What if I'm right and you are wrong? What if you knew it all along?
Welcome to the first blog in my trifecta series. There are three constants across all Secret paintings. A birth flower, a birth stone, and a representation of a number which aligns to the puzzle month. It's no secret why people believe what they do about these items. I want to start by saying, it is okay. It is extremely difficult to change your beliefs after being repeatedly taught how to do something the same way. One issue with this in The Secret, nobody has ever had a full understanding of how these puzzles were designed and intended to work. Three casques have been recovered utilizing various methods. Props to the folks who recovered casques but all had gaps in their solutions. This is acceptable. One does not need to solve the entire puzzle in order to dig up a casque. However, the desire to understand the full intended solution as designed by the creators is important to forwarding the rest of the puzzles.
I have a strong belief Byron leveraged the three month items to solidify the start and end of the puzzles. Let's begin with Boston as it is fairly straight forward. These connections appear to become more devious and complex in the puzzles which have a higher valued gem. Again, let's not overthink the gem value and things like the word hard. A diamond is generally more precious than a pearl, meaning Charleston connections may be harder than San Francisco's etc, etc.
Let's look at a bit of US history for the August birth flower:
A direct Boston call out. We also are aware the start of the verse is provided from an obscure quote in a letter from Horace Walpole to Horace Mann:
Augustan to August is the hint to verify you've found what you are looking for. We don't get this with the names on the library. Byron further manipulates the quote to get us to the North End of Boston. So how about the peridot? This one isn't easy but it makes sense on a whole. Furthermore, it seems he references olivine in the litany to double down on this point:
Is there anything related to iron in the North End of Boston? Remember JJP speaking of Byron's obsession with The USS Constitution in the harbor? I'm paraphrasing here but he mentioned "I can't just paint the boat!!!". There is a wealth of things Byron could have used in the area as reference points. Why be so into Old Ironsides in the harbor for the ending of this puzzle? Let's look at how she got her name:
Let's recap. Birth flower to Boston, Augustan quote to North End, birthstone to iron, Old Ironsides named in August. Do we still believe the trifecta of gem, flower, and month are only there to establish the old world connection? We must consider we've been taught wrong by people with good intentions who do not have a solid understanding of the intended method and template the creators used in The Secret. It's time we stop deflecting with, "keep it simple" and "Byron was bad at puzzles" when an analytical approach to the data continues to prove the opposite.
If I pretended I was blind. And struck it from my mind. Would it still be there?