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.

What is an Anagram? 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.

Anagrams Throughout History 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.

Three of the specific methodologies used by the Kaballahs were Gematria, Notariqon and Temurah. Gematria was the original name of Numerology. In Numerology, names, words and important phrases are assigned numbers in order to more easily compare those items to other important phrases, names and words.

Notariqon and Temurah were mystical divinations based on letters. Both of these methods involved changing around the letters in names and phrases in order to arrive at hidden meanings, names of deity and other foretelling words and phrases. They placed some of these powerful word anagrams on amulets and wore them as protection. Temurah, meaning Permutation was the study of anagrams. Letters were transposed using various shortcut techniques designed to aid in the hand composition of anagrams. 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.

The father of the French Revolution, the famed French author Voltaire was born Francois Marie Arouet on June 12, 1718. He was quite willful and at times acted contrary to his father's wishes. While in his early twenties he began to believe that he was truly an illegitimate child and began to openly rebel against his father. He changed his name to Arouet de Voltaire and then petitioned the Regent duc D'Orleans to make a full public affirmation of this new name. Many have wondered how he arrived at the name Voltaire. It is generally believed that Voltaire was an anagram of the name Arouet Le Joune, or Arouet L. J. In France the letter "v" was used interchangeably with the letter "u" and the same held true for "i" with the letter "j." Therefore, his new name of Voltaire was an anagram of the name Arovet L. I.