RoyalCraftiness

That's quite elegant to get the Swan Song coming out of this. I guess we can start to think of Bacon's Swan Song in Sylva Sylvarum as another SS suggestion. I've done quite a bit of this sort of analysis with the text part of the Sylva Sylvarum cover illustartion. Wouldn't hurt if you had a look there also. Another set of eyes...There's a suggestion of the syzygy there, imo. The ratio I feel may have stood out to Bacon is that 223/287=0.777=777/1000 where 1000 is the ten centuries suggestion (SS is a work in ten centuries). Item 777 in century VII concerns what is a better way to chose the "seats of one's dwellings" than what astronomers might offer by their figures. How very a propos to what I am considering... 223 is the periodicity of the Saros cycle in synodic months. Eclipse number 33 in Saros 128 occurred on day 223 in the year, 1561, Bacon was born (an impressive coincidence). 1561 and 1651 are palindromes. They are 5 eclipses apart in that Saros cycle. in 1651 the annular solar eclipse is on day 287. A better way to approximate the date of the eclipse is to use what is called the Inex cycle approximation. The Saros can be roughly estimated by considering the ratio 484/223, the Inex 777/358. Both these ratios come from the continued fraction estimation which allows for the synodic and draconic months to eventually align. 483/223=2.170403587 ; 777/358=2.170391061. The Inex is a bit more precise than the Saros. Anyone looking for coincidences would surely start to observe 223 and 777 appearing. George Stirk was hot on the trail of this eclipse suggestion in 1651. He had apparently worked it out in European alchemical works. The data is here: Solar Saros 128 - Wikipedia The 1651 eclipse path looks like this: It's the starting points (to the left we ought to focus on here. The band of visibility incorporates terrestrial locations that are the first to view this eclipse. They are in Newfoundland and near the Caicos (Great Turk suggestion). If the Southernmost location was on land it would be on an island West of Peru (where Bacon had placed his New Atlantis in his allegory). The red band is where you would see the complete ring of fire of the annular eclipse. The center point shown here is simply the midway point of the region offering perfect visibility.

Unfortunately, we do not ever know if we are staring at an acrostic or any other sort of puzzle, do we? What we always face is the possibility of suggesting a method of our choice to incorporate familiar symbols we are presented with into a narrative we wish to give life to. The range of possibility we can face is daunting. With the number 2 we face the fact that it is incorporated in half of all numbers we can express and every sort of duality that exists. It is the in 2:1 proportion in the quaternary, for example. 2 is symbolized/allegorized by the twin in the oldest creations myths we know, and twenty is the "twin T" in etymological meaning. There are context clues in front and under our noses which would suggest we ought to mind the T T suggestion in relation to the Christian God. Because we are often dealing with Christian imagery and emblems in these pages, we may want to try and figure out how a deeply pious Christian patron of Shakespeare is seeing the idea of T. We get started with that, perhaps, by understanding that Tau is the mark that identifies worthy men. It's your key into the vault. If you want into the wonderful eternity of the everlasting poet you had better sort out what bearing the Tau means. Who are the twin Taus of Christianity? Well, they are Saint Anthony and Saint Paul. What is the story there? It is a story of reclamation and redemption. You may come to find that the people who are the patrons for this individual we call Shakespeare are caught up in worldly affairs where there is an expressed desire to reclaim something that was lost in order that there may be a great redemption, since it was by then common thinking that the world of Christianity had lost its way. If you ask me, this is way above Shakespeare's head. Shakespeare was not that kind of a visionary. Someone is including these suggestions with the printing of the works. Someone executed it, and someone paid for it to be done. There's plenty of evidence for intent in the empirical considerations without touching the subjective. It is highly doubtful that Shakespeare intended it in his life. This is after Shakespeare. So, we have work to do to figure out who is seizing the opportunity to play with us. Anyone who would not consider this play is tricking themselves, imo. It is not done so much to conceal, but to draw you into the mystery of the meaning of the symbols we use daily without much consideration. Are these things real? Are all interpretations of symbols real? Can we make a Shakespeare play say anything we want with our clever minds? I see WIT again at the top left. Below I see HOB below (prankster, diminutive form of Robert). I also see HOBAAN which we could see as A HOBAN where that is a family name meaning "of Robert". Maybe we consider AA as "A"s and see HOBSAN. Maybe we look through a looking glass and see the upside down world where THIS refers to MOHB and we see HIS TOMB. Maybe we read this phonetically and see TWO as TU and decide to incorporate HBAN to get THUBAN. If we are clever and witty we can go places with our suggestions. If it is an acrostic then the world is our oyster to suggest something with that also. Do you want some suggestions? The thing about play is that it is fun, and it offers the possibility of learning or bettering your knowledge. What you are doing is beneficial to you.

Yes indeed. Hermes is the King of all tricksters. He tricks you into educating yourself. How else is he going to actually perform such magic in your skull? Magic as the viewer sees it is a well developed act where the suggestions come fast and furiously. The Hermes that we are dealing with is going to great lengths to draw us into a search. The search is the point. The reward is understanding how to search. You don't get to enter the citadel unless you are well versed in the geometric suggestions. Plato also said as much.

