Montaigne's Doghouse

[Sirius B]

KPro finally threw La Santa Chancleta de Penitencia and chased us hounds out of the dang kitchen. I thought things were going OK, but que sais-je?

So I'm opening up this thread for the usual suspects to discuss Fenn, the chase, life, the universe, etc. Where were we? Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

[Walker]

We were, and seemingly still are, in the rabbit hole.

[Sirius B]

It's funny you mention that. We often think of the rabbit hole when we think of Alice in Wonderland exclusively, and forget Through the Looking Glass. Like Carroll, Edgar Allen Poe was known for including a certain "armchair hunt" aspect to his work, notably in The Gold Bug. Doyle as well with The Dancing Men. In Carroll's case, there is another dimension to the TTLG that is hidden, but once understood, is not easily forgotten: it is about chess. Arguably Wonderland is about Cards. Fenn's Looking Glass is about wordplay. We've already discussed the apparent "6 degrees of separation" game. That's what got us to figuring out that analogies, rebuses, homonyms, etc; were all fair play in Fenn's reflections (aka SB entries). Sheriff cataloged them and using the method of loci, has placed the nexus in the Taos area, near Twining.



As you say, in the first book she goes down the hole, but in the second she passes through a mirror over the fireplace. That is a young Jane Asher performing the title role of ATTLG. Looking Glass is a British way of saying Mirror. Twining? Isn't that happens when you see a image in the looking glass? Aka, a double image of the same thing but reversed? So I called these multifaceted clues Fennalogies.

I know that Lennon appreciated Lear, and in fact wrote a book in his own write, in emulation of that style of humor, including cartoons, wordplay and cryptic clues, and cyptography and/or steganography. He hat-tips Lear in Paperback Writer by name. He name calls Edgar Allen Poe in I Am The Walrus as well. Interestingly, at the end of the song I Am The Walrus, you can hear lines of a performance of King Lear from BBC Radio. Guess whose lines we can hear on the recording? Oswald: O, untimely death. Then Edgar: I know thee well, a serviceable villain.

I could show you much more, but hey, it's there. It all started with Bacon, and Love's Labor's Lost. They had this special code called the Kaye code: the alphabet started at 10 = K, so all letters could be converted to two digit numbers. So L = 11. LLL= 33. Without the Shift? B=2 A=1 C=3 O=13 N=14 = 33, so that's what we call a cryptic signature. It's normally a sign that a group of authors collaborated to produce material under a common alias. It's not reserved to poets and rock stars. See: Blanche Descartes. They've been doing this "hollywood squares" schtick since 1618 and back then they called it the IC. I suspect Fenn may have joined a later incarnation, the UU. It's really the same thing, except in Pratchett's version he tells thinly veiled versions of the IC's antics using pseudonyms, wordplay, nonsense and satire and calls it Discworld. Maybe the 33 RPM kind? Who knows, but it's fun. Anyway, Tim, one of things I have noted is that the Poem has 24 lines. The Elizabethan alphabet had 24 characters, and there are 24 hours in a day. I would love to be able to link these concepts in a solve.

Bowie lifted "Let's Dance" directly from Lyric of Love to Leah (note that LLL thing again), by Aleister Crowley. Replace the last two lines of the poem where Crowley says "Of the Moon and Sirius" with "Serious Moonlight", and I think you'll see quite clearly what Bowie did: it's directly after the spot where Crowley says "Let's Dance". Do I think that's a problem? Heck no! I already told you the song has a totally different meaning than its superficial context as a love song. So what's Bowie doing? I think he was calling somebody out. Within this rarefied air of post-Twickenham secret pens in Discworld; where using a Crowley, Yeats, Blake or Milton poem to scaffold your song is fine, and in fact you are expected to hide Easter eggs showing that you belong to the group. Flyting is also an intramural activity at UU, and everyone is expected to participate. At the time of the song (1982), there were only a handful of people in the whole world that could have traced that connection, explained "the flower", got their hands on Crowley's poetry, remembered the line, etc, etc. The internet has made it possible to know a lot of stuff that was originally intended for a select few.

Personally, I think there were two direct inspirations for Fenn's Chase: Kit Williams and Byron Preiss. Interestingly, the son of the original artist behind The Secret, J.J. Palencar, is named Kit. Kit is also Carson's name and the Bull of the Woods that Sheriff's been reading is in the (Kit) Carson National Forest. And as I was saying, we have that and the Williams Lake/Stella Lake correspondence (Capital of Nevada, where Stella Lake is = Carson City), in which I felt we had a consensus that it could not be simply the product of overactive imaginations because it was an image intended by Fenn to convey a hint that gets us to search (and probably start) at Williams Lake and that the chest is in Carson National Forest or private property/rights of way within it.

[Walker]

All of that is very interesting, Sirius B , and stuff I'd like to take a longer look at. Interesting areas of research for the Chase.
The rebus thing is interesting because of how hieroglyphs were used in that way (or similar?) for early written languages.
I think a good look at these might be meaningful.

