Some old X-Files

I don’t usually hoard old magazines (except Fortean Times), but I kept these three issues of Cinefantastique because between them they contain complete episode guides to the first four seasons of The X-Files. I was prompted to dig them out last week – not because of the “reboot” currently showing on Channel 5, or from any general sense of nostalgia, but because I needed to do some research for a new book I’m working on. In looking through them, I was struck by how highbrow some of the X-Files episode titles were. Here are a few of the more Fortean examples – two from each of those first four seasons (just focusing on the titles, not the storylines).

The Jersey Devil (Season 1, Episode 5). One of America’s lesser known cryptids, this one dates back to those pre-Darwin days when mysterious creatures weren’t required to conform to the logic of evolutionary genetics. According to Wikipedia it’s “a kangaroo-like creature with the head of a goat, leathery bat-like wings, horns, small arms with clawed hands, cloven hooves and a forked tail”. Wings AND arms AND hooves… they don’t make them like that any more.

Ghost in the Machine (Season 1, Episode 7). This cool-sounding phrase was coined by the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle in 1949, as a disparaging description of the dualistic theory of human nature (i.e. a spiritual soul inhabiting a material body).

Little Green Men (Season 2, Episode 1). A facetious term for extraterrestrials, which was already well established when Mack Reynolds wrote The Case of the Little Green Men in 1951 – a Fortean-themed detective novel I wrote about in a blog post last year.

Fearful Symmetry (Season 2, Episode 18). This phrase comes from William Blake’s famous poem “Tiger, Tiger, burning bright”. The poem isn’t very Fortean, but its author was – as I explained in A 19th Century Contactee. One of the strangest spiritual creatures Blake claimed to have encountered was “The Ghost of a Flea” – his painting of which I happened to see in the Tate Gallery last year (see photo at the bottom of this post).

Paper Clip (Season 3, Episode 2). This is a reference to Operation Paperclip, a real world “conspiracy” that brought hundreds of German scientists – many of them war criminals – to the United States in the aftermath of WW2, giving them clean new records and salaried positions working for the U.S. government. It may be no coincidence that “Nasa” sounds a bit like “Nazi”.

Talitha Cumi (Season 3, Episode 24). This is one of several X-Files titles derived from a foreign language. In this case it’s Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. It’s a quote from the New Testament, which of course is full of Jesus quotes, but most of them only appear in translation. This example (from Mark 5:41) is one of only about a dozen that are given in the original Aramaic first (I’d be interested to know why they were singled out in this way). From the King James version: “And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.”

Tunguska (Season 4, Episode 8). This, of course, was the site of a mysterious explosion that flattened two thousand square kilometres of Siberian forest in 1908. It was probably caused by a meteor impact, although several odd things about it have led to various alternative explanations (e.g. an exploding UFO). As mentioned in my post about Ian Watson last year, his novel Chekhov’s Journey offers a particularly weird interpretation of the Tunguska event.

Terma (Season 4, Episode 9). This has to be one of the most obscure X-Files titles of all. It’s a technical term from Tantric Buddhism, referring to secret teachings carefully handed down among the inner circle of adepts. Such as, for example, that Tantric classic “Sex Secrets of the Ancient Masters” (which I really must get round to writing one of these days).

The Number of the Beast

Over the years I’ve read a dozen or so books by Robert A. Heinlein, including novels and short story collections, but I wouldn’t count myself as a Heinlein fan. And The Number of the Beast – a huge, 556-page novel he wrote when he was over 70 – is really a book for die-hard fans only. It’s got a reputation as a dull and slow-moving novel, overloaded with Heinlein in-jokes and self-references. On the other hand, its basic premise is pretty fascinating – so I picked up a second-hand copy for a couple of pounds when I saw it in a bookshop earlier this year. I just got round to reading it – and while I can’t pretend it was an enjoyable experience, it was thought-provoking enough to be worth a blog post (plus I can’t think of anything else to write about this week).

The idea of “the number of the beast” – 6 6 6 – comes from the Book of Revelation. It’s one of the few things in the Bible that even non-Christians (and Satanists, for that matter) agree is quite cool. It’s normally rendered as “six hundred and sixty-six”, but in Heinlein’s novel it’s “six to the power of six to the power of six”. Written like that it’s mathematically ambiguous. 6⁶ is 46656, but there’s a big difference between 46656⁶ and 6⁴⁶⁶⁵⁶. Heinlein makes it clear that he means the first of these, which he multiplies out as 10,314,424,798,490,535,546,171,949,056. That may look like a big number, but the second number is MUCH bigger. It starts with 223,872 followed by another 36,300 digits. I guess the reason Heinlein didn’t go for that one is because it would have taken at least 20 pages to write out in full!

In the novel, the significance of 6^6^6 comes from a six-dimensional theory of space-time developed by one of the four main protagonists. It’s supposedly the number of different universes “possibly accessible to us either by rotation or translation”. That’s pure technobabble, of course, but it’s an excellent starting premise for a science fiction novel. Unfortunately, however, Heinlein’s narrative doesn’t go the way most SF readers would expect it to.

That much was science – now for the philosophy. I like playing with words just as much as I like playing with numbers – especially if they’re really big words. There are three lovely big words on the back cover of the book – “Multiperson Pantheistic Solipsism” (that’s one of the reasons I had to buy it). Solipsism is the philosophical theory that the human mind creates its own reality. Pantheism, strictly speaking, is the theological belief that God is all-pervasive throughout the universe. But coupled with solipsism I guess you could substitute “the human mind” for “God”. The third big word, multiperson, is self-explanatory – the relevance here being that the book has four protagonists who are very much in tune with each other. Putting it all together, “Multiperson Pantheistic Solipsism” means that a whole universe can be created as a mental projection by a group of like-minded people.

This still sounds like a good idea – although closer to fantasy than science fiction – but again Heinlein doesn’t handle it the way most people would expect. I’d read in several places that the “universes” the characters create are based on pulp fiction, which immediately creates certain expectations in the reader’s mind. Even Wikipedia says “The novel lies somewhere between parody and homage in its deliberate use of the style of the 1930s pulp novels”. Having read the book I have to say that’s just plain wrong.

At its peak in the 1930s and 40s, pulp fiction encompassed a whole range of genres. The most popular of these were hardboiled crime (as typified by Black Mask magazine), supernatural fantasy (typified by Weird Tales), the “hero” pulps (e.g. The Shadow and Doc Savage) and the nascent genre of science fiction (pioneered by Amazing Stories, followed by various similarly titled magazines such as Astounding).

Near the start of The Number of the Beast, the protagonists do get into a brief discussion of pulp magazines – including Weird Tales, The Shadow, Black Mask and Astounding. But that’s pretty much it. When they start visiting “fictional” universes, only one of them has its roots in a pulp magazine. That’s a fairly brief episode involving E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman characters, who originally appeared in the pages of Astounding. As for tough-talking private eyes like Race Williams or Dan Turner, Robert E. Howard’s Conan of Cimmeria, Doc Savage and his trusty aides... there’s no sign of any of them.

