Quest4Treasure Archives

This thread is a catch-all for possibly tidying up the reason BP put in the Birthstones/Flowers/Months (and possibly Zodiac and Tarot) symbols in the images and verses. For example, there may be a way of matching verse to image, if, we had a picture with a garnet (January) and a verse talking about Capricorn -- or a famous person born in the month of January. Also, if we knew the meaning behind the birthstone (constancy) and Zodiac symbol (goat with a fish tail that the word 'cornicopia' comes from, according to legend) and the meaning behind the flower ((white) carnation -- woman's good luck symbol, purity, innocence . . . [Hmmm obviously that can't be mine.  Or at least no one saw me at the time.  Prove it if you dare.] Well, anyway, you see what might start showing up. From the International Colored Gemstone association website ( www.gemstone.org ): "Most gem scholars agree that the tradition of birthstones arose from the Breastplate of Aaron: a ceremonial religious garment set with twelve gemstones that represented the twelve tribes of Israel and also corresponded with the twelve signs of the zodiac and the twelve months of the year." And here is a short list taken from the 1st of each month's list from that site (Note the 'Zodiac' stone can be wildly different!) + a birth-flowers guide from "www.birthflowersguide.com": January -- Garnet -- Capricorn (ruby) -- Carnation ("Flower of the Gods"/"Divine Flower" -- pride, beauty, fascination, love, and distinction) February -- Amethyst -- Aquarius (garnet) -- Violet or Iris ("Rainbow" -- faith, wisdom, and hope) March -- Aquamarine -- Pisces (amethyst) -- Daffodil ("?" --rebirth, respect, regard, and unrequited love) April -- Diamond -- Aries (bloodstone) -- Sweet Pea or Gerbera Daisy ("?" -- implicity and modesty) May -- Emerald -- Taurus (sapphire) -- Liily of the Vally/Majalis ("That which belongs to May" -- humilty, chastity, sweetness, and purity) June -- Moonstone/Alexandrite -- Gemini (agate) -- Rose (associated with "Eros" -- red means you love the reciever) July -- Ruby -- Cancer (emerald) -- Larkspur ("?" -- means lightness and levity) August -- Peridot -- Leo (onyx) -- Gladiolus (named after "gladiators" for swordlike leaves -- means remeberance) September -- Sapphire -- Virgo (carnelian) -- Aster ("Star" -- patience and daintiness) October -- Opal or Tourmaline -- Libra (peridot) -- Marigold/Calendula ("winning grace" -- considered a sacred flower) November -- Topaz or Citrine -- Scorpio (beryl) -- Crysanthyemum ("?" -- compassion/friendship/secret love/royal flower of the Japanese Emperor and symbol of the sun) December -- Touquoise, Blue Topaz, or Tanzinite -- Sagittaurius (topaz) -- Paperwhite Narcissus ("Narcissus" of Greek Lore -- recipient is sweet) It should also be noted that in the colored plates, 6 of the stones had what is known as an 'emerald' (square-shaped) cut (diamond, garnet, aqumarine, emerald, peridot, and topaz) while 5 others had a 'cabachon' (smooth and round top with flat bottom) cut (sapphire. turquoise, ruby, opal, and amethyst) while the remaining 1 could be considered 'uncut' (the pearl). I shall possibly post more of stuff as I sort through my papers to see what is relevant to what symbols may have a month in common . . . Also, has anyone noticed that some of the way the main figures in the plates are standing look a lot like classic Tarot figures?  If you go to www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Tarot_Cards and look at the photo on the left side bar, amoung the cards you will find a pretty close match for the woman in image 11 (flying hair, moon/star in the background, and everything!).  Is she part of the Major Arcana, in which case shoe would have a number assigned to her?  Are all the plates arranged to be a nice Tarot reading, with an overarching theme? Things that make me go hmmmmm . . .

Unknown: Also, has anyone noticed that some of the way the main figures in the plates are standing look a lot like classic Tarot figures? Er....there is no "classic" Tarot. There is a well-known tarot, better known as the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, which was drawn in the 1920's. There is a French tarot which does not have any of the images resembling the pictures of the Secret. These two are the most well-known of the decks available, but there are literally hundreds of decks available--with themes ranging from post-modern art to Alice in Wonderland. These tarot decks are pretty much made up out of whomever designed them's imagination, not based on any "formula" except the inherent meanings of the suits and numbers. I think it's overreaching to try to find any themes of the Tarot in the Secret, and even if there were some, from the solutions of the two casques found so far, it would seem to make little to no difference. I've studied Tarot for more than 30 years now, and I can vouch for this statement with more than just my own opinion. The puzzles are riddles. They aren't arcane. They aren't "mystical." They're pretty much just word-play and rebuses in picture form. I think it really muddies the waters to try to find extra meaning when the riddles of words and pictures are enough to keep these casques from being found for more than 27 years now. The problem with The Secret is that what was relevant and obvious THEN may not be now--it may not even exist any more. It's tempting to try to overlay the whole book with hidden or occult meaning, but that doesn't help find the casques at all, and wasn't used to find the ones that were found. If you pick apart the Cleveland and Chicago solves, they were simple equations; matching picture with word, until one arrived at a eureka moment and realized how the location was encoded. Neither solution had to even be that precise--as long as the locale was narrowed down to a 500 square foot area, the holes could be dug, the casques were found. There are plenty of clues both visual and verbal in each of the images and verses to do this. Adding anything else is just asking for obfuscation.

