Novus ordo seclorum

Reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States

The phrase Novus Ordo Seclorum (Latin for "New Order of the Ages") appears on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, first designed in 1782 and printed on the back of the American dollar bill since 1935. It is often mistranslated as "New World Order," but the Latin for that phrase would be Novus Ordo Mundi.

Origin and meaning

The phrase is taken from the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, which contains a passage that reads:

Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas;

magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.

iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna,

iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto.

"The last time of prophecy has come to the Cumaean Sibyl; a brand new great order of the ages is born; for now the Virgin and the age of Saturn have returned; now a new Child has been sent from the heavens." (Latin prose would normally spell the word saeculorum, but that form is impossible in hexameter verse: the ae and o are long, the u short by position. For the medieval exchange between ae, æ and e, see Æ; medieval is another example.)

Medieval Christians read Virgil's poem as a prophecy of the coming of Christ.

The word seclorum does not mean "secular", as one might assume, but is the genitive (possessive) plural form of the word saeculum, meaning (in this context) generation, century, or age. Saeculum did come to mean "world, worldly" in late, Christian, Latin, and "secular" is derived from it, through secularis.

Thus the motto Novus Ordo Seclorum can be translated as "A new order of the ages." It was proposed by Charles Thomson, the Latin expert who was involved in the design of the Great Seal of the United States, to signify "the beginning of the new American Era" as of the date of the Declaration of Independence.

Popular culture

Novus Ordo Seclorum is also the name of a high quality encryption program in Cryptonomicon, a novel by Neal Stephenson. The name is said to be a pun based on the fact that the program puts data in a "new order" that cannot be unscrambled for "ages".

It was also referred to in Dan Brown's book Angels and Demons when the hero (Robert Langdon), a scholarly expert on the Illuminati, was trying to convince a skeptical character of the reality of the secret organization's power by pointing to supposed Illuminati symbology on United States currency. The scholar mistranslates the phrase to "New Secular Order", with no indication that it is a mistranslation in the story.

Novus Ordo Seclorum is the name of an economic terrorist organization in Robison Wells' novels Wake Me When It's Over and The Counterfeit.

The motto was one of the backmasked phrases in the Styx song Heavy Metal Poisoning from the album Kilroy Was Here.

Novus Ordo Seclorum can be found in the lyrics of the Megadeth song Washington is Next off of thier album United Abominations.

Conspiracy theory

Some of those who believe that the Freemasons and the Jacobins are conspiring to control the world claim that the motto is inspired by Freemasonry, and is one of the clues to the True Masters of the World. These theorists assert that the word should be spelled secolorum [sic], and the alleged first o is omitted for occult reasons. By circumscribing the 6 pointed Star of David over the pyramid, 5 of the 6 apices (the 6th being the 'All-seeing eye'), point near letters spelling S-M-O-N-A, which can be rearranged to spell Mason (also monas and moans, out of 120 combinations of letters). A United States dollar bill will demonstrate that the directions are not exact. Four of the apices point to empty space; the letters are at the ends of the nearest words.

The advocates of the theory also cite the 13 steps to ascend the pyramid, and the 72 visible blocks on the front, which they connect with the supposed 72-letter Name of God (they miscall it the Tetragrammaton), from which the names of the Archangels are derived; it is also the number of the decans of the heavenly sphere.

More conventional thinkers regard the thirteen steps as referring to the thirteen colonies. If the blocks are correctly counted and their number intended, 72 has other mystical meanings: it was sacred to the ancient Egyptians, as Plutarch says; so were the decans. Both Jews and Christians use it as the number of nations on the Earth.

External links

• Great Seal Mottoes - Novus Ordo Seclorum