Clue #36: Alexander Hamilton -- and a Hint of Cryptography

The 36th Twitter clue, posted at about 7:00 a.m. PDT, Thurs., July 9th:

Near the buttonwood's accord lies a field of Christ. His marker there would make even Khafra smile.

The solution to the fundamental elements of this clue was announced on Dan Brown's Facebook fan page by Cheryl Lynn Helm, about 30 minutes after the clue was posted. Good for you, Cheryl!

"Buttonwood's accord" is a reference to the Buttonwood Agreement of May 17, 1792, which established the New York Stock & Exchange Board (later known as the New York Stock Exchange, now the NYSE Group). The agreement was signed by 24 stockbrokers under a buttonwood (i.e., sycamore) tree outside 68 Wall Street in lower Manhattan, New York City. Of course, the New York Stock Exchange was and remains fundamental to the development of American-style capitalism.

"Field of Christ" is a reference to a cemetery. U.S. Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton, is buried in the Trinity Churchyard Cemetery, perhaps a 5-minute walk or so from the location of the Buttonwood Agreement. His grave marker (the "marker" of the clue, of course, shown above) is in the form of a pyramid with a flat apex.

Khafra, or Khafre (also known as Khephren) is the Egyptian pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty (2650-2480 BC) who built the second largest of the 3 famous pyramids of Giza. In one of his best-known representations, he is represented as smiling. The author of the clue is remarking on how Khafra would be pleased to see a pyramid on Hamilton's grave.

The Next Level

One thing that has consistently shown up in the Twitter clues about this novel is that many clues are very subtle: the same word is meant to be taken in more than one way, and a seemingly off-the-cuff reference may actually be crucial to the novel. Such is the case here. For we must ask: what put Alexander Hamilton's body under that pyramidal grave marker -- that is, what killed him? And why even bring up Khafra, rather than half a dozen other pharaohs?

Warning: no matter how weird things get in this section of the post, I want you to remember: everything in "The Next Level" actually happened in real life.

Alexander Hamilton (b. 1755 or 1757--d. 1804) is on everyone's list of U.S. Founding Fathers. Like many of them, he was a Freemason. He was the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and as such ties into the financial theme that runs through this clue. However, it gets murkier than that, and intensely conspiratorial, in real life, very quickly.

Hamilton was mortally wounded by Aaron Burr, in a duel in Weehawken, NJ, just across the river from Manhattan Island. At the time, Burr was serving as the Vice-President of the United States, under Thomas Jefferson in Jefferson's first term as President. Burr came under intense criticism, especially among Northern voters, for killing Hamilton. Burr left the Vice Presidency at the end of his term (Jefferson entering a second term as President with a different VP), and then things really got weird.

Burr moved into what was then the West of the territories of the U.S., and apparently came up with a scheme that, if successful, would have left him as essentially the king of a separate nation, incorporating much of what is now Texas, northern Mexico, and nearby areas. (I should point out that these were the very areas later focused on by the Knights of the Golden Circle, or KGC, whom we met in Clue #34; see this article with its provocative map).

Burr was arrested and put on trial for treason, but was acquitted for lack of evidence. The team for the prosecution included the young William Wirt, whom we met in Clue #6. (You will recall Wirt as the Freemason who later abandoned the Masons, and ran against Jackson for the Presidency on the Anti-Masonic Party ticket; after his death, Wirt's corpse was beheaded, and his skull was stolen right out of his crypt in the Congressional Cemetery.)

(Incidentally, Burr was not a Mason. However, his defense attorney, the young Henry Clay -- distant relative of my wife, Kathleen -- was a very prominent Mason later in his life.)

Which leaves us with Khafra. I find it interesting that the alternate spelling of his name, Khafre, is also the name of a sophisticated block cipher developed 20 years ago. The publication of the cipher was originally blocked by the National Security Agency, but through a variety of mishaps it came to public attention anyway.

So there we have it: Founding Fathers, a fatal duel, a conspiracy to rule a chunk of North America, pyramids galore, and a code scheme so threatening that the NSA wanted to block its publication -- and all in real life. What's not for Dan Brown to love?

Potential Relevance to The Lost Symbol

So where might Brown be going with all this? A couple of things come to mind.

You can't have a good conspiracy without a hefty amount of cash. The clue points in passing at one of the most massive wealth-engines in human history, the New York Stock Exchange, founded in the earliest days of the American Republic -- hey, Washington was still in his first term. Perhaps the conspiracy that Dan Brown depicts in his novel has something to do with the NYSE. (Of course, the Confederate gold mentioned in Clue #34 might work in here, too.)

My guess is that, in the novel, Burr somehow has connections with the KGC, connections that somehow reverberate down to our own day. (Thus, the KGC would be the "bad guy" secret society in the novel. Would the Freemasons be the "good guys"?)

In the world of the novel, Hamilton's flat-topped pyramid may resonate with the unfinished pyramid of the Great Seal of the U.S., discussed in relation to Clue #35.

