going to share with you is a basic but beautiful lookingretro-futuristic style cover for anything you'd like it be, although I built mine as an MP3 PlayerCover, you could build a watch, a cellphone cover, or even a PDA into it. Its totally up to you! Use

your imagination...

Porkshanks's "Ambience Enhancer" is a sweet little steampunk MP3 player mod:

I bought a pair of vintage Cannonball Empire headphones off Ebay and I disassembled and guttedthem. I then transplanted the working parts of a Sony MDR-006 (that I randomly found on the


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ground at a bus stop 2 days ago!) into them, and viola! Cool looking 'old' headphones that workjust fine with my MP3 player ^ _ ^

figuring out how to get the speakers into the Cannonballs was not easy. I actually ruined theprototype trying to do it in an overly fancy way with a different pair of sony headphones.

So then I decided I needed some way to get my MP3 player to match my steampunk daily wear.

First I hand sewed a little cover for the MP3 player and attached the brown leather protection padto it. Then I took a raw sheet of Brass and cut out the form, bending it into shape carefully andadding the lynch pins and strapping last. I wanted to be able to wear this on my jacket as well, so Icreated a little latch on the left arm of my jacket so it can be put on and off easily.

The "Eye-Pod" from Steam Gear Lab incorporates a hidden gen-1 iPod Nano and is a work ofsheer genius:

The "eye-Pod" can be worn on the wrist via theleather cuff, or placed on its custom Victrola base.

All functionality of the iPod remain intact an ahidden USB cord retracts from the base to either awall charger or your computer. There are hiddenpressure plates that when touched send a strobing"static charge" into the quartz crystals on eitherside of the magnified viewing portal.

Steam Gear Lab has broken the chains of smallelectronics obsolescence. Behold! The Eye-Pod

Victrola!(Thanks, SMarks!)
http://steamgearlab.com/shop/page/13?sessid=HQgTGCJt1fRU2SzE90XoEk7YPOUMk6PO9An7qyY8phrIIX6fo1EsVqUfA2osS9C5&shop_param=http://steamgearlab.com/shop/page/13?sessid=HQgTGCJt1fRU2SzE90XoEk7YPOUMk6PO9An7qyY8phrIIX6fo1EsVqUfA2osS9C5&shop_param=http://steamgearlab.com/shop/page/13?sessid=HQgTGCJt1fRU2SzE90XoEk7YPOUMk6PO9An7qyY8phrIIX6fo1EsVqUfA2osS9C5&shop_param=http://steamgearlab.com/shop/page/13?sessid=HQgTGCJt1fRU2SzE90XoEk7YPOUMk6PO9An7qyY8phrIIX6fo1EsVqUfA2osS9C5&shop_param=http://steamgearlab.com/shop/page/13?sessid=HQgTGCJt1fRU2SzE90XoEk7YPOUMk6PO9An7qyY8phrIIX6fo1EsVqUfA2osS9C5&shop_param=http://steamgearlab.com/shop/page/13?sessid=HQgTGCJt1fRU2SzE90XoEk7YPOUMk6PO9An7qyY8phrIIX6fo1EsVqUfA2osS9C5&shop_param=http://steamgearlab.com/shop/page/13?sessid=HQgTGCJt1fRU2SzE90XoEk7YPOUMk6PO9An7qyY8phrIIX6fo1EsVqUfA2osS9C5&shop_param=

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No Ordinary Churches