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This would have made a typically topical Hope (Suz) post, so a fitting tribute to her memory.
Tonight Australians should be be able to see the biggest and brightest moon of the year.
It has been called the “pink supermoon”, but expert astronomers say it won’t be pink, and may not be so super but it is undoubtedly worth a look.
A supermoon is classified as a full moon which is slightly closer to Earth than usual, giving it the appearance of being marginally larger and brighter. Typically, on average 10% closer and 20% bigger in area and brightness.
A supermoon occurs when the moon reaches the closest point to Earth in its 27-day orbit when it happens to be full, a condition which occurs approximately once a year.
The moon will be around 40,000 kilometres closer to Earth than usual, and while it might be called pink, this is merely a name, like “blue moon”. In simple terms pink means the April full moon although it is still likely to be silver or yellow-tinged in the sky.
The only time that the moon takes on unusual colours for the moon is if for instance, we are viewing it through either smoky or dusty skies which were present last summer or during a lunar eclipse.
Nevertheless it’s still worth checking out from the garden if you have one, or gazing out the window.
Moon gazing is a rewarding astronomical pursuit ... the naked eye, enables us to see the dark blotches on the orb which are actually basalt plains.
Even a reasonably cheap set of binoculars or a telescope, allows us to see craters and some of the mountains.
In fact, given these days of Coronavirus quarantine, stargazing could be an engaging family activity. Some of the bright stars and planets are easily observed with the unaided eye.
Enjil slept uncomfortably, his mind full of torment in fear of the Examination to come. He was standing in front of the Elders, those of the supreme rank, and he had nothing to say! He had not found a proof or a clever hypothesis to place before them on this auspicious day. And the day could not be put back - it marched right up to him, dragging him out brutally into the open, while the Elders, in their crimson robes, sat at the high table waiting for him. They motioned him to come up. He climbed up the steps and went to the blackboard and picked up the dry chalk in his wet, nervous hands.
Villagers crammed the square to see him perform. Word had gone out that the boy with the limp had magic powers; for when he lay dying from smallpox a strange bird had suddenly flown in and settled on his fevered brow, pecking at it. Superstition said it was the devil who seized a person's brain at such times, to give out great powers only to suck it back again at the moment of death, to prevent that tender soul from being re-born. And amazingly, as the bird flew away Enjil recovered and began talking in strange languages and writing down sheets of numbers, confusing everyone with ideas that they had never heard of
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Stories travelled through the mountain communities about the boy with the pockmarked face. How could the child be so precocious if not for some super-natural power? (No-one mentioned the devil's name for that would bring bad luck down on all of them!)
Enjil's beleaguered parents took him to the temple and gave him away to the priests, who in turn gave him away to the Academy and the Elders, these same Elders who now were laughing in his face- "Where is the cleverness that brought you here?", they mocked. "You insult us with your silence. We know who you are; The Devil's Child, a horrible trick; a wretch we now must throw out from this place of learning - Go! Only scholars are admitted here, true scholars like Vivek, who can work out the symmetry of magic squares better than you. " The insults came thick and fast like poisoned darts thrown at him, tipped with venom.
But the boy had nothing to say, his hand stuck fixed in the air with the chalk wet in his fingers. And the villagers became angry at being deceived. Provoked by Vivek, Enjil's older rival for the title of Master; the villagers aroused themselves into a riot. As the mob hurtled towards him Enjil woke up with a scream, his heart racing. The sweat poured off him; he felt he was dying. But framed in his window the night moon shone brightly, the wind rustling the leaves like waves washing the shore. There was no mob, there were no accusing Elders. Everything was quiet and peaceful. There was really nothing wrong with the world, or him. The Examination was still days away; and he was well prepared!
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His thesis was done - he had a proof written out in the higher algebra which his mentor had said would easily give him the title of Master; it was the sort of thing the Elders would like, for it was similar to the studies each of them had done. "It is not about being original, Enjil", his mentor said, "for you must not sit uncomfortably in your superiors minds. If you present something they do not understand, or agree with as high learning, they will fail you. Conform, and then privately get on with your real discoveries. That is what we all do. " His teacher shrugged at the way life was at the Academy and worry grew on the old man's face at the thought of what his stubborn student might do. But Enjil had listened, he had conformed - his thesis was as fine a piece of complicated mathematics as one could wish for; deliberately put together in an obscure way so that difficulties abounded in every line of the argument. In truth, Enjil had a much simpler proof but it would appear too easy. So he had put it to one side and applied himself to obscurities in the demonstration of his thesis, knowing this approach would be more favoured by the Elders. And the peace of the night said he had nothing to worry about but go back to sleep and wait happily for that day of the Examination.