The fact is, regardless of what Wikipedia says, The Number of the Beast isn’t even close to being a parody of 1930s pulp fiction. Instead, the dominant thread running through the fictional universes is children’s literature – classic books like The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Princess of Mars and Gulliver’s Travels.

They may not be pulp fiction, but these books are still essentially escapist adventures, with some very basic tropes in common. First and foremost is the idea of conflict. Typically this means protagonists versus villain – either the protagonists are desperately trying to stop the villain doing something bad, or the villain is trying to prevent them doing something good. Even if the story doesn’t have a human villain, it needs an impending natural disaster or other impersonal force to provide the same impetus and sense of urgency. The protagonists shouldn’t have time to catch their breath, let alone do any of the trivial little things you and I spend most of the day doing. If there’s a romantic subplot, then its course can’t be allowed to run smooth. That bit about living happily ever after comes at the end of the story, not the beginning.

Heinlein turns all of that on its head. If you think about it, in a universe governed by Multiperson Pantheistic Solipsism, he pretty much has to. I mean, if you created a universe out of pure thought, you’d give yourself an easy time too, wouldn’t you? Consequently the book is devoid of any sense of urgency. It’s the only novel I’ve read where the protagonists spend most of their time cleaning their teeth, taking a bath, deciding what to wear, eating breakfast, getting a good night’s sleep... and having long conversations in which everyone agrees with everyone else. They carefully plan what they’re going to do next, then do it in their own sweet time. On the rare occasions they come across anything resembling an obstacle or hindrance, they deal with it in half a page, then get back to eating, sleeping and agreeing with each other.

The result is a long and boring book, in which the protagonists thoroughly enjoy themselves but the reader doesn’t. That’s the exact opposite of a traditional escapist novel – it’s more like peeking in on someone else’s daydream. Maybe it is all a dream, in fact. The first two sections are called “The Mandarin’s Butterfly” and “The Butterfly’s Mandarin” – presumably a reference to a story told by the Chinese philosopher Chuang Chou:

Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither... conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.

Isaac Newton and me

The studious-looking geek in the above photo is me, at the age of 21 in 1979, posing in front of a portrait of Isaac Newton. The picture was taken in Trinity College, Cambridge, at the top of I staircase where I had a room during my third year at university. I staircase is about 200 feet along the east front of Great Court from E staircase, where Newton himself lived for many years (although I staircase, which is a 20th century utilitarian monstrosity, wasn’t there in his time).

Along with Einstein, Newton was one of the scientific heroes of my teenage years. I read a biography of him in 1973 (as I’ve mentioned before, I kept a list of all the books I read) and visited his birthplace in Lincolnshire a year or two after that. So I was pleased to end up at Newton’s college, Trinity, even though I had no say in the matter. The school I went to (a comprehensive in the West Midlands, before you ask) had a tradition of trying to get its best science student into that particular college each year. All I needed to do was get three grade As at A-level (I got four, just to be on the safe side).

After I graduated (the day that photo was taken – I didn’t always dress like that) I went to Manchester University to do a PhD on the computer simulation of galaxy dynamics. That may sound very modern and state-of-the-art, but the only science involved was 100% Newtonian. In three years I never had to use a single equation that isn’t present, either explicitly or implicitly, in the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica that Newton wrote in 1687. So I owe Newton my doctorate, too!

Just over a year ago the History Press (which published my first book, Bloody British History: Somerset) started a new series of short biographies called Pocket Giants. I was intrigued by this idea (as I’ve said before, I like short books) so I contacted the series editor, Tony Morris, to see if there was anything I could do for him. After batting a few ideas around, we eventually zeroed in – perhaps not surprisingly – on Isaac Newton. Tony was as enthusiastic about the project as I was, and with his encouragement and constructive input the proposal was accepted by the History Press, the contract signed and the book written in the space of a few months last year.

Despite being a lifelong fan of Newton, I still learned a lot about him while I was researching and writing the book. Perhaps the oddest thing about him – which is more widely known today than it was in the 1970s – is that he spent less time on the scientific work for which he’s remembered than on pursuing non-scientific interests like alchemy, Hermeticism, theology and ancient history. There’s a common tendency to view the scientific and non-scientific (or even anti-scientific, by modern standards) activities as separate and non-overlapping. Scientists see the non-scientific work as an irrelevance and embarrassment that ought to be ignored and forgotten, while mystics and New Agers see the scientific work as the irrelevance – a kind of smoke-screen of acceptability designed to hide Newton’s real achievements.

I came to the conclusion that both these views miss the point. Everything Newton did stemmed from the same world-view – the idea that the universe was designed, by God, according to a simple code that could be rediscovered if it was searched for carefully enough. Newton looked for the code in the Bible and other ancient writings, and in the work of alchemists and Hermeticists. But he also looked for mathematical relationships that applied to the material world – something that seemed just as mystical and improbable to his contemporaries. But Newton’s “applied mathematics” worked – and worked so well that it’s become synonymous with mainstream science. Both scientists and New Agers have forgotten, or can’t see, what a profoundly mystical notion it is.

This was the point I tried to make in a blog post I wrote last week for the History Press. My original title was “Isaac Newton and the Key to the Universe”, which I thought was quite clever, but they wanted to tie it in with the series so they changed it to Why was Isaac Newton such a giant? (It was meant as a rhetorical question, but one clever lady on Twitter replied “Because he stood on the shoulders of giants”).

Needless to say, all these ideas are explored in more detail in the book itself, together with lots of other fascinating facts about Newton (such as how he perpetrated a UFO hoax as a teenager, predicted the end of the world and became “17th-Century London’s Dirty Harry”). You can order your copy from any good bookseller or from Amazon.

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.

Fortean Crossword

Apparently the crossword puzzle marks its centenary this month. A few years ago I put together a Fortean-themed crossword which I thought would be worth repeating here. You can either print it out or do it in your head... or just ignore the grid and treat the questions as a trivia quiz.

Answers next week – together with an exegesis of all the Fortean connections.

ACROSS

1. Author of Chariots of the Gods [5, 3, 7]
9. First of the seven churches mentioned in the Book of Revelation [7]
10. “Their weapons were no match for the Bossonian -------“ (Robert E. Howard) [7]
11. "Voyagers who have shown every indication of intent to -----" (Charles Fort) [5]
12. Yggdrasil, for example [3]
13. The world ends without this, according to T.S. Eliot [1, 4]
14. Site of the Crucifixion [7]
16. "I had long hoped for a personal ------- with a man from a flying saucer" (George Adamski) [7]
18. The queen of the fairies, according to Shakespeare [7]
21. Sayings of Jesus that are not found in the Gospels [7]
23. Max -----, German surrealist [5]
25. --- Geller, Israeli-born psychic [3]
26. "Thus ----- Zarathustra", by Friedrich Nietzsche [5]
27. Lenape people living in New Jersey when the Europeans arrived [7]
28. "------- Tales" (1974), featuring Paloma Picasso as Countess Erzsébet Báthory [7]
29. Britain's best-known cryptid [4, 4, 7]