Beautiful alchemical wedding imagery. We see the swan on the extreme left. I see the Mitre of St Peter on the head of the person administering the ceremony. There are obviously two males present here. One is a practitioner of the spiritual work and the other the practitioner of the alchemical work (the twofold male suggestion). If we take the alchemist to be a Hermes type then we can possibly infer that one of his inventions (the Lyre) is a relevant constellation to pair with Cygnus. The Mitre is the constellation of Triangulum (which is itself a suggestion of two triangles, TT). You have to wonder how far Bacon, or whoever else is responsible for the dedication, is willing to go to step further and involve actual celestial events. It certainly appears that way. I've continued developing the geometry of the text layout: The more one develops the more one starts to get a sense for the plan. The two arcs give us the annulus. This has allowed me to notice that CD is perpendicular to AG. If you project all the lines to the outer ring you get a very symmetrical triangle (angles 55,55,70) with G within it. Point C starts to reveal its secrets too. Even in my initial treatment of the image the point C was not overtly placed. It comes out of a line going through the points in the eyes and a line from a point of the collar to the center of the O above. We can see that the other point C is cleverly also defined by a line that goes through the period after the I in B.I., the dot above the i in "hit" and the dot above the i in "strife". That line intercepts the inner ring at K. A line through the dot in the eyes/"i"s gives this invisible "Southern pole" of the circle centered at G. Furthermore, if we look at what is capitalized above the portrait we see that we are given the letters P T O and C. Our geometry in the text is working up from P T O and G which is a hidden center (C). The isosceles triangle with base 55 suggests 110. We have seen 110 before as the Twin of 111 in the Psalms. What a wonderful way to incorporate the 111 in the wedding. Intent is all over the construction of the text. It is "For The Reader" to make something come of it. The thing hinges on the idea of TT, TTT and TTTT represented in the stars where Cygnus and its two partners are going to attend a faithful wedding. Sparks were surely set to fly. lol

The letters is what I meant. Some of the Ws are clearly two Vs. I get 286.

Would you mind counting the characters in the bit of text here and confirming that there are 286. If you recall what we discussed elsewhere this is likely a reference to October 13th here. It would appear that the understanding of the timing of the future eclipse of October 14th, 1651 was one day off. That may or may not be of significance since some alchemists advised to add an additional 10, more less, days between the cycle occurrences. If you use only 10 between the last occurrences before the 1651 solar eclipse you will miss the date by what amounts to a few hours. Involving the Summer Triangle denotes three birds [a swan (female) and two males (a vulture and an eagle)]. In this alchemical recipe from Basil Valentine's alchemical keys we see how that sort of thing is being allegorized in his description. The King and the Queen coming together and coalescing is going to happen on October 14th. It's becoming evident now why Stirk was so convinced he found a pearl of wisdom in 1651 to exploit. Others were perhaps already hinting to it in ways he extended to material chemistry. Hermetic/harmonic ideas meeting up with alchemical ones.... It now makes a lot of sense that we are given two nice arcs which center at G. That's, quite wittingly, the annular eclipse suggestion of eclipse number 38 in Saros 128, dated October 14, 1651. It's the one that is paired to number 33 in 1561 which occurred on the 223rd day of the year, Aug. 11. I guess I will have to look at what the celestial relations are at this time. I think I know what may have interested Bacon. Saturn was opposite to Mars when he was born. The same thing occurs again on October 13, 1651. This almost coincides with the eclipse which also happened the year he was born. Plenty there to consider. As you know, the Kingly son is born when the King and Queen come together. Fun, fun, fun...to no end.

This morning I had a very bizarre dream where an unknown person I was introduced to suddenly started throwing sharp compasses at me and I could not remove them from my body fast enough to be compass free. That's when you know you are considering angles too much before bedtime, lol. This is the first time I've ever considered this text. I just never considered it. It's worth looking into how it is put together.

The thing is that we can stay neutral when someone suggests something. We don't have to come down on a side of any question. The danger of not being neutral is that we start to take offense or that we we start to see the world in polarizing ways. There are people I know who I am fine being with, but they are not comfortable with the fact that I don't validate their points of view. What I find frustrating is that there isn't an easy way to be neutral with some people. They will seek to define what you "believe" so that they may "know" if you are with them or against them. Our words are so imprecise that I often say to myself that people use "believe" when they only really mean that they are conditionally accepting something and would consider changing their position if they were forced to by their own considerations. Maths are useful to produce absolute statements, but lets not forget that we are only seeing the world through a mathematical lens. Math is one of those syllogisms that we use which has worked so well that many of us have accepted the suggestion that the Universe is nothing but Mathematics (that we are stuck in a Matrix of numbers as Iamblicus would say). We tend to not appreciate that Mathematic itself is on shaky logical foundations, because it is fundamentally incomplete. What I will say about it is that the empirical study of things is where we started with our "scientific" observations. Counting things and relating things to ordinal placeholders allows us to feel we know some things. That's certainly one aspect of knowledge that we ought to always consider. In nature 1+1=1 in many ways. In energy terms 1+1=2 is carved in stone. Do we really even bother to count in fractal ways? No, we stay with what is simple and manageable. That works. We also tend to love the roundness of small numbers. It pains us to say that the speed of light is 2.9970 x10^8 m/s. Surely it must have been intend to be 3, right? The sad reality is that I have been trained to be non committal, lol. Science does that to you. No one ever tells you that knowledge is going to rain down onto you by divine intervention in the field of science even if many scientists will describe having had intuitions. We basically deal in words whose exact real meaning is unclear to us. This is true of all symbols.

