Popular Culture in Fortean Times

In the comment thread to last week's post, I mentioned that Fortean Times occasionally touches on various aspects of popular culture, from cult TV and movies to comics and pop music. So I thought I'd do a quick run-through of a few examples today.

To start with some very obvious topics, there are the three shown above. The X-Files (FT 82, August 1995) was not only one of the most fortean TV shows of all time, but its first appearance in 1993 coincided with the wider distribution of FT to "mainstream" retailers like WH Smith, and almost certainly contributed to the magazine's popularity at that time. Around a decade later, Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code (FT 193, March 2005) was a publishing phenomenon, bringing fringe theories that had previously been the realm of specialist writers (and FT contributors) like Lionel Fanthorpe and Lynn Picknett to a much wider audience. Just over a century earlier, Bram Stoker had done something similar in his novel Dracula - the title character of which went on to become one of the most recognisable and ubiquitous pop-culture icons of them all, as recounted in the cover feature of FT 257 (January 2010).

At a less obvious level, you can find references to popular culture in almost every issue of FT. Taking the one I discussed last week, for example - FT 73 from February/March 1994 - there's an interview with cult author William Gibson, generally credited as the originator of the cyberpunk genre. And I spotted something else in that issue, too: a book review by comics legend Alan Moore. I don't mean a review of one of his graphic novels - I mean a review written by him of someone else's work. Looking online, I see he actually did quite a few reviews for FT in those days - which pleases me enormously, as I've done over 40 of them myself. It's always nice to discover that you have something in common with a famous person!

Sticking with books and comics for a moment, here are three more covers that caught my eye. No apologies for a second appearance of The Da Vinci Code (FT 212 this time, from August 2006) - both because it's one of my favourite novels, and because I love the illustration on the cover. In addition to people like Picasso and Orson Welles, it features Da Vinci himself in the act of strangling Dan Brown! The middle cover (FT 256, December 2009) features Dennis Wheatley - best remembered today for The Devil Rides Out (the only one of his novels that I've read), although in his day he was Britain's most prolific author of occult fiction. Finally there's the only comics-themed cover I could find - FT 320 (November 2014), relating to the Fredric Wertham-inspired anti-comics paranoia than swept America in the 1950s.

I found a few shorter comic-related pieces on interior pages as well. The most interesting of these was an article in FT 277 (July 2011) called "The Morning of the Mutants", speculating that Stan Lee and/or Jack Kirby got the idea for the X-Men from the seminal (though now largely forgotten) fortean conspiracy book The Morning of the Magicians, written in 1960 by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier. There's also a feature about Marvel Comics' Doctor Strange in FT 349 (January 2017, to tie in with the movie), which discusses the character's origin and fictional predecessors.

Regarding the "popular culture" of the mid-20th century, I can't resist mentioning a couple of pieces by myself - in fact the only two full-length feature articles I've had in FT. First there was "Fanthorpe's Fortean Fiction" (FT 297, February 2013) about the large number of mass-market paperback novels that Lionel Fanthorpe churned out in the late 1950s and early 60s. This was followed by "Astounding Science, Amazing Theories" (FT 355, July 2017), looking at fortean themes in the pulp science fiction magazines of the 1940s.

Pulp magazines were a huge part of popular culture in the first half of the 20th century, but - with a few notable exceptions - they're only of interest to die-hard fans today. Of those exceptions, perhaps the most important is H. P. Lovecraft, whose Cthulhu Mythos first took form in the pages of Weird Tales in the 1920s and 30s, before going on to develop a life of its own to rival that of Bram Stoker's Dracula. I found no fewer than three Lovecraft-inspired FT covers: FT 184 (June 2004), FT 369 (August 2018) and FT 390 (March 2020 - this one tying in with the movie adaptation of The Color Out of Space). Here they are:

As regards cult TV shows, I've already mentioned the most fortean of all, The X-Files - which not surprisingly made several further appearances after the one pictured at the top of this post (including FT 85 from February 1996, which had a rundown of all the fortean references in the show's first season). Three other TV-related covers are shown below, the middle of which - FT 215 from October 2006, celebrating 40 years of Star Trek - needs no introduction. The other two relate to the screenwriters (both with wider fortean interests than you might expect) behind two of Britain's most famous sci-fi icons: Kit Pedler, who created Doctor Who's second-most-famous villains, the Cybermen (FT 209, May 2006), and Nigel Kneale, creator of Professor Quatermass (FT 418, May 2022). The latter may no longer be a household name, but back in the 1950s he was really the first great TV sci-fi hero, in this country at least.

