Crossword Exegesis

I don’t really know what an exegesis is, but people expect a crossword compiler to have a big vocabulary. What I mean is, on the other side of the following image are the answers to last week’s crossword and/or trivia quiz, together with an explanation of the various Fortean connections.

If you want to do the puzzle but haven’t done so yet, reading beyond this point will take you into spoiler territory. But if you’ve done the puzzle, or just want to see the answers, scroll on...

ACROSS

1. Author of Chariots of the Gods: ERICH VON DANIKEN. An easy one to start with! But EvD’s ideas weren’t as original as many people imagine – see Reinventing Ezekiel's Wheel.

9. First of the seven churches mentioned in the Book of Revelation: EPHESUS. A Turkish town and a major centre of early Christianity. It was also the site of one of the Seven Wonders of the World: the Temple of Artemis.

10. “Their weapons were no match for the Bossonian LONGBOW" (Robert E. Howard). This comes from the only full-length Conan novel that Howard wrote, The Hour of the Dragon (also sometimes published as Conan the Conqueror). Not a particularly Fortean story, although some of Howard’s other fiction is. I think I’ll make that the subject of my next blog post.

11. "Voyagers who have shown every indication of intent to EVADE " (Charles Fort). This comes from The Book of the Damned, a few paragraphs after the oft quoted “I think we're property” – the voyagers in question being extraterrestrial ones.

12. Yggdrasil, for example: ASH. Yggdrasil is the World Ash Tree in Norse mythology.

13. The world ends without this, according to T.S. Eliot: A BANG. From The Hollow Men (1925): “This is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but a whimper.” Another Eliot poem from the same period, The Waste Land, is packed with Fortean themes – I’ll have to add that to my list of future posts as well.

14. Site of the Crucifixion: CALVARY. From the Latin Calvariæ Locus = “place of the skull”. The Hebrew equivalent is Golgotha.

16. "I had long hoped for a personal CONTACT with a man from a flying saucer" (George Adamski). A quote from Flying Saucers have Landed, co-authored with the far more interesting Desmond Leslie.

18. The queen of the fairies, according to Shakespeare: TITANIA. From A Midsummer Might’s Dream, of course. The picture (fourth image on top row) shows a detail from The Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania (1847) by Sir Joseph Noel Paton.

21. Sayings of Jesus that are not found in the Gospels: AGRAPHA. This is an obscure one, but anyone who’s tried compiling a crossword will know that the more words you fill in, the harder it gets to find unobscure words to fit the remaining spaces! But Agrapha isn’t so obscure that it doesn’t have its own Wikipedia page.

23. Max ERNST, German surrealist. Perhaps the most Fortean connection here is Ernst’s bird-man creation called Loplop, which was adopted as a kind of mascot by Jon Downes and the Centre for Fortean Zoology (see picture – third image on the top row).

25. URI Geller, Israeli-born psychic. Geller’s 1973 appearance on the Dimbleby Talk-In was one of my Fortean Events that Shook the World.

26. "Thus SPAKE Zarathustra", by Friedrich Nietzsche. Written in the 1880s, this philosophical work focused on two concepts more often associated with the 20th century: “The Superman” and “God is Dead”.

27. Lenape people living in New Jersey when the Europeans arrived: RARITAN. This is one of two grid entries where I just couldn’t find anything Fortean that would fit. There’s a modern-day city in New Jersey named Raritan, as well as Raritan Bay between New Jersey and New York.

28. "IMMORAL Tales" (1974), featuring Paloma Picasso as Countess Erzsébet Báthory. The Báthory segment focuses on the historical countess, not the later legends that associate her with vampirism. So she doesn’t slaughter large quantities of female virgins and bathe in their blood in order to restore her youth. She just slaughters large quantities of female virgins and bathes in their blood because she enjoys it (see picture – first image on bottom row).

29. Britain's best-known cryptid: LOCH NESS MONSTER. In light of the upcoming Scottish independence vote, perhaps I should have worded this as “Scotland's best-known cryptid” to stay on the safe side.

DOWN

1. The building pictured [in last week’s post]: EXETER CATHEDRAL. Another non-Fortean one – I needed a 15-letter word or phrase beginning with E and ending with L, and this was the best I could do. The answer was actually written on the image, if you can read Latin: Exoniensis Ecclesiae Cathedralis.