DOWN

1. The building pictured below [6, 9]
2. Eldest son of Abraham, according to the Book of Genesis [7]
3. Herman -----, author of Siddhartha [5]
4.The James ------- is inscribed "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" [7]
5. The ------- Sibyl, prophetess of Apollo [7]
6. Professional assassin in feudal Japan [5]
7. An esoteric branch of Judaism [7]
8. A type of hippie found in 1980s Britain [3, 3, 9]
15. --- Greenslit Pudeator, hanged as a witch in Salem in 1692 [3]
17. "Alles Vergangliche ist --- ein Gleichnis" (Everything transient is only a symbol - Goethe) [3]
19. "The Serpent Power: Secrets of ------- and Shaktic Yoga" by Arthur Avalon [7]
20. Thomas -------, author of Summa Theologica [7]
21. Belief that all living and non-living things have a spiritual essence [7]
22. Generic term for Indian languages related to Sanskrit [7]
24. The largest moon of Saturn [5]
26. ----- Magus, a sorcerer mentioned in the Book of Acts [5]

The Rendlesham Magi

Here is a seasonal short story, loosely based on the Rendlesham UFO incident, that I wrote for the Christmas issue of a newsletter back in 2008:

Christmas 1980: a day I will always remember. St Dunstan’s College was almost deserted. The students were on vacation, of course, and the married fellows were at home with their families. That left just four of us in the Senior Common Room that evening: the three wise men and myself. At that time I was the youngest ‘don’ at the college, having been appointed to the post of Teaching Fellow in Asiatic History the previous summer. The next in age was more than a decade my senior—Don Hunter, a lecturer in Astronomy, with whom I was engaged in a game of Fortean supercheckers.

The other two sat by the open log fire, smoking cigars and talking earnestly to each other: Arthur Dodson, the ancient and venerable professor of Theology, and Otto Ziegler, a German professor who was visiting Cambridge for a couple of semesters during a sabbatical from his own university. I had never quite made out what Ziegler’s specialism was—some kind of abstract mathematics or higher physics. He was small and round, with a bald head and goatee beard—pretty much what you imagine when you hear the term ‘mad scientist’.

“Oh do hurry up, Justin!” Don Hunter ran a hand through his long, prematurely grey hair. “If you don’t make a move soon we shall be here all night.” He looked impatiently at his watch—the third or fourth time he had done so that evening. He said a few other things, muttering under his breath, that I didn’t catch. I got the general impression he wanted to get away and do something he considered Very Important.

It was true that I was having difficulty concentrating on the game. Part of the reason was the sheer effort (not made any easier by the imbibing of several festive brandies) of focusing my mind on a board with 1600 squares and hundreds of pieces. By this stage, if I remember correctly, I was down to less than 200 men while Don still had most of his original 360.

I shrugged and moved a piece at random. Don grunted in disgust and proceeded to take another fifty or so of my men.

There was another reason for my lack of interest in the game. I was listening with more than half my mind to the animated conversation over by the fireplace. They were talking, of all the hackneyed subjects, about the Star of Bethlehem.

“It’s all nonsense, of course,” old Dodson was saying. “The Star in the East is purely symbolic. A theological necessity, to demonstrate fulfilment of God’s prophecy in the Book of Numbers. To a good Christian, that is all that is needed. But materialists like yourself—and countless others going back to Johannes Kepler in the sixteenth century—refuse to be satisfied with the beauty of religious symbolism. You insist on looking for comets and supernovas and planetary conjunctions. But these theories are all discredited—totally discredited.”

“Nein—nicht so.” Ziegler puffed excitedly on his cigar. “Not my comet—nobody discredits him.”

Dodson looked amused. “And what’s so special about YOUR comet, Herr Professor?”

“Ah, my comet—he travels backwards in time. Backwards! It is sehr unheimlich—it is very strange—but it is what the equations tell me. And equations, they never lie.”

“A comet travelling backwards in time? Where from? And why?” Dodson seemed mildly intrigued in spite of himself.

“These things the equations tell me. My comet, he is one of a pair—a time-symmetric pair created by a Fanthorpe singularity in the year 988 AD. One comet travels backwards in time, the other forwards. The two orbits are like mirror images, with aphelion in the Kuiper Belt and perihelion here, on Earth. For the backward travelling comet, perihelion was 4 BC...”

“4 BC?” Dodson looked up. “The year that Herod the Great died—generally accepted as the year of the Nativity. Well, that fits your theory, I suppose. What about the forward-travelling comet?”

“From 4 BC to 988 AD it is 992 years,” Ziegler said slowly. It was clear that he was building to something in the nature of a climax. “And from 988 AD another 992 years is... 1980! Christmas Day, 1980! Today!” He beamed triumphantly.

Whatever response Dodson was about to make was cut off by a cry from Don Hunter. I had made another disastrous move and he had promptly taken all my remaining pieces.

“Finished at last!” Don looked at his watch and jumped to his feet. “Sorry, gents—I’ve got to go now. Must keep my appointment with that new star in the East, you know.”

We all gaped at him.

“New star in the East?” Dodson and Ziegler spoke almost simultaneously.

“Yes—I’ll have to leave young Justin here to tell you about it. I’ve been chattering away to him all evening. First saw it through the telescope a couple of days ago—much brighter yesterday—should be visible to the naked eye by now. Rises just before midnight. I’ll have to rush off to the Observatory if I’m going to catch it.”

I have to admit this was news to me as much as to the others. Now I came to think of it, Don had been mumbling about something or other, but I hadn’t been paying much attention.

“We know all about your new star,” Dodson said. “Or rather, the Herr Professor here knows all about it. It’s a backwards travelling comet, previously known as the star of Bethlehem. If you can believe a word he says, that is.”

“Nein, nein—this is the forward-travelling one,” Ziegler said. “But the rest—ja, it is essentially correct.” He turned to address the astronomer. “You have a physics background—you know the theoretical possibility of a Fanthorpe singularity. I say it is more than a theory—it is a reality that occurred in 988 AD. Your so-called new star is nothing but the inevitable mathematical consequence of this.”

Don shook his head uncertainly. “A Fanthorpe singularity? But that’s impossible—such a thing could only be produced artificially, using an immensely powerful nuclear reactor. It’s not possible today, and it certainly wasn’t possible in 988 AD.”

A sudden thought flashed into my head. “Maybe it was,” I said.

Now it was my turn to be gaped at.

“988 AD,” I stated flatly, “was the year that Zhang Tsu disappeared.”

There was a long pause in which they continued to gape at me.

“Let me explain,” I went on. “Zhang Tsu was the original rocket scientist. The Chinese had just invented what they called ‘fire arrows’—simple rockets they used in warfare. But Zhang Tsu tried a series of experiments in which he replaced the black powder in the rocket with red mercury. Many scholars believe this resulted in a primitive form of nuclear propulsion. The first few experiments seem to have been successful, but then there was a huge explosion and Zhang Tsu was never seen again.”

This time the pause was so short as to be imperceptible.

