GC10K6G Melancholy Magic Maze (Unknown Cache) in New York, United States created by geoegan

This cache has been archived.

geoegan: Sorry to those who never got to find this amazing cache!

GC10K6G ▼

A cache by geoegan Message this owner

Hidden : 1/27/2007

Difficulty:

Terrain:

Size: Size: not chosen (not chosen)

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Geocache Description:

Melancholy Magic Maze

The above coordinates are a trailhead, not the cache. Magic Turtle was a legend about a 3x3 magic square. This is about another famous magic square. Like Marsh Hop this one is a good winter cache, but probably too wet and buggy the rest of the year.

In Albrecht Dürer's engraving, Melencolia I, he presents the personification of Melancholy surrounded by a collection of tools for creative and intellectual pursuits such as goldsmithing (the crucible and scales), geometry (the polyhedron and sphere), and woodworking (the plane, ruler, and saw). Most important are the dividers she holds, placed at the very center of the composition; this instrument, used by geometricians and architects, symbolizes the ultimate creative act, God's shaping of the world. In Renaissance humanistic thought, people of melancholic temperament were seen as the most creative members of society; however, it was believed that their genius also made them able to see a still higher level of achievement that they could not attain and were therefore frequently subject to depression. Dürer's figure of Melancholy, and by extension Dürer himself, broods while symbols of the artists's success, keys for power and a purse for wealth, dangle in a useless jumble from her waist. The title comes from the (unusually spelled) title, Melencolia I, appearing within the engraving itself. It is the only one of Dürer's engravings to have a title in the plate. The date of 1514 appears in the bottom row of the magic square, as well as above Dürer's monogram at bottom right. Suggestions that a series of engravings on the subject was planned are not generally accepted. Instead it seems more likely that the "I" refers to the first of the three types of melancholy defined by the German humanist writer Cornelius Agrippa. In this type, Melencholia Imaginativa, which he held artists to be subject to; 'imagination' predominates over 'mind' or 'reason'.
In the image below, the magic square has been obscured. The square beside it is a reproduction of the square with some values replaced by letters. Solve for the letters to find the cache coordinates. The numbers in every row, up and down, across, or diagonally, add up to 34.