Upcoming Spanish and German Voynich novels…

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A couple of upcoming Voynich Euro-novels for your brief attention: firstly, the Spanish “El caso Voynich” (i.e. “The Voynich Case”) from Argentinian writer and columnist Daniel Guebel. Though references to it seem to have been temporarily removed from Guebel’s website, it appears to be based on contemporary-ish Voynich research, and may even include some VMs images. Due out next month (November 2009).

And secondly, “Engels Fall” (i.e. “Fallen Angels“ “Angel’s Fall” or “Angel’s Case”) by Helena Reich has a qualmless secret society leaving a trail of corpses across Prague, each with a tarot card signature… might a mysterious order of alchemists hold the missing pages of the VMs? Prague Post reporter Larissa Khek (the heroine of Reich’s earlier book “Watery Grave”)  is determined to find out [etc, etc]. Due out in two months’ time (December 2009).

Conspiracy map (v0.1)…

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Here’s something you might like: a handy cut-out-and-keep map of historical conspiracy clichés, inspired (I’m sorry to say) by Peter Blake & Paul Blezard’s “The Arcadian Cipher” (2000). Of course, there were countless more conspiracy clichés I could have included (aliens, Roswell, MIB, etc), but seeing as the Elders of Zion paid me handsomely to leave many of those out, you’ll just have to figure them out for yourselves. 🙂

ConspiracyMap

Though these are grouped in a (vaguely) thematic kind of way above…

  • Red – art conspiracies
  • Blue – political conspiracies
  • Yellow – religious conspiracies
  • Grey – conspiratorial bodies / mechanisms
  • Green – architectural conspiracies
  • Purple – literary / textual conspiracies

…please don’t imagine for a minute that there’s any real abstract / analytical structure to this – it’s just a bunch of stuff to bear in mind when picking up historical conspiracy mystery thrillers. Oh, or when constructing demented theories for well-known historical cipher mysteries (I’m sure you know the ones I mean). Enjoy! 🙂

Father Castell and “The Voynich Club”…

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German fans of Pater Castell and of the Voynich Manuscript have a treat in store coming up, with the episode due to be aired on 5th November 2009 at 20:15 called “Das Voynich Manuskript“ (hopefully you can translate that from the German).

Here’s my rough translation of the programme blurb:-

16-year-old Ralf Hoffmann is found dead at Athanasius Kircher boarding school. Is it suicide? Father Castell, a former student himself, is asked in by his longtime friend Father Jonas Selby because a tragic event from the past seems to have exactly repeated itself. Marie Blank is surprised when she sees a youthful portrait of Father Castell on display and is even more surprised by what she finds at the scene. The two quickly decide to investigate the mystery together. Ralf Hoffmann was a misfit interested in encryption and anagrams – and especially in the undeciphered Voynich Manuscript. Crucially, Father Castells’ knowledge helps Marie in her investigation. It turns out that others in the in boarding school share Ralf’s interest in anagrams and encryption. A secret school club is active, even blackmailing a teacher – might Ralf’s death be linked to this “Voynich Club”?

Review of Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol”…

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In “The Lost Symbol”, Dan Brown takes his “symbologist” non-hero Robert Langdon on a high-speed twelve-hour tour around Washington. Broadly speaking, it’s like riding pillion on a jetbike driven by a demented architectural historian screaming conspiratorial travelogue descriptions into your ears via a radio-mike. But you probably guessed that already. 🙂

In fact, because you all thought your other questions exactly at the same time (which allegedly multiplies their power exponentially, asserts the book), here are the answers to them:-

  • Yes, it’s formulaic as hell (and po-faced throughout)
  • Yes, it’s a swift read (and for that I truly am grateful)
  • Yes, Dan Brown does flag his ‘big’ plot twist 300 pages too early
  • No, there are no sex scenes (which is probably just as well)
  • No, Robert Langdon is exactly as undeveloped as he was in the Da Vinci Code
  • Yes, the “Noetic Science” angle is just nonsense (and unlike most reviewers, I’ve read Lynne McTaggart’s “The Field”, which is what Dan Brown claimed as his inspiration)

The big reversal of expectations here is that, for a change, the Masons are not “The Conspiracy Behind All The Bad Stuff”. Actually, they’re the patsy good-guys, guarding some kind of mysterious symbolic treasure trove they don’t really understand, while All The Bad Stuff spirals out of control around them. In fact, because Dan Brown spends most of the novel stressing how darn nice the Masons are, and how they espouse a kind of universally-benign syncretist meta-religion (like apron-wearing Rastafari, De Trut’ In All Trut’s), his whole project comes over like a colossally misjudged Masonic recruiting handbook. Join us, we’re ancient and have obscure dippy rituals, but we Do Good Works, so that’s OK. Oh, and the Shriners are a joke, got that?