“For what do we wait?” Ziegler demanded. “To the observatory, schnell!”

Don Hunter needed no further encouragement—he had been itching to leave for several minutes. And I was all for it—it sounded like a great adventure. Only Dodson seemed reluctant to forego his place by the fire, but I managed to persuade him by pandering to his ego: “After all, we’re just an astronomer, a mathematician and a historian. We have our limitations. There are some situations that only a theologian can rise to.”

So the four of us were in it together. We rushed downstairs and piled into Don’s battered old Austin Mini. We decided he should drive because... I was about to say “because he was the least drunk”, but what I mean, of course, is “because he was completely sober”. He’d barely had a drop of liquor all evening. Which was a good thing, because if none of us had been fit to drive we would have missed the adventure of a lifetime.

* * * *

We pulled up at the observatory just on the stroke of midnight. Don let us into the deserted building and opened up the huge dome. The bright yellow star on the Eastern horizon was clearly visible.

“It’s altered significantly in the last twenty-four hours,” Don said, frowning as he adjusted the giant reflecting telescope. “There’s been a significant course change—there’s no doubt now that it’s headed for Earth. Let’s see if George can compute an impact point for us.”

‘George’ turned out to be the observatory’s state-of-the-art VAX-11/780 mainframe. It chugged and clicked as Don fed it the data.

“Impact point, eh?” Arthur Dodson chuckled to himself. “My money’s on Bethlehem, if history is anything to go by.” It was clear that he thought the whole thing was a load of hooey.

“Bethlehem? Nein—I think not.” Otto Ziegler, in contrast to Dodson, was taking the matter very seriously indeed. He bent over a globe and studied it carefully. “Theory predicts impact point is one hundred-eighty degrees from starting point. Starting point was somewhere in China, I believe?” He looked at me expectantly.

“Um, yes—I see what you mean,” I said. “Let’s see—Zhang Tzu’s experiments took place near the town of Huangshi in Hubei province, I believe.”

“You show me.” Ziegler indicated the globe.

With a bit of difficulty I located the place and pointed it out to the earnest-looking mathematician.

“Ach, ja—approximately thirty degrees North, hundred-fifteen degrees East. So we subtract hundred-eighty degrees to get...” He rotated the globe carefully. “Thirty degrees North, five-and-sixty degrees West. Jawohl! Right in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. It surprises me not at all.”

“Bermuda Triangle, my foot!” Dodson scoffed. “You mark my words—this comet is heading for Bethlehem.”

A heated argument ensued, and might have gone on all night if it hadn’t been interrupted after a few minutes by a cough from Don Hunter.

“Sorry to disappoint you fellows, but George disagrees with you.” Don was standing at the computer, a slip of paper in his hand. “The impact point isn’t Bethlehem and it isn’t the Bermuda Triangle. It’s much closer. Just on the coast about sixty miles east of here. A place called Rendlesham.”

“And the time of impact?” Ziegler looked anxiously at his watch.

Don glanced at the paper. “0140 hours—just over an hour from now.”

“Can we make it in time?”

“We can if we’re lucky. Let’s go!”

Cramming ourselves back into Don’s little car, we tore off eastwards along the A14. All the time the yellow star grew brighter and brighter ahead of us.

“Follow that star!” I shouted.

The new star in the East!” Dodson added, chuckling.

“We’re just like the three wise men following the star,” Don observed.

Ziegler, the great mathematician, grunted. “Except that there are four of us,” he pointed out.

“Ah, but only three of us are wise men,” Don said. “Justin doesn’t count—he’s only 28. You can’t be a wise man at 28. It would be a contradiction in terms.”

I ignored the insult. “Maybe we’ll witness the Second Coming,” I speculated.

“Poppycock,” Dodson snorted. “The Second Coming is a purely symbolic concept, just like the Star of Bethlehem. Theology is about the world of the Spirit, not the world of superstitious nonsense.”

We drove at hair-raising speeds past Newmarket, Bury St Edmunds and the sprawling lights of Ipswich. Just as we were passing through the village of Woodbridge we saw a huge, silent burst of brilliant yellow light ahead of us.

“The star’s gone!”

“It came down in the woods over there!”

We drove a bit further and came to a gate into the woods. A sign informed us that the place was called Rendlesham Forest, that it was the property of Her Majesty’s Forestry Commission, and that we were welcome to enter so long as we didn’t light any fires.

We left the car by the gate and went into the woods.

“I should have brought a flashlight,” Don muttered. “So much for foresight.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “There’s a light over there in the forest. Let’s head towards it.”

The light turned out to be an eerie yellow glow with no obvious source. We crept towards it and came to an unnatural looking clearing.

“I think this is where it came down.” Dodson was looking upwards, and our eyes followed his. There was an gap in the canopy of trees that was open to the sky. The ground beneath was littered with freshly broken pine branches.

“Some of the wood looks scorched,” I observed.

“You’re right,” Don agreed. “There must have been intense heat here.”

Ziegler was standing at the edge of the clearing, looking thoughtful. “Intense heat, ja—or intense radiation.”

Our thoughts were interrupted by the clamour of voices approaching. With a start we realized we were not the only ones in the woods that night.

“What the blazes?” Dodson looked around. “They sound like Americans. A large number of them! What are they doing here?”

Don snapped his fingers. “Americans—of course! We’re right next to a US Air Force Base. Woodbridge, I think it’s called. Top Secret atomic stuff—we don’t want to be caught snooping around here!”

The voices were getting closer.

“There’s someone out there, Sir!” one of the voices shouted. “What should I do? Finding that thing out here has made me mighty nervous.”

“Take no risks, man!” another voice barked. “Shoot the commie rascals!”

Actually the word he used may not have been ‘rascals’, but we weren’t paying much attention by that point. We were running as fast as we could back to the car.

* * * *

Well, that’s more or less the end of the story as far as my involvement is concerned. The ‘Rendlesham Forest Incident’, as it’s now known, has become quite notorious among conspiracy theorists. Many people are convinced that a UFO crash-landed in the East of England that Christmas Day more than thirty years ago—despite consistent denials by the UK and US governments. Another theory is that it was a Soviet nuclear powered satellite that came down. But an artificial comet created by a tenth century Chinese rocket scientist... a time-travelling twin of the Star of Bethlehem? Who knows? I may be the only one left who’s in possession of the full facts. Old Dodson died years ago, and Don Hunter is in a retirement home. I’ve no idea what happened to Otto Ziegler—he must be either dead or a very old man by now.

There is one curious postscript to the story. It appears that the remains of the reactor core—or whatever it was the US airmen recovered—was transported back to the States on board an aircraft carrier. It was then ferried by helicopter, slung underneath a giant Chinook, to NASA headquarters in Houston, Texas. And late at night, a few miles outside Houston on the 29th of December 1980, this strange phenomenon was witnessed by two local women returning from an evening out. The women—Vicky and Betty—were both devout Christians, and when confronted with this huge glowing apparition in the sky they could only draw one conclusion. To them, it was the Second Coming... and maybe, in a sense, they were right.

