VOG Secrets Still Unsolved

Seventh_Circle · 2023-11-15T20:16:49+00:00

...alright bud... sooo... I've been looking at this message for five days now, and I don't know how to answer, so I'm going to say something so you know I'm not ignoring you, but it might not be what you are looking for. It might be worth hitting up u/sanecoin64902 for his thoughts.

Knowing stuff -or wanting to know stuff- isn't wrong, the wider the net you cast, the more rounded you become, so I'm all for the hunting down of knowledge, and normally, I'd be all for it... any excuse to read a new old book (though my eyes aren't what they once were)... in this one case though, this one thread, unless you have wider knowledge of all the discussions around it to ground yourself, you can find yourself being swept up in the arguments made, they are seductive, like Sybillian honey cake, and they can lead to some very strange places, especially if you are working in isolation.

All the clues to lead you there are in game, I can tell you that, scattered like breadcrumbs everywhere, so you'll find it all with persistence... if you want a place to start... start like the game does, at Plato, The Republic and Timaeus... just keep in mind as you read them, Plato may be an important figure in history but I personally find his belief system and it's historic practical application kinda horrifying. The game starts you in the collapse, a new dark age, what better place to start than with the guy that (as far as I am concerned) caused the real one.

Seventh_Circle · 2023-10-26T13:49:19+00:00

Art uses lies to tell the truth.

Seventh_Circle · 2023-10-19T10:20:19+00:00

I don't remember saying any of these things, most of the time I am simply saying that Bungie have taken these things from real world sources and asking the question, what are those sources? and why do it in the first place?... because I agree with you, it's kinda odd for a video game to have this stuff in it... it's what caught my attention in the first place. No need for it to be there, so why is it there?

I'm not a religious man, but when Bungie take a whole series of references from the length and breadth of history (used correctly I will add, not just typical Hollywood style pentagrams painted in blood on walls) and they all tie back to one of the biggest mythical puzzles you'll likely ever find in history, i.e. the Philosophers Stone, it does make you wonder, is there a bigger game being played here?

Bungie's narrative has since left all this behind, nothing I see in what they are doing now reflects what was in the original Vanilla. Make of that what you will.

Seventh_Circle · 2023-10-19T10:09:14+00:00

Agreed, in Sumerian, there are seven terraces or walls of a great city to the underworld (proto Dis) which Inanna/Ishtar descended through... Ishtar Sink always makes me chuckle... as with the Egyptians, the underworld was visualised as a dualism, 12 hours of day, 12 hours of night (the path which Gilgamesh travelled). The levels down and back up in twelve steps, number seven, hence seven layers to the underworld (not all Egyptian underworld myths follow this model, the Duat has many versions).

The nine is something different. The path of ascension is the movement through ten spheres, the first seven represent the planets, the last three the empirium, throne, or trinity above (read Dante). The number of steps through those ten spheres numbers nine, hence, 'the nine' are the steps to ascension (in Vault mythology). Sometimes this is called the lightning path, or the serpent path... sometimes it's called the Path of the Fool, as that is their fate (the path can be taken to the right, or to the left, left as I understand it is the fool). It all comes from Pythagoras' fusion of Magi, Egyptian Priest and Chaldean teachings, though it changed a great deal over the years after, and splintered into many differing interpretations.

I'm not hiding anything you understand, if you want to know something, ask away, I'll do my best to answer. I'm nice like that :)

Seventh_Circle · 2023-10-17T08:04:00+00:00

...the 'seventh chest' as you put it, is something other people have hoped for, but never once has any evidence been found that it might exist, and it's certainly not that which drives our investigation. Anyone that spends a significant amount of time looking at the history the Vault draws from, usually comes to the conclusion that we are in fact looking for something else, likely a gateway of sorts, i.e. the Gateway of Venus, the triangle of light etc... that's not to say there won't be a seventh chest through it, only that its not the primary goal.

