Q13 and Voynich balneology sources…?

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One of the (frustratingly small) number of art history leads the Voynich Manuscript’s author dangles before our eyes is the balneology part of Q13 (“quire 13”). Specifically, there are two bifolios that depict baths and pools, where the pictures helpfully allow us to reconstruct what the page layout originally was:

          84r/84v – contains Q13’s quire number (which should be at the back for binding)
            78r/78v – contains left half of a two-page bath picture (should be centrefold)
            81r/81v – contains right half of a two-page bath picture (should be centrefold)
          75r/75v

The centrefold originally looked like this (my red boxes highlight a paint transfer):-

Voynich Manuscript, page f78v placed next to f81r

This codicological nuance demonstrates that Q13’s quire number was added after the bifolios had been scrambled, because the page it was written (f84v) on was originally inside the quire, on a bifolio that ended up both flipped and in the wrong position. In “Thc Curse” (pp.62-65), I tried to follow this through to reconstruct the original page order for the whole of Q13.

Fascinatingly, Glen Claston has now raised this whole idea up to a whole different level – he proposes that Q13 was originally two separate (smaller) quires which have been subsequently merged together. According to his reading, the four folios listed above originally formed a free-standing balneological quire (which he calls “Q13b“), while the remaining bifolios form a free-standing medicinal / Galenic quire all on its own (which he calls “Q13a“).

Even though Glen and I disagree on the likely page order of Q13a (apart from the fact that the text-only f76r was very probably the first page, and hence its bifolio was the outer bifolio for the quire) and on its probable content, I have to say that I’m completely sold on his proposed Q13a / Q13b layout (basically, I wish I’d thought of it first – but I didn’t, Glen did). We also agree that because there is no indication at all that f84r was the front page of the quire, there was probably an additional (but now lost) outer bifolio to Q13b in its original state.

Glen also infers (from the apparent evolution of the language between the two parts) that Q13b was made first, with Q13a coming later. Having mulled over this for a few weeks now, I have to say I find this particularly intriguing because of what I believe is a subtle change in quality between the drawings in Q13b and Q13a that strangely parallels the change in drawings between Herbal-A pages and Herbal-B pages.

My key observation here is that whereas Q13b’s drawings appear to be straightforward representations of baths and pools, Q13a’s drawings appear to have layers of rendering and meaning beneath the representational surface: that is, while Q13b is a small treatise on baths, Q13a is a small treatise on something else, rendered in the style of a small treatise on baths. As an example, on f77v you can see something literally hiding behind the central nymph at the top – but what is it?

voynich-f77v-central-nymph

This closely mirrors what I see in the herbal A & B sections: while Herbal-A pages (from the earliest phase of construction) appear to be representing plants (if sometimes in an obscure way), Herbal-B pages (which were made rather later) appear to be something else entirely made to resemble a treatise on plants.

My current working hypothesis, therefore, is that the representational (if progressively more distorted) Herbal-A pages and the representational Q13b balneological section preceded both the non-representational Herbal-B pages and the non-representational Q13a pages, both of which are disguised to look like their respective predecessor, while actually containing something quite different.

(As an aside, the same kind of mechanism might be at play in the pharma section: there, too, you can see ‘jars’ that seem to be purely representational, together with other things that seem to be disguising themselves as ornate jars. Very curious!)

This has a strong parallel with the way that recent art historians (such as Valentina Vulpi) decomposes Antonio Averlino’s libro architettonico into multiple writing phases: In “The Curse” (pp.106-107), I proposed a slightly more radical version of Valentina’s thesis – that Averlino (Filarete) targeted Phase 1 at Francesco Sforza, Phase 2 at Galeazzo Maria Sforza, and Phase 3 at both Francesco Sforza & Lorenzo de’ Medici. In the case of the VMs, I suspect that some of the difficulties we face arise from broadly similar changes in need / intention / strategy over the lifetime of the construction – that is, that the style of the cipher and drawings probably evolved in response to the author’s life changes.

As far as art history goes, though, Q13b appears to give us a purely representational (if enciphered!) connection with baths and pools – places associated in the Middle Ages and Renaissance with healing. Bathhouses were usually situated in the centre of towns and were used by urban folk: while natural spas and pools were thought to have specific healing powers based on their particular mineral content, were usually in fairly inaccessible places, and tended to be frequented by the well-off at times of ill-health (for you needed resources to be able to fund a party to trek halfway up a mountain).