As he lay there looking up at the moon, his mind began to wander over the ideas he really loved to think about, like the expansion of3t. Was there a pattern to it? Or how many unlike squares could fit into a rectangle or another square? This was a problem no one at the Academy could solve, though /Page 15/ Enjil had come near. Was every even integer the sum
of two prime numbers as ten was the sum of three plus seven?
And there was more - the multiplication patterns along diagonals used by the Chinese or the elegant ratios used by the ancient geometers that gave beauty and shape to the spiral and to the growth of the leaves around a stalk or the petals in a flower.
As he roamed through the numbers in his mind a strange thing then happened. A moon beam suddenly reached out to him and dropped to Earth and turned into a shining woman. "So here you are!", she said smiling. "I have kept looking out for you. I find you here of all places, in a musty old Academy or is it a temple?" She Wrinkled up her nose at the small room he slept in. The woman stroked his leg- "Does your leg hurt? I saw you as a child, limping, dragging your leg through the sand, making patterns that were wonderful-my friends still talk about you. I am Soma. Do you still play such games? You gave me and my companions a lot to think about that day, about the possible patterns in a matrix, instead of just the straight across and up and down. And now here you are, almost fully grown, yet still only a boy and sitting for the Examination of Master! Hah, that will sound fine - Master Enjil, Master Mathematician! How'd you like that?"
She patted him on the head and stroked his hair. Enjil could see the beautiful colours in her eyes. Her energy flowed into him. She took his thoughts away and she spoke to him:
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"There are the cumbersome proofs you follow that only the few will ever understand. Your proofs are carrion for those vultures, the Elders. So why don't you do something else, something amazingly different for your Examination? You are capable of it! Why give the elders what they want, such a narrow outcome from your learning; why not something that everyone can enjoy?
Imagine even the villagers following your every sign on the blackboard, understanding it and seeing a simple but great truth unravelling right before their eyes. Something that lies under their noses, wouldn't that be fun?
How about drawing the many different shapes of squares it takes to fit in just one square. Ah - I know you were thinking of this already. You see I know your thoughts - so I count them out. And I'll spoil it for you anyway, I'm going to give you the answer; twenty-four! Yes, don't look so amazed, it takes that many different squares to fit into one square. You want to know the size of the square that allows this to happen? Ah, that is harder. That you must work out for yourself ." She smiled teasingly and added, "Do you know the answer to the simpler problem; how many different squares does it take to fit in one rectangle? I'll tell you: It's nine! Nine unequal squares go to make up a rectangle."
"But why bother about geometry; why not something simpler than that? What is it that everyone knows and feels expert about? I'll tell you. It's numbers of course! Imagine the village folk clapping hands and cheering as they see you, their /Page17/ new master; working with the humble materials of numbers, the tools they use every day of their lives to count coins and goats and sacks of grain from the harvest. Let your mind dwell on this: numbers! Take the most simple ones. Think of their make up. Don't be afraid of the Elders; they are not bad men, but men with too much oldness stuffed into their brains. Take them back to their childhood, let them smile again and hop, skip and jump through your constructions; what do you think of that? You smile? Do I take that as yes? Good! Then here is the riddle you must solve. And remember I will be watching, now that I have found you; but I won't help. I will only give you a signal when you succeed. Remember the only thing that will slow you down or stop you is the amount your mind has grown up to be like the Elders, the brain of an expert. The problem I set is for a child, with a mind that in innocence questions everything and finds new beginnings. I too, believe it or not, am like that. I live in the moon and each night I set a new day. The turning of a fresh beginning uplifts me. It keeps me from falling into endings and dull repeat reasonings. Think about that. In your dreams I will speak to you, I will help. My spirit will be with you. But now I must go for I have to set another day. And this is the question I leave you with:
What is the fixed point in the wind?"
The woman withdrew along the moonbeam and vanished as if she had never been.
Enjil sat up. He looked hard at the moon, staring into the white disc of cold light - and the moment of magic vanished. Was it a trick? Was Vivek his arch rival for the title of Master trying to hypnotise him from a distance? If he listened to the woman it would be like suicide. Standing in that great open courtyard and speaking about simple things that did not need proofs would have the Elders laughing at him, baying like jackals at his feeble efforts. Certainly he would be thrown out. This must indeed be a hex put on him by his enemies!
But what was the fixed point in the wind? The question intrigued and teased him. How can something be unmoving in the swirling wind; what was its fix, if indeed there was such a point? For hours he lay awake struggling with these thoughts until his tired brain came to a stop and wanted rest. Finally Enjil fell asleep. The woman in the moon entered his dreams.
