The Secret Symbols of the Dollar Bill: A Closer Look at the Hidden Magic and Meaning of the Money You Use Every Day

by David Ovason

Do you know the true meaning of a dollar? Few people do. Now an expert on arcane symbolism uncovers the fascinating secret meanings behind the design of the money we use every day. In The Secret Symbols of the Dollar Bill , David Ovason explores the visual complexity and magic behind the world's most influential currency. Lively and readable, this extraordinary book invites you to take a dollar bill in hand and set off on a visual adventure. You will discover dazzling explanations of its secret contents -- from the symbols derived from the Great Seal to the extraordinary strands of numerology interwoven into its structure, to sur-prising hidden alignments. Once you discover the magic and mystery revealed in The Secret Symbols of the Dollar Bill , you will find that the dollar in your wallet is worth so much more than what you can buy with it.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Finance, Economics, Conspiracy Theories

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Darth]

Part historical documentary / commentary & part obvious design element breakdowns, this left me feeling as though the author put together a few colloqial bar stories about the dollar bill, googled the rest and cobbled it together in the least interesting thing I have read this year.

[Fred Grogan]

Examination of the symbols on American currency, particularly the lowest denomination, and of the Series 1917 U.S. currency. Most of the observations should still be relevant to the One Dollar note.
There are a lot of symbols on the bill, and a lot of meaning behind them. Most of the symbols have a real foundation in fact, not conspiracy. The book gives a good understanding of the origins of our money, from the history of the word Dollar, to the dollar symbol: $ (which does not appear on our currency), to the first American currency issued.
Much of the material deals with the archaic symbols of pyramids, all seeing eyes and cryptic mottoes, which is understandable. There are plenty of overlooked symbols detailed throughout as well.
Pretty good review of all that you take for granted in your purse or wallet.

[Morgan Gariepy]

DNF 30%

I wanted a rich narrative of how the symbols on the dollar bill came to be there and their hidden meanings. Instead I got a series of bulleted lists that of barely connected "facts" that explain the random meanings of each symbol rather than the meanings they were actually chosen to represent. There was also a great deal of speculation on how the symbols came to be on the bill, along the lines of "[some wealthy guy] had stars on his family crest. Maybe the stars came from him."

[Kitap Yakıcı]

"Fascinating." "Extraordinary." "Dazzling." Breathless adjectives like this, taken directly from the blurb on the back cover, echo the tone of the book itself. While purporting to reveal "the fascinating secret meanings behind the design of the money we use every day," this book instead merely presents a series of more-or-less unconnected factoids about the various images found on the US $1 bill. Sadly, Ovason's writing style wrings all the power and magic out of a fascinating premise and replaces it with a sullen "so what?" I also found annoying Ovason's habit of passing off unsubstantiated assertions as fact, something that he does on a regular basis.

A page-by-page analysis of the book is inappropriate for a book review, but one choice example should suffice to support my criticisms. On page 5 (in his irrelevant factoid on how the word "dollar" originally came from Germany, irrelevant because he fails to connect it with any subsequent factoid) Ovason makes the claim that only those who knew that the dollar sign had been derived from a crucifix (one of the many points he assumes rather than proves) would get the "half-joke" from Sinclair Lewis's Main Street that the dollar sign "chased the crucifix clean off the map." Really? I would have thought that was a pretty transparent reference to the fact that the "almighty dollar"/Mammon had supplanted the Christian God in the hearts of America's faithful, a non-mystical theme which is in keeping with the rest of Sinclair Lewis's writing. Far too often, a section heading that includes wiggle words like "may," "possible," "might" is followed by a paragraph from which these qualifiers are absent. One need read only a few pages into the book to see that Ovason's tendency to confuse assertion with fact is clearly evident.

A good book on the symbolism of the dollar bill would definitely be an interesting read for those interested in American history, Freemasonry, and symbolism in general. Sadly this isn't that book.

[Rick]

Well, now I know what all those symbols on the back of the dollar bill stand for. What is missing is me really caring about them now. While the facts are presented pretty straight forward, they're pretty much just expressed in a numbered series of facts broken into short units that are related. Parts were mildly interesting and many parts not so much. I'll probably forget much of this in a few days.

[Ahmed Kareem]

Readers who read this book were probably intrigued and are conspiracy theorists who want to know the truth, but does this book accomplish that? The Secret Symbols of the Dollar Bill by David Ovasion is a book that tries to show readers the "magical meaning of the symbols on the dollar bill" although readers learn some stuff that they didn't know it is information that is easily attainable in the modern world. The first literary element would be Imagery. Although this book lacks in many places Imagery is not one the book can easily put something in the readers mind which they can imagine and see clearly. The second literary element would be suspense. Although suspense in this book is not common there are certainly some parts that keep the readers intrigued and want to learn more, but the book moves too quickly between points which doesn't make much room for suspense. The last literary element would have to be mystery. This book is a very eerie book readers just imagine it to be spoken by someone with a deep voice in those horror-mystery movies. To conclude this book lacks a lot but there are some areas where it "shines" overall this book was a very quick read because of its small pages. people who would enjoy this book are conspiracy theorists who believe in everything they hear.