Reinventing Ezekiel's Wheel

Ezekiel was a priest who was exiled to Babylon along with King Jehoiachin of Judah in the sixth century BC. Ezekiel experienced a number of visions, and his account of these form one of the main prophetic books of the Hebrew scriptures. The best known of Ezekiel’s visions is the first, involving an encounter with a heavenly figure seated on a throne borne by four strange creatures, each of which has four faces and is supported by a “wheel within a wheel”.

This is one of the most striking images to be found in any of the Hebrew prophetic books, and as such has appealed to artists throughout the centuries. This depiction by William Blake (who had mystical visions of his own) emphasizes the mystical and symbolic nature of Ezekiel’s vision.

To many people, however, Ezekiel’s vision is nothing less than an extraterrestrial flying machine. As with other “ancient astronaut” theories, you often hear people says things like “Of course, that idea originated in 1968 with Erich von Däniken’s book Chariots of the Gods”. Well, no it didn’t. All von Däniken did was to pitch the idea in populist, uncomplicated language that was capable of appealing to a huge mass-market audience. But the idea was by no means a new one.

I’ve already mentioned how ancient astronaut theories were pushed by Desmond Leslie as long ago as 1953, in one of the most famous of the early UFO books – Flying Saucers Have Landed, coauthored with George Adamski. Sadly the book is remembered solely for Adamski’s contribution, even though Leslie’s chapters are a lot more sophisticated and intelligent. British readers of my generation may also remember the work of W. Raymond Drake – the first of whose “Gods and Spacemen” books was published in 1964, four years before Chariots of the Gods. To my mind, Drake’s books were more insightful than von Däniken’s, and better researched. But writers like Drake and Leslie never achieved the mass appeal of von Däniken, and people forget (or were never aware) that they predated him by several years.

Although it’s frustrating that people give all the credit to the wrong person, if you look at it another way then von Däniken’s achievement is really quite impressive. He took an idea that had previously been confined to a small niche audience, and brought it to the attention of the whole world. In Fortean circles, however, everything he had to say was old hat. In his book Great World Mysteries, published in 1962, the British Fortean writer Eric Frank Russell wrote “...anything strange seen soaring above the clouds automatically became a fiery chariot. Some imaginative writers have seized on this fact and turned out stories depicting biblical characters as enlightened visitors from another world.”

To someone brought up in a technological, materialistic culture, it may seem obvious that ancient accounts of supposedly mystical experiences are garbled descriptions of extraterrestrial hardware. But the opposite is equally true – a modern-day account of extraterrestrial hardware may be a garbled description of a mystical experience. This is the line taken by the psychologist C.G. Jung in his 1959 book Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. Jung uses Ezekiel’s vision as an example of what UFOs might be, not the other way around!

Perhaps the most mainstream reference to a “nuts and bolts” interpretation of Ezekiel’s vision is this short choral work composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1956. By that time Vaughan Williams was 84 years old, and very much the grand old man of English classical music. The piece is a setting of the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, and the only unusual thing about it is the title the composer chose to give it: A Vision of Aeroplanes (the word “aeroplane” literally refers to an aircraft with a fixed horizontal lifting surface, but in the mid-20th century it was used loosely to mean any form of flying machine).

In an article about Vaughan Williams in issue 241 of Fortean Times (October 2008), David Sutton describes A Vision of Aeroplanes as “a cataclysmic sounding piece of musical prophecy – aeronauts from the future – for choir and organ”. But it’s odd that this particular composer should have chosen such a materialistic interpretation of the text, since the same FT article also describes Vaughan Williams as “a visionary in the tradition of Blake” (and for Blake’s distinctly non-materialistic interpretation, see above).

While most of the “nuts and bolts” proponents have been content to say “Ezekiel’s description sounds a bit like a flying machine”, some writers have gone further. In 1974, for example, an aeronautical engineer named J.F. Blumrich produced a full-length book called The Spaceships of Ezekiel. According to the author’s Foreword, this started out as an attempt to debunk the spaceship theory popularized by Eric von Däniken, but ended up supporting it – together with a fairly specific engineering design based on a line-by-line analysis of the Biblical text.

Although Blumrich’s book was the first detailed analysis to draw widespread attention, it wasn’t the first of its kind. Something very similar was attempted by Arthur W. Orton in 1961, in a 14-page article entitled “The Four-Faced Visitors of Ezekiel”. This appeared in Analog Science Fiction magazine, cover-dated March 1961 in the US and July 1961 in the UK. Again, Orton employed a line-by-line analysis of Ezekiel’s text to come up with a specific engineering design (although Orton’s design looks nothing like Blumrich’s).

The main point I wanted to make was that, contrary to popular opinion, Erich von Däniken wasn’t the first person to suggest a nuts-and-bolts interpretation of the Book of Ezekiel. Numerous lesser known authors put forward similar ideas throughout the 1950s and 60s – but on closer examination even they were merely “reinventing the wheel”. As long ago as 1902, a Baptist minister from Texas named Burrell Cannon was granted a patent for his Ezekiel Airship, which was supposedly based on the description provided in the first chapter of the Biblical account!

The Siege of Lachish

Room 10b of the British Museum is devoted to a graphic portrayal of the Siege of Lachish, in the form of a stone frieze running around the walls -- just as it would have done in Sennacherib’s palace at Nineveh 2700 years ago. Lachish, about 50 km south-west of Jerusalem, was one of the fortified cities destroyed by the Assyrian army when they invaded the Kingdom of Judah in 701 BC.

When Victorian archaeologists discovered the Lachish relief in the ruins of Nineveh, in what is now northern Iraq, it caused a sensation. The events depicted had previously only been known from one source: the ancient Hebrew scriptures that Christians refer to as the “Old Testament”. As with other Assyrian artifacts (see The Bible’s Excluded Middle), the Lachish carvings provide independent evidence indicating that at least some of the events described in the Second Book of Kings did actually take place. More significantly, taken together with other Assyrian records, they more or less prove that there really was a Kingdom of Judah that had its capital in Jerusalem at that time, and that it was considered important enough for Sennacherib to bother having an extravagant frieze carved to record his victory over it.

While the Biblical connection was of immense importance to the pious Victorians, it’s not the thing that makes the Lachish frieze so fascinating to modern-day visitors to the Museum. It’s the detailed and realistic depiction of siege warfare in the ancient world, which brings events from almost three millennia ago to life in a uniquely vivid way. To modern eyes, the Assyrians are more interesting than the Israelites, simply because they were more modern in the way they went about things. Their world centred not around religion, as was the case with most ancient civilizations, but around warfare... and warfare conducted in a ruthlessly efficient style.

To find out more about the Siege of Lachish, get a copy of my new “ebooklet” on the subject -- just published by Bretwalda Books, and currently available from Amazon.com, Amazon UK and Smashwords, with more retailers to follow shortly.

My previous contribution to this series, The V-2 Offensive on London is now available from iTunes as well as Amazon and Smashwords.

