Читать книгу Mysteries and Secrets of Numerology - Patricia Fanthorpe - Страница 6

The writer of this foreword was once described by his grandson as being almost technologically illiterate. There was no sense in taking umbrage as he was only stating the truth. He could have gone even further. He could have called me almost numerically bankrupt and he wouldn’t have been far from wrong. Numbers, as far as I am concerned, if they have secrets or ramifications, or influences on characters or events, others can have them. My apathy towards numbers goes back a long way in my life and I can trace its roots. As a very small child I was privileged to go to a very select fee-paying school. Every morning we did sums using a slate and pieces of chalk and every child who got all his sums right was rewarded with a piece of pink coconut ice. If my teeth came to suffer premature decay it was not due to excess of coconut ice! Like most of us, I learnt to struggle with maths enough to pass essential exams, but even today, faced with the choice of a cryptic crossword or sudoku, it will be the crossword every time. Words I love; numbers I gladly leave to others.

Why then, you may wonder, have I agreed to write the foreword to a book dealing exclusively with numbers, what they portend, their secrets, their influences on character or events, be they imaginary or real? The answer is simple: I read the book in proof form for my two author friends as I have done for many of their other works. Even at that stage, two reasons for recommending it to a wider reading public were immediately apparent.

First, unlike myself, some have always immersed themselves in numerology as a duck takes to water. It becomes their lifelong interest. It is well such people exist as it was their expertise that helped us win the last war. Numerical experts conspired to crack the enigma code and thus gain access to messages that the enemy deemed secret. All throughout the ages there have always been such gifted men and women, for whom all secrets are a challenge. Some spend a lifetime studying the stars above us. Others plumb the depths of the world’s great oceans. Some scholars devote their lives to seeking out and then deciphering the world’s most ancient manuscripts. Numerologists are just such like-minded people and there are many of them. To them, at least, this book is offered, and the authors hope it will cause many others to take interest in some of the mysteries it uncovers. The book, in some ways, is beyond me. It is not beyond others who will enjoy every page of it.

My second reason for endorsing the book is the immense volume of research it reveals. How do the Fanthorpes do it? Co-author Lionel works full-time, and yet, somehow, he and Patricia find time and energy to uncover so much hitherto known only to the few. They write about all sorts of people from so many countries and so many ages, often, seemingly, telling stories the rest of the world seem never to have heard.

Their scholarship is immense and meticulous and deserves to be shared with others. I hope that their labours get the support they deserve.

— Stanley Mogford, Cardiff, 2012

(The authors are deeply grateful to Canon Mogford for his help with proofreading and supplying this foreword. He is rightly regarded as one of the foremost scholars in Wales.)