2. Eldest son of Abraham, according to the Book of Genesis: ISHMAEL. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, Ishmael is less important than his younger half-brother Isaac. In Islam, however, Ishmael is the more important of the two, being a direct ancestor of Muhammad.

3. Herman HESSE, author of Siddhartha. According to Wikipedia, this 1922 novel “deals with the spiritual journey of self-discovery of a man named Siddhartha during the time of the Gautama Buddha.... It was published in the U.S. in 1951 and became influential during the 1960s.”

4. The James OSSUARY is inscribed "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus". If the inscription is genuine, it might constitute archaeological evidence for the Biblical Jesus... but quoting Wikipedia again, “most scholars hold the last part of the inscription to be a forgery”.

5. The DELPHIC Sibyl, prophetess of Apollo. The illustration (second image on top row) is from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling.

6. Professional assassin in feudal Japan: NINJA. I’m not sure if this is an easy one or not – everyone uses the word “ninja”, but do they really know what it means?

7. An esoteric branch of Judaism: KABBALA. When I compiled the crossword a few years ago, I convinced myself this was a valid spelling – although “Kabbalah”, “Cabala” and “Qabbala” are more common.

8. A type of hippie found in 1980s Britain: NEW AGE TRAVELLER. Again the spelling may look wrong to some people, but that’s how it’s spelled here in Britain. And hey, spelling rules are just another fascist conspiracy anyhow. If you catch my drift, man.

15. ANN Greenslit Pudeator, hanged as a witch in Salem in 1692. It was tragic, of course, that so many innocent women were accused of witchcraft in the 17th century... but really, with a name like Ann Greenslit Pudeator, what do you expect? She probably had a pierced nasal septum and wore black lipstick, too.

17. "Alles Vergangliche ist NUR ein Gleichnis" (Everything transient is only a symbol - Goethe). These words are sung by the Chorus Mysticus at the end of Mahler’s 8th Symphony (see The Curse of the Ninth).

19. "The Serpent Power: Secrets of TANTRIC and Shaktic Yoga" by Arthur Avalon. The author’s real name was Sir John Woodroffe, who derived his pseudonym from Arthurian mythology. Oddly, though, the book isn’t about Arthurian mythology but about Indian mysticism. Woodroffe was one of the first proponents of the New Age formula “if it’s old, and it doesn’t come from the Judaeo-Christian or Graeco-Roman tradition, then it must be good.”

20. Thomas AQUINAS, author of "Summa Theologica". Aquinas was a 13th century scholar who specialized in interpreting the works of Aristotle (that’s what scholars used to do in those days, in lieu of thinking for themselves). He was often depicted trampling on a rival Aristotle-interpreter named Averroës, as seen in the painting by Gozzoli in the rightmost image above.

21. Belief that all living and non-living things have a spiritual essence: ANIMISM. Closely related to paranoia: the belief that all living and non-living things are out to get you.

22. Generic term for Indian languages related to Sanskrit: PRAKRIT. Most mystical and religious Indian writings are in Sanskrit, although the earliest Buddhist scriptures are in a Prakrit language called Pali. “Karma” and “Nirvana” are Sanskrit – the Pali equivalents are “Kamma” and “Nibbana”.

24. The largest moon of Saturn: TITAN. One of the few bodies in the Solar System that astrobiologists believe may support alien life – thought probably not as advanced as the alien life envisaged by Philip K. Dick in The Game-Players of Titan.

26. SIMON Magus, a sorcerer mentioned in the Book of Acts. All the Bible says about Simon is that he became a Christian, but not a very good one. However, later writers describe him as one of the founders of Gnosticism, and presumably for that reason he’s one of the many highbrow figures namedropped by Philip K. Dick in VALIS.

The School of Athens

The School of Athens is one of the huge frescoes painted by Raphael (1483–1520) in the Vatican's Stanza della Segnatura. It's always been one of my favourite paintings, and I knew the two central figures were meant to be Plato and Aristotle... but I've only recently discovered that many of the other figures represent real people as well. These include a number of philosophers, some of them contemporary with Plato and Aristotle, and others not! I've labelled these in the image below (click to enlarge), followed by a summary of their Fortean credentials.