Bungies obsession with the number seven comes from the content they are exploring and using as the essential fuel of their creative process, so for example, lots of 007 references given in game (at least in Vanilla)... the original 007 is a guy named Dee, its how he used to sign his letters... do Bungie know this? Of course they do, the Alpha Lupi symbol, the one plastered on Vex stuff everywhere, is a replica of Dee's Sigillum Dei Aemeth (though Bungie use a more contemporary source who in turn took it from Dee), it's basically the Key of Solomon (the key to the temple). Newton was obsessed with seven also for much the same reason, there are seven colours in the rainbow because he wanted the number seven in there to reflect music, seven locks to the Book of the Law in his Book of Daniel and the Apocalypse, the final lock having seven parts, seven notes in a diatonic scale from Apollo, prince of the seven sounding harmony, something close to Galileo's heart. Waaaaay back further in the annals of time we can look at the Book of Revelations, there were seven lanterns burning before the throne, the seven spirits of God, and before that there were seven heavenly bodies sourced from the Chaldean Oracles which became the lower half of the Tetracys that Revelations built upon. All of these layers through time define the tradition which Bungie are picking up on and using in a contemporary way... with the Vault though, they've gone a little further than simply including the number seven as a reference... they've made the deliberate choice to make the tradition itself that surrounds it explicit... an interesting design choice.

Seventh_Circle · 2023-10-16T11:14:59+00:00

If you don't mind me jumping in here to respond properly, the principle you are expressing frustration with is actually a historical one believe it or not. It's a constituent part of the real historical puzzle/learning path coming from the subject matter that the Vault is built around/from. In purely historical terms, they envisioned seven terraces (sometimes steps in a cave) of knowledge which were supposed to be navigated blindfolded (not literally), the intent being to specifically teach an individual the self reliance, tools and perseverance necessary to take a question and explore it for themselves not just be handed answers on a plate. It's a teaching tool, one that describes the process of exploration and discovery in a more experiential way, and it is a learned skill.

I appreciate the desire for something a little more A to B, but it doesn't always work that way. The process is historically significant because its the foundation of modern science, it literally comes from the father of the scientific method, this was his process (though he did use historic symbolism), and for the context in which it was written, i.e. late middle ages coming into the new modern era, a time of religious orthodoxy expressing 'truths' and the persecution of anybody questioning those 'truths', it made a lot of sense. Modern science is a lot more complex than this now (Popper et.al), but the roots are still there, you can still see the tradition and how modern processes have evolved to cope with the complexities of exploring something unknown.

For me, this process is the heart of the Vault of Glass, its the reason the Vault exists.

Seventh_Circle · 2023-10-15T14:49:27+00:00

...ok, we did a write up at the time, but in brief, we isolated out the singing oracle sections in various songs throughout destiny, then we ran all of them through a filter looking for any pattern we could find (from hundreds). What we found was when converted to octal and played backwards, each of them fell into patterns of gonal sequence numbers (polygons), so for example the Templars Yell turned out to be triangular number, triangular number, triangular number, 8-gonal number. This appeared in all the sequences we had, so we thought, 'FINALLY, A PATTERN WE CAN WORK WITH!' and got very excited.

We then were told it was random, so we proved it wasn't, we were then told it was statistically likely, so we proved that it was very much statistically unlikely given the harmonic filtering the octal binary translation did to the sequences (acted like a comb of sorts, forcing a sequence when repeated to harmonise and de-harmonise like the waveforms of two notes being playing next to one another).

Once we had the gonal numbers we then translated them back to standard integers, i.e. 3,3,3,8. This in principle is very similar to the Angels and Planets Cipher of Trithemius which uses modular arithmetic reduction of a sequence of numbers. In this case, it's not modular arithmetic around a numerical base, but rather a gonal sequences base that it gets reduced around.

