There is nothing quite as exciting as seeing an interesting anagram of one's name for the first time. The time invested in the study of one's own anagrams will be amply rewarded.

An anagram is formed by taking the letters of a word, name or phrase and changing their order to come up with another word or set of words. All letters in the first name must be used in the second. A simple example would be changing the order of the letters in LEMON to get MELON. Another example would be changing around the letters in ELVIS to get LIVES or LEVI'S.

The phenomenon of anagrams was first discovered by the Greek Poet Lycophron in 260 B.C. The study of anagrams has been called the Great Art because the word ANAGRAMS can be transposed to produce ARS MAGNA, the Latin name for Great Art.

The greatest users of anagrams were the Kaballahs, a group of mystics living in France and Spain during the 12th and 13th centuries. Their greatest contributions to society included numerology, tarot and their astrological interpretations. The divine nature of letters and numbers was the basis of their beliefs and practices. The Kaballah's traditions were handed down through the centuries to be used in one form or another by a large number of groups. Crusading knights, gypsies, mystics and magicians all benefited from the ideas, symbolism and methodologies developed by the Kaballahs.

The Kaballah gave great meaning to anagrams found pursuant to their study. They truly believed that letters and numbers were the building blocks of the universe and that they were the powers used in the process of earth's creation. They believed that all mysteries in the universe could be derived from names, phrases and existing passages of scripture. They used their own shortcut techniques for finding anagrams and other hidden meanings. They believed that a person's future could be derived from anagrams of their name.

Anagrams in the 17th Century Anagrams were the rage in France's 17th Century. King Louis XIII was fascinated by anagrams. He studied them and searched for them. He loved to present interesting anagrams to various members of his court as a form of entertainment. He even went so far as to appoint a Royal Anagrammatist, Thomas Billon to carry out the full-time work of composing strange and amusing anagrams.