paperclip wrote:: If you go to www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Tarot_Cards and look at the photo on the left side bar, amoung the cards you will find a pretty close match for the woman in image 11 (flying hair, moon/star in the background, and everything!). Thank you for telling me that there is no classic Tarot artwork that is considered canonical.  That would mean that any artwork found resembling the artwork in "The Secret" might have an actual connection than being just a well known arch-type. Did anyone else take a look at the actual artwork I was referring to?  Opinions . . . ?

Unknown: Thank you for telling me that there is no classic Tarot artwork that is considered canonical.  That would mean that any artwork found resembling the artwork in "The Secret" might have an actual connection than being just a well known arch-type . It's possible, I suppose, but as I said before, it will probably be irrelevant. Connections like this are probably not part of the solutions. It's kind of like saying that the Centaur in the Cleveland picture (image 4) is in the same pose as the Knight of Swords in the XYZ Tarot Deck. As for the picture, it does resemble image 11 somewhat, but since you aren't going to be able to find out which deck it is, which card it is and who assembled the collage it's not going to be much help.

Possible Zodiac correspondences with image months. 1. June - Gemini 2. April - Aries 3. Jan - Capricorn 4. Mar - Pisces 5. May - Taurus (Chicago bulls) 6. Sept - Virgo 7. Dec - Sagittarius 8. July - Cancer (96 suggested as a coordinate) 9. Oct - Libra 10. Feb - Aquarius 11. Aug - Leo 12. Nov - Scorpio

Again, so what? The correlations are interesting, and confirm the months/numbers of the paintings, but they do not lead to casque locations. They simply beef up the already obvious associations with birthstones and months, which is only helpful in one of the paintings: the topaz. If you had to identify the topaz, you probalby would not automatically think "blue stone" even though topaz are blue and quite often too. However, most people think of topaz as golden or yellow. By the process of elimination, you can find the topaz, but even if you do, it doesn't lead you to a solution.

Just a bit of Elemental brainstorming. The order of elements from the astrological signs of the images is: Air Fire Earth Water Earth Earth Fire Water Air Air Fire Water

The progression of the Air signs. The hands draw apart. The gem crosses the golden arch.

The progression of the Fire signs. On the left page, a mask over a lion. On the right pages - a mask over a lioness...? (Image 10 looks at and resembles Image 11. Image 10 has been compared to a Milwaukee lion.)

shecrab wrote:: Again, so what? Well there are obviously clues for the numbers 1-12 in this -- the clocks, flowers, birthstones, etc., and maybe the zodiac is part of it.  If there's a reliable pattern that can be established, it might help clear up the pairing of images and verses, and help clear up some things like "twice as many east steps as the hour."  No one knows, though.

The progression of the Earth signs. The face turns away. Turn but a stone, and stir a wing Tis ye, tis your estranged faces That miss the many-splendoured thing The progression of the Water signs. White figures facing west.