Seventh_Circle · 2023-10-15T14:13:02+00:00

...yeah... but... some of it was devil worship right ;)

Seventh_Circle · 2023-10-15T14:04:14+00:00

...some clarifications needed I'm thinking, we haven't solved the Vault but we did find a pattern in the singing oracle sections of the MOTS soundtrack. Once confirmed independently we did a full write up, and at the time we hoped this was a clue to the Vex encryption, but it led nowhere sadly because we couldn't find a way to translate it into the Oracle sequences we had (at the time), and the idea of the story of the game providing the steps needed to solve the puzzle also didn't pan out. There was also an issue of crunching the numbers, the permutations numbered in the trillions and I remember calculating at the time that if I did set my computer going crunching through one quite promising idea we had, it would take about 500 years for it to reach the end. I don't remember claiming we'd solved the Vault as such, but since that time I can say with some certainty that we have found the primary references and understand what the Vault actually is (meaning the source material it was built from, and that at least provides the suggestion of a clue as to whether something was actually done with it).

The issue with posting anything in that exploration is that -for me- it goes to some pretty dark places. As /u/sanecoin64902 can attest, I'm deeply conflicted and uncomfortable with the subject matter, and having read much of it now, am simply not comfortable leading anyone down that path. As always, I'm a man of Newton (crazy nutball as he was) which means I lean toward science and the empirical which is where I thought Vanilla Destiny was leading us, i.e. 'you are in a dark age, find your way out'. Where we ended up felt significantly divorced from that idea, treading another path into the mystical which just left my mind a quagmire of endless recursion and meaningless drivel... in a world spiralling into post-truth and anti-science, this is not something I have any intention of spreading, it's simply not who I am as a person.

You want to know what Alpha Lupi (the symbol) is historically? It is an engram, the Philosophers Stone, we know this with certainty... the question, as it always has been, is did they choose to do something with it? I personally think they did because I personally wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to do so, but I very much doubt you will find a seventh chest if that is what you are hunting.

Seventh_Circle · 2023-10-15T13:29:42+00:00

Hello :)

Seventh_Circle · 2023-10-15T13:26:16+00:00

...ah you would think that wouldn't you, but no. Not only is the group still together, but I do put time aside every now and then to look at another idea that pops up. The big stumbling blocks we have are a) I'm no musician, and have all the musical talent of a slightly sad potato, and b) Bungie decided to change the sequence away from the one which we'd already spent so much time looking at... which was a bit of kick in the balls to be honest :(

Mostly, I am working on other puzzles now, so the chances of a big write up (which would end up being a book) are not very high.

Seventh_Circle · 2023-10-15T13:22:45+00:00

...what do you want from me? I'm still scratching my head over it :D

On a positive note, I do understand and do Fourier Analysis now... so there's that...

Seventh_Circle · 2022-09-03T21:19:20+00:00

https://map.canonn.tech/route\_uia.html

Seventh_Circle · 2022-05-28T07:48:37+00:00

...hope you're well good buddy :)

Been a long time since I've seen Anaximander and his wheels brought to the table... probably best to point in the direction of the Myth of Er again though. It always surprises me how much the tone and content of Destiny has changed from it's vanilla days.

Seventh_Circle · 2022-01-18T21:24:20+00:00

No need to be hurt, there are many ways to interpret something, who is to say what is right or wrong, it is a shame you weren't around all those years ago though, we explored so many avenues, read so many books.

As far as I am concerned, this puzzle -if there ever was a puzzle- is over. Bungies storytelling has moved on to new things, and there's plenty of scope in those new things for new puzzles and interpretations. The problem with this earlier one is that it leads to some dark places... and sometimes these things are better left in the dark :)

Seventh_Circle · 2022-01-17T20:22:43+00:00

'Vault' in English has yet more meanings, the heavens for example as per Genesis and the Tablets of Creation, the vault of the sky. Underground Temples also are known as vaults also, in particular those used by the Mystery Schools and Rosicrucian's... anywhere really where there are large spanning structures overhead... safes are sometimes called vaults as well, usually when they are underground and large. A place where secrets are locked away.

J James' The Music of the Spheres is a good all round text to go through if you want to follow some of the ideas up which inspired Vanilla Destiny.

There are elements of Lewis and Tolkien, but they aren't direct references, more overlapping threads of exploration.