“So what’s your problem with that, Nick?”, I hear you saying. Well… even though Robert Langdon is notionally a “symbologist” (a made-up term that broadly matches iconographer / iconologist, if you don’t examine it too closely), he is still basically an academic historian, right? Hence, what I just don’t get from start to finish is how you can square his being a proper historian with his supposed near-obsessive interest in the kind of hallucinogenic pseudo-history clap-trap that Masonic historians have spent centuries punting out. For every one genuine story in the canon, there are a hundred fake ones: which is a lousy hit rate to be dealing with, even for a symbologist.

It’s true that the inconvenient truth behind the history of History is that it did start out as an exercise in adapting or falsifying marginal evidence to support otherwise untenable ideological claims… apologetics, by any other name. And it is also true that the various Washington monuments are indeed filled with a kind of cheerfully jaunty Man-As-Technological-God secular myth-making – mythopoiesis (if that’s not too scary a word). But as for Langdon buying in to any of it? Doesn’t work for me, sorry.

Actually, I think Langdon’s key attribute (his eidetic memory) is a ‘tell’ for what Brown uses him for – an historical memory machine, a robotic repository able to dredge up every wonky numerological / etymological / mythological fantasy ever devised, while remaining indifferent to all of them. Langdon doesn’t need to feel love, or loyalty, or lust: his mind is a blank canvas, doodled upon by X thousand years of cultural graffiti artists. Even though at one point Brown has a brief chuckle at the Wiki-esque shallow learning of modern students, Langdon himself functions as nothing more complex than a disbelieving walking Wikipedia of the occult and marginal… an erudite ‘conspirapedia’ to help fatten up the page count by a couple of hundred pages or so.

As for what Brown does with all those references… Cipher Mysteries readers should know by now that any time you see (say) John Dee, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, and (my personal favourite anti-subject) the Rosicrucians come up, you’re normally in the presence of someone fairly credulous – and sadly Brown (who namechecks these and dozens of other similar figures) never gives the impression of being alert enough to stay wise to the historical perils these present. Ghastly.

But what of “The Lost Symbol”‘s cryptography? Well… there’s a little bit of Masonic pigpen (though the fact that simple pigpens can be rotated seems to have been overlooked); the final “substitution” cipher is actually more steganographic than cryptographic; yet there’s some nice stuff on magic squares (no, not magic circles). And that’s about it. All the same, though fairly skimpy, this actually fills me with a deep sense of relief – relief that Brown didn’t try to be too clever-clever with the historical crypto side of things, for which (I’m sorry to say) he clearly doesn’t have much of a feel. Yes, the Dorabella Cipher, the Voynich Manuscript, and even the Kryptos sculpture get flagged: but these are not the main deal.

For me, the worst part of the whole book by a mile is the lack of any functional intimacy or closeness between any of the characters – even though I do appreciate that a lot of technical craft has gone into its plotting and overall construction, 500 pages is a long way to drive without any emotional attachments or transformation to help the reader along. This prolonged drabness caps even The Da Vinci Code’s sustained emotional superficiality: unfortunately… given how bad a film that first book got turned into, I truly shudder at the thought of how bad a film “The Lost Symbol” promises to be. Having done a fair bit of screenwriting myself, I can say that some story problems just can’t be fixed without major, major surgery… and this would seem to have plenty.

Dan Brown and the Dorabella Cipher…

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Apparently, Chapter 41 of “The Lost Symbol” namechecks a handful of cipher mysteries, which probably explains the Dorabella Cipher search query spike I noticed over the last few days. So, a minor mystery solved (for a change), I’d guess:-

“…after [Langdon’s] experiences in Rome and Paris, he’d received a steady flow of requests asking for his help deciphering some of history’s great unsolved codes—the Phaistos Disk, the Dorabella Cipher, the mysterious Voynich Manuscript.”