[Sirius B]

Again, funny you mention it, because I think we possess a version of that ancient Egyptian metaphysical language today in a more accessible form: The Major Arcana of the Tarot. It's the Arcanum Arcanorum, imho. Unlike hieroglyphics, it's numbered, which helps with things like isopsephy and cryptic signalling and/or signatures. Another area for exploration on the theme might be the Atbash Cipher, which is a simple substitution in which the alphabet is mirrored (i.e.: a=z, b=y, etc). There are Atbash ciphers in Jeremiah, Chronicles and Kings, to name but a few. The practice goes back to the beginnings of Jewish Mysticism with Moses, the Tabernacle, and the Kabbalah.

I also want to clear the air, which always needs it after you mention Crowley. Why are all these people so obsessed with Sirius?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sothic_cycle

Ok, so Sirius, and it's interaction with the Sun and the Moon formed the basis of the Egyptian ritual calendar, and very likely, for whatever predecessor civilization that informed the Egyptians. The day upon which the heliacal rising of Sirius occurs July 22nd for at Jerusalem (The feast day of Mary Magdalen btw), but at my latitude of 40 degrees its more like August 5th. Point being, you don't have to do anything complex with the Sothic approach. You just need a big rock and as long as you don't move it, it will always be accurate for your latitude. Just make an obelisk, and wait for an equinox or solstice. That dawn (whatever it is, solstice or equinox, it doesn't matter), walk away from the obelisk with a string in your hand until the sun is just rising on the horizon and Sirius appears right on top of the pyramidion. Now mark that spot, because you are going to be able to use that same spot year after year to tell you that "when Sirius is on top of the obelisk at equinox sunrise" 30 days later it's rising with the sun and it's time to party. While you are at it, use the string to draw two circles around the base of the obelisk, like they did at the DC mall, or one big one like St Peter's "Square".

In practice, temples like Luxor had their main axis going from SW to NE, with the sanctum sanctorum in the the SW and the obelisks flanking the NE gate. This suggests to me the whole purpose of the temple was to mark Sirius' position when the sun is at the North extent: i.e. The Summer Solstice. One light pillar representing Summer Solstice and another dark one representing the Winter Solstice. In observational reality it was much darker- the sun was 46 degrees further South, and it's the shortest day of the year. This goes back and forth over 1460 years. Sothic New Year, is the symbolic unification of Sirius, the Sun and the Moon: the Egyptian divine marriage. Look at Card II of the Tarot: The High Priestess. See it now? She's in the Sirius moonlight, right in the middle. Note Rev 12:1 A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.



A real oddity is that an Earth year as measured by the Sothic Method is an astonishingly close approximation of what we now know is exactly how long it takes to complete a solar revolution. They even used a leap day every 4 years like we do. By contrast, for the moon to return to its same position in the sky, on the same day and time you would have to wait 19 years. Sirius does it every year within a very tight range: such that it can easily be observed over a 1460 year period as falling between a moon's width (6 degrees) or so from a fixed observation point, when observing towards the East at equinox sunrise, and best- it comes back to it's start each year. The Precession of the Equinoxes is totally dependent on how you divide the constellations. By comparison, the Sothic cycle is like a Swiss watch with a sweeping second hand.

Also, in practice heliacal conjunctions are difficult observations near the equinox, that will not take place at precisely the same time depending on latitude. Also you will ruin your eyes. Sometimes weather is bad. Solstices are "better", and it's the same diff anyway. Plus, all the priests want advance notice, so they can get everything ready. A far easier method in practice was to record Sirius' altitude at the solstices (~6/20 and 12/20) which are ~ 30 days before the big Egyptian Sothic days) by constructing an obelisk or something to act as a gnomon from a fixed observation point. Then count down the days from when Sirius passes that altitude above the sun indicated by the gnomon. So it acts like an advent calendar, and you can just count down the days to the big day after this moment. Of course, you can peek at sunrise on August 19th just to check. On Sothic New Year, as Arthur C. Clark kinda hinted (fancifully) in that movie, Sirius sits on top of the sun like a diamond ring, while the Sun is in total eclipse by the Moon as it rises. What a sight!

For the Egyptians, this "Sirius observing gnomon" in practice was the obelisk. They were very precise and that's why they were made out of solid rock- they had to stay the same size and not move for eons. The Ancients were well aware of the Great Platonic Year and the precession of the equinoxes. However, by closer observation of it together with the ritual observance of the Sothic calendar, they made a huge discovery. We're still struggling with it. It's truly amazing and monumental. They realized that Sirius (and only Sirius) was not moving with the other background stars with precession. Amazingly, of all the nearby stars in our galactic cluster, Sirius is moving in the same direction, and at about the same speed, as we are. And it's close. 8.7 light years. We could send a message and get a response in our lifetimes. The parallels go deeper..We (the Sol System) and the Sirius system are "phase linked", suggesting we have either a distant common origin, or that both of us are linked by a third, massive, yet unseen periodic member of this system.