From a Fortean point of view, Aristotle was one of the bad guys, because he invented the Law of the Excluded Middle so beloved of skeptics. Forteans, like the inhabitants of A.E. van Vogt's The World of Null-A, are non-Aristotelians (that's what Null-A means). In contrast, Plato was one of the good guys, since he emphasized the distinction between the world perceived by the senses and the reality that underlies it. Raphael's figure of Plato was modelled on Leonardo da Vinci, who was 58 when the picture was painted in 1510. I suspect Raphael rated Plato more highly than Aristotle, too, since the latter is gesturing downwards into the gutter while Plato is pointing up towards the sky!

It was Plato, of course, who produced the first detailed accounts of Atlantis, in his Timaeus and Critias. In those works, the history and geography of the "lost continent" are described by a character named Critias, in conversation with Plato's teacher Socrates... who is also shown in the painting, together with a group of his students including Antisthenes and Aeschines.

The core "School of Athens", comprising the great Athenian philosophers of the fourth and fifth centuries BC, stretch from the Socrates group on the left to Aristotle and his students (labelled "Peripatetics") on the right. Somewhat apart from the main crowd (in real life as well as in the painting) is Diogenes, who was the archetypal cynic. Although he was a contemporary of Aristotle, he had as little as possible to do with him. It's probably fair to describe Diogenes as an eccentric. On one occasion he was seen masturbating publicly in the middle of a marketplace, and was quoted as saying "If only I could satisfy my stomach as easily by rubbing it in the same fashion."

The figures around the edges of the picture (if the traditional attributions are correct) are a bit of a mish-mash both chronologically and geographically. The only one connected to the Athenian School (albeit somewhat later than the others) is Epicurus, who is standing in the left foreground. Epicurus was a materialistic hedonistic atheist, but unlike most materialistic hedonistic atheists, he's mentioned in the Bible. Saint Paul met some of his followers on his visit to Athens, as described in Acts 17:18.

The earliest philosopher depicted is Zoroaster (standing in the group on the right of the picture). Zoroaster wasn't even a Greek -- he was a Persian. He founded the dualistic religion of Zoroastrianism, which Philip K. Dick considered one of the major precursors of Gnosticism. It forms the basis of his early novel The Cosmic Puppets -- and later on, in his masterpiece VALIS, Zoroaster is described as the "first Saviour".

Another group that greatly influenced Philip K. Dick were the "pre-Socratics"... Greek-speaking philosophers from Ionia, in what is now modern-day Turkey. The most famous pre-Socratic was Pythagoras, who is pictured writing in the left foreground. Pythagoras is best known for his mathematical theorem, although he was a teacher of more esoteric subjects as well. In fact, the very word "esoteric" was originally coined in 1701 to describe the secret teachings of Pythagoras, as opposed to his public or "exoteric" teachings.

Other pre-Socratics, clustered around Pythagoras in the picture, include Anaximander, Heraclitus and Parmenides. The latter two feature prominently in VALIS, and also in PKD's non-fiction essay "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later". Dick saw both Heraclitus and Parmenides as important precursors of Gnosticism, along with Zoroaster. In Raphael's painting, the figure of Heraclitus is modelled on Michelangelo, who at the time was working a few corridors away on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. This may or may not have been meant as a compliment to Heraclitus, since Raphael and Michelangelo didn't get on very well together!

Also in the Pythagorean group, and mentioned in Dick's essay, is Anaxagoras -- who is also reputed to have coined the word "panspermia". Well, maybe he did, but I doubt whether he was thinking of microbes falling to earth in meteorites... since I don't think anyone in those days was aware of the existence of either microbes or meteorites!

Unfortunately, the "Zeno" depicted on the far left of the painting is probably Zeno of Citium, who is far less interesting than his namesake Zeno of Elea. The latter was a pre-Socratic who was famous for his paradoxes... including one which proves that any kind of motion is impossible! Philip K. Dick featured Zeno's Paradox in his 1953 short story "The Indefatigable Frog".

