The Grand Temple of Ceres, "The Pit" , and Scrooge McDuck

Back in 1930, the Chicago Board of Trade (Established April 3rd, 1848) moved to it's current 45-story location at 141 W. Jackson, making it the tallest building in Chicago, replacing then record holder the Chicago Masonic Temple Building. Time Magazine declared Ceres as the Goddess of Chicago upon the unveiling, and even today the U.S. financial center of agriculture remains an art deco shrine to this writer's deity of focus.


Of it's structural symbols perhaps the 31 foot tall "capstone" statue of Ceres is it's crowning glory. Sculptor John H. Stoors chose to craft his aluminum totem without a face. In an interesting parallel to The Question/Rorschach/Cho (Cho was said to have disfigured his face beyond recognition with the gun blast that ended his Va. Tech killing spree).

Removed from the agricultural trading room in 1973 (reason unkown), artist John W. Norton's three story mural of Ceres shown bare-breasted in a field of grain

An Octagonal Clock is situated above a Blue Lily Fountain immersed in an octagonal pool flanked on either side by Ceres

Synchromystic guru Jake Kotze has shown us the "Mega-ritual" signifier in the form of the octagon. Perhaps nowhere else on earth is this symbol more clearly on display than The Chicago Board of Trade Building. In fact, it stands as the logo of the CBOT, perhaps acting as the world's very own Dharma Inititive (for you Lost fans out there). I recommend checking out the Synchromystic Librarian's ongoing visual expose' of the signs and symbols of the show.












The CBOT has taken this use of the octagon to high ritual form by incorporating it into it's inner chamber, the trading floor (or "Pit" as it was patented in 1878). In a delightful piece of synchomysticism, I once again will invoke the incredible work of Kotze. Thoth Duck worshipers at The University of Oregon have dubbed McArthur Court (I'm not kidding, that's what it's really called...), their octagonal indoor sports complex "The Pit".

Downward stepped Octagons known as "Pits" are the primary focus on the trading room floor. The grains of Ceres are exchanged for $

"The Pit" was brought into public consciousness via the writing of Bohemian Club member, and Darwinist, Benjamin Franklin Norris (interesting to note that "Norris" Hall was the the scene of 31 of 33 deaths during the Va. Tech massacre, although the only connection between Frank Norris and Norris Hall namesake Earle Norris is that they belonged to the same fraternity. See below). The Pit (1903) was the second book in his unfinished "Epic of Wheat" trilogy, and is centered directly on wheat speculation within the Chicago Board of Trade. The first, Octopus: A California Story (1901), and the third being the uncompleted Wolf...a unique and oddly synchronistic collection of titles to say the least, given some of the recent threads by Mr. Ben Fairhall.

http://the-daily-behemoth.blogspot.com/2007/06/police-find-werewolf-link-to-violence.html
http://the-daily-behemoth.blogspot.com/2007/06/pirates-of-constitution.html

Follow me even deeper down the rabbit hole now, won't you?

[I was introduced originally to Frank Norris by blogger Kean Matthams @ A Kean Eye whose article on the secret origins of his college fraternity Phi Gamma Delta is worth checking out: you can read it here] According to Matthams "the stories in the series "Outward and Visible Signs" are all about one male character who is obsessed with a girl who already has a boyfriend. These boyfriend characters are different each time but one is a "Chinaman" and one rides a horse named Conspiracy who is obsessed with a girl named Virginia, and they all are looking to steal the girl or get revenge. Norris even talks about how the "Chinamen" have guns strapped to their arms and are antisocial and don't speak well." A silly "series" of coincidences or highly esoteric "in-joke" embedded in the Ceres Death Ritual?


[Other notable Phi Gamms are Nike President and Co-founder Philip H. Knight, and Stargater Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap and Star Trek Enterprise), as well as LOST castaway Matthew Fox [Thank you Spenser]. Why is Nike important here?...well anyone who knows a thing or two about college athletics will know that The University of Oregon has an extra exclusive contract with Nike. ]

Norris' best known work was a novel entitled McTeague (1899), which was later made into the epic lost silent film "Greed" (1924)by Erich von Stroheim. Here we see some striking synchromystic (and Scottish) similarities to one Scrooge McDuck (1st appearing in 1947) aka Uncle Scrooge or Thoth Duck. Although creator Carl Banks suggests the character was loosely based on Dickens' Scrooge from A Christmas Carol (1843); is it possible that McTeague might not be a truer source for Uncle Scrooge or at the very least a second "darker" source? The McTeague story is a sinister tale of greed, a love triangle, and murder. A bit too grim for a children's comic book duck surely, and yet the theme of greed, it's use of gold mines and scenes of characters rolling around in a sea of gold coins seem to mirror many of the images we see throughout the Scrooge McDuck universe.

In this quote from Wikipedia I sense a naivety in regards to the concept of the Masonic idea of "on the square" which perhaps gives us more true insight into the nature of our supposed dualistic Thoth duck.

"Carl Barks gave Scrooge a definite set of ethics that was in tone with the time he was supposed to have made his fortune. The robber barons and industrialists of the 1890–1920 era were McDuck's competition as he earned his fortune. Scrooge proudly asserts "I made it by being tougher than the toughies and smarter than the smarties! And I made it square!" It is obvious that Barks's creation is averse to dishonesty in the pursuit of money. When Disney filmmakers first contemplated a Scrooge feature cartoon in the fifties, the animators had no understanding of the Scrooge McDuck character and simply envisioned Scrooge as a duck version of Ebenezer Scrooge— a very unsympathetic character. In the end they shelved the idea because a duck who gets all excited about money just was not funny enough."




If you understand the Masonic intent, "making it square" (as in "fair" and square) takes on a different meaning than that put forth in the text above, does it not? In the same wikipedia entry for Scrooge McDuck we get repeated contradictions from Barks about his own character's nature. Although his quotes frequently suggest that Scrooge is a "good" capitalist and duck (he really only admits that he will defend what is his), Scrooge's own beginnings tell a different story, one of violence, and exploitation:

"Voodoo Hoodoo", first published in August 1949, was the first story to hint at Scrooge's past with the introduction of two figures from it. The first was Foola Zoola, an old African sorcerer and chief of the Voodoo tribe who had cursed Scrooge, seeking revenge for the destruction of his village and the taking of his tribe's lands by Scrooge decades ago.

Scrooge privately admitted to his nephews that he had used an army of "cutthroats" to get the tribe to abandon their lands, in order to establish a diamond-mining colony. The event was placed in 1879 during the story, but it would later be retconned to 1909 to fit with Scrooge's later-established personal history.

The second figure was Bombie the Zombie, the organ of the sorcerer's curse and revenge. He had reportedly sought Scrooge for decades before reaching Duckburg, mistaking Donald for Scrooge. Bombie was not really undead and Foola Zoola did not practice necromancy.

Comic character for kids indeed! We see the Disney machine at work here spinning a web of Masonic "hoodwinks" to generation after generation of unsuspecting young minds. A bizarre collection of connections, I agree but the wheels of this vast fraternal drama turn in the most mysterious of ways do they not? For me it is important to look as closely as we possibly can at the creators, story-tellers, and magicians of these tales...to understand them is to understand the real, and untold history of the world in which we live.