Of course, only a cryptological schmuck taking Elonka’s famous list of unsolved codes & ciphers at face value would put Dorabella right up there with the VMs – so that must have been added by the copy-editors, right?

PS: here’s a recent blog entry on a proposed solution to the Dorabella Cipher.

“I Am Darknesse” Voynich story…

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Here’s a Voynich Manuscript short story to sustain you through those long dark Northern hemisphere summer months (you know, that time when you have lots of things to do outside that don’t involve endlessly surfing the ‘net).

It’s called “I Am Darknesse” by Jez Thorpe, and is a fairly enjoyable stab at a drug-tastic horror-trip take on the VMs’ dark secrets. Sure, his characters are a bit cartoony and thin: but it’s nicely written, and (apart from a  “Frank Newbold” gaffe) manages to get the VMs side of things pretty much straight.

Just so you know, Jez is 36, married, lives near Cambridge, has taken at least one Creative Writing course, and recently found himself unemployed.

Roberto Salvidio’s Italian Voynich novel “Codex”…

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Words reaches Cipher Mysteries ears (via the Italian Wikipedia Voynich page) of a new Italian Voynich-themed novel called “Codex” by Roberto Salvidio. The story begins when an unknown person sends a manuscript to Mary Radclyffe’s family: from then on, she’s on the run until she can decode the Voynich Manuscript. There’s plenty of esotericism and a sprinkling of Leonardo in the mix – sounds like a bit of fun.

Naturally, I then contacted Roberto Salvidio via Facebook: he told me that he is currently looking for an English translator for “Codex”: if that sounds like something you might like to be involved in, please feel free to contact him.

Intriguingly, Roberto also mentioned that he put his own cipher challenge at the end of his book. Would you like to see it? Of course you would! So, here it is (with his permission):-