[Kevin Keating]

Yeah this was mostly a bunch of gobbledegook about numbers. I was looking to read about some interesting mysteries. 15% of this book was interesting. Much else was not. I'd read the Wiki page instead next time IIWY

[Raj Desai]

An article with 10-15 interest facts would’ve been a much better read than writing a whole book. Some of the facts mentioned in the books were stretched to fit into a narrative author started with one or two obervations.

[John]

Easy read. Some jumbled passages, but overall good.

[Burak Emiralp]

Sıradaki şarkı da iluminati ve dünyayı yöneten ailelere inananlara gelsin....

Ciddiye alınmadan gülmek için okunduğunda keyif verebilir....

[Lilia McKenzie]

Fascinating and learned a lot of new information.

[Brian]

If the most chronically online Swiftie turned their unimaginable knack for finding meaning in every combination of letters and numbers to the dollar bill, you'd only get half as far as the author.

[Manuel Solano]

Intresting fact but I don’t know if it really captured me

[Jesse]

In some instances the author stretches a bit far to try and prove his points, but for the most part this is a very interesting book to learn of some of the symbology behind those little bits of art in everyone's pocket; the dollar bill. What is applicable without reaching is very well researched with archival pictures to back it up. One small detail the author did miss that I noticed only because I was recently reading a book on art deco, is that there is some minor bits of art deco in the dollar bill, most notably in the fonts created which bear a striking resemblance to some infamous art deco fonts. This would only make sense, because the dollar bill as we know it was really conceived during the height of the art deco period (1930's). The very interesting and quite true thing that is pretty well proven in this book, is that many of the symbols on the dollar were conceived out of the idea of Kabblah styled magick, some of which came from groups like the Freemasons, whether you believe in it or not is irrelevant; our founding fathers obviously did and incorporated it into the fabric of our nation.

[Scott DeVogelaere]

I picked this book up because I am interested in the hidden history of the world, especially that in the United States. Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed in Ovason's work. He could have summed up the information in this short read in a paper the size of an undergrad thesis. The research is there, but he does what I often disdain in books and television shows - stretching the story out by repeating information over and over again, often interrupted by commercials in the tv world. What this does is waters down, or even dumbs down, the information, which does no justice to it. What Ovason covers has often been said before. He does go into detail that I haven't encountered before, but he I felt like the book was longer than it could have been.

[Jacko]

I chose the book" the Secret Symbols of the Dollar Bill" by David Ovason because this book caught my eye in the stores.It gives a closer look or meaning to the dollar Bill we use everyday. It talks about the stars, the eagle, the great seal, and the words and what they mean of the dollar bill."peace and war" would be my favorite quote because the eagle is arrows and olive branches which means peace and war. The author's writing style is more in a teacher trying to teach something but in an interesting way. If I would recommend this book to someone, it would be the people who like mysteries because there is a lot of secrets of the dollar bill.

[Sherrill Watson]

Mr. Ovason gives 100 historical "facts", some of which he refutes in the back of the book in the "Notes" section. Many references to the King James version of The Bible, and many Masonic references, naturally, because our founding fathers were Masons and a God-fearing bunch of men. I couldn't "get" why I should fold up the dollar bill, or use a ruler, to see that the second "A" in America coincided with. . . well, you get the idea. 50% of the book is history, 20% supposition, and the rest was interesting. In my opinion.

It'll be interesting to see whether "In God We Trust" is on the new $5 "women's" bill.

[Jacob]

This was a quick read and very informative! The author isn't much of a writer or story teller. He sticks to the facts and moves forward and in many ways I liked that style. I learned a lot about our nation's symbolism and the dollar bill. I'm glad I picked this one up!

[Adam]

Mildly informative book about the history of the design of American money. Short with lots of illustrations. Finished it in 2 sittings, I think.

[Dan]

Acquired Nov 15, 2005
Powell's City of Books, Portland, OR

[Cwn_annwn_13]

Learn all about the Occultic Jewish and Freemason symbols on the dollar bill. The slave owning Freemason scumbags that founded America have flaunted their planned new world order for centuries.

[Keith]

Lots of info on the symbolism and where the symbols came from but nothing on how to fold a dollar into a boat or turn George into a mushroom.

[Daniel]

pretty interesting though i find discrepancies in what this book and others say about the bill regarding certian symbols, it still goes alot more in-depth about the content of the art work.

[Todd Stockslager]

Meaningless astrological and numerological twaddle whose only redeeming characteristic is that it doesn't waste much paper.