Symbolica
Symbolica / Readings

Readings

Essays built only from works this archive holds. Every quotation names who said it, in what book, when, and each reading lists the records it stands on. Where a source is a transcription rather than a page read with our own eyes, it says so.

  1. Eyes Wide Shut symbols, and where each one comes fromSeven things people ask about, each set beside the printed version somebody signed and explained. Six of the seven have an ancestor in this archive. The seventh, the one everybody remembers, has none.Reading five · about 7 minutes
  2. The Baphomet: what Lévi said he was drawingÉliphas Lévi made the most famous image of Satan in the world, signed it, and then explained sign by sign that it was a diagram of balance. The first thing he points out is which way the star on its forehead is pointing.Reading four · about 6 minutes
  3. The eye on the dollar bill, explained by its designerIt is the most decoded image in the world and the least read. Charles Thomson explained every part of it to Congress in 1782, Congress adopted his explanation along with the device, and the explanation is dull, specific and public.Reading three · about 5 minutes
  4. When God appears, he appears as a handAcross three centuries and four different books in this archive, the divine is drawn the same way: not a face, not a body, a hand coming out of a cloud. The reason is stated on one of the plates.Reading two · about 5 minutes
  5. The Hand of the Mysteries, and the two men who read itThe same seven signs on the same seven places, explained twice, two and a half centuries apart. One man saw a shelf of chemicals and the other saw a mind. Neither was reading carelessly.Reading one · about 5 minutes