So… might there be an existing textual source where this (presumably secret) information on baths and spas could have come from?

The main source for medieval balneological information was Peter of Eboli’s much-copied De Balneis Puteo (which was hardly a secret): when I wrote “The Curse”, the two main Quattrocento balneological discussions I knew of were by Antonio Averlino and by the doctor Michele Savonarola. I also pointed out that that the (now misbound) Q13 centrefold (f78v and f81r) resembles “the three thermal baths at the Bagno di Romana. Of these, the ‘della Torre’ bath was used for showers, the ‘in-between bath’ was used to treat various illnesses and skin complaints; while the third one was more like a women’s spa.” (p.63)

However, I recently found a nice 1916 article online called “Balneology in the Middle Ages” by Arnold C. Klebs. Klebs notes (which I didn’t know) that the fashion for balneology died around 1500, fueled by a widespread belief that baths and spas were one of the causes of the spread of syphilis. Errrm… that would depend on what you happened to be doing in the baths (and with whom), I suppose. Here are some other fragments from the last few pages of Klebs’ article which might well open some doors:

In Giovanni de Dondis we usually hail the early apostle of exact balneology. Whatever his right to such honour may be, it must be mentioned that it rests on his attempt to extract the salts of the thermal of Abano.

Gentile da Foligno (died 1348), […] a great money-maker and promoter of the logical against the empirical method in medicine. He wrote a little treatise on the waters of Porreta, the chief interest of which may be found in the fact that it was the first to appear in print (1473).

Ugolino Caccino, of Montecatini (died 1425). He came from that thermal district not far from Florence, in the Valdinievole, which has still preserved its ancient reputation as a spa. Evidently he was a man of broad and open-minded scholarship, who in his treatise on all the Italian spas, the first thorough one of the kind, gives the results of his own personal observations, stating clearly when he is reporting from the information of others.

Matteo Bendinelli (1489) sums up for them all, in his treatise on the baths of Lucca and Corsenna,…

Michele Savonarola, representing Padua and the new school of Ferrara. To him European balneologrv owes the most ambitious work on the mineral springs of all the countries.

De Balneis omnia quae extant,” Venice, Giunta, 1553, fol., 447 leaves. This fine collection, the first text-book on balneology, offers to the interested student a mine of information.

Hieronymus Reusner & the Voynich Manuscript…

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Late in 2008, Adam D. Morris emailed me to discuss his Voynich theory: that the VMs might have some connection with Hieronymus Reusner. Finally, I’ve got round to posting about it (sorry for the delay, Adam!)…

Adam’s jumping-off point was the visual similarities between the VMs and Reusner’s 1582 book “Pandora” (a version of the ‘Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit’, Book of the Holy Trinity) – colouring, faces, line-structure, etc. And so he wondered: might Hieronymus Reusner be (or be connected with) the author of the VMs? Or if not him, might it be connected to other Germans connected with him, such as Ulmannus or Franciscus Epimetheus? Additionally, manuscript copies of the “Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit” go back to 1415, so at what point did the drawings we see in Reusner’s Pandora take that general form?

Adam was also intrigued by Bachmann and Hofmeier’s (1999) “Gehemimnisse der Alchemie“, particularly the drawings of people and objects on pp.103-123 which he thought were reminiscent of the VMs.

Alchemy expert Adam McLean has also studied Reusner’s Pandora, and concludes that it is the coloured drawings in The University of Basel, MS L IV 1, UB (entitled ‘Alchemistisches Manuscript’) that were very probably “the original for the woodcuts in Reusner’s ‘Pandora’, rather than their being directly derived from an early manuscript of the ‘Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit’.”

I dug up a couple of images from MS L IV 1, UB on the web: Figure 1 on this page, and Figure 1 on this page. The accompanying text dates the manuscript to 1550, which is a little late for the VMs, but (as I’m constantly reminded by others) not one the current fairly scratchy dating evidence definitively rules out. And, as always, the Basel Alchemistisches Manuscript might well have been copied from a yet earlier source – so there may well be a significant (probably German-language) literature on this manuscript which explores its visual roots. Let me know if you happen to find any of this!