Moving forward to the post-Athenian period, the centre of learning in the Graeco-Roman world shifted to Alexandria in Egypt. Two of the early Alexandrians, Euclid and Ptolemy (both in the right foreground), are - like Aristotle - more famous for being wrong than anything else. Euclid believed space was flat, which it isn't, and Ptolemy believed the Sun went round the Earth, which it doesn't. Sadly, their views held sway for more than a thousand years before they were proved wrong.

A less well-known figure from Alexandria was Plotinus, who is shown standing on the right of the picture. During the third century AD he developed a system called neoplatonism, which was probably as close as Western philosophy ever got to Eastern mysticism... complete with enlightenment through meditation and oneness with the World Soul.

A later disciple of neoplatonism, also from Alexandria, was Hypatia -- pictured over on the left with the pre-Socratics, even though she lived almost a thousand years after them. As well as being a mystic, Hypatia was a pagan and a female -- a dangerous combination in the early days of Christianity. A mystical, pagan female... she must be a witch! Inevitably, Hypatia met her death in 415 AD at the hands of a lynch mob -- arguably the first ever victim of a witch-hunt.

Traditionally, Hypatia's death marks the end of classical civilization and the beginning of the Dark Ages. There is a gap of 750 years until the next person pictured -- a mediaeval scholar named Averroes, who is looking over the shoulder of Pythagoras. Born in the Islamic part of Spain, Averroes was one of the first people to rehabilitate the works of Greek philosophy and translate them into Latin. The picture on the left is one of Raphael's preliminary sketches for the painting... but it amused me because it looks like something from a pulp magazine, or one of those old black-and-white comics like Savage Sword of Conan!

A Gnostic fable

One of the central concepts of Gnosticism is the idea that Creation was a botched job, and hence the Creator (referred to as the Demiurge) couldn't have been the real God. Gnosticism was widespread in the early years of Christianity, but was then suppressed for almost a thousand years before re-emerging during the 20th century in the writings of people like Carl Jung and Philip K. Dick.

At least, that's what I used to think. However, I recently came across a short fable called Plato's Dream, written by the French satirist Voltaire (right) in 1756, which struck me as distinctly Gnostic in its message. It even uses the Gnostic term Demiurge, although in Voltaire's satire the Earth was created by a still more incompetent being called Demogorgon! Since Plato's Dream is out of copyright, and I couldn't find an English translation that didn't distort Voltaire's original, here is my own translation of the relevant passage:

... the great Demiurge, the eternal geometer, having peopled infinite space with innumerable globes, wanted to test the knowledge of the Spirits who had been witnesses of his work. He gave each of them a small piece of matter to arrange, a bit like Phidias and Zeuxis might have given their disciples statues and paintings to make, if it is permissible to compare small things with great ones.

Demogorgon had for his share the piece of mud that is called the Earth; and, having arranged it in the manner that one sees today, announced that he had made a masterpiece. He imagined he had subjugated envy, and waited for the praise of his companions; he was greatly surprised to be received by them with jeers.

One of them, who was a bit of a joker, said to him: "Truly you have worked very well; you have separated your world into two, and you have put a large volume of water between the two hemispheres, so that there is absolutely no communication from one to the other. People will freeze from the cold at your two poles, they will die of heat at your equator. You have prudently established large sandy deserts, in order that travellers will die there of hunger and thirst. I am happy enough with your sheep, cows and chickens; but frankly I am not too happy with your snakes and spiders. Your onions and artichokes are very good things, but I do not see what your idea was in covering the Earth with so many venomous plants, unless you had a design to poison its inhabitants. It appears moreover that you have formed some thirty species of apes, many more species of dog, and only one species of human: it is true that you have given this last animal something you call Reason; but, in all conscience, this Reason is too ridiculous, and approaches too much to folly. It appears moreover that you have not made a very good case for this animal, since you have given him so many enemies and so little defence, so many illnesses and so few remedies, so many passions and so little wisdom. Apparently you do not want many of these animals to remain on Earth; since, not counting the dangers to which you expose them, you have balanced your account so well that eventually smallpox will carry off regularly every year a tenth part of the species, while the sister of smallpox will poison the source of life in the nine-tenths that remain; and, as if that were not enough, you have so disposed things, that half of the survivors will be occupied in litigation, and the other half in killing each other; without doubt they will be very obliged to you, and what you have made here is a fine masterpiece."

