Unravelling “Cassie’s Sonnet”

Ever since David Pogue mentioned it, I have been following the saga of lonelygirl15 (her tribute site can provide some background). About midway through, however, a character named Cassie has taken hold of the story, and has turned it into a twisted trail of codes and clues.

Recently, the community has deciphered a number of these clues (neatly summarized by twjaniak), leading to the following sonnet, which was encoded in both morse code and anagram on her YouTube profile. Cassie later validated the decoding by posting a link to the clue's answer.

between the virgin and the beast
moses armed the evil priest,
to kill me with his sword of hate
if help again will come too late.

warns luke eleven seventeen
of dangers now and ever been.
the cost is not just mine to bear,
we win we live we die we share.

revelation starts the first,
at dawn you'll rise to do your worst.
this is not a game or show.
the stakes are high and you must know:

the pulse of the doe-eyed child may cease
but cassie does not rest in peace.

One brief criticism of the community effort so far: list your sources! It’s difficult to decipher the signal from the noise, and for a neophyte trying to make sense of the storyline, it is essential that you list how and where clues were solved, validated or denied. Without this, the misinformation will sit evenly with the information.

In order to help with the cause, I submit here a line-by-line analysis along with some intertextual criticism and close reading. Maybe these insights might lead further down the rabbit hole.

between the virgin and the beast
moses armed the evil priest,
to kill me with his sword of hate
if help again will come too late.

The virgin and the beast may refer to Mary, the mother of Jesus and the Devil, but this seems too obvious a connection. The virgin might also refer to Bree, “lonelygirl15,” and her male friend “danielBeast.” This line is also very ambiguous as to whom is between the virgin and the beast—Moses, the priest, or “me” (the speaker).

The second and third stanza speak of moses arming a priest with “his sword”. A quick Google search for “Moses sword” lead to the Sword of Moses, as translated 110 years ago. This book is also mentioned in the List of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha on Wikipedia. Sword of Moses depicts biblical magic. Further analysis of important parts of this book may yield some clues.

The third stanza asserts that speaker of the poem will die if help comes too late. The current description of her first video is

TOO SLOW I DON'T PLAY CARDS YOU ALL FAILED I HATE YOU. This line is a slight chastisement to Cassie’s followers for not finding the first clue.

Assembling these lines, it looks as if Cassie (as has been proposed in some lonelygirl15 forums) got between Bree and Daniel, as their dialog about Cassie seems to suggest some jealousy. Someone, the “evil priest” will use magic to kill Cassie unless help comes for her. Note also that her MySpace page (of dubious legitimacy) pleads for help.

warns luke eleven seventeen
of dangers now and ever been.
the cost is not just mine to bear,
we win we live we die we share.

The Gospel of Luke chapter 11, verse 17 reads:

Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: “Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall.”

The “danger” mentioned in the second line is the danger of a divided self. While this may be two things: either “Cassie” is a divided person—such as a second personality of Bree (where the schizophrenic Bree would talk to herself at school, be made fun of and therefore be pulled and put into homeschooling) or changing focus to the community.

The speaker ends the first stanza speaking of her fate. There’s little reason to believe that focus has changed. The final lines, “we win we live we die we share” are not punctuated at all. This might insinuated that should the split-personality speaker win, the personalities will both live and die by sharing their body, much as did Eve White.

Another possibility is that “we” contains the speaker and the reader, such that we—the audience—has the ability to share in Cassie’s triumph over her danger.

revelation starts the first,
at dawn you'll rise to do your worst.
this is not a game or show.
the stakes are high and you must know:

One definition of “Revelation” is something revealed or disclosed, esp. a striking disclosure, as of something not before realized. This most likely means we are going to learn something about this mystery on Sunday. But the next line, at dawn you’ll rise to do your worst, implies that by Sunday we will already know and begin solving the puzzle at dawn. Combined with the latest change to Cassie’s YouTube profile (morse code for “wait”), asserts that the truth is coming.

In the third line, this is not a game is a common meme of Alternate Reality Games, as is coordinated community effort (hence Luke 11:17). Note too that The Beast is a nickname for one of the first ARG’s.

The stakes are high in this game, however. Some games have given away cash prizes, but according to this poem the game’s stake is Cassie’s life. Telling use we must know the following:

the pulse of the doe-eyed child may cease
but cassie does not rest in peace.

Is both an assurance and a warning. The doe-eyed child is most likely Bree. The darkening occultism in her blog, her mentioning of a “purity oath,” taking iron pills and learning Enochian definitely alludes to some sort of sacrifice. Bree’s character may die. Or, she may (as her latest vlog insists) stop vodcasting. Cassie, however, will not stop even if the

LG15 series does.

What does all of this mean? Hard to tell. But a complex world of puzzles is about to be unleashed upon the world, for the Internet community at large to solve.

The mystery of Cassie has just begun.