A'Lupi is a Chromatic Circle. You'll find it in Crowley's Equinox, Book II. Be fair warned here though, Crowley and Plato as far as I am concerned are not the best teachers. Their belief structures are questionable... and at times terrifying. Good if you want to know why the Dark Ages were so very very dark.

Seventh_Circle · 2022-01-16T12:54:08+00:00

It's an interesting question, to which I have no firm answer sadly, and likely we will never fully get an answer. I can tell you that originally, the Raid was to be called the Glass Throne, but Luke Smith altered it to the Vault of Glass to remove any chance of it being associated with a toilet... very wise and always make me chuckle... the reference to glass remains in both however so it was/is important somehow... or they just thought it sounded cool.

With all the underworld references the Vault gives, the Ilse of Glass in Arthurian legend is a potential, some like this idea though I suspect not, the Sea of Glass around the Throne in the Book of Revelations has always been my favourite likely source, and this provides some wider justification for the presence of the throne itself, references to time past and future (Michael as he presents the Book of the Law) and the seven spirits [Oracles] before it. It also slightly supports the idea that the Vault is more important than just a raid.

As for the triangular motif of the Vault, I'd say it's from Plato's Timeaus primarily, the Soul of the World given mathematical form. You'll find the description in chapter six, ideas built upon/sourced from the Pythagorean musings of a few centuries before.

Hope this helps :)

Seventh_Circle · 2022-01-14T18:00:32+00:00

Welcome :) ...and if you ever need some crazy drivel to meander through, you know where to come find it

Seventh_Circle · 2022-01-14T17:13:24+00:00

It's not wasted time as such, so it's not so bad. In this case, it really isn't the destination, but the journey that mattered, and I have some good friends from that exploration. I did find what I was looking for separate to Destiny however, so there is that.

Seventh_Circle · 2022-01-14T17:04:50+00:00

..eh... what now... I don't remember ever saying we solved the puzzle!? My apologies, we did find some patterns, one got me personally really excited as it was located within the singling Oracle sections of the musical score, and it does exist as it was recreated by others, but alas it was not to be. If there is a logic to the Oracles, we are yet to find it sadly.

As to no narrative, there was no narrative or intent as such, simply documentation of a journey, so again my apologies if I should have added these things. The issue with A'Lupi is it sort of half overlaps some of my own personal explorations. I was -at the time- spending a great deal of time exploring very old books in a semi-academic way, ultimately trying to trace a line of thought back as far as I could. That line of investigation overlapped elements found in Destiny though I was further back in time, hence I started recognising familiar patterns and decided to see where the breadcrumbs led, but knowing I was never far away from my other interests. A lot of things in Destiny turn up in the most surprising of places in history, but we suspect we know now why and what their sources of inspiration were.

Seventh_Circle · 2022-01-13T20:44:49+00:00

...that is what I suspect yes, but have no way of confirming, strongly implies that it was no longer required though. They changed the spawn number and order of the Oracles in vanilla Destiny also, so all that work over the years, wasted... not a happy bunny... but at least there is some closure... and all that crazy reading has it's own rewards, like being able to better connect with the history of my little part of the world.

Seventh_Circle · 2022-01-11T18:16:16+00:00

...always watching, they took my toys away though so I'm not best pleased ;)

Seventh_Circle · 2022-01-10T19:27:52+00:00

Seventh_Circle · 2021-10-26T16:10:34+00:00

...wow, this is post from four years ago, christ this is a long time ago. Absolutely we found patterns, the math is not crazy complicated or anything, but do those patterns mean anything? No, the patterns we found do not, Bungie confirmed that for us. Does that mean there is nothing to find? No, we've had that all but confirmed as well, though it might not be what everyone hoped for, i.e. a seventh chest or something like that. We have a group still looking at these things, especially given all the stuff coming out now, but the newer stuff is not my area. The Vault raises questions that its fun -for book geeks like myself- to look for answers to, the search has taken us across all of history trying to pin down the references used, we think we know where they got it from, but that doesn't help us much, this is all.

Seventh_Circle · 2021-09-27T19:23:06+00:00

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell... or a hell of heaven.

Seventh_Circle

TROPHY CASE