Demogorgon reddened; he was aware there was moral and physical evil in his work; but he maintained that there was more good than evil. "It is easy to criticize," he said, "but do you think it is so easy to make an animal who is always rational, who is free, and who never abuses his freedom? Do you think that, when one has nine or ten thousand plants to tend to, it is so easy to prevent some of them from having harmful qualities? Do you imagine that given a certain quantity of water, sand, soil and heat, one can avoid having sea or desert? You, mocking sir, have just finished the planet Mars: we will see how well you have acquitted yourself, and what a beautiful impression your nights make without a moon; we will see if in your world there is neither folly nor disease."

Indeed, the Spirits examined Mars, and quickly fell to mockery. The earnest Spirit who had fashioned Saturn was not spared; his companions, the makers of Jupiter, of Mercury, of Venus, each had to undergo their own reproaches.

They started to write pamphlets and thick volumes; they spoke words of wisdom, they composed popular songs, they made jokes, then they grew bitter; at last the eternal Demiurge imposed silence on all of them: "You have made," he said to them, "both good and bad, because you have plenty of intelligence, and yet you are imperfect; your works will endure only for a few hundreds of millions of years; after which, being better instructed, you will do better: but it is only for me to make things that are perfect and immortal."

Devil-worship

The Devil of mediaeval Christianity was a thoroughly unpleasant character, and it's difficult to understand why anyone would have wanted to worship him. Yet the idea that certain individuals indulged in "Devil-worship" was common during the Middle Ages. There are at least three different (and completely independent) explanations for this:

[1] Paganism. Before Christianity came to Europe, there were several perfectly benign pagan deities who had superficially "Devil-like" characteristics, such as horns or cloven feet, or were associated with goats or serpents. One example is the Celtic God Cernunnos, pictured on the left (this is a modern representation on display in the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle, Cornwall). It's possible that worship of such deities survived in secret into the Middle Ages, and when encountered by Christians was misinterpreted as Devil-worship (It's also possible that the iconography of the Christian Devil was deliberately modelled on these pagan deities, in order to deter people from worshipping them).

[2] Gnosticism. This was a variant form of Christianity, which existed for several centuries alongside the mainstream form. Gnostics worshipped Christ, who they believed was the Son of the one true God... but at the same time they believed the God described in the Book of Genesis was an impostor who had created a world that was flawed and inherently evil. In this view, the Serpent in the Garden of Eden was arguably on Christ's side, since he was an enemy of the pseudo-God! At least one mediaeval Gnostic sect, the Ophites, actually worshipped the Serpent... although this wasn't really Devil-worship, because in their interpretation the Serpent was the Good Guy and the Creator was the Bad Guy!

[3] The Occult. The idea that certain individuals had dealings with the Devil (or one of his subordinate demons) was common in medieval folklore, as attested by the legends of Faust or Pan Twardowski (see A Polish Pact with the Devil). Undoubtedly some people really did try to summon up demons by magical means -- although I wouldn't be surprised if these attempts were inspired by the legends, rather than the other way around. Whether this counts as Devil-worship is a moot point, since the individuals concerned are generally portrayed as being Christians who are revolted by the thought of the Devil -- but persuaded to  deal with him by the promise of worldly power. In reality, if such things ever did take place in the Middle Ages, I suspect the participants were just bored, over-educated cynics who had no expectations of anything supernatural occurring... much like the people who enact "Satanic rituals" in our own supposedly more enlightened times!

Montségur and the fall of the Cathars

The above view of Montségur is another of the pictures Paul Jackson took in France last year. I meant to post it soon after the last one (The Devil of Rennes-le-Château) but I forgot!

About 50 km west of Rennes-le-Château, Montségur is a mountain fortress in the historic region of Languedoc. The site is famous as one of the last strongholds of the Cathars, a mediaeval religious sect who practiced a variant form of Christianity that was linked to Gnosticism. The Cathars became so firmly rooted in Languedoc that a crusade (called the Albigensian crusade) was launched against them. In March 1244, after a long siege, Montségur finally fell to the forces of the French king -- who promptly reduced the fortress to rubble (the castle visible in the picture dates from several hundred years later).