It occurred to me that the prominent period after To The Reader ought to display some usefulness if the whole thing was intended to convey elegance with nice round numbers. I examined a few other things by focusing on the center of the G: The line AE cuts angle GAC (50 degrees) in two. If you draw an arc using G from E you intercept C forming an angle EGC of about 57 degrees (1 radian, or 180/pi). This is a nice confirmation or coincidence. Angle BGD is 45 degrees. A circle arc centered at G also joins B and D which is 1/8 of a circle (an octant). That arc just touches the tip of the W. Also G to the final period after Booke produces a 45 degree angle to the bottom of the text (page horizontal). What I have not shown here is that you can slide over the line AB to have it make a parallel through G. That line will pass through the bottom tip of the the large T in TO and then onto the left tip of it. That yields a TT parallel suggestion. The line from the center of the O at point D going through the center of the O in To (in To The Reader) is also 55 degrees from the page horizontal (parallel to line of text). Angle OGO is 104 degrees. From this I conclude that the center of G was part of the planning/layout. So is the center of the O. The periods are relevantly placed also. I just now notice that the line AC may in fact try and capture the lower period of the colon in the line above it. In my opinion there's reason to like the point C that comes from using 40,60,80 and the mid points in the letters T,O,G and P

If the angles are the same, the ratios are identical. There's a geometric theorem for that. I just checked these again. The angles are for all intent and purpose identical. What I did is essentially construct a perfect 80 and 40 degree angle pair there to show where the other corner would be. You could in theory shift this around a bit since you don't really know what is intended as starting points. What works best, in my opinion, is to use the middle point of all the letters mentioned. You end up landing in between word 33 and 34. That's fine by me. One can just as easily argue the angles in the Summer triangle are not 80,60 and 40 (they change in astronomical time scales anyway). That is also true. None of this is meant to be characterized by high precision. What is of value is the elegance of the numbers which are used in the triangle angle suggestions. That sort of loose precision is everywhere in Freemasonic suggestion and sacred geometry/numerology where 53 and 37 are used for the angles in a 3:4:5 triangle, 27 is used where the angle is actually 26.6 in the compass and square, 107 and change is covered by 108, 5/8 is used for the golden mean, 22/7 for pi... Elegance in round numbers is valued more than precision. The line DC here is in reality not a straight line, nor is it narrow. It's contained in a thick band in the sky which represent the galactic plane. There's no way to do it justice with one precise narrow line, but you can represent that using stars associated with the Summer Triangle if you want. I do everyone a great disservice by showing very narrow lines and precise angle suggestions. There's no way anyone was dealing with precise data to begin with in that time. Things would have been greatly rounded off to make them look harmonious. It's like saying a month is 28 days because you want 4 weeks of 7 days in them. If you want to discredit alchemy and numerology for being imprecise then I am completely on board with that. They aren't anything but attempts at showing correspondences that aren't really there. Nature is absolutely not showing geometric elegance unless we play fast and loose with the data. Edit: I just reread your comment. Identical in the strict mathematical sense means all sides are equal length and that is probably what you mean. No, the triangles are not identical. They are similar which means they are just scaled up/down versions of each other. I should not have used that word, but in common parlance it doesn't mater. They need not be identical. Because the ratios are equal they are similar. I don't think there is any reason why they would have to be identical.