12 6 7 1 ­ 8 5 27 5 8 / 6 8 7 27 ( – 7 2 8 5 7 9 / 5 9 8 6 _ 4 33  4 3 23 7 ) 7 5 34 5 ­ 13 4 5 1 ( 7 1 7 4 5 _ 12 3 6 \ 3 15 8 9 5 4  ­ 16 ) 3 9 3 5 1 _ 8 9 4 3 1 7 5 ( 2 6 ­ 3 29 7 16 2  2 ­ 9 7 5 24 9 5 27 \ 4 7 5 8 _ 5 8 9 8 4 / 13 9 7 1 ) 4 5 6 7 8 5  12 \ 2 7 9 5 2 43 1 ­ 7 6 28 5 4 5 7 9 / 3 5 6 8 9 8 3 4 _ 3 21 3  26 3 \ 4 24 3 7 9 3 27 ( 5 9 7 13 2 8 2 7 6 _ 8 13 15 7 \ 8 5 4 ­  2 8 9 3 4 / 12 _ 4 9 3 23 ) 3 7 3 9 1 ­ 9 14 8 7 9 7 2 6 1 \ 8 16  8 6 3 1
2 7 44 9 ­ 5 7 28 5 – ( 3 8 4 4 9 _ 9 5 1 3 ) 3 26 7 9 ­ 9  9 8 13 1 5 4 \ 5 38 1 5 _ 5 89 8 4 ( 7 1 9 ­ 2 61 7 2 ) 4 9 3 6 7 _  6 89 49 8 36 8 9 5 ( 9 1 4 4 1 3 ­ 1 7 3 9 ) \ 81 ( 56 7 84 3 1 /  4 77 6 1 7 19 / 3 8 65 84 _ 76 94 9 3 2 ) 6 8 94 ­ 5 87 9  ­ 2 7 / 1 7 58 28 4 / 7 3 ­ 8 13 9 ­ 1 7 9 3 / 5 7  5 7 1 4 ( 6 2 ­ 51 7 3 ) 3 15 9 3 \ 4 91 7 2 ­ 9 8 75 8 4 / 3  3 65 8 _ 6 9 44 3 7 \ 5 4 3 15 ­ 32 6 7 9 3 / 1 5 49 8 ( 5 4 19 9 8  5 ­ 19 / 6 8 9 _ 8 5 3 44 7 ) 6 8 49 5 1 ­ 6 7 18 18 ­ 7 2 88 6 ­ 4 2 7 9 6 3 ( 9 8 5 8 4 / 4 6 1 7 9 ) 8 4 7  7 23 \ 8 7 7 1 6 – / 7 13 _ 2 45 8 7 4 \ 7 6 18 ­ 4 8 7 9 16  ­ 5 8 9 4 3 1 ( _ 5 8 5 9 3 1 _ 5 8 33 6 5 8 4 4 _ 4 9 6 7 6 32 \  7 4 24 7 8 9 ­ 23 9 16 ) 8 3 7 2 _ 7 5 8 29 8 1 3 4 _ 27 \ 13 4 5  1 ( 2 7 8 66 _ 4 9 6 7 6 3 2 )
– 2 6 7 14 9 ­ 9 16 8 5 1 7 5 4 ­ 5 18 8 7 8 9 ( 7 14 9 5  5 / 4 8 66 7 5 7 9 / 4 8 2 7 1 78 _ 4 8 7 \ 4 91 7 2 ­ 66 23 7 13 9  ) 15 3 9 _ 3 28 9 8 3 ( 4 23 6 9 7 2 ( 7 21 8 7 _ 23 24 9 3 ) 8 7 6 ­ 8 9 15 8 14 ­ 3 2 8 5 7 5 4 ) 1 8 \ 2 17 6 2 ­ 1 €“ 1 9 6 / 11 7 5 8 28 4 _ 8 5 3 4 7 2 _ 12 ( 2 4 6 7 8 9 6 2 ­ 1 7 3  19 3 / 4 9 5 8 7 12 _ 4 9 3 2 6 7 6 3 _ 5 9 8 82 1 72 9 4 ( ­ 9 8  7 5 48 ) 4 7 _ 6 3 9 8 6 5 _ 66 9 5 1 8 13 \ ( 6 5 7 6 8 3 _ 6 5 9 4 9 3 6 \ 5 16 25 ­ 4 8 7 6 9 ) 7 4 23 9 6 9 4 _ 8 27 6 _ 3 18 6 3 \ ( 12  7 8 5 8 5 9 4 _ 4 3 23 7 ) 5 7 18 66 9 14 8 ­ 9 1 7 ­ 3 7  7 6 2 7 9 / 5 6 34 43 8 9 _ 66 7 7 9 4 3 6 9 7 3 _ 5 8 4 6 3 4 6 5 ( 3 15 8 9 5 4 ( 1 7 2 18 7 _ 2 3 17 8 5 4 ) 2 3 8 6 ­ 5 8 9 8 7 \ 7 8 5 9  44 27 ) 3 2 6 7 3 9 7 ­ 4 7 26 11 ­ 6 79 / 9 8 3 4 9 8 _ 9  9 3 5 1 \ 9 8 5 4 5 13 ­ 2 ­1 ( 8 9 3 4 8 _ 3 9 24 9 23 ) 9  9 7 4 19 / 5 6 9 8 6 59 _ 13 15 9 \ 3 6 4 5 2 7 9 ­ 3 2 6 7 9  ­ 5 6 3 15 ­ 9 4 8 6 9 / 5 6 8 6 8 9 _ 5 8 11 2 47 \ 9 8 5  5 4 4 5 13 \ 12 36 _ ( 7 2 5 9 4 5 ­ 28 7 5 ) 15 _ 8 27 12 8 4 _ 9 3  6 4 27 6 \ 4 7 26 9 4 ­ 1 7 6 14 7 19 / 3 6 8 5 6 _ 4 9 5 6 8 7 12  5 8 _ 4 8 9 5 55 6 3 ( 4 13 5 4 1 \ 9 5 19 3 11 _ 7 8 6 2 7 _ 6 9 7 4 2 3 9 4 ) 7 5 34 5 ­ 4 5 13 5 4 3 \ 5 8 6 _ 3 6 8 6 7 5 ( 3 1 8 9 4 3  15 \ 3 5 3 8 1 5 ) 2 3 ­ 4 1 9 5 8 89 5 4 ( 6 3 4 9 5 _ 3 2 6 7 2  3 6 \ 14 15 3 4 \ 5 8 \ 4 7 27 14 3 9 ­ 7 1 9 4 5 8 8 2 6 ) 3 2 9  6 4 9 7 6 _ 9 8 9 4 1 7 5 / 7 25 8 7 / 41 7 5 4 _ 4 5 12 8 7 8 11 \ 21 7 2 3 9 ­ 7 5 16 9 6 2 8 4 / 6 8 7 27 _ 4 2 \ 6 7 19 3 ( 5 9 8 8 6 9 5  6 _ 6 9 3 4 9 ) 6 6 11 7 2 ­ 2 7 9 16 14 \ 5 9 3 1 5 \