As with a lot of VMs research ideas, what we have here is something and nothing all at the same time. Is a slim visual resemblance a convincing enough reason to spend a significant amount of time attempting to build a case for an historical connection? And (for example) might similarities in paint colour merely suggest that the VMs was repainted in Germany in the middle of the 16th century, rather than anything to do with its actual origin?

Perhaps the bigger problem with this lies with trying to shoehorn the VMs into some kind of alchemical tradition (at whatever date) is that nobody has yet presented any evidence that suggests any sustainable parallel (however fleeting) between the VMs’ drawings and any known set of alchemical drawings.

In the past, Voynich theorists have all too often used “alchemy”, “heresy”, “magic”, “necromancy” and indeed “conspiracy” as catch-all that’s-why-it-must-be-secret buzzwords: but the good news is that people are now starting to see that “why is it secret?” is the wrong kind of question (as per point 5 on the DIY Voynich theory list) to be starting from. Given that the forensics mantra is “forget about the whys, focus on the whats”, I believe that an essentially forensic approach is our only real hope of making progress.

And so I applaud Adam Morris for trying to follow the drawings (for art history surely aspires to be a forensic study of stylistics?), as this is arguably the most sensible route to take: but as he has found, it is a far harder path to follow than it at first seems. Good luck!

Barcelona blog musings…

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Before I post properly on the Barcelonan archives, here are some random musings, make of them what you will…

Believe me, I really wanted to enjoy walking around Barcelona – but perhaps I’m too much of an Early Modern kind of guy, because for all my efforts, I just couldn’t get into the town’s whole Gothic Modernist thing.  For all the feverish & fluid imagination in Gaudí’s works, for all his epic & enigmatic symbolism, I instead walked away with an overwhelming impression of hallucinatory parochialism, as if I had somehow seen Leo Lionni’s “Parallel Botany” (or the Codex Seraphinianus, for that matter) writ large in stone and in shattered tiles.

I even took along a copy of “The Gaudí Key” (a recent novel based around hidden messages supposedly left by Gaudí in his buildings, and according to which novelistic conceit the architect’s 1926 death in a tram accident was engineered by a Satanic conspiracy etc etc) to read. But that left me cold too.

Sitting on the plane home, what struck me was a eery sense of how Gaudí’s mesmeric farmboy Catholicism echoed Joseph Smith Jr’s theophanic farmboy Methodism – and an uneasy feeling of how Gaudí’s death (in 1926) segued into Opus Dei’s founding (in 1928). Perhaps the brashly naïve self-confidence required to found a religion is something denied to big-city dwellers: and hence “humble origins” are not a handicap in this respect so much as a significant asset.

To my eyes, Barcelona comes across as a sprawling temple to its own unique brand of modernity, whose underlying religion / subtext is neither Progressive Science (think of the Italian Futurists for that) nor even Commerce (think of the City of London for that), but something else entirely – Pragmatic Nostalgia, perhaps? I don’t know.

Voynich tapas selection…

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Keeping with this week’s Spanish theme, here is a small selection of Voynich tapas to dip into the spicy sauce of your prejudices rich life experiences. Tasty!

(1) René Zandbergen’s recent Voynich talk seems to have gone off OK: here’s a brief mention of it by Hugh Deasy in a blog post.

(2) Here’s a novel (though only partially formed) Spanish Voynich theory presented in the form of a Youtube video: it suggests a link between the Voynich Manuscript and Juan Ponce de León (1474-1521), the soldier who famously went searching for the fountain of youth (though this was only said of him after his death). The irony, of course, is that Florida (to where he travelled) has come to be stuffed full of retirees doing much the same thing. Personally, I suspect he was more interested in gold than any claims of eternal youth: but never mind. Oh, and if you do choose to look at the webpage, don’t forget to turn the shouty rock music backing track off. 😮

(3) Here’s a Voynich theory that is even less well-formed than the above (yes, it’s possible). “Lord Trigon” suspects that the VMs is an elvish school book that fell up from Middle Earth through a well, in basically the same way that he/she once threw his/her own 5th grade maths book down a well (and said he/she’d lost it). Ah, bless.

(4) Finally, a big Cipher Mysteries Guten Tag! goes out to Michael Johne, who puts up brief German summaries of (usually) English-language Voynich news stories on his blog. At first, it was a little strange to see my own posts pop up there (a bit like having a multilingual stalker), but I’m starting to get used to it. I hope to read some of your own posts there soon, Michael!