I'm not sure I agree with the word count. If you count the O then "Picture" is the 66th word. The 33rd word is then "His" which makes sense, as in "this (is) his picture". I do like the triangle suggestion. Assuming we use the middle of the T, the middle of the G and the middle of the P we end up with a triangle with a point almost mid way between word 33 and 34, and we end up with a diagonal PG through it. If we also use the middle of the O then we get the Summer triangle suggestion almost exactly (80, 60, 40 or TT, TTT, TTTT). I've gone ahead and compared that to what I showed before about the Droeshout portrait and have tagged the corners appropriately. It works really well, so well done from where I stood. The point G in the image ends up being on the diagonal that goes right through the tip of the nose of William. This I love because the Summer triangle comes with the suggestion that it is to point us to Hobson's Nose at latitude 44.4 and longitude 66.6 from Paris (meaning/etymology of Hobson family name= son of Robert). As far as the image goes. It does also seem to extend upwards to the mid point of the P while the line AG appears to want to hit the edge where the top parallel also intercepts it. 33.3 and 66.6 are very much a part of the 100 degree wedge of longitude that Bacon suggests to us between his North American point of interest which is in line with Alexandria to the Pillars Of Hercules and the location of MM (Mount Moriah in Jerusalem). The figurative connection between the two is the number 111. If you go to Sylva Sylvarum you will find in century 2 the item 111 which describes how globes and pyramids are similar in displaying harmony in their proportions when you account for the golden mean as Plato long ago informed us. Just mind the divided line and you will be well served. Here's an overlay of celestial declinations and right ascensions of constellations over a map of longitude and latitude which is found in one the Peter Dawkins essays. You can adjust the opacity of either to see how Cygnus' body is a good representation of the Great Circle in question. I like it because it also depicts the position of the Stella Nova of 1600 under the wing of Cygnus very much in the position where Bacon hints it works out to. Celestial Globe 1792 - David Rumsey Historical Map Collection (geogarage.com)

You ought to be greatly disappointed if you were not questioned and put to task. The goal is not to be believed or to produce unconditional acceptance of a suggestion. When all is as it should be, you ought to be doubted and scrutinized critically. The act of proving things to the world is not for cowards. It is said to perhaps be for fools, though. There are no religions that have achieved this. I submit that it may not be possible. What anchors some ideas firmly enough that they may continue to exist is the existence of the unconditional acceptance of the underlying suggestions (a pitfall). They will have faithful believers, and they will be able to have factions form around them where the conditioning for the acceptance of the suggestion going forward is practiced in ritual fashion. In my case, know that I would never believe you. At best I will conditionally accept what you say and consider if it is worthy of being included in the spectrum of possibilities which I also try and map out. That spectrum is akin to the physical landscape which an explorer is trying to map out. He may think, for a while, that he has reached India, but later he may revisit his assumption. Don't be so quick to think you have reached India. When you are closer to 60 than 16 you will have known by experience how often it is you must walk back previous suggestions you've made. Monuments erected by third parties after the fact, and works written by third parties before the fact, will contain in them the perspectives of the third parties. In hindsight it is easy for us to create narratives in the possibilities. Bacon was a proponent for a method with which we could know things that was more than just weak syllogism. Rene Descartes was also. This was the chief pursuit of that age. If we lack a method then we cannot know a hell of a whole lot with any degree of certainty. This of course, is limited to what Plato informs us is "under the Sun". For things under the Sun it is possible to gain confidence by discovering demonstrable and repeatable truths which do not fail to be true anywhere we look. Now, there are other things which reside in dark caves (in the figurative sense) where we have only our mental faculties to feel our way around them. We look at cast shadows and we look for patterns in things which resonate with our sensibilities. There are real limits to knowing things this way. When we cannot show beyond a doubt we must accept to say that we are only feeling a certain way. If we do not then we are speaking as impostors. There is no shame in that. For the most part that is what we all are. We believe in circles, but there are no circles in the world, and there will also never be any. There are only things which satisfy us enough to call them circles. The world is built upon a fundamental uncertainty. Out of the chaos appears to us things we see as only evidence of realities in their own dimensional scale. We do not refer to humans as chaos magnified and personified in 90 trillion relationships, but maybe we should. By all means map the possibilities. If you are afraid of being judged then that is very normal human thing which is very strong in youth. You ask for permission because you want that sense of safety. The world is full of judgement and that is supposed to even follow you to your afterlife in some ways of thinking. The courage of the knight is to stand before the fire breathing dragon. The heat will temper you.

The Philosopher's stone is a pearl of true wisdom. If you possessed it you would begin to know the workings of the "Opera Omnia". If you think back to the Kunrath illustration where you pointed out the Hermes figure standing at the gate of the alchemical citadel with elbows pointed out forming a square in which his spine represents the division of two triangles that make up the square (the duality), the representation is itself containing symbolic references to a philosophical idea. There is a great German literary tradition that touches on this knowledge which is an extension of the Arthurian legends. The quest has been compared to the search for the Hoy Grail by the great German Mediaval poet Wolfram Von Eschenbach in his epic poem "Parzival". One of my favorite descriptions of this literary reference is from Joseph Campbell (the mythologist once retained by George Lucas when he wrote Star Wars). Joseph Campbell: Literary Meaning of The Holy Grail - YouTube The Hermetic tradition served as an avenue to approach the material sciences. It is with parallels between substances and the imagined character of astronomical bodies that we first began to think of chemical reactions which we saw as transformations of character. We tried to bridge our beliefs about the spiritual to nature and we ended up reshaping our beliefs. Occasionally, there have been revivals in Hermetic thinking when the world has sought correction from the existing dogma of the times. When we are faced with intractable problems there is an inner alchemist in all of us that tries to see things from a very high perspective (a spiritual one). Family tends to contain, what are to us, neutral angels. We can accept that all sorts of dualities may be present and still retain the philosophical wisdom to keep the relations loving and intact. In those close relationships we are practitioners of the way of the middle. If we could ever come to see ourselves as brothers to each other then it might be possible to extend that in reach to the globe. This is the intent behind the forming of brotherhoods where men can be baby-stepped into a certain degree of understanding and compassion of the other with an exploration of things that unite us (none are quite as effective as the fact we are all born and will all die). When we are deeply in love we are also almost blind to dualities. There can be major differences between two people, and still the feeling is that there is more oneness possible than anything else. It is not hard to see why Philosophers have for long expressed the idea that we are drawn towards harmony and to the places in the Universe where it is found. Go to these places and experience them. They are in music, in relationships and even in physical places where many things conspire to present to us echoes of beauty which resonate with our senses and our minds. When Bacon imagined a Utopia he would have considered what one should find there. There ought to be echoes of various harmonies in his suggestions.