\ \ 5 13 5 4 3 ( 15 9 8 4 / 3 7 5 8 8 2 3 5 4 ­ 6 7 9 3 1 6 2 \ 4  44 9 5 8 7 12 ) 4 8 6 5 7 9 5 7 6 / 12 8 3 1 9 5 _ 6 3 7 6 9 4 3 \ 6 7 4 16 2 ­ 6 9 6 7 4 5 8 4 / 8 34 8 ( 3 18 8 9 3 ­ 7 8 9 9 5 8  8 4 5 5 7 / 8 27 6 88 4 _ 7 21 8 7 4 6 8 15 \ 9 13 14 1 ­ 7 13 9 7 )  9 3 6 5 4 _ 9 3 8 8 9 4 3 / 6 4 48 / 1 7 2 8 4 7 _ 3 6 3 7 2 \ 5 1 ( 5 13 4 / ) 4 23 9 4 _ ( 4 18 7 6 1 ­ 23 4 5 8 ­ 6 7 ­ 3 €“ 3 7 5 4 35 7 )
\ 7 3 6 72 3 9 4 ­ 7 12 6 3 29 6 / 6 8 ( 55 19 8 4 18 ­ 16 16 ) 9 55 31 _ 5 7 1 3 4 5 6 ( 5 27 ­ 3 5 7 11 / 28 3 12 3 _ 3 6 ) 9  3 7 27 ­ 27 3 4 9 17 ( 3 8 _ 9 2 3 9 4 2 _ 5 8 4 8 9 98 / 5 8 7 25  ) 11 8 _ 5 5 7 2 13 4 9 8 / 4 8 7 6 9 6 / 4 9 5 6 9 21 7 6
( 7 8 6 16 7 ­ 2 7 3 88 4 5 7 ) 9 3 \ 4 9 22 13 ( 7 8 5 4 27 1 _ 7  24 23 4 8 ) 16 7 8 5 ­ 3 4 \ 3 5 7 31 8 5 _ 6 8 9 _ 9 4 37 6 _ 6 5  8 9 ( 4 5 27 9 4 7 ­ 5 8 2 6 4 9 1 ) 7 8 4 5 7 _ 7 5 8 4 1 ( 1 5 2  7 66 16 8 7 ­ 6 27 19 37 ) 3 9 4 23 27 6 _ 27 5 8 14 9 _ 69 4 3 \  9 13 14 ­ 6 7 9 7 3 26 / 3 6 _ 3 18 6 13 \ 9 8 13 15 4 ( 785 _ 4 9  5 23 15 8 6 7 ) 4 8 5 6 7 5 9 8 ­ 8 76 16 25 ( 7 11 _ 5 1 8 6 7 8  _ 6 3 6 5 6 7 _ 4 23 9 ) 3 9 3 7 19 ­ 3 15 8 8 9 3 ­ 6 4 7  7 9 7 16 \ 9 8 44 5 8 13 ( 9 5 8 7 2 _ 3 9 ) 39 1 7 3 9
– 8 7 44 2 ( 5 18 9 4 5 _ 8 5 31 ) 4 8 7 5 4 / 4 5 ( 5 8 1 ­ 3 7 9  1 ­ 33 1 8 9 ­ 27 1 7 1 ) 44 5 9 3 \ 15 14 1 9 18 9  9 ­ 6 28 7 4 3 9 / 6 3 4 6 5 _ 4 7 2 1 8 5 \ 5 8 13 4 9 ­ 15 15 ( 7 14 / 44 8 7 6 9 ) 18 5 1 _ 8 9 5 6 8 ( 3 4 15 ­ 4 3 7 5 4 ) 3  4 2 5 15 3 _ 5 8 9 8 4 8 ( 16 7 8 7 2 5 3 9 ­ 9 8 5 4 5 7 5 8 / 66  88 7 2 ( 5 8 9 4 31 ­ 6 8 4 3 9 17 ) 3 4 5 8 13 7 ) 9 8 4 5 7  ­ 27 19 6 44 9 ­ 48 7 6 19 1 / 8 4 7 2 8 21 _ 12 6 3 12 3  3 \ 3 4 2 7 9 4 ( 2 7 88 6 _ 4 5 8 67 1 23 ) 8 5 7 / 7 28 _ 7 28 5 4 21 \ 6 3 7 9 6 7 2 ­ 6 17 2 3 7 9 / 11 7 6 3 8 2 ( 9 7 1 44 5 2 4  ­ 11 77 9 7 6 ) 4 5 6 7 8 7 3 5 \ 11 3 9 8 1 ­ 7 4 9 4 6 /  / 5 9 _ 3 5 13 7 18 \ 2 7 12 ­ 3 5 1 7 3 / 6 7 2 8 6 _ 8 5 4 2 3 7 \  8 5 4 19 8 ­ 8 7 4 3 9 28 6 ­ 9 88 5 14 ( 2 7 1 _ 5 7 4 2  2 \ 9 31 8 9 ­ 3 77 9 11 ) 4 9 6 7 6 3 2 _ 3 8 3 44 3 66 ( 3 14 5 \  4 9 3 24 \ 13 2 4 3 2 7 9 ­ 19 7 3 ) 4 5 8 7 24 \ 6 2 7 12 ( 8 66  _ 8 5 9 31 \ 8 5 9 44 3 1 ­ 8 4 ) 5 8 6 7 _ 4 9 ( 5 88 9 3 11
­ 7 16 4 7 6 9 / 3 6 8 55 6 _ 9 33 2 4 9 6 77 \ 88 7 12 5 9 8 4 5  ­ 88 6 8 7 9 34 / 32 88 9 8 3 _ 6 7 2 4 9 5 18 66).
Doubtless if you do crack it, he’ll put a trickier one in the English edition. Enjoy! 🙂