Voynich: ‘4o’ = ‘lo’ ?

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I’ve just got back from Barcelona (more on that shortly), and have a brief thought on the VMs for you.

Tony Gaffney emailed a few days ago to say that he had posted up his initial thoughts on the Voynich Manuscript to the Ancient Cryptography forum’s Voynich Manuscript topic: overall, his initial code-breaker’s reaction is that everyone else seems to be overcomplicating the issue – the VMs can’t be that tricky, can it?

Alas, for all Tony’s skill and cunning, I believe that he is trying to read the covertext, much as I described here. In poker terms, the VMs is full of “tells“, tiny behavioural tics, mannerisms and rituals that give away what’s going on under the surface: to a code-breaker’s eyes, the problem here is that there are so many tells that it is hard to accept that they all might be valid at the same time, as opposed to being the quirks of (for example) an unknown language. But they are all tells!

All the same, I’ve been prompted (partly by Tony’s desire to see the VMs as a simple object) into wondering whether my own reading of “4o” (as a “subscriptio” token, indicating a word-initial contraction following the first plaintext letter) might be overcomplex. If not that, though, then what kind of thing might “4o” be?

Thinking about it over the weekend, perhaps the simplest explanation might be that it codes for “lo” [‘the’] in the (very probably Italian, & very probably heavily-abbreviated) plaintext. “lo dragone” would then be written something like “4odra[gone]” (depending on how you encipher the rest of the letters). This has the additional benefit of explaining 4o’s ciphertext shape, as the “lo” would be steganographically concealed within the shape of the “4o”, while its very presence would be concealed by running it into the subsequent word (so, “4otedy” rather than “4o tedy“).

voynich-qo-lo

I also suspect that the (rarely seen) free-standing “4” is an entirely different letter entirely… but that’s an issue for a different day.

PS: there isn’t a lot of literature on “4o” (“qo” in EVA), but here’s one brief paper (Sazonov 2003) to be going on with.

1908 Archaeologia article on Temple Bruer…

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Here’s something a bit different that Cipher Mysteries buffs with an interest in the history of the Knights Templar might well enjoy: a 20MB PDF scan of a 1908 article on Temple Bruer, one of the few Knights Templar buildings in the UK still standing.

You see, one summer nearly a decade ago I had a picnic with my friend Charles Cecil and his family at a Lincolnshire local history open day at Temple Bruer, complete with a swordfight between a Templar and an Hospitaller (I think it was a draw). Just for a bit of historian fun, I decided to buy the copy of Archaeologia that contained the definitive article on the site to bring along. Fast forward to 2009… and a few days ago I thought that I really ought to get round to scanning it in, for the benefit of anyone else out there with an interest in Templar history in the UK. (Well, Charles will like it, anyway.) 

The article is entitled “The Round Church of the Knights Templars at Templr Bruer, Lincolnshire. By W. H. St John Hope, Esq., M.A.” (from Archaeologia LXI (1908), pp.177-198), and commences:-

One is sorely tempted in writing upon matters connected with the Knights Templars to say something about the monstrous persecution and terrible sufferings which the unhappy brethren of the Order endured, during the opening years of the fourteenth century, at the hands of an infamous King of France, a more wicked Pope, and even of a King of England, as an excuse for bringing about their suppresssion.

But the subject has already received the attention of abler hands than mine, and the purpose of this paper is not to lay before the Society any new facts about the Order, but some notes upon a curious church of the Knights Templars at Temple Bruer which I have lately had an opportunity of investigating.

It’s an easy read, and includes some nice plates, plans, maps and photos (most of which I scanned at 600dpi). If you ever find yourself between Lincoln and Sleaford and fancy having a look for yourself, here’s Rod Collins’ nice page which tells you how to find Temple Bruer (though remember that it’s on private property, so you must ask before you go in). Enjoy!

Flying Spaghetti Monster & the Voynich Manuscript…

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Right on cue after yesterday’s post on how to cook up your own Voynich Theory, up pops a exemplary (if perhaps not entirely serious) Voynich Theory…

voynich-f33v-medium

Pastafarian “Guilherme” points out the hitherto-unnoticed resemblance between the drawing on page f33v of the Voynich Manuscript [above] and His Noodleness the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (He erroneously calls it f34r, but it’s f33v really). So now you know – those three bobbly round things aren’t rootballs, they’re meatballs.