Revisiting the order of elements: The signs of the zodiac are organised into four groups of three; air signs, fire signs, earth signs, water signs. Each image corresponds with a month, hence a sign of the zodiac, and therefore an element. Taking the images in order, you get: Air Fire Earth Water  /  Earth Earth Fire Water  /  Air Air Fire Water There's no theory which explains the order of the images, so any pattern here would be a bonus. This pattern isn't as obvious as it might be, but it doesn't look completely random either. I tried working out a list of elements for the order of the verses I've adopted to see if there might be any correlation. The choice of verses I've been using lately is: Image 1 - Verse  6 (San Fransisco, RLS) Image 2 - Verse 5 (Charleston, Poe / Moultrie) Image 3 - Verse 11 (Roanoke, Oz) Image 4 - Verse 4 (Cleveland) - confirmed Image 5 - Verse 12 (Chicago) - confirmed Image 6 -  Verse 9 (Florida, FOY - first chapter) - popular Image 7 - Verse 7 (New Orleans, Stone wall etc) Image 8 - Verse 1 (Houston, 982) - popular Image 9 - Verse 2 (Montreal) Image 10 - Verse 8 (Milwaukee, three stories etc) - popular Image 11 - Verse 3 (Boston, Thucydides) - popular Image 12 - Verse 10 (NY, Isle of B) - popular (Apart from the two confirmed matches, there are several that seem to be widely accepted, which I've marked as "popular", but I'm not saying any of these are right. It's just a personal preference.) By taking the verse number as a month number (eg Verse 1 = January), and listing them in order of the associated image as above, you get the following list of elements: Air Earth Water Fire / Fire Earth Water Earth / Air Fire Water Air I noticed that this gives three groups with the same combination of elements as the list shown above for the images, so I then looked to see if there was a transformation which would convert one into the other: Images: AFEW   EEFW   AAFW Verses: AEWF   FEWE   AFWA Note that in each line, the Water elements have a fixed position in the groups of four. Also note that when comparing the image and verse groups, each has a matching pair which I'll call the "anchor". Take the image sequence. Within each group of four, rotate the letter pair following the anchor... ...then the letter pair following that... ...and you've transformed the list of image elements into the list of verse elements. A method like this could provide confirmation that a set of image/verse matches is correct, without supplying a system which could be used to calculate them in the first place.

Erexere...do you have the paperback...? The book seems to be structured around the twelve months, which the book orders in several different ways through their correspondences with gems and tribes. 1) The order of the images 2) The order of the verses 3) The order of the litany 4) The order of the map None of these follows the order of the months, but I can't believe they're entirely random. I've wondered if there might be some kind of key which makes sense of these orderings, or points to some kind of message related to "The Secret". There are various references to peace and liberty, for instance. For Fairy, Peace the real accord Hush In truth, be free Freedom at the birth of a century There's a poem "Liberty and Peace" which mentions various places that feature in the book (eg Britain, Rome, Spain, Germany, Charleston), "celebrating the genesis of the United States of America as a country separate from Great Britain" - something that reminded me of the migration of the Fair Folk. "Phillis Wheatley (1753 – December 5, 1784) was the first published African American poet and first African-American woman whose writings were published. Born in Gambia, Senegal, she was made a slave at age seven. She was purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston." "Peace Liberty" is 12 letters. Or there's "Commonwealth", a twelve-letter word meaning "fraternal associations of sovereign nations", reminding me of the Fair Folk and Man forming a truce and living in peace together as described in the book. Commonwealth Ave possibly comes up in Boston. It has a statue of Sarmiento, who also crops up in the verses. There are several other verses in the book, like the ones at the beginning and end, which have never been discussed, and may not be completely random. To find the keys is your reward For Fairy, peace the real accord The Fair Folk come to you With their challenge and a pact And what does this mean...? The final couplet in the postscript... For Fair Folk's peace Goodness first Seems a weird phrase to end on, and I'm wondering if it has some other meaning. Just some random thoughts here.

I use to take naps and admire all the new age antiquities when I was a child growing up when my mother ran an astrology center.  I could really go down that road of birthstones and zodiac but I'm not wanting to trust it here, since there are many pitfalls of interpretation.  If I run out of toys to play with then I will go there, but I don't think tbe collaborative focus of the book was anything more than marketing a fun treasure hunt. I don't own the book, so I can only judge from what I've read about it.  I thought the hunt itself was strictly defined by the images and verses and the rest of the book was filler.  I intend to get a copy soon, so I'm not such a carpet bagger in this.

erexere wrote:: I thought the hunt itself was strictly defined by the images and verses and the rest of the book was filler. (That's the conventional wisdom, but I didn't think you took much notice of that. )

I haven't even read all the verses yet.  I'm trying to avoid being overwhelmed.  New Orleans is really tough to chew on. I feel I must agree there is a connection to the jewels.  Having the plan to design a 12 jewel payout I can imagine BP contacted a jeweler and said "give me 12 stones for this much money, all different, like birthstones, and as big as can be".  He then looked at each and went to his research with a certain inspiration after looking at each jewel.  I haven't done any analysis that way yet, maybe I should...its probably a huge blindspot in my process.

He probably never even had to go to a jeweler. I can buy all those stones at almost any rock/gem show for little $$ comparitively. Unset stones are much cheaper than set stones--the setting is probably 2/3 of the price of any jewel you buy at a jeweler's; the name of the jeweler is another chunk of the cost. I go to gem shows all the time around here, and you can also buy unset stones on eBay cheaply--though BP would not have had eBay at the time he wrote The Secret.  In the late 70's, unset gems would have cost him probably less than $200 for all 12. This hunt was never about the value of the prizes, but the hunt in finding the buried treasure.