Review of Latayne Scott’s “Latter-Day Cipher”…

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Here’s yet another cipher-tinged literary genre I wasn’t previously aware of – the ex-Mormon novel. As a just-released exemplar,  “Latter-Day Cipher” by ex-Mormon Latayne Scott (author of “The Mormon Mirage”, so her overall position should be no great surprise) appears to do a pretty good job of tackling contentious Mormon issues – along the lines of ‘if certainty is God-given, why do His interpreters on earth keep changing their minds?’

Her novel has a socialite killed with “strange markings carved into her flesh and a note written in a 19th Century code“: and so, of course, it is to the alphabet of the Anthon Transcript that her title appears to refer [Update: it actually refers to the phonetic Deseret Alphabet, developed in the 1850s to teach English to immigrants. Thanks for the correction, Latayne!] Sounds like quite a fun read to me (though perhaps 12 million Mormons may beg to differ).

Actually, this all reminds me of an unexpected parallel I forgot to mention in that previous post… between the golden plates and the Anthon Transcript (that signalled the founding of the Mormon Church) and the Golden Dawn Cipher Manuscripts (that signalled the founding of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn). How similar yet dissimilar!

Incidentally, everyone knows about famous Mormons (such as the Osmond family, Matthew Modine, and Ted Bundy) but what about famous Golden Dawn members? Well… Aleister Crowley aside, the GD had as members [according to Wikipedia, so be ready with your pinch of salt] the poet Yeats, Bram Stoker, Gustav Meyrink, Arnold Bennett, and Edith Nesbit (yes, she of “The Railway Children” fame). Just so you’re prepared for the next pub quiz! 🙂

Review of “Stigmata”…

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The film Stigmata (1999) presses a whole lot of my buttons. At the time it was originally released, I had been researching my own novel built on broadly the same premise:  a globetrotting protagonist hunting down miraculous statues and people claiming to have duplicates of Christ’s stigmata (though that’s basically where the similarities ended). And so I was fascinated to see how the film-makers went about bringing this to life.

stigmata-small

Even though the story and script (by Tom Lazarus, the not-quite-so-famous brother of Paul Lazarus III, director of Westworld & Capricorn One) didn’t itself think far out of the [confession] box, something magical happened in the art direction and cinematography: the use of colour, focus, light, time, sets, costume, and even make-up were all exemplary. For me, watching Stigmata was at times like being artfully collaged to death, machine-gunned with photographically (and geometrically) perfect moments: a tick on a piece of paper, Patricia Arquette lying underwater, a blood drop in a pool, blood being drawn, a blood centrifuge – all elegant, spare, swift, and focused. I highly recommend the film to anyone purely to enjoy its five-star visual treatment.

