So Dark The Con Of Furre..., that's con as in CONTEST! Options

[Talzhemir]

Anybody out there a DaVinci Code fan...? If so, here's a little game for you.

The clues to a secret message of the Priory of Sion were concealed all along within my first post here:

http://forums.furcadia.com/index.php?&showtopic=31086

NOTE: The message in this post is NOT 'the secret message'! It's merely a clue to the secret message.

You can't figure this out without researching the actual Priory of Sion.

25 Golden Dragonscales to the first one to tell me the secret message!

Please email your answer, and how you derived it, to DemidEspres (at)hotmail.com

Contest ends midnight January 20, 2007.



...do vinca dice?

[Mandaliet]

Et in Furcadia ego...

[Et In Furcadia Ego]

Yes?

What did you want, Mandaliet?

[Mandaliet]

Yes?

What did you want, Mandaliet?

Um...

Hi.

[Psyston]

.

[z3n0n]

Yes?

What did you want, Mandaliet?

ok

[Tarket]

Are the clues just in your post, or in the post and the poll?

Good question, but I think the poll is too obvious:

"I'm taking this poll primarily because..."

Im expecting a secret communique from agents of the Priory of Sion. Hail unto the Merovingian Line!

good luck - i have no idea what we are supposed to be looking for.

[Shinichi Kudo]

Et in Furcadia ego...

And in Furcadia I .... o.o

[Talzhemir]

Yay, we have a winner! Psyston was the first to figure it out.

"...I took the first letter of every sentence, and put them in order. They are:

I DIGO ARCANE TEA
Then, I rearranged them into an anagram, as follows: I TEGO ARCANA DEI
This is the latin phrase "Begone! I keep God's secrets", which conspiracy theorists often claim is an anagram for "et in Arcadia ego", the phrase in two paintings by Nicolas Poussin, as part of the Priory of Sion legends.

In the book and movie "The Da Vinci Code", the Priory of Sion are the guardians of the descendants of Mary Magdalene and Jesus, and the burial place of Mary's remains. The heroes are pursued by super-secret agents of the Roman Catholic Church, who are part of an ages-old conspiracy to cover up the true history of Jesus.

In my opinion, the idea that Jesus was married doesn't seem very damaging, but I guess the important part was maintaining authority over the storyline. After the Council of Nicea, many people really did lose their lives for heresy to the Inquisition, and the Gospel of Mary was one of the texts actually persecuted.

The apocryphal book I thought was far more potentially damaging was that of the Gospel of Thomas and other books that claim Jesus had a twin brother. He's called Thomas Didymos; both "Thomas" and "Didymos" mean "twin". In the Gnostic Gospels, Thomas serves the role of a homey imperfect "everyman", in contrast to the cool perfection of the Gnostic Jesus. He's a sidekick to whom things get explained aloud, a "Watson" to Jesus's "Holmes".

I could see more clearly why the Church would try to destroy copies of those books. Conclusions about the story of a man who survived crucifixion are rather different if everybody thinks he had a twin brother.

There were originally many sects of Christianity. Some of them were fairly major and didn't happen to include the Crucifixion story.

("Lost Christianities": a scholarly book on the subject of what early Christianities were like)

http://www.popmatters.com/books/reviews/l/...tianities.shtml

Some sects believed in the existence of two, not one, 'God': a mean and bipolar deity of the Old Testament and a much kinder deity in the New Testament. They were rather anti-Semitic ("Jew-haters"). After the Council of Nicea, many of them fled to the region known today as Germany, to seek alliance with the Visigoths who had also just lost their Roman citizenship because Christianity had been made the official religion by Constantine.

Some people think the Council of Nicea was for the benefit of the Jews, who were an important and wealthy part of the Roman bureaucracy, and the Roman Empire, which did not want a divisive version of the state religion on the loose.

According to Wikipedia, the Priory of Sion did exist, but it was a hoax. It doesn't go back to the Dark Ages, it was created in 1956 by Pierre Plantard. He and his associates planted a large number of forged documents all around France. He was trying to convince everybody that he was descended from the Merovingian Kings, who, themselves, did historically claim to be descended from Jesus's family.

Essentially, Pierre was running around declaring himself the REAL rightful king of France. Riiiiight. He was eventually convicted of fraud and served time in jail. The moral of the story- one should always use their calligraphy skills for good, never for evil!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priory_of_Sion

My initial secret messages was "I DIGO ARCANE TEA". Psyston asked what the arcane tea might be. I mainly chose those words to be recognizable English. I have a "furry" label picture, and I'm planning to make some tea. I may be able to offer small "designer" tins of it for DragonScales. The flavor would be cinnamon and vanilla. I don't know yet.

Anyways, the prize of 25 Golden Dragonscales will be awarded to Psyston. Congratulations!

So this contest is officially closed. Thank you, everybody who participated.

--Talzhemir

[Mandaliet]

Wow, I had no idea that was the answer. I can never figure these things out, but I was reading Wikipedia's Priory of Scion article and I came across "Et in Arcadia ego". Then I posted "et in Furcadia ego" as a joke. For some reason I didn't see Talzhemir's first post and was looking in her second one for clues. Someone whispered me about this pointing out that rearranging the letters at the beginning of each sentence yielded "et in Arcadia ego" but I took it to mean that that was the hint, not the answer. Oh well.

I bet I seemed a lot smarter before I explained everything.

[Sirum Hest]

That was me. (; I still think Talz registered that name and responded to you just to throw people off the trail.

[Psyston]

.

[Et In Furcadia Ego]

That was me. (; I still think Talz registered that name and responded to you just to throw people off the trail.

Actually this alt has nothing to do with Talzhemir. I registered it months ago because I thought it was funny, then couldn't resist replying to Mandaliet when he said my name.

[Justin StinCoy]

Quoth Et In Furcadia Ego:
Actually this alt has nothing to do with Talzhemir. I registered it months ago because I thought it was funny, then couldn't resist replying to Mandaliet when he said my name.

I can confirm the first sentence as we once spoke in Naia Green a few months ago.