In their book Mysteries and Secrets of the Templars (2005), Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe state that the Cathars were offered a stark choice shortly before the fall of Montségur: "Provided that no-one left the fortress or attempted to take anything away from it, the garrison could more or less go home quietly as if nothing had happened -- but if anyone attempted to leave prematurely, they would all be burned." Instead of taking the first option, the Cathars elected to go with the second! During the night, a small group was lowered down the cliff face carrying something described as pecuniam infinitam - Latin for "infinite wealth". As a result, over two hundred Cathars were burnt alive. So the "pecuniam infinitam" must have been pretty valuable if it was worth that price! The Fanthorpes speculate that it may have been the Emerald Tablet of the alchemists, the Ark of the Covenant, or the Holy Grail.

In October 2004, when the manuscript of Mysteries and Secrets of the Templars was still in draft form, Lionel Fanthorpe gave a sneak preview of it at that year's Fortean Times UnConvention. At a time when Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code was making headlines, Lionel's talk was a real scoop for the event -- in effect the keynote speech. Then 18 months later, after the book had been published, Fortean Times covered it in their review section (FT211:62). It was one of the worst reviews I've ever seen! The book received a score of 2 out of 10, and was described as a "deeply cynical exercise" and "a dishonourable crock of a book". There's gratitude for you!

John Brunner: a British Philip K. Dick?

John Brunner (pictured left at Eastercon in 1976) was a British science fiction writer whose career in many ways paralleled that of his illustrious American contemporary Philip K. Dick. Their first stories were published within a year of each other (Brunner's in 1951 at the age of 17, Dick's in 1952 at the age of 23), and they both went on to generate an impressive corpus of novels and short fiction throughout the 1950s and 60s. They were two of the most prolific contributors to Donald Wollheim's line of Ace "paperback originals"... and even shared the credits on two 1960 Ace Doubles: D-421, featuring Dr. Futurity and Slavers of Space, and D-457, with Vulcan's Hammer and The Skynappers (for the benefit of the uninitiated, Wollheim was notorious for inflicting sensationalist titles on his authors, and all these stories are more sober and intelligent than their titles suggest!).

Both Dick and Brunner slowed their production rate in the late 60s and 70s... and in both cases their "academically recognized" work dates from this period. Aside from their writing, the two authors had other things in common: they were both notoriously paranoid in their dealings with other people, and both had a morbid obsession with the East-West arms race and the threat of nuclear war. And, sadly, they both died in middle age -- Dick in 1982 at the age of 53, Brunner in 1995 at the age of 60.

There are important differences, of course -- most notably the fact that all of Dick's novels are still in print, while very few of Brunner's are. This may be down to the large number of Dick's works that have been made into successful motion pictures... a mixed blessing, perhaps, but one that has yet to be inflicted on anything John Brunner wrote. People who only know Brunner through his most famous works -- the huge, near-future dystopias of Stand on Zanzibar (1968), The Sheep Look Up (1972) and The Shockwave Rider (1975) -- might add that the fictional themes and subject matter of the two writers are also completely different. But John Brunner produced many other excellent works that are now almost forgotten, but which show interesting other dimensions to his character.

Although his best-known works all deal with the sociology of the near future, many of Brunner's other novels have more conventional science fiction themes. It's widely known that he was the first person to use the word "Worm" in the context of computing... but less well known that he was the first person to use the word "Gray" as the name of an alien species! His obscure 1965 novel The Martian Sphinx (published under the pseudonym of Keith Woodcott) includes a race of enigmatic aliens who are dubbed "The Grays"!

Amongst Brunner's vast output, there are several works that could be called "Dickian", including the following:

• The Gaudy Shadows (1960, later expanded into a 1970 novel of the same name), in which an entrepreneur constructs multi-sensory illusions for the entertainment of the idle rich. The illusory worlds are created using a combination of stage sets, simulacra, hypnosis and liberal doses of an LSD-like drug -- the latter designed to enhance the brain's tendency to pareidolia: "to reject the actual appearance of objects and seize on their resemblances to other things". This is Brunner's most direct attempt to depict "the malleability of externals under psychosis or drugs" -- a phrase he would later use to describe the work of Philip K. Dick!

