Читать книгу The World's Most Mysterious Objects - Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe - Страница 8

INTRODUCTION

In a universe filled with the mysterious, the anomalous, and the unexplained, it is helpful to examine these mysteries by categories, rather than trying to take in their dazzling panoramic totality.

Lecturing on the theme of “The World’s Most Fortean Object” at the 2002 Fortean Times UnConvention in the Commonwealth Institute in London, co-author Lionel concluded — after a wide survey of all the other mysterious objects that have intrigued researchers for so long — that the winner had to be the human mind. He said, “The human mind uses a physical brain that contains 10¹⁴ neurones and its electro-chemical synapse processes enable it to think as many separate thoughts as there are atoms in the known universe. There is nothing that it cannot do for us — if only we have the courage and imagination to unleash its amazing powers.”

In this book, we have surveyed and analyzed a wide and varied range of other mysterious objects. They have taken us on a lengthy but intriguing research journey through history and the contemporary world. Can a diamond carry a curse — and, in any case, what exactly is a curse and how does it work? Back to the mystery of the mind again: a magician points a bone at a victim who believes in the magician’s powers — and the victim promptly drops dead. He points the same bone at an agnostic Cordon Bleu chef, who thanks him politely and makes it into soup! The difference between death and culinary excellence lies in the minds of the chef and the man who thought the magician had strange powers.

From magical mysteries we have proceeded to look at pseudo-scientific ones: what exactly is ball lightning? Did Orffyreus really make a perpetual motion machine? What weird inventions of the brilliant but eccentric Tesla could we advantageously use today?

Locked rooms and locked boxes (like Joanna Southcott’s) are another great source of mystery — as are mazes and labyrinths. We’ve investigated several of those recently!

Curious codes, shrouded symbols, and anomalous alphabets bring their own special atmosphere of mystery with them. It’s a very human response to want to find out what’s written there.

Did the Golem of Prague really exist? Did the weird clay monster come to life and fight against its people’s enemies? If so, the great question is how?

The quest for power and the fascination of mysterious objects often walk side by side. Did Charlemagne and Hitler have access to the mysterious Lance of Longinus — and did it affect the outcome of their battles? Did alchemists like James Price really succeed in making gold? What were the Emerald Tablets of Hermes Trismegistus (alias Thoth, scribe of the Egyptian gods) and where did they go? Could they possibly have become the mysterious and powerful Urim and Thummim of biblical times?

We’ve found these investigations both intriguing and fascinating, and we have great pleasure in sharing the research data — and a few of our theories — with our readers.

Lionel & Patricia Fanthorpe

Cardiff, Wales, U.K. 2002