Having been reading through the Robert Cochrane Letters i think it's in the second letter he says and in one of the essays he wrote there is a snippet which states He never did actually "deal with it later" at least not in any of the letters I have read. This has peaked my interest for a while but I am not really any further in finding out just what he is refering to.

Okay obviously it is some form of sign language I have some suggest maybe some form of Ogham signing but I have not found anything about it at all.

Does anyone have any suggestions on where I should look for further information, well ANY information on this really.

I play cat's cradle and normally have a loop of string in my pocket for just this purpose.

However, I know there is an Italian system of counting on the fingers which goes up to at least one thousand. This system has been linked with Strega and Italian Witchcraft. But that's all I know.

The popular, two-person cat's cradle should appeal to magic-users as, of the six or seven figures, it is possible to cycle through them all in turn, it is also possible to move from any one figure directly to any other.

There are ways of weaving with a loop so that it will quickly unravel. Could be useful for curses.

Traditionally people would count on their fingers, when they reached twenty they would cut (or score) a mark and start again. That's why 20 is called a score, why the span a man's life is said to be three score years and ten. That seems to be pretty universal, but there was an old counting system based on the principle utilised by shepherds in this country that went 'yan, tan, tetra, pethera and so on. I suppose that might sound mysterious and magical to someone who was looking for esoteric things among the country folk

As for the cats cradle, there is a German word for them - Hexenspeil. Hexe means witch in German so I think that's probably an area worth investigating. I've poked around but there's not much out there on the face of it and my interest moved on before I could be bothered to search deeper.

You might like this post. Mudras are known in most cultures.

PS - love to know more about Hexenspeil.

Sorry - dumb question, I probably should know the answer - but where's Quas gone?

worth a laugh ... http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Rel...ns_of_satan.htm ... especially Spiderman and MacDonalds

system for counting to 1000 on hands is linked to binary. where 101 = 5 the ones being fingers up and the 0's fingers down.

In palmistry the hands are associated with planets. However, the same system works on either hand, so it's a five digit, not a ten digit system.

Not at all sure about each finger having a purpose. That sounds strange. It could be an idea of his own (or some pre-existing rudimentary system) that he meant to develop but eventually discarded because he found it ultimately unsatisfactory.

I was told about each digit having a particular purpose. Think the middle is the Soul finger but I, and the person doing the telling don't remember anything else.

However Chinese traditional medicine and refloxology do. But i'm not sure how likely it is for Robert Cochrane to have had much contact with them...

It makes sense to me. You don't want the bum-scratching finger to be the same as the nose-picking one.

Yes, I know that one - It's easy. I used to score badminton matches by counting on my fingers - up to fifteen on each hand. It used to puzzle the Badminton coach.
You can count up to 1023. You can tell a computer geek if they tell you that 256 is a round number.


The Italian counting method is more obscure. It involves bending the fingers. I can't remember much more than that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_counting

Check them all out - they're interesting.



Marto