Ambiguous Symbolism

Here is another photograph from my recent visit to London. This was taken in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and shows a wooden model of Jesus riding on a donkey. It was made in Southern Germany around 1480, and according to the caption “On Palm Sunday it was drawn through the streets to commemorate his triumphal entry into Jerusalem”. If I’d seen it a month ago, it might have been topical!

There is something jarringly contradictory about the juxtaposition of a donkey and the phrase “triumphal entry”. To human eyes, a donkey is a comically awkward-looking creature. Compared with a horse, camel or elephant, the sight of a grown man riding on one is anything but dignified. This isn’t just a modern perception -- even the Old Testament prophet Zechariah talks about the future Messiah “humble and riding on a donkey”.

But humble is a relative term. What if there are strict rules against riding on any kind of animal? In that case, riding on a donkey is transformed from a symbol of humility to a symbol of power (made even more powerful in light of Zechariah’s prophecy). According to Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince in The Masks of Christ, “At Passover, it was the custom to enter Jerusalem on foot as a sign of humility. The people should have been offended that he was riding into the holy city on the back of an animal. If they were happy with the arrangement, they must have recognized him as a special person to whom the usual customs no longer applied.”

Enigmatic Art

A few months ago I wrote an item about the awesome apocalyptic paintings of John Martin (1789 -1854) that were on show at the time at the Tate Britain museum in London. I went there again last week, and I have to say the museum’s permanent collection is pretty dull in comparison with the Martin exhibit. At first glance the picture above looks like it might be one of Martin’s works, and it does depict the Biblical tale of The Destruction of Sodom which is exactly the sort of subject Martin specialized in. On closer inspection, however, it simply isn’t vivid enough -- the architecture and human figures are too vaguely drawn and hazy. Actually the picture is by Martin’s much more famous contemporary J.M.W. Turner (1775 -1851). If you think the picture looks too good to be a Turner, that’s because I “improved” it by enhancing the colours and contrast. The original, shown below, looks exactly like any other painting by Turner!

Another unusual picture I saw in the Tate is shown below. This dates from the late Elizabethan period -- to put it in context, that’s around the time Shakespeare’s plays were written. It depicts an “average man” praying to heaven as he is beset by woes from all sides. The picture is highly symbolic, with most of the figures dressed in a classically timeless style... except the woman on the left, who is wearing what must have been the high fashion of the time. For some reason this struck me as a distinctly kinky touch, especially as one of her three arrows is labelled “lechery”!

Since my own photograph didn’t come out very well, what is shown here is a detail from the Tate’s own image. You can see the full version here, together with a transcription of the various labels.

The Principle of the Excluded Middle

Aristotle (right, as imagined by Rembrandt) is often blamed for the prevalence of black-and-white thinking in Western culture. But the problem stems not from what Aristotle said, but what people think he said. The Principle of the Excluded Middle, as originally formulated by Aristotle himself, makes perfect sense. It argues that, if a statement X is demonstrated to be false, then the negation of statement X must necessarily be true. The operative word is ‘negation’... not ‘opposite’.

I mentioned the Bible’s Excluded Middle on a previous occasion. If you start with statement X = ‘Everything in the Bible is true’, and find something in the Bible that is demonstrably false, then you have proved that statement X is false. All this means, in strictly Aristotelian terms, is that the negation of X must be true: ‘Not everything in the Bible is true’. But far too many people imagine they have proved the opposite of X to be true: ‘Everything in the Bible is false’. It’s not just the Bible-hating atheists who take this view -- many Biblical literalists do as well. That’s why they get so upset if anyone suggests that pi is anything other than three.

For a more Fortean example, there is an analogous situation in the case of UFOs. In this case, statement X might be ‘All UFO reports can be attributed to sightings of extraterrestrial spacecraft’. If this statement is proved to be false, then all the Excluded Middle says is that its negation must be true: ‘Not all UFO reports can be attributed to sightings of extraterrestrial spacecraft’. But again there is a tendency to apply the erroneous logic that the opposite statement must be true: ‘No UFO reports can be attributed to sightings of extraterrestrial spacecraft’. And again, it’s not just the skeptics who think along these lines, but the UFO enthusiasts as well... hence their outrage when any specific report is ‘explained away’ as a weather balloon, the planet Venus or a flock of pelicans.

When Aristotle formulated his Principle of the Excluded Middle, he was talking about a statement and its negation, not a statement and its opposite. But the ancient Greek philosophers did have something to say on the latter subject. It’s called the Dialectic Principle, and in this case the statement is called the ‘thesis’ and its opposite is called the ‘antithesis’. According to the Dialectic Principle, the two sides should engage in a sober and rational dialogue, and come to some mutually agreed compromise called a ‘synthesis’ (don’t laugh -- the ancient Greeks really thought this might happen).

In the case of ufology, the thesis would be ‘All UFO reports can be attributed to sightings of extraterrestrial spacecraft’ and the antithesis would be ‘All UFO reports have mundane explanations’. If ufologists and skeptics were as enlightened as the ancient Greek philosophers, they would engage in a meaningful dialogue—without spelling mistakes, bad grammar and whole sentences in capital letters—and come to a synthesis from which the state of human knowledge could move forward. But the real world doesn’t work like that.

Forteans, of course, are an exception to the general rule -- we are at our most comfortable in the ‘excluded middle’ between thesis and antithesis. Charles Fort himself referred to the dialectic principle in Lo!, and even attributed it to Aristotle: “I am thinking of an abstraction that was noted by Aristotle, and that was taken by Hegel for the basis of his philosophy: That wherever there is a conflict of extremes, there is an outcome that is not absolute victory on either side, but is a compromise, or what Hegel called the union of complementaries.”

Galileo wasn’t always right...

Present-day fringe theorists often cite the case of Galileo (1564–1642) as proof that they’re right and the authorities are wrong. It’s true that Galileo was constantly in conflict with the intellectual establishment of his time, and that history has proved him to be on the winning side on all the big issues. The Earth really does move around the Sun, and heavy objects really do fall at the same rate as light ones. But is Galileo really such a good role model? Unlike the armchair scientists and internet cranks of today, Galileo didn’t always get it right.

To start with, it’s worth dispelling a couple of tenacious myths about Galileo. The first myth is that he set out to disprove the Bible. In fact, it’s clear from his Selected Writings that he had no problems at all with the Bible: “Holy Scripture can never lie or be in error... nonetheless some of its interpreters or expositors can.” All of Galileo’s arguments are aimed not at the Bible but at the Greek philosopher Aristotle—who was held by the Church to be second only to the Bible in authority.

Galileo used the Biblical story of Joshua, where God caused the Sun to stand still in order to lengthen the day, as evidence that the Aristotelian earth-centred model is wrong, and the Copernican sun-centred model is correct: “This passage of scripture clearly demonstrates the impossibility of the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic world system, and on the contrary fits perfectly well with the system of Copernicus.” Galileo argues (correctly) that making the Sun stand still in the Aristotelian view would actually shorten the day, not lengthen it (since the length of the day is set by the Primum Mobile, and the Sun moves backwards relative to this). What you actually need to do is freeze up the whole Solar System. Galileo had observed the Sun to rotate on its own axis, and believed (wrongly) that this rotation was the source of all the motion in the Solar System—hence he argued it was this rotation that God halted in the story of Joshua.