As a writer myself, however, I think the film’s problems stemmed right from the initial plotting – basically, having a priest-scientist (Gabriel Byrne) investigate the stigmata being suffered by a young atheist-hairdresser (Patricia Arquette) beneath a Vatican conspiracy managed by his control-freak boss (Jonathan Pryce) never worked as a setup for me… all too staged / stagey. The walls between the characters stopped the emotional side of the film from developing in a satisfactory way: I also didn’t much like the St Francis of Assisi (arguably the most famous stigmatic?) resolution, but you’d have to see that for yourself to see if you agree or disagree.

Watching this film a decade on, it feels a bit dated: could it be that the Da Vinci Code (and its flood of [make]-me-[rich]-too ripoffs) made the whole notion of devastating-secrets-that-would-topple-the-Church-were-they-to-be-made-public seem lightweight? And I kept wondering: was Holy Blood Holy Grail ultimately to blame?

Regardless, the film set me thinking about the kind of ur-story towards which Tom Lazarus was reaching, with his ancient Aramaic codex (based loosely on the Coptic Nag Hammadi Gospel of Thomas) triggering high-stakes factional infighting within the Vatican, with the supernatural subtext that The Truth Will Out (even beyond death).

Yes, it’s undoubtedly a cliché: and the overarching literary / cultural template at play is pretty easy to sketch out:-

  • concealed message left by an ancient (implicitly perfected) person, that requires…
  • deciphering and translation by (extremely proficient) domain experts, to expose…
  • long-held lies behind contemporary doctrinal messages, which are supported by…
  • powerful present-day conspiracies trying to maintain the (morally untenable) status quo.

Historically, does this sound familiar? After all, it is not vastly different to the entire back-story of the Renaissance (particularly during the Quattrocento). There, you had people scouring the known world for lost or concealed messages left by the Greco-Roman civilizations, to be deciphered by humanist scholars for their presumed wise (and frequently contrarian) messages.

And so I would argue that HBHG-style searches for enciphered traces of a ‘real Jesus’ are arguably little more than back-projecting our present-day cultural insecurities onto early Renaissance cultural insecurities – their search for lost classical wisdom was no different. One irony, though, is that things like the Turin Shroud (which I blogged about here and here) offer us glimpses of an entirely parallel kind of lost Christian history, far beyond the conceptual reaches of most contemporary conspiracy theorists.

What I personally fail to understand, though, is how this whole wonky ‘enciphered anti-doctrinal message’ meme has managed to endure the centuries as a literary conceit. Even my new best friend François Rabelais satirized this none too subtly in Chapter 1 of Book 1 of his alcohol-obsessed Gargantua and Pantagruel:

The diggers struck with their picks against a great tomb of bronze… Opening the tomb at a certain place which was sealed on the top with the sign of a goblet, around which was inscribed in Etruscan letters, HIC BIBITUR, they found nine flagons, arranged after the fashion of skittles in Gascony; and beneath the middle flagon lay a great, greasy, grand, pretty, little, mouldy book, which smelt more strongly but not more sweetly than roses.

Rabelais goes on to offer (“with much help from my spectacles“) his translation of the “Corrective Conundrums” found in that stinky little tome, all of them nonsensical and presumably meant to resemble some kind of vaguely prophetic quatrain-based literary genre popular in France at the time (Nostradamus fans, take note):-

The year will come, marked with a Turkish bow,
And spindles five and the bottoms of three pots, […]
This age of hocus-pocus shall go on
Until the time when Mars is put in chains

So… even though this concealed-text plot pattern was a hoary old chestnut by 1530, can anyone really explain to me how come it continues to drive a low-brow literary industry nearly five centuries later? For me, the big mystery here centres on the apparent lack of cultural progress: does Dan Brown’s success actually prove that we have learnt practically nothing in half a millennium?

Consider that your cipher mystery for the day… 🙂