The Khafre cipher can encrypt small amounts of data very quickly, which, in Dan Brown's universe, could come in mighty handy . . .

Clue #34: The Sons of Liberty -- and the Knights of the Golden Circle

The 34th Twitter clue, sent about 12:04 p.m. PDT on Wed. July 8th:
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http://twitpic.com/9ph81 - Who flew this rebellious banner?
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The URL is a hot link to a TwitPic showing a flag with 9 alternating red and white stripes. I'm sure a lot of people thought this was some just the right-hand edge of some kind of Colonial-era flag.
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No. It was the whole thing, as a really careful inspection of the TwitPic showed.
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In fact, this was the nine-striped flag of the Sons of Liberty, a Revolutionary War-era group (really, an association of local resistance groups given a common name) responsible for such activities as the Boston Tea Party. Their 9-striped flag (shown above) was called the "rebellious stripes flag," echoing the clue.
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However, this is not all. (Come on, guys -- this is Dan Brown. The surface answer is almost never enough.) There are two more connections to make with the Sons of Liberty, one of which is just devious, the other of which is downright inflammatory.
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First, there is a connection to Freemasonry. For over two centuries, the myth has been that a lodge of Freemasons, St. Andrew's Lodge of Boston, was behind the Boston Tea Party. The actual story is a bit more complicated. (Read the details in S. Brent Morris' excellent The Complete Idiot's Guide to Freemasonry.) Overall, my opinion is that a number of Masonic brethren discussed the upcoming demonstration, perhaps even in lodge, and then participated in it; thus, the Boston Tea Party was a production of Masons (and many others), but was not itself a Masonic activity.
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Now for the inflammatory part. The name, "Sons of Liberty," was appropriated over 80 years after the Revolutionary War by another group that is almost certain to appear in The Lost Symbol: the Knights of the Golden Circle.
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During the Civil War, some of Lincoln's political opponents also opposed the war itself. Such groups and individuals were derisively labelled Copperheads (for the snake) by Lincoln's supporters. Copperheads wanted an immediate truce to the war; some encouraged resistance to the Union draft, shielded Union Army deserters, and sometimes planned to help Confederate prisoners of war take over their prison camps.
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A large Copperhead group, the Knights of the Golden Circle, was actually organized in Cincinnati, Ohio, almost a decade before the war, in 1854. Gaining much sympathy in the South, their agenda was to take over Mexico as a slave-owning state of the Union; they raised armed groups to do so, although their attacks on Mexico were unsuccessful. With the outbreak of the Civil War, they changed agenda to work to help the Confederacy. The Golden Circle reorganized in 1863 as the Order of the Sons of Liberty, just before they officially dissolved as their support in the North evaporated the following year in the face of Union military victories.
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But did they really dissolve? Or did they just disappear from sight?
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Before the war, the Knights of the Golden Circle were very interested in bringing the territories of what is now in the Southwest into the U.S. as slave states. They had operatives in those territories, part of which was obtained for the U.S. in the Gadsden Purchase (a name we met in Clue #28; perhaps that clue was just left to put the name Gadsden out there).
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There have been rumors for years that the Knights of the Golden Circle endured as a totally secret society after the Civil War, and amassed a fortune in gold that they hid--and that is still out there somewhere, held in secrecy to help finance the rise of the Old South again, some day. (A commenter on this blog says he is Warren Getler, co-author of a book investigating these rumors, for which Getler is convinced he's found evidence. Getler is also convinced that Albert Pike of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry was a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle.)
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So, here's where this might all go in The Lost Symbol: one piece of the puzzle would involve a conspiracy dating from before the Civil War, as the Knights of the Golden Circle, underground as the Sons of Liberty, have hidden the Confederate gold for a century, with the help of Albert Pike of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. Now, in our era, someone plans to use that gold -- but for some sinister purpose, no doubt . . .
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[The image of the flag was obtained from Wikimedia Commons through Wikipedia, and is in the public domain.]
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(Copyright 2009 Mark E. Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.)
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Bonus "Clue 31 1/2": Facebook Post: The Six-Pointed Star

Posted, not on Twitter, but on Facebook, at 10:00 a.m. (EDT) on Tues., July 7th:

Dan Brown's publisher invites you to solve this:

43.027239, -85.634995

44.309355, -105.493126

30.335547, -97.711716

43.027239, -85.634995

47.960962, -97.021637

33.706063, -111.939697

33.819089, -84.355774

47.460962, -97.021637

To the best of my knowledge, it was one of this blog's followers, "Bad News," who originally came up with the interpretation that these were paired geographical coordinates of latitude and longitude (in decimal format), each pair of coordinates thus defining a point.

You will note that the first and fourth pairs (or points) are identical; this suggests to me that the reader is meant to draw a line from the first point to the second, from the second to the third, and from the third to the fourth (which is the same as the first point). In the same way, the fact that the fifth and eight pairs of coordinates are identical suggests to me that the reader is meant to draw a line from the fifth point to the sixth, from the sixth to the seventh, and from the seventh to the eighth (same as the fifth).