Of course, if you’ve yet to be introduced to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the whole associated quasi-legal quest by “millions” to get His Noodly Teachings taught in parallel with Intelligent Design in schools (particularly in Kansas), this may all come as a bit of a surprise. Also, note that teachers would have to wear “full pirate regalia” to do this without being disrespectful to the CFSM: I’m not quite sure of the precise reasoning, but it’s somehow because global warming since the 1800’s has (apparently) been inversely dependent on the number of pirates in the world. Just so you know!

Applying the DIY Voynich Theory checklist:

  1. Doesn’t care about facts? √
  2. Could be made into a T-shirt? √
  3. Major historic figure roped in? √
  4. Personal psychodrama projected on subject? √   (Probably)
  5. Asking (and answering) all the wrong questions? √   (Sort of)
  6. Having fun?  √√√√√

So, what’s it to be: sauce or butter? The eternal question (apparently). 🙂

DIY Voynich theory construction…

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I’m constantly astonished by the inventiveness of Voynich theorists, as if the mundane facts surrounding the manuscript amounted to no more than an unfolded piece of Washi given to a roomful of psilocybin-addled origami experts.

Given that creating a Voynich theory obviously can’t be that hard to do, why not devise your own? You can sell eBooks or T-shirts, maybe even get interviewed by local newspapers – and the best thing about it all is that for now, and probably for a fair while yet, nobody can prove you wrong.

OK, there are already plenty of Voynich theories out there, but a little bit of competition is healthy for the soul, don’t you think? And so here are some practical DIY tips to help you construct your very own Voynich Theory…

(1) Don’t Sweat The Itty-Bitty Stuff (such as facts)

History, schmistory – the Voynich Manuscript’s mystery is so vast that it transcends petty detail-mongering, right? So don’t even bother to try to understand why historical methodologies might help you construct better arguments – you have much bigger groupers to griddle here, for Pete’s sake.

(2) For Clues, Interpret The Pictures However You Like

Your first challenge is to assemble a nice-looking set of visual clues, preferably ones that you can cut-and-paste into a web-page or a T-shirt. Though… I should probably point out that if fifteen minutes browsing Google Images or Flickr for intriguing Voynich images isn’t enough to land you your clue #1, you might find yourself struggling a bit – awesomely great Voynich theorists need only glance at any picture in the manuscript (or anywhere else, for that matter) to be able to instantly concoct a plausible story around it.

(3) The History Of The World Is Your Oyster

Let’s face it, who’s going to give a monkey’s stool about any Voynich Manuscript theory that isn’t also a secret history? I’m sure you know the kind of thing, a story that just happens to link one or more famous historical people into a secret socio-techno-political-religious-occult conspiracy that just happens to explain all kinds of other mysterious things you may possibly have heard of. And so one thing you really need to come up with fairly early on is an unexpected set of one or more edgy, liminal historical figures (think of the Priory of Sion, but toned down somewhat), one of whom might just possibly (if you squint a lot) have had half a hand in the Voynich Manuscript. Unfortunately, most of the particularly good ones (Leonardo da Vinci, Nostradamus) have been nabbed already, but Google will probably come to your rescue here. As a rough guide, anyone born between 1200AD and 1600AD is basically fair game, so you’re not short of options.

(4) Look Deep Into Your Own Heart

The litmus test of a “proper” Voynich Theory is that it acts as a mirror to your own secret desires and wishes, insofar as it functions as a wish-fulfilment object within your personal psychodrama. Which is a $600 way of saying that every wild / exaggerated claim you make about the unsung / misunderstood historical hero figure behind the Voynich Manuscript should be something you’d like others to say about you. Whether you are a frustrated inventor, traveller, writer, physicist, astronomer, or whatever, your Voynich Theory gives you a chance to right those wrongs and so regain your pride (through a conveniently long-dead proxy).

(5) Ask (And Answer) All The Wrong Questions

Sensible questions (such as “what was the original state of the manuscript?”, “what handwriting was added later?”, “how were individual pages constructed?”) lead only to disproof, not proof: and so you should avoid sensible questions at all cost. Instead, focus on the biggest wrong questions you can think of: such as “what historical secret could possibly be so important that an entire cryptographic conspiracy would be required to encipher it?” And then give your own particular answer (of course).