A great view for book lovers. I have only watched part of it and am very tickled by both the commentary and the eye candy. He drops a very interesting comment when he says that the person of Hermes Trismegistus is referred to at the Saqqara pyramid (that would be a very early reference). That is not what most scholars would tell you, but I do suspect the character is partly in reference to the Egyptian man-God and polymath Imhotep who is responsible for the building of the stone block structures for the Pharaoh Djoser. If ever there was a real man who was in the mold of Hermes Trismegistus he is a good candidate. Otherwise, people do seem to think he was a mash up of Greek and Egyptian deities. I immediately noticed the work of Basil Valentine which I was reading yesterday, the one with the twelve keys. That work seems to be the inspiration for Eirenaeus Philalethes' later works where he described his experiments in producing the Philosopher's stone. The physical experiments mimic the alchemy of the spiritual which is found in the earlier works. Have only seen the first 30 minutes and will watch the rest later, but definitely worth viewing. There's already talk about Fludd. Fludd is said to have been given a Rosicrucian title by Michael Maier at the very same time some allege Bacon was given the honorary title of Imperator (father figure) of Rosicrucians. it is why I have always encouraged people to seek the link, if any exists, with Robert Fludd. Fludd had been trained by Maier in Germany as a physician/surgeon. In Fludd's works we see many or the ideas of the German Rosicrucians and astronomers. As noted, he Christianizes many of the ideas and that is something that we see present in some of Bacon's works' cover illustrations. Reading Bacon, you don't quite get a sense that he is talking to us in alchemical terms, though. He is much more focused on the production and dissemination of knowledge with a method, as opposed to inferring knowledge with occult references. Bacon speaks of the imposture of the words of the old heretics in my favorite quote of his: It would seem that Bacon would have been shrewd enough to take from it what was valuable and cast out the rest if he could not find a reason to keep it. We are being abused by the Hermeticists is what he suggests. This lends me to believe that Bacon was much more of a Christian mystic than anything else. He seems to not mind the Hebrew ideas in the Christianized Kabbalah, for example. In that he likely saw a way to train men to be founded on the belief in the primacy of the God of the Old Testament. Hard to say, though. What Bacon writes isn't conducive to thinking he was a Hermetic practitioner if we compare him to Fludd and others who were. It is easy to suggest he may have been hiding that aspect of his beliefs. Anyway, it's always something I try and detect. Thanks for the link.

There's probably something to be gained in considering the name of the Island, Bensalem, and the fact that Saint Bartholomew is involved, he whose claim to fame was being skinned alive. Maybe Bacon was making a veiled comment about his life/society back home where, among other things, Jews were vilified for being impure when they are said to be found there living upright existences, unmolested by Asians and other peoples who live among them, and where they have erected a great Temple of knowledge. The suggestion seems to be that you can only have a Utopia if you are accepting of other faiths. England had known, and was going to know, bloody internal conflicts of religion. I don't imagine those stood well with Bacon's Christian sensibilities.