Connecting up the points in this fashion creates two intersecting triangles on the map of the United States, illustrated above. The first, downward-pointing triangle connects Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Gillette, Wyoming, and Austin, Texas. The second, upward-pointing triangle connects Grand Forks, North Dakota to Phoenix, Arizona and Atlanta, Georgia. The resulting shape, of course, looks like the largest Star of David or Seal of Solomon in the world.

Wow. Where do we go with this? There are at least two interpretations for this clue, one Masonic, and one technological. (Of course, with Dan Brown, these may both be correct.)

The Masonic Interpretation

It is worth pointing out that this shape recalls Clue #1, part of the solution of which is the phrase, "6 points of the Star of David" -- a shape shown here on a continental scale. In that clue, the phrase was encoded in an initial-letter cipher, a traditional Masonic code in use in the real world for almost three centuries.

Thus, perhaps the six points of the Star of David shown here are meant to have some sort of significance in the context of Freemasonry. Of course, all of these cities have at least one Masonic lodge in it, but that is nothing distinctive; almost every American city of any size has at least one Masonic lodge in it.

As it happens, The Lost Symbol clues indicate that the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry has a special place in the novel. The Scottish Rite offers an additional set of degrees beyond the three degrees of initiation in basic Freemasonry. Scottish Rite facilities are far fewer in number than the lodges of basic Freemasonry, although each of these meeting places ("valleys" in Scottish Rite vocabulary) has a much larger number of members than the typical lodge. We see the seal of the Supreme Council, 33rd Degree, of the Scottish Rite shown in the seal in the center of the cover of The Lost Symbol (Clue #31). In addition, some important symbolism of the Scottish Rite rituals of initiation are evident in some of the Twitter clues, such as the "Christogram" clue (Clue #18).

So, what might the Scottish Rite have to do with these six points of the map? As it happens, 4 of the points (Grand Rapids, Austin, Atlanta, and Phoenix) lie within a 15-minute drive of a Scottish Rite meeting place. A fifth point (Grand Forks) lies within a 45-minute drive. Only one point (Gillette, WY) lies a great distance from a Scottish Rite facility.

It also is noteworthy that 5 of the 6 points are in the territory of the Southern Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite. (Only Grand Rapids, MI, is in the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction.) This is important because of a quirk in the Dan Brown universe.

Dan Brown uses a great deal of research and background sources to create the world of his novels. For example, in writing The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown created his world on the basis of ideas reported as fact in a work of alternative history: Holy Blood, Holy Grail (by Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln). In writing The Lost Symbol, some Brown-watchers believe that Dan Brown is leaning on at least two other works of alternative or speculative history:

• David Ovason, The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital: The Masons and the Building of Washington, DC (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).
• Warren Getler and Bob Brewer, Shadow of the sentinel: One man's quest to find the hidden treasure of the confederacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003; the 2005 paperback is titled Rebel Gold).

Each of these books makes claims about a man named Albert Pike, who led the Scottish Rite in the Southern Jurisdiction for many years in the 19th century. In particular, the Getler and Brewer book claims that Albert Pike was secretly in league with the Knights of the Golden Circle (Clue #34) a group that supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. According to Getler and Brewer, Pike helped conceal billions of dollars in Confederate gold for use in a future Civil War.

Getler and Brewer write that they build their case on evidence that is circumstantial. I do not think that this is true. In my estimate, their case does not ascend to the level of the circumstantial. Rather, as I see it, their case is essentially built on speculation, even fantasy. They present not a shred of actual evidence to support their case regarding Pike and his allegiances.

However, this might not matter to Dan Brown. Thus, what we may see in The Lost Symbol is a backstory like the following: During the 19th century, there was a conspiracy where Albert Pike helped the Knights of the Golden Circle to hide billions of dollars in Confederate gold at facilities of the Scottish Rite, especially of the Southern Jurisdiction, facilities that were widely scattered about the United States. In the current day, these billions are now about to be put at the disposal of some contemporary Conspiracy, no doubt for nefarious purposes.

The Technological Interpretation

Flashing forward to Clue #97, we find a reference to a classified hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft, the Aurora, described as a "Black Triangle." On our map above, we have two black triangles. How might these be connected?

The Aurora is estimated at being capable of speeds between Mach 5 and Mach 6 (roughly 3,300 to 4000 mph). If one is going to test fly a hypersonic aircraft like this, one must fly it over immense distances. Each of the triangles on the map above could be traversed in roughly an hour by the Aurora, flying at top speed; this would be a good period of time for a test flight.

Thus, it may be that the map is meant to show the flight paths of two test flights for the Aurora aircraft. In The Lost Symbol, the Aurora might be involved in high-tech surveillance -- or, perhaps in something that was more materially destructive. (How could you shoot down a hypersonic bomber that could outrun any missile sent against it?)

High stakes -- that's what I think will find in The Lost Symbol: the highest of stakes.

[The image of the United States with the intersecting triangles was created by the blog author, working with a public domain image of the map of the U.S. located by Kathleen Koltko-Rivera.]