Another myth-conception is that the Church prohibited Galileo from writing about the Sun-centred theory, and that his ‘crime’ was to defy this prohibition. Actually, the Church encouraged him to write about the theory... as long as he ended up debunking it, or at least showing that the truth couldn’t be proved one way or the other. What he was prohibited from doing was offering any concrete proof that Copernicus was right and Aristotle was wrong. But that’s what he did, and that’s what got him into trouble.

The hilarious thing (and now I’m finally getting to the point of the article) is that Galileo’s proof was rubbish. At the time, no-one knew what caused sea tides—Galileo’s fellow Copernican Kepler believed they were due to the influence of the Moon, but Galileo dismissed this as mystical mumbo-jumbo (“Of all the great men who have speculated on this marvellous effect of nature, the one who most astonishes me is Kepler... he had grasped the motions attributed to the Earth, and yet he still listened and assented to the notion of the Moon’s influence on the water, and occult properties, and similar childish ideas.”) Galileo was convinced the tides were a direct result of the Earth's motion, in the same way water sloshes around in a vase when you move it. But Galileo was wrong about this... and he was wrong about the Moon having nothing to do with the tides!

You might think that, having upset the Irish nation last week by suggesting that St Patrick was British, I’ve now lurched on Boris Johnson style to insult the Italians—by pointing out the single occasion on which Galileo made a mistake. But it’s worse than that... he made another mistake as well! Galileo believed that orbits had to be perfectly circular (again, this was a disagreement with Kepler). This created a problem in the case of comets, which are on manifestly non-circular orbits. Galileo’s solution was to dismiss comets as not really existing at all—merely an illusion caused by the Sun reflecting off the upper layers of the atmosphere!

The History of Biblical Literalism

Here is another photograph I took on my recent visit to the British Museum. It’s one of the most famous items in the Museum -- the 11th tablet of the Gilgamesh epic. It recounts an ancient, and supposedly fictional, story that was popular in ancient Babylon and Assyria (this particular example comes from Nineveh in Assyria, and dates from the 7th century BC). The 11th tablet has become famous, or notorious, for its description of a great flood sent by the gods to destroy the world. A character named Utnapishtim is forewarned of the event, and he constructs a large boat in order to save as many living things as possible.

Undoubtedly the Hebrew scribes who were exiled in Babylon a hundred years later would have encountered writings such as this... and that, of course, brings us on to the thorny subject of Biblical Literalism. It dawned on me a few weeks ago that the notion that Christianity begins and ends with the Bible is a relatively recent invention. Christianity is 2000 years old, but Biblical Literalism (as a widespread concept) can be no more than 500 years old. Printing, in the context of European culture, was only invented in the 15th century, before which Bibles were rare and expensive hand-written manuscripts. They were written in Latin, too, so most people wouldn’t have been able to read them even if they’d got their hands on a copy.

In its early days, Christianity was typical of the religions of its time. Religions in those days were centred, not on writings, but on symbolism and ritual... a wide variety of rituals, but all of them in one way or another aimed at personal transformation. This was true, in broad terms, of the Mystery religions of Graeco-Roman Europe as well as the “Eastern” religions of Persia and India. While there are great differences of detail, the basic concept was much the same. Writings, if they existed, were for the priesthood, not the people... and usually they were meant for guidance only, not as a central focus of belief.

Early in the 5th century AD, St Augustine wrote a treatise called “The Literal Meaning of Genesis”... but he was arguing for a symbolic, spiritual interpretation of that work, not a literal interpretation in the modern sense. Augustine’s mother was a Christian, but in his early years he turned to another Mystery religion of the time, Manichaeism, before converting back to Christianity. So he was able to look at Christianity from an outsider’s perspective, and see that people who insisted on the word-for-word truth of the Bible were merely making themselves look stupid: “Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world... If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?”

The notion that Christianity should be centred on the Bible, and not on its rituals, originated in 16th century Europe, as more and more people gained access to affordable copies of the Bible in a language they could understand. This was a brand new type of religion... one that belongs to a period in which books are common and everyone can read. That simply wasn’t the case when Christianity started out.

The English Puritans of the 16th and 17th century were amongst the earliest Biblical Literalists. They were persecuted by the established churches (both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England), and to escape this persecution many of them emigrated to America, where they were among the first European settlers. In some sense, therefore, America is founded on Biblical Literalism. That’s probably why most people in the English-speaking world today (atheists just as much as Christians) see Biblical Literalism as the “purest” form of Christianity. That may be true... but the fact remains it’s only a quarter the age of Christianity as a whole!

Gods of the Bible

The religion of the Bible is emphatically monotheistic. But no culture exists in isolation, and the ancient Hebrews and early Christians rubbed shoulders with other civilizations that were less frugal in their choice of deities. The New Testament, written in the early days of the Roman Empire, makes several references to well-known gods and goddesses of the then-thriving European pagan tradition -- such as Jupiter/Zeus, Mercury/Hermes and Diana/Artemis.

In contrast, the pagan deities of the Old Testament are far less familiar, coming as they do from long-dead civilizations. Perhaps the most famous of them is Dagon, if only because H. P. Lovecraft invented a modern-day "Esoteric Order of Dagon" in The Shadow over Innsmouth. In the Bible, Dagon is the chief god of the Philistines -- who are the arch-enemies of the Israelites in several Old Testament books. In chapter 5 of the first book of Samuel, the Philistines capture the Ark of the Covenant and place it inside the Temple of Dagon at Ashdod... where the Ark proceeds to wreak havoc on Dagon's statue! Many centuries later, the same Temple of Dagon was finally destroyed in chapter 10 of the first book of Maccabees (as depicted in the accompanying detail from an engraving by Gustave Doré).

"Dagon" was also the name of an Assyrian god, who may or may not have been connected with the Philistine god of the same name. The Assyrian Dagon had the head of a fish... which is probably where HPL got his inspiration for the denizens of Innsmouth! This version of Dagon is closely related to another Assyrian deity, Nisroch, who is depicted with the head of an eagle. Nisroch is mentioned in the Bible, in the context of the assassination of the Assyrian king Sennacherib (a historically documented event that occurred in 681 BC). According to 2 Kings 19, the assassination took place while Sennacherib was praying to the god Nisroch.

Of all the references to pagan gods in the Bible, by far the most frequently mentioned is Baal -- which was probably just a generic word for "pagan god" (the name sometimes appears in the plural, Baalim). But the record for the most gods in one place goes to verses 30 and 31 of 2 Kings 17: Succoth-benoth, Nergal, Ashima, Nibhaz, Tartak, Adrammelech and Anammelech. These deities come from a variety of different cultures, all of which were forcibly resettled by the Assyrians in Northern Israel during the late 8th century BC.