Freemasonry, being informed by "The Reception" or "Kabbalah" has things within it that are most certainly traceable to that influence. It is not that the two are alike because they speak of a same truth/reality, but that one is an offshoot of the other which was brought into the world to serve non Jewish ends in a European society that had no tolerance for Jews and had not had any for almost 400 years. The Christianization of the Kabbalah happened exactly when the Reformation happened. Before that Christians and Jews did not often see eye to eye, mainly because Christ is not recognized as a messiah by the Jews. The Church of England needed standing, though. The great rub here is that all that we can say about Speculative Freemasonry is also something we can say about the Kabbalah. It is informed by other things and other cultures which we quite happily never bother to look into. Good luck trying to discover the origins of these two. Speculative Freemasonry has no idea of its origins from within it. It decorates itself with legends and cosplay in such a way that an outsider may make inferences about its origins. Both the Kabbalah and Freemasonry are anchored in the unconditional acceptance of a fundamental suggestion. The suggestion is what has ultimately allowed for Zionism to grow in the world we know today (I am not implying anything good or bad about this). The system is powerful because it is anchored in belief which is further conditioned for. It must have its consequences. All belief does. When you study the Kabbalah you will encounter the very old idea that very strict transmission and guidance is necessary (you'll never guide yourself with it). The reason why this is said is because it is claimed that the system has the power to be used for great evils and that one should be weary of it being used for ill pursuits. Again, this is on account of the strength of systems with start off with belief and that condition for more belief. There are many offshoots of Freemasonry that took off with this and were used to promote many things. Freemasonry fractured many times along the way. In some offshoots there was open hostility towards Jews. Freemasonry doesn't teach anything to an outsider, except that there is power in shared belief. Ideas can be made to resonate in society to such a degree that it can make the belief become very widespread. The great historical benefit of that was that the Church of England was able to benefit from the Christianization of the Kabbalah. It did not serve the Catholics as well. A first intense effort to align the Church of England with the history of the Jews happened with Henry VIII who promoted the idea that the English were one of the lost ten tribes. This is not to say the entire thing isn't based in very real observations, because ultimately it is. Men can be shaped by belief in very beneficial ways. We can be groomed to be "good", whatever that means. It is a system that makes parallels between things we know little about too. That soothes our anxieties. Those things are suggestions based in old ideas that everything was being informed by the same sort of pattern creator. If you are 16 I encourage you to delve into epistemology which is a discipline that deals in the philosophy of knowledge. In our lives we need to appreciate why there are some ideas and then others. It is not enough to come down on one side of a duality. You will be well served by staying in the middle and observing the behaviors of all those who come down on sides of dualities. We often hear today that the world is polarizing. It is still a choice to stand in the middle.

Your mind is the architect of your own experience. It is possible for you to hear and even see John Dee, and that would have nothing to do with mental defect, so fear not talking about it. It is in the sphere of what is possible with minds. However, our individual experiences are not faithful witnesses to what is real to all other observers. It is highly unlikely that you would have experienced John Dee in any degree of specific detail had you never heard of him. Having established a conceptual relationship with this character allows for a range of possibilities of experience. Something akin to the relationship Elizabeth had with Dee had an equivalent in modern times with Nancy Reagan. The Reagans, to Nancy's insistence, involved an astrologer in their daily planning all the way back to their Hollywood days before Reagan became governor of California. When Reagan swore an oath it was on a day that had been settled on astrologically. Same thing with his major speeches for the rest of his career. It may interest you to know that Reagan grew fond of the number 33 this way, that events like the Iran hostage situation were not settled as early as would have been possible in favor of that being resolved on the 444th day (a resolution was delayed for almost 2 weeks to make that coincide with a time which was supposed to be politically beneficial to the president). It only got worse after Reagan was shot. Nancy had an astrologer on a retainer and routinely oversaw the president's schedule. On some days he didn't even show up to work based on the stars. Can we say that any of this isn't real? People who are respected have the ability to shape what is real in those who respect them. The magic is not produced by the astrologer. The magic is what happens in the mind of the person with experiences. You don't have to testify to any of this for me to accept that you had an experience/feeling. I know this sort of thing from my own experience, but in my case these things have come, in time, to not impress anything in me but wonder about how the mind works. I don't trust my experiences should have a meaning to others. When we are involved in something where feel a large degree of coincidence is involved we can almost immediately default to deducing there is meaning in it. That is what happens with minds that are working in "symbolic culture". Symbol is our currency and the mind is never as satisfied as when it produces recognition of a pattern in an area where we struggle to see patterns. It is a common enough thing for people who are devoted to studying one individual to think they are a reincarnation of that individual, that they have some experiential link to them, that they were meant to continue the work of the individual, that their choice were guided from that individual's selection... It would be interesting to do a blind survey of Baconians and report what would be the result of asking them if they felt a strong personal relationship to Francis Bacon. One probably doesn't have to be done. By virtue on knowing how the mind works we know what we would find. Those who were somehow convinced they were on a Bacon led mission would be counted in the demographic to represent that. The feelings you have, when reported on here, will resonate. They would do the opposite somewhere else where it could very well be deduced you suffered from severe mental defect, lol. Great minds think alike in as much as they will always find minds which will think that when they congregate. Dee does not impress me with his esotericism, and never has. It is therefore doubtful I would ever have a Dee experience I would value. However, I do fancy the study of how it is we come to believe or think we know things. I'll let you know If I ever come to grips with that, lol. For all the impossibility of knowing in the world it is truly remarkable how many people will claim to know things. We have Youtube to testify to that. Finding sympathetic souls is akin to cashing-in within a capitalist society. Dee cashed-in in his day. More power to him for having done so. He changed the course of History which was not carved in stone.

