© Gunnar Tómasson

1 January 2016

I. The Shugborough Cipher Mystery¹

179294

In the grounds of Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, England, sits an 18^th-Century monument known as the Shepherd’s Monument. The Monument contains a relief, depicting a copy of a Nicolas Poussin painting, and a cipher text that has stumped historians and decoders for hundreds of years. What is the meaning of this outwardly simple, 10-letter text? Why was it carved onto the monument? Was it a declaration of undying love, a code to locate something, or a Biblical reference? While the meaning of the Shugborough Inscription has never been verified, there have been several theories as to what it means.

The Shepherd’s Monument was commissioned by Thomas Anson, a member of the British Parliament, and crafted sometime between 1748 and 1763 by Flemish sculptor Peter Schee. The monument consists of a relief of Poussin’s painting, ‘The Shepherds of Arcadia’, which depicts a woman and three shepherds, with two shepherds pointing towards a tomb. Carved on the tomb is “Et in arcadia ego,” or “I am even in Arcadia” in Latin.

The mysterious inscription that has yet to be decoded is located beneath the relief, and contains the letters O U O S V A V V. Framing these eight letters, at a slightly lower level, are the letters D M.  So cryptic is the cipher text, that it became a feature in the international bestseller ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’ by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, and Dan Brown’s historical thriller, ‘The Da Vinci Code’. Both books presented the theory that Nicolas Poussin was a member of the secretive Priory of Sion, a Medieval monastic order, and that his painting ‘The Shepherds of Arcadia’ contains deep esoteric messages hidden within it.

Several famous individuals have attempted to determine the meaning of the inscription, including Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, and Josiah Wedgewood. Each of them failed to determine the purpose or meaning of the letters. Numerous theories have been put forward regarding the meaning of this cryptic message, none of which have been verified. Some of the interpretations are acrostic, trying to match each letter to the first letter of a word, while others are non-acrostic. […]

One of the most popular beliefs, which emerged following the world-wide fascination with ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’, is that the inscription encodes secrets relating to the Priory of Sion. Indeed, Pierre Plantard, founder of the fringe fraternal organization, adopted „Et in Arcadia ego”, which appears on both Nicolas Poussin’s painting and the Shepherd’s Monument, as the motto of both his family and the Priory of Sion. Proponents of this theory believe that decoding the inscription, supposedly masonic symbols, would lead to the location of the Holy Grail.

It is not clear whether the inscription will ever be decoded, nor whether it was ever intended to be. Whoever inscribed it must have known that the letters would last throughout the centuries, and be viewed by civilizations to come. It is possible that only a select few ever knew the purpose of the letters and what they stand for. So for now, the Shugborough Inscription remains a mysterious puzzle for individuals to try to solve, though its true meaning may have already been lost to the pages of history.

The Shugborough Hall Monument was constructed around 1748, featuring a mirror image of Poussin’s 17th century painting Les Bergers d’Arcadie and the letters D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.  On the death of George Anson of Shugborough Hall in 1762, an apparent reference was made to the monument’s imagery in the following poem which was read aloud in Parliament:

17361 = Upon that storied marble cast thine eye.

15188 = The scene commands a moralising sigh.

14189 = E’en in Arcadia’s bless’d Elysian plains,

22857 = Amidst the laughing nymphs and sportive swains,

18540 = See festal joy subside, with melting grace,

14427 = And pity visit the half-smiling face;

21938 = Where now the dance, the lute, the nuptial feast,

19696 = The passion throbbing in the lover’s breast,

16971 = Life’s emblem here, in youth and vernal bloom,

  18127 = But reason’s finger pointing at the tomb.

179294

II. Shugborough Monument Ciphers

25447

7582 = Les Bergers d‘Arcadie

6085 = O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.

1516 = Cain

767 = D.M.²

4000 = Flaming Sword

5497 = Et in Arcadia Ego

25447

III. Snorri Sturluson‘s Mission

(Íslendinga saga, 38. k.)

