And it all gets curiouser and curiouser....



So I’m reading to Rick and the boys the news about the transit of Venus on June 8 and come across a little nugget of information that John Philip Sousa wrote a march in honor of the transit of Venus in 1882. I wondered what the piece was called, being somewhat familiar with Sousa’s work from the records of my dad’s that I used to march around the living room to in my formative years. A quick Google check reveals that it is called “The Transit of Venus March.” Duh. The Library of Congress has oodles of info (including a download-able version of the march. It’s OK, but no Stars and Stripes Forever.)


So....

Like many musicians and conductors of that time, Sousa was a Freemason. His affiliation to the group, with its penchant for divining mystical qualities in otherwise natural existents and phenomena, played a significant role in the performance of his march, particularly in the selection of the precise time and date of the performance. On April 19, 1883, at 4:00 P.M., as 10,000 people, including representatives from many branches of government, filed in a stately procession from the museum to the receiving stand, the planet Venus, invisible to the participants, completed its arc in the sky and set in the west. At the same time, Virgo rose in the east, and Jupiter positioned itself directly overhead. Why was this particular time and date selected for the unveiling of the magnificent bronze statue? In the mystical circles in which Sousa and the event organizers orbited, Venus was associated with the element copper, and Joseph Henry had used large quantities of copper to create his powerful electromagnets, which at that time operated some of America's newest technology. The correlation of the "passing of Henry," commemorated by the statue, and the "passing of Venus" in the west may have seemed like a fitting bond between two separate worlds, human and cosmic. (See David Ovason, The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital, 1999.)

I never knew that.

While we’re on the topic of mystical secrets, I’ll assume there is no point in calling in sick on June 8 to take the kids to the planetarium or something, since I’ve already published my curiosity in a public forum. Oh, well.