While most of the "false" gods and goddesses mentioned in the Bible were associated with outsiders, some of them were worshipped by the Hebrews themselves. King Solomon is reported to have placed idols of Ashtoreth, Chemosh, Milcom and Molech in the temple at Jerusalem (1 Kings 11), where they remained for centuries until they were destroyed by King Josiah (2 Kings 23).

The names of many of the Bible's pagan deities -- such as Baal, Dagon, Ashtoreth, Nisroch, Molech, Chemosh, Nergal and Adrammelech -- were appropriated by mediaeval occultists as the names of demons, and they regularly feature in "demonologies" of the period. More surprisingly, many of the names also turn up as "fallen angels" in Paradise Lost, by the Puritan poet John Milton. The English Puritans hated idolatry (and they destroyed countless works of art to prove it), so one might expect them to dismiss the objects of idolatry as fictitious deities existing only in the minds of their misguided worshippers. Instead, Milton chose to give them validity by suggesting they have a solid existence... albeit as Lords of Hell!

The Bible's Excluded Middle

Everyone has heard of Biblical Literalists, who hold every word of the Bible to be the exact and literal truth. At the other extreme, there are some people who believe there is no truth to be found in the Bible at all. This is a good example of the "Excluded Middle" fallacy -- the misguided notion that proving a statement to be false is equivalent to proving the opposite statement to be true, with no shades of grey between.

In the case of the Bible, the view of the "non-literalists" is that the entire Old Testament was written as a work of fiction by a Jewish scribe in the 4th or 5th century BC. Descriptions of events taking place centuries before this time are, according to this interpretation, mere fabrications. References to "real" cultures (i.e. cultures that even skeptics admit existed) such as those of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon and Persia, are nothing but scene-setting in what is effectively a historical novel. But what if the references went the other way? Are any of the major Biblical characters mentioned in records left by undeniably "real" cultures?

The answer is that in at least two cases they are. There are two Assyrian artifacts in the British Museum, which I saw on my last visit there a couple of weeks ago, that provide explicit references to two of the more important kings mentioned in the Second Book of Kings. So much for the über-skeptics and their "nothing in the Bible is true" theory!

The picture on the left shows the two-metre high Black Obelisk, which was discovered at the archaeological site of Nimrud near Nineveh in Northern Iraq in 1845. The obelisk was carved during the reign of Shalmaneser III, who was king of Assyria from 859 to 824 BC. It shows a number of scenes from the life of the king, complete with captions in cuneiform script. The second panel down (outlined in red) shows a figure kneeling in homage to Shalmaneser, with a caption reading "Tribute of Jehu, Son of Omri". Jehu reigned over the Northern Kingdom of Israel (the one that was famously "Lost", as in "Lost Tribes of Israel") from 841 to 814 BC. He wasn't literally the son of Omri, but Omri was an earlier king of Israel so "son of Omri" is just a metaphorical way of saying "of Israel". Jehu is the subject of Chapters 9 and 10 of 2 Kings... although the account there neglects to mention the fact that he knelt in tribute to King Shalmaneser of Assyria!

The second object (depicted on the right) is the so-called "Taylor Prism", which was unearthed at Nineveh by a man named Taylor in 1830. The cuneiform writing on the prism provides accounts of the first eight military campaigns of Sennacherib, king of Assyria from 704 to 681 BC. The second of these accounts deals with another important figure mentioned in 2 Kings: Hezekiah, who reigned over the Southern Kingdom of Judah from 715 to 686 BC. By this time the Northern Kingdom had already fallen to Assyria, while Judah survived as a vassal state. King Hezekiah tried to lead a revolt, by calling on the aid of the Egyptian Pharaoh Taharqa, but this came to nothing. Sennacherib launched a vicious attack on Judah and its capital Jerusalem, as recounted in 2 Kings 18. The attack is described by Sennacherib himself on the Taylor prism: "The terrifying splendour of my majesty overcame Hezekiah... he, like a caged bird, I shut up in Jerusalem, his royal city." Hezekiah was forced to pay tribute to Sennacherib -- a fact that is mentioned both on the Taylor prism and (perhaps surprisingly) in the Biblical account as well.

So at least some parts of the Bible are non-fiction!

The man who invented aliens

Some concepts are so deeply ingrained in modern culture that it's difficult to imagine that someone, at some point in history, must have invented them. Take aliens for example. Aliens, as everyone knows, come from a planet orbiting the star Zeta Reticuli. Or possibly Alpha Draconis. Or Tau Ceti. Or Sirius, or one of the Pleiades. At any rate, they come from another planet, orbiting some star other than the Sun. That's the idea, anyway (aliens being purely hypothetical and/or fictional). But where did the idea come from, and when?

The Bible contains lots of references to the stars, but it doesn't give any indication that they're extremely distant objects of comparable size to the Sun, or that they might be associated with inhabited planets. The Biblical account of creation only really makes sense if the universe is quite a small place, not much larger than the Earth itself. The stars are just tiny points of light fixed to a spherical sky, with heaven on the other side of it (as depicted on the left, in a fresco painted in the 1370s by Giusto de Menabuoi).

Not all cultures have taken quite such a narrow-minded view as this: for example the Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian and Chinese civilizations all seem to have had more realistic views of the size of the universe and the true nature of the stars. But Europe persisted with the "small universe" theory. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543) famously demoted the Earth from its place at the centre of the universe... but he put the Sun there instead, which is just as parochial. Copernicus still imagined that the other stars were smaller and less important than the Sun.

The real revolutionary, as far as European cosmology was concerned, was the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno (1548 – 1600). He believed in an infinite universe, of which the solar system was just an infinitesimally small part. It was Bruno who introduced the idea that the stars are other suns, and that they might have their own planets orbiting around them... and that these planets might be inhabited. In other words, Giordano Bruno was the man who invented aliens.

Bruno's key work in this context was De l'infinito universo et Mondi ("On the Infinite Universe and Worlds"), published in 1584. The whole book is concerned with "the plurality of worlds", but one quote is enough to give an idea of Bruno's view on the subject: "For it is impossible that a rational being, fairly vigilant, can imagine that these innumerable worlds, manifest as like to our own or yet more magnificent, should be destitute of similar and even superior inhabitants."

Nowadays it goes without saying that Earth is the archetypal planet, and the phrase "other planets" refers to planets other than the Earth. But before Bruno, the word "planet" simply referred to one of the five planets visible in the sky: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter or Saturn... not the Earth at all. As late as 1640 an Englishman named John Wilkins published "A Discourse concerning a New Planet" -- and the new planet in question was the Earth! That sounds ludicrously obvious now, but it's another example of a concept we take for granted today, which was far from obvious in the past.

In the end, Giordano Bruno was tried by the Inquisition for heresy -- and, since he refused to recant, he was burnt at the stake on 17th February 1600. It's cool to think (as many people do) that he was put to death because of his belief in the plurality of worlds -- the first ever martyr to science fiction, as it were. However, this is far from proven. Bruno was a prolific writer throughout his life, and almost everything he wrote was designed to annoy the Church in one way or another. According to A New and General Biographical Dictionary (1798): "Though he denied the being of a God, he believed the effects of magic and sorcery".