007 is certainly an interesting later literary reference by Ian Fleming. Have you ever looked into Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's works of Sherlock Holmes? His second volume was titled "The Sign of the Four". The sign of the 4 (also called the staff of mercury in Germany) is itself a symbol of Alchemy. There are some interesting parallels in that story which revolve around the search for a hidden treasure. It involves the suggestion of the pearl (of knowledge) and the number 6, a map of a citadel (the alchemical citadel suggestion), a boat called "Aurora" (the title of Boehme's very influential work of German mysticism) and other very interesting coincidences. The name of the main character is Mary Morstan. That's interestingly very similar to the name that Thomas C. Haliburton places on the tombstone in his chapter which deals with TT. He used Mary Merton. I am assuming here that a name in MM was the point (MM, being the Mount Moriah of Jerusalem and Freemasonic fame). MM for a name on a tomb may very well refer us to "memento morti", remember death. That might work as a name for a murder mystery too (another MM, lol). Holmes' famous words: "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" ...are to be found in Chapter six on page 111. Not a bad place for this pearl of wisdom. Anyway, I am one who does suspect that these older esoteric mysteries have served as inspiration for a very long time.

Luckily for him, he was the coiner of the expression, so he could work to make that compute in two ways by originating a word. That would be clever, but doable with some judicious fiddling. Intent is certainly suggested. I'd not err on the side of saying God meant it to be that way. It's rather interesting that 40 and 117 are there also. Should we conclude that individual ciphers were tailored/defined to produce the desired result? After all, John Dee is his name. If he wants to be associated with 40 then why not involve a short cipher that does that. What do we know about the origins of the short cipher? What would all other known ciphers show. Probably no coincidence... It does tell us quite a bit about the state of mind of the individual if he did intend it. It means he feels he can use the coincidences to advance the sort of suggestion already being made with number coincidences in nature, or that he himself is a force of nature sanctioned by God. It allows other suggestions to be made about his own mystical origins. It's the sort of trick that one would expect to see from a man who was versed in the occult. Suggesting Bacon was playing this game is another thing. He obviously benefited from having a full name that summed to 100 and included 33, so he would have been shrewd to hunt down some symbolism that worked to give that some meaning if he wanted some of his own to depict (I submit that we are all tickled when we are involved in an interesting coincidence of some sort). It's got some obvious potential with the coming together of Sun and Moon. Centuries are things that Bacon involved in Sylva Sylvarum. The second century in that work pertains to music, and the entry for 111 is about how there is also pleasing harmony in globes and pyramids. I've said it before that Bacon likely looked for a tranche of 100 degrees of longitude on the globe which he found elegance in, and which involved an idea of Sun and Moon coming together. Once you find these things you can see how far you can push the coincidences to create something very elegant. Bacon does say that what is pleasing to the senses is harmonious in the same way musical notes are. In that regard a demonstration bathed in coincidences is like a beautiful song. He mentions which notes--the fifth and the fourth are most pleasing. The fifth and the fourth can be related to the century by involving 20 (proper factors 2,4,5,10) which is itself a fifth of C. Two tens are TT and 4x5 is one octave away from 8x5 which was a used as a fractional approximation for Phi (which relates to the height of the pyramid). You can go very far with 20 to bridge a lot of ideas. His entry 108, to not be slighted, involved 2 and 7 specifically, as one might have expected for the relation of the perfect ashlar's perimeter (108) to its side (27) to be paid homage. Is there intent in all that? It would appear to be in play. How far does it go? This is where one can potentially get himself in trouble with actual coincidences.

You would think that since both lectured on Euclid's Elements that they would have, at some point, discussed that sort of thing. It would be interesting to know what Dee had to say about gematria, because we still really don't know from where it sprung. Examples of words that came into being because of a desire to express a number aren't that easy to identify. That to me is how it ought to work. Taking a word and finding its value doesn't tell you a whole lot about whhether that was intended to be that way. An example of it would be: taking the Sun as an example, you'd want a word that would capture 365 so you would create one which summed to 365, perhaps by using an extension of a word for which you already had a made that sort of pairing, let's say "light". The process starts with concepts which are basically rooted in number. You may have wanted 72 for God, and in doing so you can build onto it concepts where 72 is a factor (144, 360, 1080...). You'd produce many geometric ideas where God appeared in the geometry favored by the sexagesimal system. With gematria it is impossible to know if the value of a word is intended since you would have to limit yourself to one word per value to remove such guess work. The English network of spies in Europe, and especially in Spain, was made up, in part, of Jews who obviously were capable of reading and writing Hebrew. I'm assuming the spymaster would have been interested in knowing of the possibilities with it that could have been exploitable.

That's right. The integer part is just dividing by 60 and putting the remainder after the comma. It gets more interesting with decimals. The year 365 would be expressed as 6,5 The exact year 365.2588 or 365 + 279457/1080000 (nice appearance of 108) would be 6,5;15,31,41,24 in cuneiform 222 is 3, 42 142 is 2, 22 242 is 4,2 Cute isn't it? Forty-two is that number that Lewis Carroll goes batty over.