• No Other Gods But Me (1966, expanded from A Time to Rend, 1956). The protagonist of this novella discovers that his life is being screwed up, deliberately and systematically, by a shadowy religious cult called the Real Truthers... who in turn are being manipulated by a despotic ruler in a parallel universe. The hero shifts between the two realities, and is told that originally they were one and the same: "Our suspicion is that the reality of the pre-animate cosmos differed from its present reality; to put it in the most extreme terms, the universe may well be a figment of the minds of mankind. Certainly the massed minds of the race constitute the only force known to be powerful enough to change it. You are to accept that long ago -- perhaps ten thousand years -- it was changed."
• Father of Lies (1968), in which a group of vacationing students, having failed to find the Loch Ness monster, turn their attention to a strangely shunned area of rural England. They discover a small, self-contained world of fantasy -- complete with dragon, ogre, mediaeval villagers and a gothic castle. This all turns out to be the projected dream-world of a big-brained, perpetually child-like mutant -- born in Victorian times and steeped in Arthurian mythology: "At what stage the make-believe turned to that horrible reality, we'll perhaps never be sure... Maybe his power, till then dormant, matured. And then, all at once, the world turned to nightmare for everyone around him. The land of legend escaped from his mind and pervaded the real world."
• More Things in Heaven (1973, expanded from The Astronauts Must Not Land, 1963). Strange events occur when the first faster-than-light ship emerges from hyperspace. Crewmembers are seen wandering around on Earth, spouting philosophy, several days before their ship is due to land. Vast ethereal figures, possibly angels or demons, are seen in the sky. And when the ship is boarded, it's found to contain mis-shapen monsters claiming to be the original crew! All this is explained in pseudo-Gnostic terms worthy of Philip K. Dick himself: "What you refer to as normal space is a very special case of hyperspace -- indeed, an artificial distortion of it. Human awareness isn't native to such a continuum and includes concepts which here can find no real referents. In consequence you 'see through a glass darkly', and in days when the shock was fresher attempts were made to convey a vague memory of your original reality by means of myths and legends."

As to John Brunner's views on Philip K. Dick... as mentioned in an earlier post, he was his biggest fan this side of the Atlantic!

Magic Words

There is a tendency in some circles to give words (when spelled out in one alphabet or another) a significance beyond their obvious meaning and etymology. A well-known example of this is gematria, or numerology, which originated at least two thousand years ago... and is still going strong among the New Age fraternity. A more interesting New Age habit (though equally unsound, from an etymological point of view) is the finding of parallels between similar-looking words that come from completely different language families and time periods -- for example Mary Caine's assertion, in connection with the purported "Earth Mystery" of the Glastonbury Zodiac, that the English county of Somerset derives its name from the ancient Middle-Eastern civilization of Sumeria!

As far back as the early nineteenth century, a man named Godfrey Higgins wrote a book called Anacalypsis: An Inquiry into the Origin of Languages, Nations and Religions, in which he asserted (on the basis of the similarity of the names when written in modern English) that Abraham, the Biblical patriarch, was one and the same as Brahma, the supreme divinity of the Hindu pantheon. However unlikely linguistically, the suggestion is interesting because it potentially unites a large proportion of the world's religions. Brahma is recognized (though not necessarily worshipped) by Buddhists as well as Hindus, while Abraham is the "most recent common ancestor" of all three monotheistic traditions (Islam, Judaism and Christianity).

Now for a couple of other words that "sound a bit like Abraham" (the pictures on the left are taken from a series of cigarette cards published in the 1920s). Abracadabra, of course, is the archetypal magic word used by stage conjurors... but it was also employed as a mystic formula by the early Christian Gnostics, who would write it in the triangular form shown here as a talisman against plague and other diseases. Later, the twentieth century occultist Aleister Crowley used the even more Abrahamic variant "Abrahadabra" in his magical incantations!

Abraxas was one of the names of the supreme deity in the Gnostic tradition of Basilides -- the God of the 7 planets and 365 heavens (the word "Abraxas" has 7 letters and a numerological value of 365). The bizarre form taken by this god, with the head of a bird and a pair of snakes for legs, can be seen from the Abraxas ring depicted on the cigarette card. A Masonic scholar named George Oliver (roughly a contemporary of Godfrey Higgins, who was mentioned earlier) put forward the theory that Abraxas and Abraham were one and the same... and that Abraxas was effectively the same deity as the Hindu Brahma!