(6) Remember To Have Fun!

Unfortunately, in practice this is the bit many Voynich theorists tend to forget. They get so caught up in the arcane nonsense nearly all of them are spouting (for let’s face it, it can’t be Hildegard of Bingen, Trithemius, AND Leonardo simultaneously) that they take out their ongoing frustration (at being unable to prove the unprovable) on other competing Voynich theorists. Guys, guys (and gals, gals): relax. Until such time as the hard data train finally arrives, nobody can prove a darn thing about the Voynich Manuscript. So, you can just kick back and enjoy the warm feeling that your theory – no matter how ludicrous – is arguably just as valid as anybody else’s.

There – that’s pretty much everything you need to know. So what are you waiting for? Get theorizing! 🙂

Jewish Arabic Voynich theory

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Here’s another (sort of) “plaintext” Voynich Manuscript reading, that I first found back in 2006: having corresponded briefly with the Greek author (who wishes to remain anonymous) at the time, I then managed to completely forget about until a few days ago.

He claims that the Voynich Manuscript is a transliterated Arabic document written down “using a kind of [old-fashioned] Jewish script”, and that it contains incantations to fulfil “all kinds of human desires”, addressed to the goddess “Siit” as part of cult worship ultimately deriving from the Mesopotamians.

René will be pleased to hear that the author gives extensive equivalence tables showing how to map Voynichese letters onto Hebrew letters, as well as a pronunciation guide. (Though note that you will need to resize your browser window to be 1024-pixels wide in order for the left-hand “Gabelsberger Shorthand Symbol” column to line up).

There is also a long section on f116v (the “michiton oladabas” page), as well as comments on other pages:-

Cotton is depicted on page 17, and cannabis sativa on page 16; these are plants used to make fabrics, like the one on the right of cotton, which is flax. On page 11 it is, I think, a lemon tree.

He finishes up by noting that the first few lines of folio 56 (which he says depict an eggplant) read as follows (“aqith” = “eternal”), and comments that “I cite this passage for anyone who knows Arabic well to offer a tentative reading of the whole page“:-

s(tbqd bbk)n sTn rkran bn nbsMb.n bsl bn bn
bstbrn bsd bsdn tsl bn bn trn bsTn hstqSθ
sd brn bstbsd brn ten usten bsten bstkn
usT bsl bsl bst sl btsl bn stql ban
bs bsl bs bsaqdn aqiΘ
ntbs an abrn ten aqiΘ n

Is this the answer we have been looking for? Confidentially… I don’t really think so. As claimed plaintexts go, it appears to have quite a few, errrm, ‘problems‘, let’s say. But perhaps some Arabic-literate Cipher Mysteries reader reading the above will know how to make the Philosopher’s Stone, who knows? 🙂 

Incidentally, the author also refers to a (previously unknown?) VMs book by “Ethan Ashmole Jones” called “The Voynich Manuscript – Who Is Who of a Riddle”, published by Ellinika Grammata (I believe), though I couldn’t see a copy in WorldCat. Anyone seen this before or heard of Ethan Ashmole Jones? Sounds a bit like a pseudonym to me, but (as always) you never know! 😉

Von Daniken & Voynich update…

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I flagged here last year that a new Erich von Daniken book was on the way (though it was only in German at the time). Well… now it’s on the way (August 2009) in English, too, courtesy of Legendary Times Books, with the openly provocative title “History Is Wrong“.

Curiously enough, EvD not only takes on all the usual fringe suspects (the Voynich Manuscript, the Piri Reis Map, the Antikythera Mechanism, etc), but also talks of nn underground labyrinth in Ecuador containing “an extensive library of thousands of gold panels“. And yes, you’re way ahead of me: he does indeed put forward evidence linking this not only to the Book of Enoch, but also to the Mormons.

Of course, there are plenty of people out there who would readily retitle this latest Danikenian meisterwerk as “von Daniken Is Wrong“: and I’d be hard-pressed to say from what I’ve read of it so far that this would be vastly unfair. All the same, perhaps his book will reach out to a whole new generation of gullible open-minded readers, who have managed to spend their short lives without being exposed to his individual breathless brand of cultural syncretism. Or, given the million websites that have sprung up to follow on his footsteps, might he have left it too late to return to the fray – essentially, has the Net made von Daniken redundant?