Turning to movies - I was spoiled for choice here, so I've picked out three covers that really speak for themselves. First there's a celebration of 50 years of Hammer Horror films (FT 223, June 2007), then a look at one of the mainstays of those films, Peter Cushing, on the 100th anniversary of his birth (FT 301, May 2013), and finally a 40-years-on retrospective about The Exorcist (FT 313, April 2014):

To be honest, my favourite thing about The Exorcist is the music - the snippet from Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells that it uses, I mean - which brings me neatly onto the next subject. When I talk about "pop culture" on this blog, I most often mean fairly specialized things like pulp magazines, comics (from the pre-multimedia franchise days) and cult TV shows such as The X-Files. But to most people, pop culture means just one thing, and that's pop music. This is such a pervasive part of modern life that it's acquired a plethora of fortean connections - so much so that I'm going to split them into two distinct parts.

To start with, here are three cover features that deal with direct fortean influences on musicians. The first, from FT 88 back in July 1996, describes how various pop stars from David Bowie and Jimi Hendrix to Kate Bush and The Orb absorbed ufological and similar speculations into their music. Second, there's a somewhat more arcane take on the same subject by Ian Simmons (FT 244, January 2009), featuring the likes of Stockhausen and Sun Ra - a much-referenced source for my own book The Science of Sci-Fi Music. Finally, in the immediate wake of David Bowie's death, there was a cover feature about the numerous fortean influences on his work (FT 338, March 2016) - including the aforementioned Morning of the Magicians by Pauwels and Bergier.

Another aspect of pop music that's of fortean interest is the way weird conspiracy theories grow up around the subject. So to round off what I honestly believed would be a shorter-than-usual post when I started it, but has ended up as probably my longest ever - here are three cover features addressing this aspect. The one on the left (FT 166, January 2003) deals with the numerous legends and conspiracy theories associated with Elvis, while the one on the right (FT 384, October 2019) does much the same for the Beatles. As for the one in the middle (FT 258, February 2010), it concerns the notion that the "Illuminati" employ popular music - and the musicians themselves - to manipulate the thoughts, beliefs and behaviour of the general public. But that's not really a conspiracy theory, is it? I mean, if you substitute "global media" for "Illuminati", I'd say it's an indisputable fact.

 

From Atlantis to the Roswell Incident, via Wikipedia

 

There's a game where players compete to get from one specified Wikipedia article to another in the minimum number of jumps, just by clicking on internal wiki-links within an article. I thought I'd try a fortean variation on this, navigating my way from the Atlantis article to the Roswell Incident. But instead of going for the shortest route, I've tried to make it more interesting by, wherever possible, including items from the tag cloud on the right-hand side of this blog. Here's the route I came up with:

STEP 0: Atlantis. A long-time favourite topic of mine, this scores 12 in my tag cloud (meaning this is its 12th appearance on this blog). My most recent brush with it was a video I made last year based on an old comic story by Steve Ditko. Historically, the oldest surviving references to Atlantis appear in the writings of the Greek philosopher Plato, who consequently is one of the very first wiki-links in Wikipedia's Atlantis article.

STEP 1: Plato. Wikipedia's article on him mentions his prominent appearance in Raphael's painting The School of Athens, with an onward link to its article on that subject.

STEP 2: The School of Athens. This is one of my all-time favourite "fine art" paintings - a fanciful depiction of a host of famous philosophers of various time periods all congregated together in a classical architectural setting. I've seen the original in the Vatican, and written a blog post about the fortean credentials of some of the people featured in it. An interesting bit of trivia mentioned early in the Wikipedia article is that Raphael's depiction of Plato (top left in the montage at the start of this post) is modelled on Leonardo da Vinci - whose article Wikipedia then links to.

STEP 3: Leonardo da Vinci. The second "hit" for my tag cloud, Leonardo scores 8 in it (which is either a measure of his fortean relevance, or my interest in him, or both). I've seen the originals of several of his paintings, including the most famous, the Mona Lisa, and the most interesting, The Last Supper. Both of them are linked from his Wikipedia article,  but there are no prizes for guessing which one we're going to click on.

STEP 4: The Last Supper (Leonardo). This, of course, is prominently featured in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, which scores 11 in my tag cloud. And since Wikipedia's article on The Last Supper links to the one on The Da Vinci Code, that's where we're going next.

STEP 5: The Da Vinci Code. Of the many interesting links in this wiki-article, the one I'm going to pick out is another item from my tag cloud (with a score of 9), the Knights Templar.