721747

Snorri Sturluson var tvá vetr með Skúla, sem fyrr var ritat. Gerðu þeir Hákon konungr ok Skúli hann skutilsvein sinn. En um várit ætlaði Snorri til Íslands. En þó váru Nóregsmenn miklir óvinir Íslendinga ok mestir Oddaverja – af ránum þeim, er urðu á Eyrum. Kom því svá, at ráðit var, at herja skyldi til Íslands um sumarit. Váru til ráðin skip ok menn, hverir fara skyldi. En til þeirar ferðar váru flestir inir vitrari menn mjök ófúsir ok töldu margar latar á. Guðmundr skáld Oddsson var þá með Skúla jarli. Hann kvað vísu þessa:

Hvat skalk fyr mik, hyrjar hreggmildr jöfurr, leggja,

gram fregn at því gegnan, geirnets, sumar þetta?

Byrjar, hafs, at herja, hyrsveigir, mér eigi,

sárs viðr jarl, á órar ættleifðir, svan reifðan.

Snorri latti mjök ferðarinnar ok kallaði þat ráð at gera sér at vinum ina beztu menn á Íslandi ok kallaðist skjótt mega svá koma sínum orðum, at mönnum myndi sýnast at snúast til hlýðni vid Nóregshöfðingja. Hann sagði ok svá, at þá váru aðrir eigi meiri menn á Íslandi en bræðr hans, er Sæmund leið, en kallaði þá mundu mjök eftir sínum orðum víkja, þá er hann kæmi til. En við slíkar fortölur slævaðist heldr skap jarlsins, ok lagði hann þat ráð til, at Íslendingar skyldi biðja Hákon konung, at hann bæði fyrir þeim, at eigi yrði herferðin.

Konungrinn var þá ungr, en Dagfinnr lögmaðr, er þá var ráðgjafi hans, var inn mesti vinr Íslendinga. Ok var þat af gert, at konungr réð, at eigi varð herförin. En þeir Hákon konungr ok Skúli jarl gerðu Snorra lendan mann sinn. Var þat mest ráð þeira jarls ok Snorra. En Snorri skyldi leita við Íslendinga, at þeir snerist til hlýðni við Nóregshöfðingja. Snorri skyldi senda utan Jón, son sinn, ok skyldi hann vera í gíslingu með jarli, at þat endist, sem mælt var. = 721747

IV. Völuspá/Sybil’s Prophecy

(Saga Myth)

22025

4714 = Völuspá

Sacred Triangle of Pagan Iceland

Cain‘s Course through Life

7196 = Bergþórshváll

6067 = Miðeyjarhólmr

3027 = Helgafell

Resurrection from Miðeyjarhólmr

Holy Sepulchre Opens At Helgafell/Holy Mountain

(Saga Myth)

-5979 = Girth House³

New Earth

  7000 = Microcosmos – Man in God‘s Image

22025

I + II + III + IV = 179294 + 25447 + 721747 + 22025 = 948513

V. Eternall Reader, You haue heere a New play

(1609 Preface, Troilus and Cressida)

948513

29250 = Eternall reader, you have heere a new play, never stal’d with the Stage,

23708 = never clapper-clawd with the palmes of the vulger,

29861 = and yet passing full of the palme comicall; for it is a birth of your braine,

21808 = that never undertooke any thing commicall, vainely:

17249 = And were but the vaine names of commedies

25742 = changde for the titles of Commodities, or of Playes for Pleas;

35317 = you should see all those grand censors, that now stile them such vanities,

21808 = flock to them for the maine grace of their gravities:

27399 = especially this authors Commedies, that are so fram’d to the life,

37386 = that they serve for the most common Commentaries of all the actions of our lives,

23403 = shewing such a dexteritie and power of witte,

30902 = that the most displeased with Playes, are pleasd with his Commedies.

21167 = And all such dull and heavy-witted worldlings,

20251 = as were never capable of the witte of a Commedie,

23426 = comming by report of them to his representations,

30076 = have found that witte there that they never found in themselves,

19072 = and have parted better-wittied then they came:

16531 = feeling an edge of witte set upon them,

22250 = more then ever they dreamd they had braine to grinde it on.

18999 = So much and such savored salt of witte

27095 = is in his Commedies, that they seeme (for their height of pleasure)

21928 = to be borne in that sea that brought forth Venus.

22553 = Amongst all there is none more witty then this:

16867 = And had I time I would comment upon it,

29490 = though I know it needs not, (for so much as will make you thinke

28055 = your testerne well bestowd) but for so much worth,

18241 = as even poore I know to be stuft in it.