And he woke up with a new conviction - the doubts and torments of the night well behind him. He whistled and even smiled at Vivek, winking at his arch rival as if to say he had prepared a brilliant proof Enjil laughed to himself when he thought of the title he would introduce to his Elders on the day of the Examination. He would wear the yellow robe of scholarship, go up to the blackboard and announce in his most stern voice the customary words, "My respectful Elders and Seniors. I submit for your Examination and proper adjudication this thesis I have now prepared for the award of the Most Expert Master of Mathematics, the honour I now seek, /Page 19/ and pronounce as the title of my learned subject: 'The Fixed Points in the Wind'." He could see them writhing in agony, splitting their sides with laughter and thirsting for his blood. The images made him break out in a cold sweat. But a small voice spoke inside saying, "Don't be afraid - of course you can do it - after all it is an easy question - so solve it like a child, think like one, just like I said."
To solve the riddle Enjil went to a secluded spot and sat in the shade of a banyon tree and blanked everything he knew out of his mind. The great blackness descended. Nothing moved. Shadows went into deeper shadows, layer into layer. A black disc grew. First as a dot, then a circle, then a rushing blind movement. Then the numbers cameout, tumbling one over the other; rolling the patterns over in his head. There were the star patterns, zigzags, squares, cubes, seesaws and the weaving patterns going in and out, all twisting over each other. Mindful of the woman spirit, he looked at the simplest numbers; he followed their trails, the white and black patterns, some, dotted with colour; moving like the wind, changing shape and turning all the time. And there in the simplest patterns were points that did not move or change, no matter what the numbers were. And they were fixed points. When the woman in the moon had talked of the wind Enjil knew she must have spoken of numbers, jumping over each other in gusts of multiplications or blowing steadily in ordered breezes of additions and subtractions. But within these patterns, there was one number and point through which all the others /Page20/ seemed to gather- it indeed must be the fixed point. Could that be the answer to the riddle?
Then Enjil opened his eyes and composed his thesis. It was so simple that he laughed out loud. Never mind the Elders - they would have to love it, for he would draw the movements of all numbers in one simple diagram. What was clever about it was the method he had in his mind. He would take the secret code the Elders knew about but had never thought of using to look beyond their rituals of prophecy, for they would take the letters of someone's name and use such secret numbers to divine the character of that person. But Enjil vowed to go beyond this.
That night he wrote out his thesis. When he had finished he went out into the deserted courtyard and held up each page to the moon. "Look ", he said to the woman in the moon, "I have finished - the task is done. I pray these are the answers."
A shape seemed to move across the face of the yellow disc though he could not be sure. But the woman did not appear. The wind picked up, the night chill made him shiver. Tomorrow was the day, and Vivek would be hoping for his downfall; and his teacher would fret to the last moment as the Elders assembled, sharpening their wits in readiness to humble the nervous candidate. The crowd would gather and settle. Everyone would be waiting, watching.
Still, Enjil was at peace. His ideas were simple, innocent; he believed they would shine through no matter what. While Vivek performed great feats /Page 21/ of algebra Enjil would offer to the Elders and the gathered crowd the four precious mirrors of arithmetic. They could all laugh or puzzle at the reflections he would show them, but in time their doubts would vanish or be blown away, just as the gusting wind cleans out the dirt lying on the ground.
Suddenly a bright light flared, lighting up the compound for an instant, and then faded. Had the woman come to him and acknowledged his answer? Enjil rolled up the pages of his thesis and held up his hand, just in case, to the night sky in salute and farewell and then went to bed. He slept the peace of the innocent, a fixed point himself in that night of swirling anxieties and jealousies. Tomorrow would be a new beginning.
I wear Enjil's Talisman now, whenever I calculate and look into numbers, and remember the mathematician who was a boy. He inspires me to look afresh at things.
Enjil went on to be famous. He surprised the Elders with his arguments of the fixed point in numbers; he astonished the crowd. And if not for them cheering as they did at what was being drawn on the board, the Elders would surely have failed him - the old men being insulted that there was no high algebra or long- winded, obscure complications to be resolved. Enjil's workings were just basic arithmetic, they grumbled, which even a nine year old could follow, they whispered to each other. It was laughable; it was ridiculous and all too simple. But the crowd cheered and cried out, "Master, Master," so many times, that the Elders /Page 22/ gave in. On the boy's shoulders they placed the purple sash of Master embroidered with winding circular motifs in gold thread, and then they held up Enjil's hand to the crowd who in turn roared, "Mas-Ter, Mas- Ter". The four syllable chant rocked the compound. When the dust cleared and the noise subsided and the courtyard was empty, the temple still hummed long into the night with stories of the new Master's cheek and sheer luck.
So Enjil went on to be the real Master of the Academy, outshining everyone and everything. He proved many things, much of it beyond the best minds in that Academy of high learning. But he kept faithful, from what we know of his teachings, to the simple and straightfoward, and always the beautiful and intriguing. The Master saw patterns where others only saw calculations.