STEP 6: Knights Templar. More than anything else, I associate this mediaeval organization with the legend of the Ark of the Covenant, but surprisingly their Wikipedia article doesn't mention it. So we'll have to take a roundabout route via something it does link to, the Temple of Solomon.

STEP 7: Solomon's Temple. OK, now there's a link to the Ark of the Covenant, so without further ado let's click on that.

STEP 8: Ark of the Covenant. This is another favourite fortean topic of mine, with 5 hits in my tag cloud. To most people, however, it just means one thing - Steven Spielberg's 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark - which Wikipedia conveniently links to.

STEP 9: Raiders of the Lost Ark. Astute readers will probably see where we're going now (if they haven't worked it out already)! This, of course, was the film that introduced everyone's favourite archaeologist, Indiana Jones - and the Wikipedia article helpfully links to all his subsequent appearances, including Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).

STEP 10: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. By far the most fortean instalment in the series, I love this film - and it neatly provides the last (wiki-) link in the chain, straight to our target destination: the Roswell Incident.

STEP 11: Roswell Incident. With a count of 5 in my tag cloud, this is the ultimate "modern myth", which I thought was a fitting final destination after starting out from the "ancient myth" of Atlantis. Hope you enjoyed the tour!

More Underground Art

I did a post a couple of years ago about the Underground Art at the Wieliczka Salt Mine near Kraków in Poland, but now that I’ve been there myself I can do another one using my own photographs. The mine is one of the great man-made wonders of the world, and has been a tourist attraction for centuries. One reason for this is its sheer scale – it consists of over 200 kilometres of tunnels on nine levels linking around 3000 artificial caverns or “chambers” with a total volume of ~7,500,000 cubic metres. Unfortunately none of this comes across very well in photographs, which make everything look much smaller than it actually is.

The picture at the top shows the chapel of Saint Kinga, which is the only one I took that gives a reasonable impression of scale. The chapel is 54 metres long, 15 metres wide and 10 metres high (180×50×33 feet). There are half a dozen other chambers on the tourist route of a similar volume, although most of them are taller and narrower (the tourist route covers a mere 3% of the whole complex – just 2 kilometres of tunnels on the uppermost three levels).

Easier to capture in photographs are the various images carved out of salt that can be found along the tourist route. These are relatively recent, most of them dating from the last hundred years – during which time the mine’s main source of income gradually shifted from salt extraction to tourism. Here is a famous carving I mentioned in my earlier post, based on Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper (with my cousin and myself standing in front of it, just to prove I really was there).

Over the centuries the mine has had many famous visitors, three of whom are shown in the next picture. The astronomer Copernicus visited in 1493, when he was a student in nearby Kraków. Goethe, the great German polymath, visited almost 300 years later in 1790 – apparently in one of his lesser known roles as mining adviser to the Duke of Weimar. Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła) visited during the 15-year period, in the 1960s and 70s, that he served as Archbishop of Kraków.

Saint Kinga is the legendary founder of the Wieliczka Salt Mine. She was a real person, the daughter of a 13th century King of Hungary, although the story of the founding of the mine appears to be pure legend. In real life she was a devoutly religious person who sold all her material possessions to lead a life of contemplative prayer – she was made a saint by Pope John Paul II in 1999. The scene below depicts the legendary version of Kinga.

Another legend associated with the mine is that of the Skarbnik (or Treasurer), which I also mentioned in my previous post. There are supposed to be numerous spirits and other supernatural entities inhabiting the mine, but the Skarbnik is the most powerful of these, guarding the mine’s treasures and protecting miners from danger. The statue of the Skarbnik shown below comes at the very end of the tourist route, 135 metres (440 feet) below ground level.

The Art and Science of Microwriting

Microwriting—the practice of writing in microscopically small letters—is a fascinating subject that I’d barely heard of a week ago. Since then I’ve learned a bit more about it courtesy of Gordon Cramer of Queensland in Australia, who got in touch with me in the context of my recent post about The Bletchley Park D-Day Pigeon Code Caper. Gordon has kindly given me permission to pass on this information to a wider audience – most of the following is culled from a couple of emails he sent me, with only a small amount of additional digging on my part.

There are several different reasons why people have resorted to microwriting over the centuries, ranging from harmless amusement to life-or-death secrecy. The picture on the left shows an example of the former – a miniature booklet that was handwritten by Charlotte Brontë when she was 14 years old. According to The Guardian this contains 4000 words spread over 19 tiny pages.