Consider this: 365-223= 142 remaining days That remainder can be expressed in sexagesimal as 2, 22 Every 4th year you would add 1 day and get 2, 23

That has to be that way. 10/7=1+0.4285714285714285714285714285714.... No matter what you divide by seven (unless it is a multiple of seven) it will produce a decimal remainder which will eventually become expressed by a remainder of 10/7. 2/7= 0 + next digits equal to 20/7 = 0.2 + next digits equal to 60/7=0.28 +next digit equal to 40/7=0.285+ next digits equal to 50/7=0.2857+next digits equal to 10/7=0.2587(1 + 0.428571428571....) There's a mathematical proof to show that all rational numbers (integer fractions) can be expressed by decimal expressions with a repeating decimal part. Irrational numbers are by definition numbers with no repeating decimal part. All fractional approximations of pi will have a repeating part. Pi never will. 223 is prime, by the way. Its the 48th prime. Prime numbers were considered equivalent to primal matter. If you divide the precession period by 48 it yields 540 which is the sum of the internal angles in a pentagon. The precession cycle does have 5 demarcations which coincide with the occurrence of the 5 pole stars which form a pentagon around the constellation of Draco. It's all nice coincidences to potentially strive to see meaning in if you are Hermetic minded soul. In a regular pentagon each angle is 108 which is the perimeter of the perfect stone ashlar of Freemasonry (the square of side=27=3^3). It was known pretty early on that the distance from Earth to Moon is 108 times the moon's diameter. You can start to see how celestial bodies and cycles take on the symbolism of polygons. Dee's pentagon in a heptagon arrangement is way to suggest overlapping cycles of 7 and 5. An example of a cycle based in 7 was the old Hepton eclipse cycle.

It's not hard to see why 364 days would have some appeal on the basis of it's proper factorization. 2, 4, 7, 13, 14, 26, 28, 52, 91, 182. In that we can see how useful it would have been to think of 13 months of 28 days (a lunar cycle which is divisible by 4, and an even period for each of its quarters). You get to have 52 equal weeks of 7 days in that year and four seasons of 91 days. This is much more appealing than 365 which has a much simpler proper factorization of 5 and 73. You can't really do a lot with that to divide the year into useful equal divisions. It's a step up in precision from 360 days which offers you more factors than any other number: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 24, 30, 36, 40, 45, 60, 72, 90, 120, 180. In this regard 364 gives you a bit of both worlds. You could think of a year as 364 + 1 and capture the same idea as 153 +1 with the number of Sonnets. What I assume these early minds were chasing was maximum elegance which would speak to cyclical harmony. If I was to ask you to give me the closest number to a solar year in days which involved the quaternary (1,2,3 and 4) you would have to involve 360. And they did count by using a base 60 system. You end up with triangles with internal angles that sum to 180 instead of 182 (which is not divisible by 3) and squares with 90 degree angles instead of 91 degree angles which are not divisible by 4. For a while there must have been a tension between what is most useful and what is actually seen. We can also ask ourselves to what degree the solar year was known. It was apparently known to be 365 +1/4 day as early as 330 BCE. As long as you account for the year you wish by adding days at the end of your calendar you are fine. The Egyptians and the Romans did this. It eventually was noticed that things had gone out of whack since 1/4 day isn't precise enough either. The Antikythera mechanism displays an Egyptian year reading with 12 months of 30 days for 360 + 5 intercalary days. The Greek one is assumed to be 365 1/4 days, but part of the mechanism are missing to confirm that. The largest gear in the mechanism has 223 teeth to display the Saros cycle eclipses by using the synodic 29.5 days for the lunar cycle. Kunrath could have presumably used 223 pages, but I think that for reasons of elegance and maximum coincidence 222 is simply better. Accounting for 111 would have been very desirable, especially if 222 is precise enough to suggest other secondary things like the golden mean. The history of the esoteric sciences is often about fudging numbers. It has to be, because the Universe doesn't actually get described in simple geometric laws. It is more about chaos, a concept that Kunrath potentially began to grasp. A near infinity of relationships that add up to something which looks a lot like simple geometric regularity...

153 is the perfect number of Biblical notoriety. A modern cultural reference: the Oak Island legends used that number for the depth of the vault (Enoch's vault before it plummeted into the abyss). 10 is the perfect number of the Greeks (an idea that comes out of the perfection of the decad in Antiquity). 153 and 1 and 10 and 1 are similar that way. You are often helped by considering the proper factors in numbers given to you. 154 has 2,7 and 11. They sum to 20 (TT). if you are quick on the draw you will see that 2x11/7is the ancient approximation of pi that comes out of the continued fraction expression. TT is of course pi when the two Tees are touching. It would not be surprising to see this involved in something which you have noticed has a pyramid shape reference. The pyramid with height equal to a multiple of phi is going to represent one half of an octahedron which you can fit in a circle/sphere. That pyramid will represent one half of a duality. The idea with the pyramid is that you can Hermetically project yourself into the heavens with it. I suppose one could see that as taking one step beyond the perfection of the material world. Taking that next step baby...it's a hard step to take, lol.