Then disaster struck. In the wars that ravaged the country the Academy was set on fire and the intellectuals speared to death. Enjil and his papers and all the great library of learning in the Academy were lost forever. No one found the young mathematician's body. Soon the story went out confirming Enjil as a spirit child, one that visited Earth now and then to remind us of the greater glories that hid elsewhere. Others said it was the work of the devil, who flew in to collect the soul that he had claimed for himself long ago, when the little boy had lain dying from a fierce attack of smallpox.
Whatever the truth of it the crooked smile and limping walk of the Master was no more, severely missed by those who loved him. Those who were there /Page 23/ on that day of the Examination told others. And the words and diagrams spread. The ideas travelled from community to community; changes and additions were made along the way. But the basic structure Enjil proposed is still there in the teaching.
Modem ways have swept across the culture of this great land and hand calculators and computers have taken away the simple romance of numbers, but in remote parts of the highlands, in locked away villages, young mathematicians still look at Enjil's patterns and meditate for half an hour before doing any serious mental computation.
What follows is a trace of the young Master's working, gleaned from private study and old village stories. With Enjil we move towards finding the magic of numbers and that special point, which though full of movement itself, remains unmoving and stationary; just as a fixed point does in the wind.
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Armed with the code we go on to look into the precious mirrors of arithmetic, the four infinite planes of adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying, that manipulate all numbers.
The sigma code lays down a trace of how numbers work in secret, we can peer into their basic patterns. But it is only when these patterns are seen as a whole that the beauty of the code is revealed and the astonishing truth of number nine at the heart of our number system.
(And here we must thank zero for even allowing the sigma code to exist. For without zero the process of reduction would not work. Adding digits to pare down to a single digit is dependent on our unique placement value system of units, tens, hundreds, etc. Zero allows the code to be bound within the range 1-9)."
Somewhere along the way, according to Robert Graves, 9 became the number of lunar wisdom.12
This number is found often in the mythologies of the world. the Viking god Odin hung for nine days and nights on the World Tree in order to acquire the secret of the runes, those magic symbols out of which writing and numbers grew. Only a terrible sacrifice would give away this secret, which conveyed upon its owner power and dominion over all, so Odin hung from his neck those long 9 days and nights over the 'bottomless abyss'. In the tree were 9 worlds, and another god was said to have been born of 9 mothers.
Robert Graves, in his White Goddess, Is intrigued by the seemingly recurring quality of the number 72 in early myth and ritual. Graves tells his reader that 72 is always connected with the number 5, which reflects, among other things, the five Celtic dialects that he was investigating. Of course, 5 x 72= 360, 360 x 72= 25,920. Five is also the number of the planets known to the ancient world, that is, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus Mercury.
Graves suggests a religious mystery bound up with two ancient Celtic 'Tree Alphabets' or cipher alphabets, which as genuine articles of Druidism were orally preserved and transmitted for centuries. He argues convincingly that the ancient poetry of Europe was ultimately based on what its composers believed to be magical principles, the rudiments of which formed a close religious secret for centuries. In time these were-garbled, discredited and forgotten.
Among the many signs of the transmission of special numbers he points out that the aggregate number of letter strokes for the complete 22-letter Ogham alphabet that he is studying is 72 and that this number is the multiple of 9, 'the number of lunar wisdom'. . . . he then mentions something about 'the seventy day season during which Venus moves successively from. maximum eastern elongation 'to inferior conjunction and maximum western elongation'.13
The message was sent from a guest who specified his name as Babel:
On Fri, 21 Feb 2020 at 22:19
Subject: I know who you are and what this site means
There is nothing to decipher, no math equations to solve & your riddles are
no riddles at all. The pictures may not be visible to other ppl but I can
see them clearly. The site doesn't scare or impress me! The "end of the
world" "revelation" will not be for another 2 billion years. By then all
of us plus this site will be gone. There is nothing supernatural or
cryptic about this except for conspiracy theorists who wish to argue over
it's meaning. Try harder because it isn't cryptic enough 2 confuse or
blind people like myself who can see what others cannot. Be very careful
with what you are playing with because you are very close to opening a door
that you will not be able to close and with what you believe is fun will
unleash something that you cannot control. This is no threat because there
is no need for one. Its a cautious warning! Careful they are watching &
they are waiting!
Dear theone, What a titan of a deep knowledge digger you are, nay a miner is perhaps a more appropriate suffix description. You show such great kindness bringing all these golden nuggets to the surface from the 973-eht-namuh-973 main site to those who are less familiar with our labyrinth of learning and enlightenment, as well as a depth of respect for the memory of our former great contributor Hope. Kind Regards Redbeck
To augment your already major contribution and with thanks, some more sign posts from David Denison.