Finally, have a look a here: it puts some of the original hieroglyphic forms together with this calendar stuff. You may find it interesting.

[Old blue]

Has anyone tried using quipu it is pronounced keypoo

[Tim (ZosoRocks)]

I found Sirius on the ground in my travels.

Uncannyingly similar to Sirius in the stars.

"As above, so below."

[Space Hopper]

I found Sirius on the ground in my travels.

Uncannyingly similar to Sirius in the stars.

"As above, so below."

Great theory, but those stars remind me more of Damien Hirst's diamond skull, than your trees that may disappear tomorrow.

[Sirius B]

I found Sirius on the ground in my travels.

Uncannyingly similar to Sirius in the stars.

"As above, so below."

Interesting. All those stars are "Sirius", but taken together are Canis Major which has Sirius a as it's brightest star. The alpha star of Canis Minor is called Procyon. Orion's club is defined by Betelgeuse. They make a nearly perfect equilateral triangle in the sky called the winter triangle in the period of their peak visibility. They are tough to see at northern latitudes in the summer after 7/22. Instead we use another group of 3 bright stars which also form an equilateral triangle: Altair, Deneb and Vega. These are called the summer triangle. As with Orion, Canis Major and Minor, each of the these stars is the alpha star of its respective constellation and they are contiguous celestial neighbors: Altair, Lyra, and Cygnus. The Summer and Winter triangles were key elements of both Sothic calendar structure and celestial navigation. The Eqyptian certainly used them, and I suppose because of it, much of Egyptian astronomy is mimeticly linked to the idea of triangles and Sirius. The hieroglyph for Sirius is an asterisk next to a triangle. The Ankh is the symbolic union of the moon as Hathor, and the cross as Sirius.

I have mentioned previously that when the celestial and terrestrial globes are aligned (The Nile at the first point of Aries-The Ram), the Altair, Lyre and Cygnus constellations cover most of the United States. The Appalachian range in the Northeast aligns almost perfectly with Cygnus's main axis which forms the Northern Cross in the sky. The Lyre constellation covers most of the search area in the Rockies, with the Eagle (Aquila) covering the central US. You like that wordplay? The Lyrebird? Interestingly, like Sirius, Altair is a very bright star and also very close neighbor in the Milky Way (our neighborhood) at 17 Light Years.

I recall some stuff about Double D's said by Fenn. I think he's talking about the triangles and also bringing in Red River, NM. How so? Red River was a movie with John Wayne and Monty Clift. In the movie, a bracelet and a belt buckle become key symbolic elements, and Hawks had two made specially for he and John Wayne. Wayne never took his off, until it was famously stolen. It depicted the Red River Dunson Brand, which was two D's superimposed on each other. The bracelet was symbolic of the circularity of the journey, and I heard Clift got that one.

[Tim (ZosoRocks)]

Great theory, but those stars remind me more of Damien Hirst's diamond skull, than your trees that may disappear tomorrow.

So very true.....i just thought it was a peculiar instance.

thanks for the response.

[sally]

S way ne. I really try not to have disdain but . . .georgie porgie puddin in your eye says there is the truth and there is the lie. You guys are so wrapped up in the bacon I don't think you could even recognize a piece of gold if it sat next to you at the breakfast table. So you resort to setting a trap for her and kill her Ruby - all so vile - beyond vile. You can't keep her from her date with Maggie.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/freeing-of-ley-lines-in-north-carolina#/

[Knowledge]

This is from across the river from the chest site. Forrest did have the blaze point to the Milkyway.

[Knowledge]

Same image

[Knowledge]

This is what Forrest used that string for to make little images into huge images you could see from above, note the scale of the images.

[Sirius B]

All of that is very interesting, Sirius B , and stuff I'd like to take a longer look at. Interesting areas of research for the Chase.
The rebus thing is interesting because of how hieroglyphs were used in that way (or similar?) for early written languages.
I think a good look at these might be meaningful.

Taking a step back, I want to explore this >*<. I know that looks bad, let me rephrase: I mean the asterisk. It's come up quite a bit, and I admit it is a bit sketchy. It's the hieroglyph for Sirius. Blah, blah, baal. Pursuant to your point, modern day hieroglyphs are present in corporate logos and iconography. Sirius looks very much like Walmart from this perspective.

So how's this? Sam Walton was well known for flying everywhere to check on his stores: Old Pilot- check. Daughter named Alice (Check). Son named John(check) who was a Green Beret(check) and served in Laos(check); who later died in a plane crash(check). We were talking about Bacon (Louis Moore too); and incidentally Sam Walton's middle name was also Moore (check). Alice Through the Looking Glass is really about Chess. Check and...