Aside from being an amusing pastime, microwriting allows a large amount of information to be compressed into a very small space, and for this reason Gordon tells me it was sometimes employed in Carrier Pigeon messages during the Second World War and earlier.

If the microwriting is sufficiently small, then it may not be obvious to the eye that it’s writing at all – if done skilfully it may simply look like solid lines. This of course is where the secrecy comes in. According to Gordon “the Gang population in US prisons even today use microwriting and actually train their membership in its use” and “the unfortunate inmates of concentration camps used it; they referred to it as KSIVY (personal, private document). They would write small letters and notes, wrap them around a stone and throw them sometimes to other family members in an adjacent compound.”

While the purpose of microwriting is usually to conceal text in the form of a graphic design, it can sometimes be the exact opposite of this – particularly in religious contexts which allow writing but forbid purely ornamental design. The Star of David on the right dates from 1794, and consists entirely of micrographic Hebrew text. Some of the larger letters can be seen quite clearly, but even what appear to be narrow lines in the design are also made up of tiny letters.

Not surprisingly, microwriting has always been a valuable tool in espionage, and Gordon writes that it “was used widely by agents in the field. Although microdots were available, carrying the necessary equipment around wasn’t an option... The German army made good use of it as well. In an interview with an ex-Wehrmacht man, Werner Schmitz, I believe in 1949, he freely admitted his use of the technique in his work during WW2. Interestingly he also demonstrated the skill to a reporter who was amazed at the man’s ability, commenting ‘I couldn’t see the words, just a curvy line’.”

With the aid of appropriate technology, incredibly small-scale writing can be achieved. The picture on the left shows a Dall-type diamond microwriter, with the result shown in the inset. The dark circular object is a microscopic organism called a diatom, which is less than a tenth of a millimetre in diameter.

Microwriting even has its Fortean applications. On the subject of the perennially mysterious Voynich Manuscript, Gordon says “I think you’ll find that there was a man in the 1920s or 30s who suggested that the manuscript contained microscopic shorthand of some sort. His work was dismissed as pareidolia at the time, but were the pundits wrong?”

Of course, the issue of pareidolia—appearing to find what you’re looking for in random data—is quite common in Forteana. If it crops up when you’re gazing at photographs of Martian topography or listening to an old vinyl record played backwards, then it’s just as likely to happen when you’re scouring the works of Leonardo da Vinci looking for microwriting. While I was exchanging emails with Gordon I remembered a media report I’d seen in the Daily Telegraph a couple of years ago: “Art historians are probing a real life Da Vinci Code style mystery after discovering tiny numbers and letters painted into the eyes of the artist's enigmatic Mona Lisa painting”. And why not?

Crashed UFO in London

Hot on the heels of his Alien skull simulacrum, Paul Jackson has obtained further photographic evidence of extraterrestrial visitation in the form of this crashed flying saucer, which he spotted near his hotel while staying in London last week. I assume it’s meant to be some form of abstract sculpture, although Paul said he couldn’t see an identifying plaque on it, and his own caption confidently reads “A crashed UFO in Canada Square, Canary Wharf”.

Looking through Paul’s album from his London trip, another vaguely Fortean picture is this statue by Enzo Plazotta called Homage to Leonardo, which stands in Belgrave Square. It’s modelled after Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” drawing, which features prominently in the early chapters of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. But the image is interesting in its own right as a depiction of the Hermetic symbolism of the individual as a “microcosm within the macrocosm”.

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!

Secret Knowledge... by Mail Order

There was a time when American comic books were famous, among other things, for carrying mail-order advertisements for X-RAY SPECS. Too good to be true, of course... but sufficiently tempting that countless youngsters were happy to part with their money just in case. And older readers had their equivalent of X-ray specs, too -- a book containing the Secret Knowledge of the Ancient Masters. Again, something that was clearly too good to be true... but still worth a punt just in case. For several decades, science fiction magazines regularly carried "Rosicrucian" advertisements like the ones below:

From left to right, the ads shown are as follows...

[1] From Amazing Stories, August 1946. 'A SECRET METHOD FOR THE MASTERY OF LIFE ... Whence came the knowledge that built the Pyramids and the mighty Temples of the Pharaohs? ... From what concealed source came the wisdom that produced such characters as Amenhotep IV, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton and a host of others? ... Today it is known that they discovered and learned to interpret certain Secret Methods for the development of their inner power of mind ... This secret art of living has been preserved and handed down throughout the ages... The Rosicrucians (not a religious organization) will send you a Sealed Book of explanation ... Use this coupon for FREE copy of book ...' (Amenhotep IV, credited in the ad as "Founder of Egypt's Mystery Schools", is better known today as the Pharaoh Akhenaten).

