ANGKOR, NAZCA AND SAN FRANCISCO

San Francisco City Hall

San Francisco's City Hall faces south. South of City Hall, across the mall, is the Pioneer monument, facing north, towards the front of City Hall. This is a very elaborate and interesting monument. The old image of the monument below shows the central statue holding a spear and a shield and standing next to a bear, which is one of California's state symbols.

Pioneer Monument

A plaque at the base of the monument indicates that it was commissioned by James Lick. Born around 1800, Lick moved from Philadelphia to Buenos Aires as a young man. He was a successful piano maker in Buenos Aires and then he moved to Lima, Peru where he continued his piano business. In 1847 he moved to San Francisco. At that time San Francisco was a small, largely undeveloped village, but Lick anticipated the gold rush and bought large undeveloped tracts of land in and around San Francisco. At the time of his death in the late 1800's he was the wealthiest man in California.

In San Francisco's Golden Gate Park is another impressive monument honoring Francis Scott Key.

Francis Scott Key Monument

A plaque at the base of this monument indicates that it was also commissioned by James Lick. Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner and he was also a mason. The monument, facing the ampitheater, is on the eastern side of the music concourse in Golden Gate Park. The ampitheater, facing the monument, is on the western side of the concourse.

Temple of Music

Across the road to the north, about 50 yards from the Francis Scott Key monument, are two stylized sphinxes. The new DeYoung Museum, due to open around 2005-2006, is presently being constructed directly behind the sphinxes.

Golden Gate Sphinxes

When the picture above was taken, the sphinxes were in front of the second M. H. de Young museum. The original museum, pictured below, was destroyed in the earthquake of 1906.

M. H. de Young Museum

With it's pyramidal roof and the sphinxes outside the entrance, the original museum bore a similarity to the Supreme Headquarters of the Masonic Rites in Washington D.C.

James Lick financed the Ghiardelli chocolate company which is now one of the largest chocolate companies in the world. Ghiardelli was also a mason. Lick built the grandest hotel in San Francisco, known as the Lick House (also destroyed in the 1906 earthquake). The Lick House occupied an entire city block in San Francisco, with the exception of one corner of the block that was occupied by San Francisco's masonic temple.

Lick wanted to build a pyramid in San Francisco for his tomb, the size of the pyramids of Egypt, but he was persuaded to build an observatory instead. He commissioned the Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton just outside of San Francisco. This was the largest observatory in the world at the time of it's construction. Lick is buried underneath the observatory but he died prior to construction and was temporarily buried in the masonic cemetary.

Lick Observatory

Today, the skyline of San Francisco is dominated by the pyramid shaped Transamerica building.

San Francisco Skyline

With one exception, all of the streets in the northeast quarter of San Francisco are on a square grid. The one street that runs diagonally from Ghiardelli Square and Fisherman's Wharf to the financial district is Columbus Street.

Image of San Francisco

The E-W street at the terminus of Columbus Street in the financial district is Washington Street. The TransAmerica tower is located on the block that touches the intersection of Columbus and Washington streets on it's northwest corner. The picture of the San Francisco skyline was taken from Coit Tower atop Telegraph Hill, which may also be seen on the map above. It is eight blocks north and one block west of the TransAmerica building.

The grid of northeastern San Francisco is offset from the cardinal directions by approximately ten degrees. The N-S streets are 10° west of due north and the E-W streets are 10° north of due east, etc. Columbus Avenue is at an angle of 40° to the N-S streets and 50° to the E-W streets. Thus, the azimuth of Columbus Avenue is 50° west of due north and 40° south of due east.

40° south of due east is an azimuth of 130°. A great circle from San Francisco with an azimuth of 130° crosses right over Nazca. Since the Angkor temple at Preah Vihear is antipodal to Nazca, this same great circle also crosses over Angkor Vihear. The azimuth of the great circle from San Francisco to Angkor Vihear is 310° (50° west of due north), the same as the azimuth of Columbus Avenue in that direction.

The azimuth of this great circle as it crosses over Angkor Vihear is such that this great circle also crosses right over Angkor Wat.

The azimuth of this great circle as it crosses over Nazca is 321° (39° west of due north).

There are a lot of lines at Nazca pointing in different directions, but the azimuth of one of the major Nazca lines is the same as the azimuth of this great circle as it crosses over Nazca.

The image below is an equal azimuthal projection centered on the axis point of this great circle alignment at 37° 05' N, 3° 30' E, just off the coast of Algiers in the Med. Every point along this great circle is equally distant from this point, at a distance of one quarter of the circumference of the earth.

The distance from Nazca to Angkor Vihear is 12,446 miles, one half of the circumference of the earth. San Francisco is 4,754 miles from Nazca. San Francisco is 7,692 miles from Angkor Vihear. These distances express the same double φ relationships found in the distances between Angkor Vihear, Giza and Nazca:

12,446/7,692 = 1.618

7,692/4,754 = 1.618

Just as in the case of Angkor Vihear, Giza and Nazca, a line 12,446 miles long divided at the point where one segment is 7,692 miles long and the other segment is 4,754 miles long, is a precise expression of the golden section.