11685 = It deserves such a labour,

22731 = as well as the best Commedy in Terence or Plautus.

15269 = And beleeve this, That when hee is gone,

24766 = and his Commedies out of sale, you will scramble for them,

17673 = and set up a new English Inquisition.

30450 = Take this for a warning, and at the perrill of your pleasures losse,

31603 = and Judgements, refuse not, nor like this the lesse for not being sullied,

18871 = with the smoaky breath of the multitude;

24849 = but thanke fortune for the scape it hath made amongst you.

21313 = Since by the grand possessors wills, I beleeve,

22266 = you should have prayd for them rather then beene prayd.

14729 = And so I leave all such to bee prayd for

30720 = (for the states of their wits healths) that will not praise it.

    1754 = Vale.

948513

***

The Tragedy of Existence:

Shakespeare’s “Troilus and Cressida”

By Joyce Carol Oates, 1966/67 – Introduction

Troilus and Cressida, that most vexing and ambiguous of Shakespeare‘s plays, strikes the modern reader as a contemporary document – its investigation of numerous infidelities, its criticism of tragic pretensions, above all, its implicit debate between what is essential in human  life and what is only existential are themes of the twentieth century. Philosophically, the play must be one of the earliest expressions of what is now called the “existential” vision; psychologically, it not only represents the puritanical mind in its anguished obsession with the flesh overwhelming the spirit, but it works to justify that vision. It is not only the expense of spirit in a “waste of shame” that is catastrophic, but the expenditure of all spirit – for the object of spiritual adoration (even if, like Helen, it is not unfaithful) can never be equivalent to the purity of energy wasted. Shakespeare shows in this darkest and least satisfying of his tragedies the modern, ironic, nihilistic spectacle of man diminished, not exalted. There is no question of the play’s being related to tragedy, calling it one of the “dark comedies” is to distort it seriously. This is tragedy of a special sort – the “tragedy” the basis of which is the impossibility of conventional tragedy.

This special tragedy, then, will be seen to work within the usual framework of tragedy, using the materials and the structure demanded of an orthodox work. What is withheld – and deliberately withheld – is “poetic justice.” Elsewhere, Shakespeare destroys both good and evil together, but in Troilus and Cressida the “good” characters are destroyed or destroy themselves. The “evil” characters (Achilles, Cressida) drop out of sight; their fates are irrelevant. Ultimately, everyone involved in the Trojan War will die, except Ulysses and Aeneas, and it may be that Shakespeare holds up this knowledge as a kind of backdrop against which the play works itself out, the audience’s knowledge contributing toward a higher irony; but this is probably unlikely. The play as it stands denies tragic devastation and elevation. It follows other Shakespearean tragedies in showing the annihilation of appearances by reality, but the “reality” achieved is a nihilistic vision. Thus, Pandarus closes the story by assuming that many in his audience are “brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade” and by promising to bequeath them his “diseases”. The customary use of language to restore with its magical eloquence, the lost humanity of the tragic figure is denied here. Othello is shown to us first as an extraordinary man, then as a man, then as an animal, but finally and most importantly as a man again, just before his death; this is the usual tragic curve, the testing and near-breaking and final restoration of a man. […] Troilus is almost a tragic figure – and it is not an error on Shakespeare’s part that he fails to attain this designation, for the very terms of Troilus’ experience forbid elevation. He cannot be a tragic figure because his world is not tragic but only pathetic. He cannot transcend the sordid banalities of his world because he is proudly and totally of that world, and where everything is seen in terms of merchandise, diseases, food, cooking, and the “glory” of bloodshed, man’s condition is never tragic. […] One mistake and man reverts to the animal, or becomes only flesh to be disposed of. As for the spirit and its expectations they are demonstrated as hallucinatory. No darker commentary on the predicament of man has ever been written. If tragedy is a critique of humanism from the inside, Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy that calls into question the very pretensions of tragedy itself.

¹ http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/enigma-shugborough-inscription-002232

² 1 + 666 + 100 = 767, where 1 = Monad; 666 = Man-Beast; 100 = The End.

³ Girth House is a medieval stone church in the Orkney Islands, built on the model of The Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

***

Calculator for converting letters to cipher values is at:

http://www.light-of-truth.com/ciphersaga.htm