[2] From the British edition of Astounding Science Fiction, December 1955. 'SECRETS ENTRUSTED TO A FEW ... There are some things that can not be generally told ... things you ought to know ... Behind the tales of the miracles and mysteries of the ancients, lie centuries of their secret probing into nature's laws ... The Rosicrucians (not a religious organization), an age-old brotherhood of learning, have preserved this secret wisdom in their archives for centuries ... Write today for a free copy of the book "The Mastery of Life" ...' (Although very similar in wording to the American ads, this one has a London address instead of San Jose, CA!).

[3] From Galaxy magazine, July 1972. 'These great minds were Rosicrucians ... WHAT SECRET POWER DID THEY POSSESS? ... Know the mysterious world within you! Attune yourself to the wisdom of the ages! ... Benjamin Franklin, statesman and inventor ... Isaac Newton, discoverer of the law of gravitation ... Francis Bacon, philosopher and scientist ... were Rosicrucians ... The Rosicrucians (NOT a religious organization) have been in existence for centuries ... Write for your FREE copy of "The Mastery of Life" ...' (This was the first Rosicrucian ad I ever saw, way back in 1972 when I had just graduated from comic books to "grown-up" magazines. I was totally intrigued by it, and I wanted to write off for the free book but -- as with the X-Ray Specs -- my mother said I couldn't. So I've had to remain unenlightened ever since!).

Underground Art

The huge salt mine at Wieliczka in Southern Poland has attracted tourists since the fifteenth century -- the astronomer Copernicus was among its first visitors. In 1978 the mine was included in the original batch of thirteen UNESCO World Heritage Sites (only two of the other sites were in Europe). Besides its size (over 300 kilometres of tunnels) its main attraction consists of numerous images, statues, and even whole churches carved out of salt.

The mine even has its own demon (the Skarbnik) and its own saint (Saint Kinga of Poland). The Skarbnik (pictured on the left) is said to haunt the tunnels of the mine, and to guard its treasures (the name means "treasurer" in Polish). Saint Kinga (1224–92) was a Hungarian Princess who, according to legend, first discovered the salt deposits at Wieliczka. The largest of the underground churches (more than 50 metres in length) is dedicated to her. As can be seen in the picture below, Saint Kinga's church boasts a wall-carving which is a copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper... the original of which didn't make the World Heritage list until two years later in 1980! [Thanks to Ewa Babarowski for providing background information for this post.]

The Da Vinci Code and medieval symbolism

My hard drive has an impressive collection of letters that I've sent off to the Fortean Times on various occasions but which they didn't bother to print. I was reminded of the following example (originally written in January 2005) on a recent visit to the National Gallery, when I noticed the figure of Saint John in Michelangelo's "Entombment" painting (John is the beardless figure on the left, with long red hair and an orange dress).

The Da Vinci Code is an entertaining book, but like a lot of modern pseudo-historical works it is based on the erroneous supposition that the people of past centuries can be fully understood by assuming they have the same interests, values and beliefs as modern-day people. In fact, the average European of the Middle Ages probably understood a lot more about Christian symbolism than any 21st century professor of Religious Symbology.

An interesting book that was published around the same time as Dan Brown’s novel (but hasn’t sold as many copies) is How to Read a Church by Richard Taylor. With regard to images of the Last Supper (of which Leonardo's is only one among many) Taylor says that the beardless figure always shown next to Jesus is meant to be St John. Apparently it was common practice to depict John with long hair and rather effeminate features. In fact, John is one of the three "women" sometimes shown at the foot of the cross in crucifixion scenes, the other two being Mary Magdalene and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Dan Brown says the early church demonized Mary Magdalene because she represented the sacred feminine, but if any disciple was demonized it was Judas Iscariot, a man. According to Taylor's book Mary Magdalene was a much-loved saint, honoured as the first person to see the risen Christ. And the other Mary, the Blessed Virgin Mary, has always been venerated as the greatest of all the saints, particularly by the Roman Catholic church... the establishment that Brown sees as suppressing sacred femininity and tailoring the Bible to suit its views. This would come as a surprise to the early Protestant reformers, who according to Taylor "... objected to some of the doctrines that the Roman Catholic Church allowed to Mary: that she was without sin, that she remained a virgin throughout her life, and that she was physically assumed into heaven at her death. These teachings seemed to Protestants to be without biblical authority, and to elevate Mary to a position that was more than mortal."