We didn’t quite plan to visit this particular Episcopalian cathedral (the world’s fourth largest Christian church with the largest rose window in the USA, that is), we were just on our way to getting something to eat at the famous diner on the corner of Broadway and 112th Street that made it both in the TV show Seinfeld and that 80’s Suzanne Vega hit song “Tom’s Diner” (which, by the way, I cannot believe is older than me).
But we happened to walk right past it and were immediately drawn inside by a force larger than our own will. It was humbling and striking in it’s immensity, guarded by statues and saints, religious figures and tall, heavy doors.
But, as we later found out, it was much more than that.
We discovered it at 1047 Amsterdam Avenue between West 110th Street and 113th Street in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights district and although it’s been designed in 1888 and the construction begun in 1892, it has undergone numerous interruptions and changes (especially by the two World Wars) so much so that it’s never actually been finished. To this day, it’s rightfully been carrying the name of “Saint John the Unfinished”.
But there is something extremely unsettling about this Cathedral, once you start to pay attention to the strange depictions on the Prophetic Pillars from the main façade. Some say they are a symbol of a modern New York apocalypse, with a broken-in-two Brooklyn Bridge, something that looks a lot like a nuclear explosion and people running chaotically from a scorpion and a snake (which is never a good sign).
Moreover, the chatedral and it’s surroundings are said to be filled with other Masonic and occult symbols, such as the struggle between Good and Evil, representations of the Sun’s worship, Satan’s decapitated head – all details of the Fountain of Peace, unnatural rituals being performed in the sanctuary on certain occasions, not to mention that the cathedral was also featured in the magazine “Masonic World” of March 1925.
But most people who are lucky enough to find this place by mistake, on their way to some other site, will hopefully embrace the openmindedness and liberalism the cathedral is renowned for, rather than for Simon Verity – the carver’s perhaps unusual approach to the Book of Revelations and others’ prejudiced opinion that the frontal pyramid is indeed Masonic or the belief that the Blessing of the Animals is an absolutely preposterous idea.
It is also worth mentioning that some very important funerals have taken place within the confines of Saint John the Divine, such as James Gandolfini, Nikola Tesla, Duke Ellington, Dizzie Gillespie and more.
Green Eyed Kisses,
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